Name: Anna Hillburg • Brad Brooks • The Bye Bye Blackbirds
Start: 2025-11-21T20:00:00
End: 2025-11-22T01:00:00
Location: Ivy Room

ivy room presentsFRIDAY NOV 21ST<h2>— ANNA HILLBURG</h2><h2>BRAD BROOKS</h2><h2>THE BYE BYE BLACKBIRDS</h2>----Doors 7:00pm / Show 8:00pmAdvance Tickets Available----IVY ROOM860 San Pablo Ave, Albany • 21+<h2>ANNA HILLBURG</h2>—Anna Hillburg has spent several years making music in the Bay Area. As a singer, songwriter, trumpet, guitar, drum, and bass player she has contributed to acts such as Shannon and The Clams, The Dodos, The Moore Brothers, Will Sprott, Dream Date, Greg Ashley, Shannon Shaw and her All Star Buddy Band, and more. She spent her teenage years playing with the All American Band at Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, California. Hillburg graduated from the highly selective Los Angeles County High School for the Arts where she was awarded the Lew and Edie Wasserman Award as the school’s top instrumentalist. After graduating she came to the Bay Area to study music at UC Berkeley, where she was a member of the University’s symphony. She spent her 20’s and early 30’s touring with several different bands in the US and Europe before becoming a music teacher to students of all ages. After her 2013 self titled album, Hillburg went on to release “Really Real” in 2018, gaining even more accreditation and praise a songwriter on her own. She has once again joined Bay Area members of Extra Classic, The Dodos, Yea-Ming and the Rumours, and Chime School to release her third solo album, ironically entitled “Tired Girls.”In 2025, she released the lauded synth pop EP, Dangerously Impressionable, a collaboration with her partner Bill Rousseau. Drawing inspiration from Madonna to Moroder and everything in between.<h2>BRAD BROOKS</h2>—Brooks, beloved in the Bay Area as one of its finest vocalists and songwriters with 4 solo records under his belt since 2000, released “Harmony of Passing Light” in 2012, which drew comparisons to Elvis Costello, Wilco, Brian Wilson, Queen, and planned to head right back into the studio to record an immediate, even more ambitious follow-up.   Instead, he found himself fighting for his life.   Just as the songs for “God Save The City” started to take shape, a routine trip to the dentist revealed a lump in Brooks’ throat, which turned out to be cancer that could have robbed Brooks of his voice forever. Instead, Brooks made a full recovery and simultaneously mined the scariest moment in his life for the most honest and fiery record of his career.   “God Save The City” explodes with Brooks screaming “Come on!!!” and the record never loses that urgency. From the Hall and Oates slow burn of “Feel The Might” to the classic Hi Records groove of “Why Do You Hurt” and “The Chance,” this is Brooks’ soul album, one he has earned the right to make. Recorded with his longtime, devoted, and white-hot live band, the record is full of first and second takes with minimal overdubs, raw and vulnerable. Not surprisingly, Brooks’ journey and the country’s wild descent into partisan rancor over the last few years show up all over “God Save The City.” Brooks tackles wealth displacement in the title track (“they sang it like an angel with the devil’s rhyme”), his own mortality in “Sacred I Was ” (“Fear can change you, keep you from what’s true”), recalls a hilarious true encounter with the actor Lee Marvin on “Lee Marvin’s Uzi,”On “Strange Fruit Numb,” what started as a band jam evolves into a civil rights anthem for the 21st century in the grand tradition of other Bay Area politically musical visionaries like Sly Stone and Boots Riley. With “God Save The City”, Bay Area artist Brad Brooks made a triumphant return with the most direct, soulful record of his life. Since its release, God Save The City reached the ears of some legendary figures, including the MC5’s founder Wayne Kramer and producer Bob Ezrin. Kramer invited Brooks to join the “reanimated” MC5 as lead vocalist and toured with him in 2022 as well being co-writer of the new Ezrin produced MC5 album “Heavy Lifting” which will be released by Ear Music on Oct 18th 2024 and includes Tom Morello, Slash, Vernon Reid, Dennis Thompson, Don Was, Abe Laboriel Jr., Tim McIlrath, Stevie Salas, Vicki Randle, Winston Watson, Jill Sobule, and Joe Boyd. <h2>THE BYE BYE BLACKBIRDS</h2>—Torchbearers for harmony laden guitar rock in the 21st century, The Bye Bye Blackbirds' sound is a sparkling blend of country and roots influences, classic 60’s guitar pop, 70’s power pop, contemporary indie rock and the college radio heroes of the 1980’s.