Turkuaz 8 nugs of Hanukkah are Here
It’s the final night of Hanukkah and the final day of Turkuaz’s ‘8 nugs of Hanukkah’. This year’s holiday celebration brought us audio from live performances, studio sessions, and virtual sessions. Each beautifully unique show will delight both longtime fans and those wanting to get to know Turkuaz for the first time. Check out information on each show and happy Hanukkah from all of us at nugs.net.
In one single rehearsal in a tiny, cramped rehearsal room in Brooklyn just days before Catskill Chill 2015, all 14 of us (Turkuaz, Dopapod and Johnny Durkin) gathered together and hammered out these 14 songs from the Studio 54 disco era. This was a big set for us and the pressure was on. We proceeded to have one of the best times we’ve ever had on stage. This is one we will never forget!
Every year since 2014 Turkuaz has celebrated New Year’s Eve with an event called “The Ball Drop”. This was the first time doing it away from the east coast, in Boulder, CO at the Boulder Theater with our good friend, Swatkins as our guest. The show was sold out and the energy was high. You can hear our high hopes for 2020 mentioned throughout the set, which of course feels strange now. But it’s nice to relive the best part of this crazy year.
Sly and the Family Stone Cover Set
Another Catskill Chill favorite. That festival was always so special to us, and this set was one of the most exciting things we’d done at this time way back in 2014. I (Dave) ended up being so incredibly sick with a cold or flu of some kind, and I napped in our van until moments before we went onstage. But then the music started and the energy just exploded. This isn’t our highest quality recording or our most flawlessly executed performance, but the energy is HIGH and we gave it everything we had. Still one our favorites to this day.
This year we all learned new ways to make music in quarantine, and this is the culmination of all the virtual festival sets we put together for the year, including all of L4LM’s virtual events, and Bonnaroo’s Virtual Roo-ality. For Bonnaroo we performed Talking Heads music and our newest single with Jerry Harrison and Adrian Belew. Considering our Remain in Light tour got postponed, it was great to be able to collaborate with these guys and keep the arrangements fresh in our heads. Even though none of us were in the same room for any of this music, we still had a blast and felt like we were collaborating.
This one we approached less as a live performance, and more as a video tribute. Though you can watch the videos on Youtube, this is the only audio release we’ve done of these Beatles covers which are near and dear to our hearts. This music shaped our childhoods, and we can only hope we did justice to the spirit of this incredible, world-changing band. The videos went over quite well with our fans, and we’ll hope you’ll enjoy this chance to listen to all the songs as one collection here on Nugs.
We just recently released our first ever acoustic performance on digital platforms, along with our friends at Sugarshack who produced it for us. They challenged us to channel our music and energy into an acoustic setting and it ended being a very special experience. It was so special in fact, that in the midst of the quarantine blues this summer, we decided to do our own attempt at yet another acoustic set which you can only hear right here on Nugs.net. This one also came together very nicely. We hope you enjoy this gentler side of Turkuaz!
This was night 2 of 3 of our 2016 Brooklyn Bowl residency. Brooklyn Bowl feels like our home as a band in so many ways, and it’s such a pleasure to release a board recording from this show. This show has two sets. Most special of all is that the second set is our tribute to The Band. This is the only existing recording where Craig, Taylor and Mikey all contribute vocals as well. Yet another night we will never forget!
We’re capping it off with the last documented “Kuadrochrome Era” performance, done at Echo Mountain Studios in Asheville, NC. To say this place and their team of people are extremely hospitable and masters of their craft is an understatement. They made us feel so at home when we arrived and all through the experience. We feel like this set is one of the most unique blends of live and studio performance that we’ve ever done. It was all done live, but with an incredible team of people in the control room and behind the cameras who we thank for allowing us to release this audio here on Nugs. We hope you’ve enjoyed our 8 Nugs of Hanukkuah!
