Evento

Brahctopus with the Tom Batchelor Band

Brahctopus is a space-rock collective playing originals and covers from many genres including jam-rock, reggae, psychedelic and funk. The debut album, Mothership, was released to all major streaming outlets in February 2019. The album release party took place at the Buhl Planetarium of the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, PA with a live performance and accompanying laser show. Tickets to this event sold out in less than an hour! Since then, the band has released 4 singles, performed live on WDVE and streamed a quarantine set with much more content in the works. Brahctopus also hosts a small festival, GareFest, outside of Pittsburgh with some of the region's best up and coming bands and artists. This helps continue to build outstanding relationships with many groups, organizations, venues and fans.
Tom has been playing guitar and singing/writing music for 35 years. As a graduate student at West Virginia University he formed a band called Rasta Rafiki, which has put out three fulllength releases and played 175 touring dates nationally per year. In 1997 Batchelor and Rafiki went their separate ways and Tom became a member of The Recipe Two years later he broke away from them and formed his own group Tom Batchelor Band, which played a wide array of music from reggae, rock covers, and many originals. The band consists of myself on guitar and vocals, David Haley on keyboards, Robert DeSutter on bass, Will Oxley on saxophone, Tina Shank on trombone and Gregg Lowley on drums. Each member brings many years of experience on their instrument, and extensive knowledge of wide ranging musical styles to the band. The core of what we do consists of reggae and rock covers, as well as originals from these and other genres. We regularly perform songs from diverse performers such as Bob Marley, The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Max Romeo, The Rolling Stones, and Toots and the Maytals. My original compositions range from straight forward rock and funk, to reggae and island romps. Live we enjoy exploring all the realms of improvisational possibilities within the song structures, delving into genres as diverse as jazz, ska, and country. Weve released two full length CDs 2004, Runes and 2017s Moon vs Mars Wed love to come share our music with you and your patrons.