Pi Jacobs / Babilonia (Celia Chavez)

The two artists share the distinction of being Filipina-Americans who have long been creating in the Americana music genre with their own unique approaches and styles. Ever since they met singing in the Silverlake Chorus, they have supported and collaborated on each other’s projects, live shows, videos, and recordings. The evening will celebrate Pi’s new album, Soldier On, which has stayed in the Americana Music Association Chart’s Top 50 for 10 weeks as of this writing. The opening set will feature Celia’s new EP and moniker, Babilonia, and “No Companion”, the first single off her recent EP.

Pi Jacobs: 
Pi Jacobs draws inspiration from her unconventional, mixed-race upbringing in Northern California, aka “The Land of Weed and Wine.” Blending roots-rock swagger and storytelling soul, her music has drawn comparisons to Tom Waits, Dolly Parton, and Lucinda Williams. She has spent the better part of two decades onstage and on the road, creating a rhythmic, rootsy sound as diverse as her upbringing. Raised on California country songs, blues standards, soul classics, and Laurel Canyon folk songs, she began playing bass at 15, earning a BA degree in bass and vocal performance.

Pi honors that longtime love of good grooves with Soldier On. It’s a joyous blast of blues, soul, and string-band stomp that shines brighter with her bluesy interpretation of American roots music. This record, her tenth release, captures a longtime songwriter at the peak of her powers and delivers stories of resilience and endurance. while a hotshot band kicks up plenty of dust behind her. Co-produced with two-time Grammy nominee Eric Corne, Soldier On finds Pi looking inward, balancing some of her most personal songwriting to date with full-band performances that were primarily tracked live. The result is the best of both worlds: a rawly autobiographical album punctuated by groove and grit, caught halfway between the intimacy of Pi’s writing and the collaborative chemistry of her stripped-down band.

Babilonia:

Stepping outside the gilded cage of her life as a globetrotting backup singer, Celia Chavez assumed a brand new moniker, Babilonia, to release her newest EP, If I Ever Think To Double Back. Draped in a tapestry made of strands of music she’s lived and loved — from her parents’ jazz and soul records in her hometown of Seattle, to the vibrant scene of New York City’s Lower East Side, to the songcraft capital of Laurel Canyon — Chavez finally takes her place at the helm of her own formidable studio band as a compelling frontperson. Written during a painful two year break from her life partner, If I Ever Think to Double Back is a record of liberation against a backdrop of deep cultural change. Reclaiming and harmonizing parts of herself she lent to other artists’ music for so many years, Babilonia resists melancholy and embraces bittersweetness through a vibrant current of energy that becomes, song by song, an arrival to a place of wholeness and peace.

“Babilonia is my grandmother’s name,” Chavez shares. “She died young, so I never knew her. I’m only now learning details about her life in the Philippines. Embracing her name feels like reaching back and inviting her and my mom to sing with me.” The name has always held mystique for Chavez, along with its origin linked to the city of Babel, where legend says the peoples of the world were scattered and human speech fractured into many languages. “This project calls home all the voices I have summoned while in service to so many distinctive artists. Babilonia contains all my vulnerability and power, joy and imperfection.” With the Mother’s Day date on her mind, Chavez will include a few songs on the setlist that were inspired by her mother and grandmother.