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Abbie Gardner & Anthony da Costa



Last Updated: 7/15/2009

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Status: Single
State: New York
Country: US
Signup Date: 10/7/2007

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Thursday, September 18, 2008 

The Independent Music World Series was a blast...  we got to play songs from Bad Nights/Better Days with special guest Emily Hope Price ..o!

Check it out here:

Red Barn and Someday

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEz6qu_X8A4

and here:

Spent and On My Knees

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oH5ybApnXRs

8:15 AM 
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Monday, August 25, 2008 

This review is posted online here. and will be printed in the September issue of the Westchester Music Monthly, "More Sugar."
------------------

Bad Nights/Better Days" by Abbie Gardner and Anthony da Costa features all the Sturm und Drang you'd find in a serious Broadway drama. The kind where people speak from the heart in ways you rarely hear in real life. Take the Gardner penned "Red Barn." "She has your touch and I have your clothes. If you're leaving baby, wish you'd just go... Every one of your hellos is a goodbye waiting to go. I miss you baby, can't you see. I miss you baby constantly." In "Down on My Knees," da Costa emotes pure despair. "Every time I hear that you're going back to him, I break, I am breaking. I don't even care, I don't care at all. So why am I shaking... Don't let me go. I am down on my knees." Gardner appeals to her lover in "Someday." "Don't hold me like that, so tight I can't breathe. I know what you want but you see what I mean. You have to let go if you want me to stay. When you hold me like that all you do is push me away." In "Crazy in Love," Gardner seeks real emotion from her boyfriend. "I wish you'd be jealous just this once. I wish you'd act crazy, so crazy in love. You're so calm and so cool, yeah, you're nobody's fool. I wish you'd be crazy in love. I wish you'd show up wherever I go. Tell me you love me, stop assuming I know. And drive through the rain just to tell me again. Say you're crazy, so crazy in love." And finally on a high note, or at least as high as these two go, da Costa sings "Let me die in your arms. Let me drown in your charms. Let's get married and buy ourselves a farm. Oh let me die in your arms."

This is a real record that talks to real people. Recorded in three intense days and nights, it features Abbie Gardner (vocals, dobro, lap steel, acoustic guitar, banjo), Anthony da Costa (vocals, acoustic and electric guitar, banjo, percussion), Emily Price (cello), Oliver Hill (violin). Mark Murphy (double bass), Mark Dann (electric bass), Steve Kirkman (vocals, national guitar), and Fred Gillen, Jr. (producer, vocals, percussion). There's no compression and no drums. But true feelings crystallize in the speakers. Gardner and da Costa sing to each other as if they've known each other for ever. I've never understood or appreciated the cello. But after listening to this record, especially "Someday," I'm a huge fan. The pathos and pain it expresses pierces my heart. Please don't tell me that was a violin!

"Bad Nights/Better Days" enfolds you like a mist filled evening out on the moors. Take a stroll and open yourself up to the highs and lows, ebb and flows of your inner life.

©2008 Roger-Z

Roger-Z
http://www.Roger-Z.com
http://www.TheWorkingMusician.com
http://www.MySpace.com/RogerzAndTheZygotes

7:04 AM 
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Thursday, August 14, 2008 

Abbie Gardner and Anthony da Costa - Bad Nights/Better Days

Independently Released Summer, 2008

About.com Rating three out of Five

By Kim Ruehl, About.com

Abbie Gardner & Anthony da Costa - 'Bad Nights/Better Days' 

Abbie Gardner (Red Molly) and Anthony da Costa are both excellent songwriters, and their collaboration on Bad Nights/Better Days only accentuates that point. Together, their voices blend beautifully, driving this collection of incredibly sad songs from shadow to shadow.

Gardner and da Costa's Sad, Sad Songs

If you're looking for a feel-good record, steer clear of Bad Nights/Better Days. Both Abbie Gardner and Anthony da Costa's voices just ooze sadness from the opening notes of "Spent" to the pleading "curse" of "Someday"—with its musical theater-style duet—even through the romantic love song that closes the record.

Indeed, even the feel-good songs come across with a tinge of sadness, as if they're harboring the kind of love that happens because of, not inspite of, loneliness and regret.

The Bottom Line

What's good about this collaboration is that it's evenly matched. Da Costa's tendency to lean more toward the folk-pop or -rock end of the spectrum nicely complements Gardner's penchant for more straight-up traditional Americana. Their harmonies are tight and intuitive, and the instrumentation added to their own stringed instruments is almost never invasive or inappropriate (the electric guitar moaning through the opening track doesn't add much, but that's the only instance of instrumental excess).

Overall, Bad Nights/Better Days is an honest opening effort for a duo that will hopefully shell out more collaborative efforts as the years go on.

http://folkmusic.about.com/od/cdreviews/fr/AbbieAnthony.htm
4:46 AM 
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Thursday, July 31, 2008 

New School Old School, (07/30/08)

We reviewed seventeen-year-old Anthony da Costa's last solo offering, Typical American Tragedy, a few months ago, and hot on the heels of that release comes this thirteen-song duo effort with friend Abbie Gardner, of the roots trio Red Molly. Produced by Fred Gillen Jr and recorded over three days in mid-February at Woody's House in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, the duo is supported by Emily Price (cello), Steve Kirkman (National guitar, vocals), Oliver Hill (violin), Mark Murphy (double bass), Mark Dann (electric bass), and Gillen (percussion, vocals).

Da Costa penned nine of the Bad Nights/Better Days songs, thirty-three-year-old Gardner composed three, and the pair collaborated on "Someday." A neat synopsis of the subject matter currently appears on da Costa's (revamped) website and runs to "Over the course of the record, in the tradition of an old-school concept LP, love is found, confused, lost, rediscovered and redefined." I could have said it in many more words, but I couldn't have said it better!

Pretty much from the outset, in addition to the forcefully plucked acoustic guitar, "Spent," the album opener, features a discernible fuzzed electric guitar. In a similar support role, the instrument appears on the ensuing cut, Gardner's "Red Barn" (wherein the narrator mourns love that's taken for granted and confesses a penchant for dancin' in the moonlight) and nowhere else on this disc. Price's cello and a gently fingerpicked acoustic guitar perfectly set the mood for "Down On My Knees," wherein the lovelorn narrator reveals his innermost thoughts while, in support, Gardner's voice subtly weaves in and out of the mix. On "Someday," the sole Ab n' Ant co-write, as if replicating conversation, at least at the outset, they take solos on alternate verses and their voices combine in crescendo on others (including the chorus). Therein the protagonists burned by the intensity of their passion, recall their affair in retrospect and earnestly express the hope that when they next find love "...we'll stop writing the same songs over and over again."

The sonically percussive, rhythmically rowdy "Pocket" features the familiar phrase "I am down on my knees." Where a ghostly banjo is heard as "Pocket" fades, a similar effect (played on violin or cello?) is employed on "Someday." Gardner's narrator in the delightful waltz-paced "Crazy In Love," voices the wish for her man to be more demonstrative with his expressions and professions of love. The protagonists in "Let Me Die In Your Arms" dream of a long and happy future, therefore utterly belying the song title, while Garner's third contribution, "I'd Rather Be," is quite a simply a gem wherein the narrator states, plainly, that she's not going to "...waste my time waiting for love/From a man who's grown tired of me."

At the outset of "Nothing Left" da Costa paints the portrait of an alcohol-fuelled derelict, who, with "winter creeping in," dreams of love restored in some verdant green place where "...the clouds aren't so mean." Toward the close Gardner delivers the wife's/lover's reply "I tried all I could to save him/He would not let go of me, so you see/He could never fall to sleep/My love was not enough." The track climaxes with Ab n' Ant's layered voices - she repeats the (foregoing) reply, while he delivers three lines of the chorus and their voices unite on "My love was not enough" - following which da Costa, literally in a deathly whisper, adds the closing "He took the pills she gave/Now there's one black rose at the foot of his grave." Confusion and desperation concerning the definition of real love pervades "Better Days," and the album closes with the optimistic "I Feel Like Dancin'."

In the pantheon of male/female singing duos, past or still present, be they Pop, Folk, Country, or whatever aural concoction, here, da Costa and Gardner more than hold their own, with "I'd Rather Be" and the utterly desperate "Nothing Left" being noteworthy highlights. I guess that it's no word of a lie to state that teen da Costa's songwriting output is prodigious. That said, in terms of album production, maybe the time is right for him to inject new blood into the equation. In that regard, I wonder what Lorne Entress or, for that matter, Sam Kassirer or Zack Hickman of Josh Ritter's road band would have made of da Costa's and Gardner's songs. Hell, I'm even thinking "Come on down to Congress House in Austin."

Arthur Wood is a founding editor of FolkWax. You may contact Arthur at folkwax@visant.com

3:34 PM 
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Tuesday, July 29, 2008 

Hey Peeps,

We're finalists in this year's contest and will be going up against 5 other acts of various genres in a live competition for the Northeast title!  The show is in NYC on August 14th at a place called Crash Mansion.  It's totally swanky.  And we need all the support we can get for the night.  Take a look at our competition here: http://www.discmakers.com/imws/northeast.asp

Want to get on the IMWS guest list and save the $10 cover? Send an email to imws@discmakers.com by Monday, August 11th! Be sure to include your full name and the number of guests attending in the body of the email.

Thursday, August 14 – CRASH MANSION –
199 Bowery (@Spring Street) – 8 PM http://www.crashmansion.com

We'll probably have Emily Price joining us, the amazing cello player who graced our record.

Hope you can come!

:) The A's...

ps- wow, the world series... I was never very good at softball so this amazes me, but Anthony's got some history with little league, so we're hopeful.

12:31 AM 
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Tuesday, July 15, 2008 

If you guys wanna hear some of the new record live, come on down to the Living Room tonight!  We'll be doing a "Duos" show with the Kennedys.

154 Ludlow, NY, NY

7pm-9pm

http://www.livingroomny.com

 

3:42 PM 
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Monday, February 04, 2008 

We got a review of our December Rockwood show in NYC.  He even lists the setlist, which (ha) we didn't know during the show or afterwards, so it's good somebody's keeping track.  Heh.  Some of the song titles aren't right, but I don't care because the titles he used instead show that he was listening to the lyrics pretty closely. 

http://rattlemycage.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/rockwood-music-hall-122207-abbie-gardner-and-anthony-da-costa-beaucoup-blue/

Currently listening:
Transcendental Blues
By Steve Earle
Release date: 06 June, 2000
6:37 PM 
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Thursday, January 17, 2008 
Had so much fun listening to our rehearsal tapes from August that we thought we'd post some.  Some of these are first time through, just learning the song, with random talking before, during or after the song, mistakes and all...  recorded on a little point and shoot thingy.  But it's real.  And that's what music's all about, right?  Might make a habit of this...
5:43 AM 
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