The Ascetic Junkies profile picture

The Ascetic Junkies

...are one shoe over the cuckoo's nest

About Me

BUY OUR ALBUM:
One Shoe... physical copy on CD Baby
One Shoe Over the Cuckoo's Nest on iTunes
(on the US, UK, EU, NZ, AU, JP, and CA stores!)
BIO:
The - a definitive article used to quantify a noun.
Ascetic – an adjective describing a person who dedicates his or her life to a pursuit of contemplative ideals.
Junkies – a group of people who have an insatiable interest, devotion, or craving.
The Ascetic Junkies are mates - bandmates, housemates, bedmates, and chefmates. The merging of two Time Magazine "Songwriting Genius of the Year" recipients**, the AJ's craft tunes out of silk and wood, water and stone, to create a unique, boy-girl-folk-rock-indie-bluegrass-pop sound just for you.
At the core, the band consists of Kali Giaritta (vocals, claps, stomps, other) and Matt Harmon (vocals, guitar, other, other, other). Kali and Matt met through a mutual friend while attending college in Boston and found that they had a mutual interest in music, living in Kenmore Square, and each other. Having both been in failed attempts at rock-band-superstardom in the past, they decided to try making music together; not surprisingly, the first two real AJ's tunes were songs they had written about each other.
After taking their name from a group of misfits in a Kerouac novel and testing, nay, jumping into the proverbial water of the Boston scene for a year, our heros decided to move to the Pacific Northwest and take up residency in Portland, Oregon. They quickly assembled a new band, throwing a drummer, a banjo player, and a bassist into the mix, and they just released an entirely self-produced and -recorded full-length album titled One Shoe Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Check them out, go see an energetic live show, and be careful - you may just fall in love with them.
**Neither a real award nor an award the AJ's have ever received
View The Ascetic Junkies's EPK
Make us one of your
TOP FRIENDS
Just click the button below!

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 1/13/2007
Band Website: theasceticjunkies.com - COMING SOON
Band Members: Kali | vox, stomps, claps, spoons
Matt | vox, guitar, bass, keys, mandolin, percussion, other
Ryan | bass
Graham | banjo
Kurt | drums

The Ascetic Junkies at St. Johns Bridge from The Penny Jam on Vimeo .
Influences: THINGS PEOPLE SAY:
"[CLATTERING INDIE FOLK] With more and more bands in town learning about the power of acoustic instruments, we should be thankful they can wrench some great sounds out of them. The quintet known as the Ascetic Junkies does just that by introducing the stomping joy of bluegrass and country into its navel-gazing pop (à la Tilly and the Wall but without that silly tap dancing thing). The resulting music, as heard on the band's debut, One Shoe Over the Cuckoo's Nest, has quickly marked it as one of the best young groups in Portland." -ROBERT HAM, WILLAMETTE WEEK

"(Windows Sell the House is) a great example of the modern bluegrass music that's been growing all over the country, from the deepest deltas of bluegrass country to the edges of the country, like Portland, Oregon... One of the things I love so much about modern independent music is that there are no genre restrictions. You can have a song called "Dracula" and not be goth. You can be from Portland and play bluegrass. It's a cool new world, as far as music is considered... The Ascetic Junkies have solved the problem of always being locked out. They now have no doors or walls." - CERULEAN'S LOVE OF MUSIC
Sounds Like: people with at least one "A" in each of their names

Type of Label: None

My Blog

Re: BUYING OUR DEBUT ALBUM (or, MP3s, AACs, and CDs, oh my!)

Friends,You can now buy our debut, self-recorded/produced, 10 song album - One Shoe Over the Cuckoo's Nest - all over the place. There are so many choices that things could get confusing, so let me l...
Posted by The Ascetic Junkies on Tue, 08 Jul 2008 06:23:00 PST

ROOTS & RESONANCE (an AJ’s interview)

Hi folks - check out RootsAndResonance.com... it's a new folk/americana website and they just put up an interview of us. You can read it here, or just go to rootsandresonance.comand wait for the main...
Posted by The Ascetic Junkies on Tue, 03 Jun 2008 09:59:00 PST

JUNE 12th, and Portland’s next mayor

Two things:1) We should have physical copies of the album on June 12th. That means that, starting at our Alberta St Pub show on the 14th, you'll be able to buy our album at shows!B) Look where our Pe...
Posted by The Ascetic Junkies on Fri, 23 May 2008 10:05:00 PST

Final versions of our songs/your myspace pages

Hi everyone - I've gone through and updated all the songs on our page to the final album versions, so to all the people who've posted our songs on your pages (thank you!!!), you'll have to re-add them...
Posted by The Ascetic Junkies on Mon, 19 May 2008 11:15:00 PST

THE PENNY JAM: the future of music (all music)

Big, big, big thanks go to the gentlemen from ThePennyJam.com for filming a stripped down version of us (Kali, Graham, and I) playing Gone Shootin' under the St Johns bridge. The video looks great an...
Posted by The Ascetic Junkies on Wed, 07 May 2008 10:26:00 PST

SIDEBURNS: THE NEW MUSCLES (or, show tonight, and other things)

Friends,As Blink-182 once deftly put it, "I fell in love with the girl at the rock show". For those of you in the Portland area tonight, this is your chance to live out Mark Hoppus' dream scenario. ...
Posted by The Ascetic Junkies on Fri, 02 May 2008 10:16:00 PST

WHO WILL U MARRY? The AJs know...

A Myspace ad just posed me with an interesting question: ARE YOU A VAMPIRE?Really?  Someone, somewhere is getting paid for that?I suppose I understand the appeal of clicking on a "WHO IS UR SOULMATE",...
Posted by The Ascetic Junkies on Wed, 16 Apr 2008 10:37:00 PST

AJs on CHLY 101.7

Hey there everyone - This is my first blog (ever) actually.  We are really excited because we just had our first radio interview!  Well, second inluding the radio show I DJd at Boston Univer...
Posted by The Ascetic Junkies on Sat, 08 Mar 2008 10:13:00 PST

A RECAP or, what we did with our first 3 weeks in portland

things we've done so far: -drove west along the columbia on a sunny day with mt hood looming in the distance -set up a sweet place to live -(almost finished the album... be patient) -explored the city...
Posted by The Ascetic Junkies on Sun, 03 Feb 2008 11:36:00 PST

OurStage.com

Dear reader, We just joined a site called OurStage.com and thought you should know about it. It's a really cool site - you basically choose a genre of music to judge, and then the site gives you tw...
Posted by The Ascetic Junkies on Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:32:00 PST