We’ve set up some free track downloads for you and a limited-time-only $5 download of the 11-track Get Free album. Here are a few of the album’s biggest guitar jams, for my fellow guitar freaks:

When It Comes Down (at 3:15) – free download
C21H23NO3 (at 3:10) – free download
Love That Lasts (at 2:15)
The Needle and the Damage Done (at 2:30)

P.S. You can also download Get Free at iTunes, eMusic, Rhapsody and Napster.

Initially, I was only attending to write about the festival for Vintage Guitar magazine but I’m really grateful to have also been invited to teach two workshops (on alternate tunings and on developing a strong vibrato)…and to perform some Devi songs with the festival house band at the Guitar Extravaganza concert Sept 4th at Flathead Lake Lodge!

What makes this festival unique is that it’s run by a nonprofit organization committed to promoting not only guitar playing but also protection of the beautiful Montana environment. The foundation is sponsoring free community guitar workshops at local schools during the festival and donates proceeds from its activities to environmental and music education groups in the region. I can dig that.

As a Strat fanatic, I’m very proud to see Fender reaching out to women like this. We are your market, too, guitar and amp companies!! Enough already with the ads showing women straddling guitars; show us PLAYING them and we might buy them!!

First, it’s for a great cause — to raise money for the JC 4th Street Arts & Music Festival. Second, the other bands are hella cool (Easter Vomit, In Musth, Plastiq Passion, Shayfer James, Los Huevos and Prison Pretty). And third, there will be food. Food! Five bucks to watch eight bands duke it out, hang with hipsters and eat.

The judges are pretty cool, too – our fave DJ, Lindsay Klein from WHDA-FM, music manager Eddie Applebaum (Morningwood, Earl Greyhound) The Needle Drop blogger Anthony Fantano and Pistol Pete Kaufmann from RockinLifestyle. Come root for us!!

Interview with event organizer Max Michaels

Facebook Event Invite

It isn’t often that I come across an album that’s so good I have to listen to it multiple times in a row. When I sat down to check out Devi’s album GET FREE, I found myself doing just that. Every time the record finished I started it over, eventually just setting iTunes to “repeat all” to save me the hassle.

After about the fifth time through the album I found myself left with only one question, “How in the world have I never heard of this band before?”

Big shout out to 105.5 WDHA-FM “The Rock of New Jersey” DJ LINDSAY KLEIN for posting about DEVI on her HOMEGROWN SPOTLIGHT blog!!

Lindsay is a super-vivacious stalwart of the NJ rock scene and we’re very grateful to have her support. Plus, it’s always great for me to meet another woman who loves the ROCKNESS!

Keep an ear out for some Devi on her show tonite 9 pm to midnite. Tune in to 105.5 or listen online. You can email her a request or text “DHA” then a space followed by the song name to 30241.

Check out Perry Robinson’s clarinet intro and John Hummel’s incredible drumming around 2:20 on Love That Lasts from our Get Free album. John’s gotta be the bastard musical lovechild of Ginger Baker and John Bonham.

OK Guitar Geeks – what tuning am I using on this song? I’ll give you a hint, it’s a favorite of Jimmy Page. This photo of him makes me want to lick his neck.

Big thanks also to director of photography Evan Seplow and assistant director Jason Jaworski. Shot in one long-ass day in my apartment and at Boca Grande, Keith’s new rock/art bar, both in Jersey City.

I blame the dress.

We’ll be playing together in DC May 14 and 15 to raise money for BCI. I’ll be playing with Groovananda, and then I’ll perform acoustic versions of some Devi songs, backed by Groovananda musicians including Wynne on sarod/vocals, the great tabla master Badal Roy and jazz clarinet maestro Perry Robinson (who also lives in Jersey City and is the nicest person). Wow, I’m feeling very lucky!

Check out the Facebook invitation for more info on lineup and location.

Keith and I both decamped to Jersey City last year. Me in August, escaping the yahoos of Hoboken, and Keith in October, to help a friend rescue a lost-cause restaurant then-called Ole.

Six months of 80-hour weeks and inestimable sweat equity later on the part of Keith and his crew of rockin maniacs (including my awesome nephew AKA Hawk), Ole has been transformed into Boca Grande, a hip Mex restaurant/bar that is increasingly packed with the super-vibrant downtown JC art and music scene that Nick chronicles in his podcast.  It’s been amazing to watch these guys rip the place apart and rebuild it from the ground up. Check out the open mic on Wednesday nites, which Nick also hosts. I dig this town.