Back­stage at The Sea­sons  $10.00 pre-show, $12.00 day of show

Vetiver are com­monly lumped into the nascent “freak folk” move­ment along­side the likes of Joanna New­som and Six Organs of Admit­tance, thanks to leader Andy Cabic’s friend­ship with scene founder Deven­dra Ban­hart. (Besides Banhart’s musi­cal con­tri­bu­tions to Vetiver’s first two albums, Cabic co-wrote Banhart’s break­out song “At the Hop,” from 2004′s Rejoic­ing in the Hands; on the same album, Ban­hart paid trib­ute to his friend’s band in the song “When the Sun Shone on Vetiver.”) How­ever, the band’s roots go deeper than Syd Bar­rett and Linda Per­hacs, encom­pass­ing the U.K. shoegazer scene and the mid-’90s D.I.Y. indie rock scene. Cabic was part of the lat­ter, form­ing the Ray­mond Brake in his native Greens­boro, North Car­olina in the early ’90s. The Ray­mond Brake’s noisy, Sonic Youth-influenced take on indie rock was a nat­ural fit with both the Chapel Hill art-punk scene and the influ­en­tial Wash­ing­ton D.C. indie Sim­ple Machines, which released the band’s debut album Piles of Dirty Win­ters in 1995. After a hand­ful of EPs and one more album, 1996′s Never Work Ever, the Ray­mond Brake broke up and Cabic migrated west­ward, even­tu­ally set­tling in San Fran­cisco. While study­ing at the San Fran­cisco Art Insti­tute, Cabic met fel­low stu­dent Ban­hart and instantly estab­lished a close work­ing rela­tion­ship with the bearded sprite. While play­ing live gigs with Ban­hart, New­som and oth­ers, Cabic started writ­ing songs for his new project Vetiver, named for an Asian rel­a­tive of lemon­grass that’s used in per­fume mak­ing. Adding Ban­hart on gui­tar and back­ing vocals, Jim Gay­lord on vio­lin, and Alissa Ander­son on cello behind Cabic’s vocals, banjo, and acoustic gui­tar, Vetiver released its first, self-titled, album on the DiCristina label in 2004. (The album, pro­duced by Thom Mon­a­han of the Per­nice Broth­ers, also included guest spots by New­som, Mazzy Star’s Hope San­doval, and for­mer My Bloody Valen­tine drum­mer Colm O’Ciosoig.) Vetiver was fol­lowed in 2005 by a stop­gap odds and sods col­lec­tion called Between that included two live tracks, plus a new ver­sion of a song from Vetiver and a cover of Fleet­wood Mac’s “Save Me a Place.” For Vetiver’s sec­ond full-length album, 2006′s To Find Me Gone, Cabic finally added a drum­mer, Otto Hauser, and bassist Kevin Barker to the core trio of him­self, Ban­hart, and Ander­son. After the album was released, Cabic intro­duced a sta­ble, full-time record­ing and tour­ing lineup of him­self, Ander­son, Hauser, new gui­tarist Sanders Trippe, and new bassist Brent Dunne. In 2008 the band released A Thing of the Past, a col­lec­tion of cov­ers of songs by artists like Michael Hur­ley, Ron­nie Lane and Townes Van Zandt who have influ­enced Cabic along the way. The band’s next album, 2009′s Tight Knit,was released by new label Sub Pop.~ Stew­art Mason, All Music Guide