Psychedelic Double Feature

Phish-y influences and classic experimental sounds

Lucy Arnell
Lucy Arnell

On the night of March 30, Sam Bond’s Garage is going to be painted with some funkadelic jams, man. Lucy Arnell and Holly Bowling are bringing tunes laced with Phish-y influences and classic experimental sounds.

Arnell, a self-described former New York City “concert bum,” moved to the West Coast in 2013. She then met and collaborated with guitarist Jason Abraham Roberts (Norah Jones, HYMNS) to produce her first EP, Side by Side, which later unfolded into a full-length album with a track featuring Jon Fishman (Phish) on drums.

The duo’s music video for “Dr. Captain” sums up Arnell’s style: comfy-classic sounds on the edge of a psychedelic trip. She says she never intended to be a musician, but after the removal of a surprise tumor followed by extended bed rest, she was smoking pot on her couch and fiddling around on her guitar almost daily. Within a few years, Arnell began touring the West Coast with her “psychedelic folk” sounds.

Bowling follows Arnell with the same homage to psych-rock by covering mostly Phish (with just a pinch of Grateful Dead) songs on — get this — her piano. Bowling says her influence comes from Phish’s collective risk-taking when it comes to the band’s group improvisation, which she incorporates into her own renditions. “I try to create that space and allow a musical conversation to develop,” she says, “even if it’s just between my left and right hand.”

Bowling’s classical piano background juxtaposed with her passion for Phish creates a sound that’s too beautifully odd not to love.

Catch Arnell and Bowling 9 pm Wednesday, March 30, at Sam Bond’s Garage; $10.