Midtown Social

It’s time to stretch, hydrate, and double-knot your dancing shoes, because The Bay Area’s favorite soul party band, Midtown Social, is back with their first full-length release. Midtown Social’s freshly squeezed blend of California soul, funk, and rock is downright irresistible. Midtown Social is a nine-piece tour-de- force. But it’s more than just a band. Together, these nine musicians are a collaborative community of writers, arrangers and artists. When they’re on stage, they invite you into the family.

The Midtown mission is to spread the message of positive social change through art and music. As rates of eviction and homelessness soared due to technology-driven corporate gentrification across the Bay Area, Midtown Social began hosting charitable fundraisers following the release of their debut EP Down On Sixth, including one for the Homeless Youth Alliance.

With San Francisco and Oakland flush with tech money but wracked by police violence and deepening social tensions, the band decided their next release should stand as a voice for the people. Midtown Social documents the struggle to make art in a city and a society divided against itself. The record is inspired by the determination to push onward: Midtown Social serves up food for hungry souls—fuel for a revolution of free, open and creative thought.

Written and recorded as the Bay Area artistic community continued its exodus amid evictions and club closures, Midtown Social speaks with the voices of a generation that understands the power and beauty of its diversity. Each track represents a sound or aesthetic representative of that community by drawing upon the colorful musical impulses that compose it.

Recorded at John Vanderslice’s magical, all-analog Tiny Telephone in Oakland with engineer Jamie Riotto, the record captures Midtown Social’s raw live sound without any unnecessary ornamentation.

Deeply inspiring and guaranteed to make you sweat just as much as it makes you think, Midtown Social presents a message of solidarity and hope, voiced by a community of people who are as diverse, bold, authentic, and vulnerable as the community in which they were forged. Midtown Social asks us all to come together, to find common ground, love and camaraderie, to fight for our communities, way of life, and rights—and to stand together as one.