At this point in its career, Umphrey’s McGee is like a spinning top of rock – just drop it on stage and watch in awe as it spins with power and unpredictability. The band returned to North Carolina’s capital city to kick off their fall tour at the oversized Raleigh Amphitheater, which highlighted the band’s unique situation in the market
By the time Alison Krauss and Union Station waved farewell to the capacity crowd at Cary, North Carolina’s Booth Amphitheatre, they had unfurled a career-spanning set that included 30 songs. That’s been the standard during their lengthy Paper Airplane tour, and the tour’s moniker has proven applicable only because of the recently released album of the same name
Countless bands, upon releasing a new album, say that they’ve finally made the album they knew they were capable of making. The guys in Tea Leaf Green have invoked this phrase in regards to their latest, Radio Tragedy, and they may actually be right.
If Thursday night at Bonnaroo has moved past its former status as a festival prelude, Sunday has certainly maintained its rightful place as the event’s mellow epilogue. The music certainly isn’t mellow, but the atmosphere tends to be just that. Sunday night’s headliner usually draws a smaller crowd, and campers begin leaving in droves. This mass exodus makes for a full, pleasurable day for the dedicated fans, and Sunday at Bonnaroo 2011 was one of the finest yet.
Crowds at Bonnaroo swelled to capacity on a typically over-the-top Saturday that saw some of the music world’s most popular live acts perform. The teeming horde that filled the What stage field for Eminem’s headlining set rivals any assemblage of humanity in the event’s history, and the masses made for tight quarters at many of the shows.
As Bonnaroo built to a head on Friday, the day turned out to be a hectic and overwhelming one. More than a few attendees were roundly confused by an evening stunt that featured parachuters dropping several thousand fluttering LED lights, and that can be attributed to the monumental amount of activity at the festival. They could hardly be expected to comprehend the stunt or the cryptic messages borne by the cargo’s QR code after such a day. Plus, many of them had seen Ron Jeremy in the flesh, or perhaps been berated by Lewis Black.
Attending a comedy show at Bonnaroo is a dubious proposition for a music addict. There are at least a couple of hours of waiting time involved with gaining entry, thus many veterans and greenhorns alike have never even seen the inside of the air conditioned theatre. A great opportunity presented itself in the form of Henry Rollins’ performance.
Just days before masses of people descended on the District of Columbia for Memorial Day, Paul Simon paid a visit to D.A.R. Constitution Hall, one of the city’s most patriotic venues. Whatever political subject may have been on the 69-year-old legend’s mind, he kept banter to a bare minimum, quipping only that he recalled “playing here with Artie in the 60’s.
American Legacies sounds exactly like you’d expect a joint album from Del McCoury Band and Preservation Hall Jazz Band to sound. It’s a riverboat full of rhythmically intoxicating Dixieland, blues, bluegrass, jazz and gospel that draws heavily on standards.
Paper Airplane, like the rest of Alison Krauss and Union Station's albums, is meant to please their diverse musical needs and equally diverse fan base. Nothing on this album is going to satiate their fans’ desire for the old stuff, but even after seven years away from the studio, the band’s reputation as country music’s most unpredictable jukebox is intact.
