Today’s Find—The 25th Anniversary Gala of Farm Sanctuary, one of the finest non-profits in existence.

We’ve worked with Farm Sanctuary since they hired us in 2006 to redesign their original logo and re-brand the group from top to bottom. And we’re lucky enough to still be working with them today.

For anyone who doesn’t already know, Farm Sanctuary started out in 1986 (thus the math) as very much a grassroots volunteer organization, supported almost entirely by the selling of veggie dogs out of a VW van. Today, Farm Sanctuary is the country’s leading farm animal protection organization, with hundreds of thousands of supporters…most of whom don’t expect a veggie dog in return for their support. They run two huge farm animal sanctuaries—one in upstate New York, one in California; both of which you can visit—and work to end the suffering of farm animals by way of activism, education, active rescues, policy reform, some lovely merch, and anything else they can think of. So, yeah, they’re the good guys, and we’re very proud to work with them.

It prides us even further to be attending their New York gala this Saturday (they’ll be throwing an LA celebration in September). So, though we know most of our friends and clients don’t have stacks of cash lying around their houses/offices/massive yachts, we have to strongly urge anyone and everyone to join us this weekend in supporting a worthy, worthy cause. And hob-nobbing with snazzy celebs while donning decorative duds, eating flashy foods, and drinking decorative drinks. It’s win-win, really.

So, get your glitz on for the animals! Reservation information and—for those of you who can’t attend—support info here. Though we’d love to see you!

Pearl and the Beard • Sweetness
A long time ago, a friend of mine who worked at a pre-school daycare center had the seemingly fun, pure-of-heart idea to have his band play a show for the kids. He asked the kids if they were into it, and, being kids, they were psyched. So he and his bandmates got the go-ahead from the higher-ups and, when the day came for the mini-gig for the minis…it was a complete disaster. Main problem: A pop-punk band of college kids used to playing house shows where they have to be audible over the drunken shouts of their audience come across a tad loud to tiny, tiny ears. Essentially all of the kids ran away, literally, from the band. “They make my ears hurt,” was overheard at one point. Most concise band review ever.

Somehow I think things will go better this Sunday, when the superb electro band Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. (goes over awesome in the south) and Brooklyn-based trio Pearl and the Beard (above, in the six-armed, three-headed, conjoined sweater) play KiDROCKERS at Park Slope’s Rock Shop. Comedians Seth Herzog and Craig Baldo host KiDROCKERS, which is not as lame as you’re thinking— “These All Ages shows are designed to bring families together to experience some of the most engaging and vital artists in indie music and comedy. Artists perform original (not specifically made for children) songs in a manner that is both authentic and kid-friendly. ” And I’m betting they turn down a little too. Evidently kid-run Q+A sessions and dancing on-stage are both common.

If you’re not into tiny humans or cute things, you can see both bands around the city this week at regular, smelly, drunken shows where there will likely be copious cursing. And, in the meantime, you should definitely check out this week’s Song of the Week, from Pearl and the Beard, “Sweetness.” It’s a charmingly beautiful and vigorous piece of pop music that has you humming and dancing along by the kick in the middle. Good, good stuff. Raucous original fauxlk with a sense of humor that stops short of cheeky. That’s right. I used ‘cheeky’ in a sentence as an American.

Below, a video medley of Will Smith tunes from Pearl and the Beard. You read right.

Pearl and the Beard – Will Smith Medley from Goddamn Cobras Collective on Vimeo.

The Dogs • Dance More
Heard about these guys via Oh My Rockness Radio, which is great in and of itself. And this song indeed amkes us want to dance more. Well-titled! Here is they.

Walk the Moon • The Liftaway
Band from Cincinnati (I know, right?) that has a penchant for super-likable songs and insanely designed MySpace pages from what we can tell.

Metronomy • Heartbreaker
Friend of mine posted a song from this band on my Facebook page with no explanation at all. After some investigation, I found that the band was Metronomy—and insanely British, quite addictive eletro-pop outfit that I can’t quite stop listening to.

Fences • Girls with Accents
This guys’ tragically great, as is this song and its story of ‘wanna do good but my self won’t let me.’ We wrote about him here. His site and debut album.

And our final song for the weekend—a brand new gem from our good friend Meredith Bragg (pictured above with a bird). The song—“Birds of North America”—is featured on a split with the talentedly awesome Donny-Hue and the Colors. Song’s below via Soundcloud, and you can purchase the hard copy—limited edition white vinyl—or digital via The Kora Records.

Peace out!
Birds of North America by thekorarecords

May finds our Pin-Up Pandas once again not doing so well.

Heavy drinking and philandering ways. No wonder they’re going extinct.

They pretty, right?

Plus, I feel like, in a pinch, they’d make decent substitutes for throwing stars.

Just sayin.

What to do when you’re mired in the wistful world that rests between the brave throes of summer and the seemingly unending doldrums of destitute as winter slowly, ever so slowly eases its decrepit grip on our souls?
Make potato salad. Not yet the potato salad of summer, with it’s cool crispness and barely cooked flavor, but a potato salad that still has holds court in the realm of warming foods to help you get through a day like…today.

Hit it!

Thai Potato Salad
(aka Fuck You, Winter, Salad)
• 28 oz. of Small Yukon Gold Potatoes (we like those bags of Bon Campo Potatoes), un-peeled and cut into eighths
• 4 Shallots, peeled, halved, and thinly sliced
• 2 large Carrots, un-peeled and diced into pieces about an eighth of an inch square
• 1 Red Pepper, cored and diced into pieces about an eighth of an inch square
• 2 stalks of Celery, diced into pieces about an eighth of an inch square (cut off and discard leafy top portion)
• half a bunch of Cilantro Leaves, stems removed and cut into thin strips
• .75 – 1.25 cups of Vegenaise,  depending entirely on how creamy/fatty you want your salad to be
• 1 4 oz. Masaman Curry Paste (be sure it’s vegetarian—we like Maesri)
• 1 tbsp. Liquid Smoke
• 2 cups Vegetable Broth (or water)
• Salt and Pepper to taste
• Olive Oil

Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a large, heavy-bottom or iron skillet on medium heat. Once it’s warm (throw a drop of water in—it should sizzle), add your sliced shallots and cook until translucent and they begin to brown on the edges—three to five minutes. Now add your potato pieces and toss to coat. Cover and cook for five minutes. Stir, making sure you turn and circulate potatoes to evenly brown them. Cover again and cook for another five minutes. Add 1 cup of broth (or water), your liquid smoke, and stir, unsticking the potatoes from the skillet surface. Cover and cook for another five to ten minutes, checking throughout until the liquid’s been fully absorbed. Once it has, add the second cup of broth (or water) and repeat.

Meanwhile, chop up your carrots and pepper and set aside and chop you celery and add that (separately) to a large mixing bowl.

Back at the skillet, once the liquid’s been absorbed, check the potatoes with a fork. They should be a little resistant still and not crumble to the touch, but not too firm. If they’re not at that point yet, add water, cover, and cook until they are.

Once your potatoes are good, add the carrots and pepper to the skillet, cover, and reduce to low heat. Cook for five minutes, and then remove from heat and uncover, letting everything cool for five or ten minutes.

When things have cooled a bit, add your skillet mixture to the mixing bowl with the celery and gently stir in the Veganiase thoroughly. You can do a little at a time, if you like, to ensure you don’t end up with an overly wet mix. I know. Ew.

Now add your curry little by little. This is a fairly mild curry paste, but it still packs a little heat, so add a quarter of a can or so at first, mix, taste, and then add more if you like. We generally go for a whole can, but, if you don’t use the whole thing, save the remnants—it tastes AWESOME mixed with a little ketchup or tomato paste and used as a condiment.

That’s it! Enjoy!

We’ve been pretty busy both blog-wise and actual-work-wise of late, so we haven’t had a chance to post about a band we’ve been really really diggin’ on the past couple months—Seattle’s The Head and The Heart.

We heard this week’s Song of the Week, “Down in the Valley,” back around SXSW, and it became one of those pieces of music that slowly creeps into your subconsciousness and wraps itself around your heart until you start to miss it when it’s not playing. It’s truly beautiful, rootsy music that’s sincere and touching in it’s nakedness. And it’s based on solid song-writing and really sweet melodies to boot.

Give “Down int he Valley” a listen and, if you like what you hear, head over to their site to download another really nice, slightly more rollicking number—”Lost in My Mind.” You can pick up their brand new self-titled full-length on CD, vinyl, or ones and zeroes over at Sub Pop or at a independent record store new you.

Reader, as you may or may not know, today is International Crow and Raven Appreciation Day.

Wait, let us rephrase that—as you definitely do not know, today is International Crow and Raven Appreciation Day. As far as we can tell, it was essentially proclaimed as such by four Canadians via the Facebooks. In fact, if you do a Web search for International Crow and Raven Appreciation Day—ICRAD for those in the know—you pretty much just find the Facebook page. And our blog. 

ALAS! We have never been ones to shy away from celebration or question potential problems pertaining to proper registration of international holidays. ESPECIALLY when they involve ravens and crows, who not only serve as our company’s namesake, but also fascinate us personally and visually. 

So raise your glass of dark, dark, beer, reader; tip your chapeau noir in reverence, friend; and don that slightly creepy crow mask to freak out your neighbors as we all toast these covetable corvids!

On a related note, please enjoy this superb headline from a couple years back. Oh, Metro editors.

At raven + crow studio, our day-to-day operations are pretty streamlined. It’s essentially two of us working in a studio that used to be part of a pre-prohibition brewery, so cool and old-school, yes, but not exactly cushy. Being a small business and personally and professionally concerned with lessening our overall impact overall, we generally keep it simple—walking half an hour to work and then back every day, relying on reusable and recycled paper and other materials whenever possible, sourcing from and supporting local businesses as much as we can, and almost always bringing lunches from home.

So, when the rare day comes around and we decide to order lunch—because of a heavy workload or having to be at the office super-early or just because we want to treat ourselves—we get pretty f’in psyched. And, being people of the world and living in such a diverse, exciting city, we always try to expand our horizons. “Let’s order from the vegan raw place up the street! Or maybe the veggie asian place over on Court! Or maybe V-Spot!” But, I’d say 4 out of 5 times, we end up walking a few blocks northwest and pick ourselves up a vegan Vietnamese sandwich from Hanco’s on Bergen. And we rarely regret it.

Next time you’re in Cobble Hill, give ’em a try. Not only do they make Bánh mì with fried tofu, they’ve also now got mock chicken (pictured above) and the brand new mock roast pork, and, we must say—they are BAD ASS. Oh, and be sure to order them without butter and mayonaise—both staples on traditional Bánh mì. They’ve assured us that the mock meats are totally vegan, which makes sense, because they both remind us of the chicken and veggie ham from May Wah, both of which are vegan. And yes, that “chicken” has “vegetarian perfume” in it. Hm….

But trust us! It’s AWESOME!

Happy Music Monday to you, reader. This week, we’re down right elated to bring you a song from the soon-to-be-released collaboration between Thao Nguyen, of Thao and the Get Down Stay Down, and Mirah, of awesomeness. Their self-titled album comes out tomorrow and we’re featuring one of the many stand-out tracks—”Eleven,” featuring indie-jangle-artist, tUnE-YarDs—as our Song of the Week. What’s more, Mirah, who we’ve both been a huge fan of since she released her beautiful debut, You Think It’s Like This But It’s Really Like This, took some time to talk with about the album, what it’s like to work with Thao, and the oh-so-dreamy Marc Summers, former host of Nickelodeon’s Double Dare. For reals.

Kindness of Ravens: Alright, first thing’s first—What brought on this magical musical collaboration? I’m assuming you two originally knew each other from the west coast music scene…but I don’t know, maybe this is like one of those things where some old rich dude puts together a band of well-groomed, fresh-faced strangers to woo the mall-stalking teens of America.

Mirah: Why thank you for the compliment.  I don’t usually get to claim membership in the well-groomed club. We were introduced over e-mail after I moved to the Bay Area by a mutual friend who also happens to be our licensing agent.  So it was sort of like a cross between a ride-share bulletin board, internet dating, and general cosmic alignment.

KoR: How would you say the resulting sound differs from, say, a Mirah record or a Thao with the Get Down Stay Down release?

M: Does it?  Love child, man.  The question is—’how does it sound the same, yet somehow magically better and even more beautiful’?  I think it must be the influence of all the drugs other people do so that we don’t have to do them.

KoR: Alright, but you’re both such strong song-writers and you both have such distinctive sounds. Does the collaboration break down along specific lines? Like, did you, say, write all the lyrics and maybe Thao wrote particular guitar lines? Or maybe you each had your own songs you sort of ‘owned’? Or did you just sit around and jam? …or maybe you did the whole thing and Thao, I don’t know, got you coffee and breakfast burritos?

M: First things first—I am not a coffee-drinker and Thao and I both shared duties on the quinoa and greens provisions. Thao happens to be the only person in the world who I’ve ever successfully jammed with and so, yes, there was some of that. But it was most like your option number 2—ownership, sharing, conferring, jamming, allowing space for each other; like each of us holding open a door for the other that neither of us could hold open just alone.

KoR: Ooh, I like that. And your sessions sound VERY well-catered. And tUnE-YaRds produced the album, correct? How’d ya’ll hook up Merrill (of tUnE-YaRds)?

M: She was one of the constellations who became cosmically aligned via mine and Thao’s yenta. Merrill and I also both happened to be moving to the Bay from elsewhere during the same month of at the end of 2009.

KoR: Nice. By the way, we really like the cover art (above). You both look really tough. Who did the design work for the album?
M: Thao had met Alejandro Chavetta at one of her shows, I believe. He’s the art director at San Francisco magazine and a photo-collage artist and had offered to take photos, should she ever need. He came and took a bunch of beautiful shots on the roof of our upper Haight apartment. My friend, Forrest Martin, who does graphic design work out of Portland, put together a lot of the design elements for the outside of the package, but then we ran into a time crunch and our people at Kill Rock Stars took over and finished up with the booklet.  And, yes we are tough.  You should see me flex my biceps.

KoR: I’m afraid I didn’t buy any tickets to the gun show. So, not to get all serious and junk, but I know a lot of women in music—or the arts in general—feel an obligation or pressure to represent the gender as a whole or provide a positive role-model to their female audience. Some people embrace that kind of thing and some people totally dismiss it as an unfair burden that’s not placed on your average white male (um, hello,  TRAIN!). Where do you all fall on that? …or are you just like, “Fuck it”?
M: I’m far too intentional of a person to just say ‘fuck it’ about anything.  I represent myself, and I identify as a feminist, as queer, as a powerful female person, and as a conveyor of love. I have my days where I feel small but I try to meet those days with patience. I don’t stand up in the world because of feelings of obligation but rather through a commitment to doing my humble part in carrying on the tradition of positive female role models who have inspired me in my life. I’ll paraphrase one of my favorite celebrity quotes from last year . . . ‘Some days I wake up feeling like any other insecure 24 year old, and then I say to myself- “Bitch, you’re Lady Gaga, you get up and walk that walk today.”‘

KoR: Hells yeah! A friend of ours was in the band Velocity Girl and I remember him telling us how crazy it was when Volkswagon bought the rights to “Sorry Again,” but that was like, 50 years ago. Do you think the songs-in-commercials scene and what it all means has changed a lot with the way the music industry has shifted in the past few years?

M: It is honestly harder to make a living as a musician ever since people stopped buying music. It took me a couple years to really face that reality. I kept thinking that since I was so incredibly independent, and that the scene of folks who listened to my music felt more like a big family I was a part of than some dualistic fan/rockstar model, that the consequences of the shift to digital and the advent of file sharing would never be felt. But I was wrong. I do know that people still love and listen to music,  but the whole social and financial structure of writing, recording, touring, selling, listening to and buying albums has inexorably shifted. Also, when I was coming up as a musical presence in Olympia and the Northwest in the mid to late 90’s, making money or charging much money for anything or being involved with main-stream anything was just simply not done. The identity was anti-globalization and anti-capitalist and pro small scale, grass-roots and d.i.y. And as a kid raised by  hippie macrobiotic parents who were self-employed, I just never really felt myself a part of most of the dominant structures of our society which champion making money and running with the herd. I still question any emphasis on financial gain over emphasis on pulling up the people, and at the same time I can see a certain pretension in some of the attitudes I used to have about ‘the main-stream’. I still feel myself to be an outsider in a lot of ways because of having been born and bred in alternative-land, and I’ve also come to a point in my life where I can appreciate things I used to disregard. The combination of all of these changes has led me to making certain choices about my music which I might not have made earlier in my career. I still use a healthy dose of discretion and there are offers which I decline but it’s true—a song of mine has been featured in a Kinder Chocolate ad in Europe and I’ve had a number of songs in TV shows and movies. I feel like positive messaging is present in much of my music and my aim is to share that with as many people as possible.

KoR: That seems like a healthy way to view things in this ever-changing scene. So, on a personal side-note, Katie (my wife and partner) and I have been HUGE fans of yours forevs. Actually, I fondly remember riding in a friends car and listening to You Think It’s Like This But It’s Really Like This and deciding to to propose to her. Whenever I hear a song from that album, I think of that. No real question there…just…thanks.

M: You are welcome.  You are why I love my job.

KoR: So…is it true that you were on Double Dare when you were a kid?
It is indeed. It was perhaps less fun than you might imagine, or maybe it was just less fun for me. There’s something really chaotic about being herded around by a bunch of grown-ups in nylon pants shouting instructions like ‘jump in the cereal and milk Mirah, grab the flag and stuff it down your shirt’ while cameras are rolling and you’re wearing ugly knee pads and a big bobbly white helmet and you’re scrawny and flat-chested and your glasses are covered in goo from the physical challenge you messed up on earlier in the show.  It was awkward and confusing, and yes, a little exciting. The best thing about it was using the money I won to join up with the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament later that month.  I think I had my priorities pretty well set up at 12.

KoR: Um, yeah. My twelve-year-old self is pretty embarrassed for himself. But MAN is he good and making Transformers transform! But, yeah, I totally always wanted to be on that show. That Marc Summers. So dreamy. So, do you think this is a long-term collaboration or do you think you’ll both go your separate ways after this album and tour?
M: We’re friends and loved working together and we’ll both be making music for a long time yet, so, all things considered, I’d be surprised if this was it.
KoR: Having loved the album, we’re very happy to hear that answer. So as to inform myself and others of proper show etiquette—kosher to request Thao wtGDSD

M: Absolutely, though i can’t promise being able to play every old song. I try to make the people happy, and I am very human, not a machine!

KoR: Apologies, apologies. Though I am going to go ahead and put in my request fro “La Familia” now. Favorite thing about San Fran? Other than calling it San Fran?

M: Calling it Frisco. But really, I think my favorite thing is riding my bike all around and through it. Riding riding riding.  Looking looking looking.  I spend a lot of time at the ocean. And I’ll go up a steep steep hill just so I can get a good view.

KoR: Those hills are nuts. Favorite thing to do while in NYC/Brooklyn?

M: Walking, anywhere, all over.  I could walk miles and miles just looking.  I was there for one of the blizzards last winter and loved walking around with almost no cars and all that quiet burying everything. Someday I want to run the NYC marathon—such a tangible way to feel somewhere, running my feet over it. When I was a kid I would go with my dad on knish deliveries (family business while growing up: natural brown rice and vegetable knishes that we made in a bakery in the basement of our house). I would sit in the car all day and look at people, buildings, taxi drivers, other delivery people, piles of garbage.  I love New York, the whole package deal.

KoR: And we love you right back! Finally, in closing, were you each to be a mystical creature, you’d be a—?

M: Fairy Godmother

KoR: I knew it!

You can now pre-order Thao + Mirah’s album—out everywhere tomorrow—and even listen to whole dang thing over at NPR right now. They’ll be playing Music Hall of Williamsburg June 8 and touring across the nation throughout the rest of May and June. Catch ’em if you can!