The Family Crest with Br’er Rabbit and guests

The Family Crest

The Family Crest is an orchestral indie collective based in San Francisco. Beginning as a collaborative recording project in 2008, the group evolved by 2010 into a six-piece band with over 250 ‘Extended Family Members’ who participate in recordings, live performances, and other media and art projects. The band aims to form an interactive community around a common musical platform, dissolving the barrier between artist and audience member.

Fusing rock, classical, folk, and jazz, the band’s versatile style has become a favorite of music lovers around the world. Seismic-Sound says, “Their songs can vary quite widely from symphonic, to cabaret, to a flat-out rock and roll ruckus. It is hard to say which place they fall into most often, and given the instrumentation it’s easy to think it might be a little too down tempo, but have no doubt when the last note is played it is clear that above all else they are a rock band at heart.”

Delivering performances as unique as the music they make, the band has become a choice live music act in the Bay Area and beyond. The San Francisco Chronicle states, “while vying to collect more musicians onstage than the Decemberists or Arcade Fire, The Family Crest harbors an affection for Burt Bacharach-style swingin’ romanticism that is sure to impress lovers of classical pop.” According to The Bay Bridged, “they take their earnest, anthemic cue from The Arcade Fire, but the presence of so many string and wind instruments and the talents of frontman Liam McCormick put them on a unique frequency.”

In February 2012, The Family Crest was added to Google Play’s Magnified Artist program. As a part of the program, they traveled to Los Angeles and were featured at Red Light Management’s GRAMMY after-party, on Google Play’s homepage, and on the Magnifier Blog.

The Family Crest released an EP, Songs from the Valley Below, in February 2010. Their debut LP, The Village, was pre-released at SXSW 2012 and released nationally on May 1.  

Br’er Rabbit

Zach and Nathan Hamer have been playing music and reading one another's minds since their earliest days running around wooded areas of their family's farm in the furthest Northwest corner of the U.S. When they came to the sad realization that they were in fact not capable of playing the eleven instruments in which they were cumulatively proficient, they decided it was time to recruit other band members, including bass virtuoso Stephen Straub and vocalist Miranda Zickler, whom they found wandering the streets of Brooklyn, NY asking people to let her play acoustic covers of rap songs in exchange for rent money or vegan baked goods. They are primarily based in the Pacific Northwest.