Hailing from Minneapolis, MN Shakedown City is a band playing a wide array of styles ranging from funk and psychedelic fusion to bluegrass and soul music. A new earthy yet urbane set of sounds that creates an incredible energy live felt between the performers and musicians.


The five members that make up the band all come from very different musical backgrounds, each one adding a different touch to the overall sound and texture of the group.

On bass the cuban sensation Chris Porto provides an amazing display of bass playing ranging from spastic slap funk licks to beautiful slow melodic compositions that feature incredible technique his instrument. The song “Lawn Order” written by Porto is a testament to Shakedown City’s wide range of styles. It starts out as a slow melodic piece of music at first featuring Porto hitting harmonic’s all over his bass, elegantly swinging the notes, then moves quite epicly and smoothly into a fast paced trance like beat almost seemlessly.

On guitar and dobro Ben Frizell the son of a bluegrass mandolin player adds a dirty southern rock tone to the bands sound. On the song “Bungalo” written by Frizell, one of Shakedown’s best, Ben gets a crackily distorted sound on his guitar, flips it onto his lap, takes out a slide and plays a ferocious high energy riff through the song that’s rockin to say the least.

Always keeping the pocket on drums is Ryan Moore from Branard, MN. Ryan has played with many bands around the Minneapolis and Branard area but found a home with Shakedown. Watch his face next time your at the show, he’ll keep you entertained the whole time, as well as play some amazing percussion.

Faye Lewis the resident female singer has a voice on her that could cut glass. Her father a local Minneapolis musician had her singing with him on stage when she was only 5 years old. Since then she’s been singing with numerous groups in various places. There aren’t many singers who can cover Aretha Franklin songs, but Faye is one of them. She’s sings lead on one of the bands few ballads called Anytime, a great song.

Mitch Pucik the lead guitar player and singer stands center for the band and is quite a monster on stage. The whole bands live presence is an amazing sight to be seen but Pucik is a showman on the vocals as well the lead guitar. Wailing out crazy blues licks over Porto’s funk riffs they create quite a dynamic voice together thats one of the great parts of there sound.

Overall Shakedown City is an up an coming group not just because they have some good songs. They have quite an original new sound that’s a breath of fresh air to music heads. There live performances are the real experience, a high energy good time music explosion that's as musically impressive in it's composition as it is groovy and contagiously fun. You can catch them all over Minnesota and the surrounding states right now. Recently they’ve played all over the Minneapolis area at venues like Trocaderro’s, The Kitty Kat Klub, 501 club, The Turf Club in St. Paul and many others as well. They recently headlined the second night of the music festival Bone Fest in Ortenville, MN, and have also played in the St. Cloud area on the holiday of April 20th along side Pert Near Sandstone, and Steelin Strings. In the future look for them anywhere and everywhere including specifically Mankato, Duluth, Madison, Black River Falls, Sioux Falls, and others TBA.