Eric Krasno’s rolodex must be positively Warren Haynesian by now. He’s never far from a stage, and if you think about all the people he and his two Soulive bandmates
Black Joe Lewis probably isn’t that sick of the James Brown and Wilson Pickett comparisons yet (I mean, what a compliment, right?) But it’s inaccurate to portray Black Joe and the Honeybears as a 21st century version of the Godfather’s JBs. They’re more a rock band with a serious Stax problem, or a punk band riding a soul train, or a garage band with blaster horns, on an R&B mission. Really, they’re all those things, not to mention the arrival of one of the most commanding new frontmen in ages.
As the story goes, Austinite Joe Lewis was working in a pawnshop when he started fooling around on guitar, eventually picking up gigs with a blues trio. He met guitarist Zach Ernst and the (now) seven-piece Honeybears were born, initially as an opener for Little Richard, then as a hot-shit regional band in the Austin area, and then, thanks to hugely buzzed about performances at Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits in 2008, then SxSW in 2009, a national act.
The buzz is justified: the band takes the stage and wallops an audience with an almost brutal mix of garage rock, blues-punk, hot-skillet soul and pummeling energy, and does so with a refreshing lack of slickness. The sense of abandon is key to their appeal: they’re not all too polished and they don’t feel like a band hatched in a soul studio with meticulous attention paid by producers. If Joe didn’t already have a moniker, Smokin’ Joe would fit.
READ ON for more from Chad on Black Joe Lewis…
The Allman Brothers Band returns to…well, not the Beacon this March for the first time in many a moon, having been forced from their usual haunt by Cirque de Soleil. Thirteen dates are on the books — and according to Butch Trucks, selling briskly — at the United Palace, 100 blocks uptown from the Beacon. The return of the residency will also bring the return of Moogis, the live music video streaming service Butch Trucks unveiled for last year's 40th Anniversary run of Beacon shows. Glide/ Hidden Track caught up with the drummer earlier this month to talk Moogis, the United Palace, and plenty of other subjects both comfortable and uncomfortable. Say this for the man — and we said it last year, too — he doesn't hold back.
As we leave the 2000-2009 decade behind, we’ve been looking at a lot of the bands that didn’t quite make it. Esteemed HT editor Scott Bernstein had his picks in a few months back, and here are some of mine. I was surprised to see we overlapped only once, but that says a lot more about the scope of bands that thrived in the decade but that we (probably) won’t see again.
I didn’t have room here for all the supergroups. I loved the JoJo Hermann/Dickinson Brothers combo Smiling Assassins, for example, and it’s hard to believe the Oysterhead tour (minus the 2006 ‘Roo reunion) was nine years ago. I felt like reaching back to Frogwings, too, but seeing as they became inactive in 2000, they weren’t really of this era, were they? And recent reunions by both The Word and Will Bernard’s Motherbug are enough to convince me those groups aren’t lost to the dustbin, either.
Then there’s the matter of Leftover Salmon. Salmon hasn’t been a proper touring outfit since at least the 2005 hiatus, but they continue to reunite and play, and as Drew Emmitt told us in recent site interview, they’re comfortable leaving it at that. Works for us, though maybe they should count for this list seeing as that probably means we won’t see new music or extended tour dates anytime soon. Hard to say.
Did I miss anybody? Am I crazy? Leave a comment below and argue.
10. Phil Lesh & Friends (2007-2008)
They didn’t top another PLF ensemble (see below), but this lineup – with Larry Campbell, Jackie Greene, Steve Molitz, John Molo and sometimes Teresa Williams and Barry Sless – was strong enough to make observers wonder if Phil would finally commit to a band again. It wasn’t to be, and their shows could be frustratingly inconsistent, but this particular band had a strong roots and country-rock jones that felt especially pronounced in Dead classics like Brokedown Palace, Brown Eyed Women, Beat It On Down the Line or, their signature, Cumberland Blues.
Not psychedelic enough for some – and at times lacking the finesse and guitar acrobatics of other PLF lineups – but they were plenty strong (rarely more, for my money, than 11/11/07, the last night of their first NYC residency). They also introduced an entire new group of fans to Greene, now a jam-scene favorite.
READ ON for nine more bands that didn’t make it out of the ’00s…
Benefit shows with pre-determined guests are by nature a skewed perspective: neither the band, nor the guests are in their regular elements, so you hope for the best, knowing you’ll get some fun collaborations heavy on cursory pleasure and maybe not a lot of deep-digging.Kudos to moe., then, for bucking the trend. Their 20th anniversary tour opened with impressive aplomb at Roseland Ballroom Friday, and thanks in part to a mix of well-chosen, well-utilized co-conspirators, the band was fun, groovy, limber and exploratory, with nary a dull moment.
It’s pretty remarkable just how consistent moe.’s been over 20 years: in personnel, in commitment, in slow, steady growth, in that damned quirky, hard rocking way of doing things they do so well. So I posed the question to guitarist Chuck Garvey directly: How have you guys kept it together and kept from killing each other when changes, hiatuses and other issues have wreaked havoc on many of your jamband peers?
[Photo by Jeremy Gordon]
“That’s just the way we are,” Garvey said in a recent interview. “Everyone has a different attitude about it, but we seem to have a certain comfort level in how we are as a band. It’s been working for a really long time and we’re just getting on to the next creative phase. Making another album is always something to look forward to. This past fall, we were going to record, but we decided to push it off because we didn’t feel like we had enough time to devote to it. We have to make sure these days that we have the time and space to do it right.”
Garvey said moe.’s been “pulling back” on touring in recent years, which seems true but relative only to moe. Apart from a few extended seasonal breaks, the band, at least in the past decade, hasn’t been off the road longer than a few months. Pretty remarkable when you consider the major hiatuses and lineup changes from moe.’s peers, although, as Garvey notes, “It’s different for everyone. Widespread Panic lost Michael Houser, and that’s a major, life-altering occurrence. I’d say it’s more accurate that we’ve been lucky.”
READ ON for more of Chad’s chat with moe.’s Chuck Garvey and Hidden Track staffers’ favorite moe. moments from the past 20 years…
Bill Payne, Paul Barrere and their cohorts in Little Feat are probably well aware that they could coast on the strength of the catalog and get away with it. Little Feat’s output, taken as a whole, is not only humbling in its accomplishment but still underrated enough as to have ardent fans who are fiercely protective of it. In other words, a stock setlist with Dixie Chicken and Willin’ as the centerpieces, performed with minimal gusto, would be enough to do the job and enough to keep Little Feat-headlined concert halls comfortably packed. The songs are friggin’ beautiful, and so very loaded — they’d lend nicely to a revue, wouldn’t they?
That it isn’t that way is precisely what makes the Little Feat touring apparatus so compelling. It’s a more streamlined unit than in the past — Shaun Murphy’s vocals are missed, and drummer Richie Hayward is sidelined in cancer recovery — but its members dig deep, radiate a love of these songs and a pronounced interest in their care and feeding, and even on an off night, can pull some terrifically groovy and expansive improvisational flights from the guts of well-worn jamming vehicles. It’s what keeps them fresh — Little Feat shows sound so damn fresh — and is why I push Little Feat on those who’ve either never had the pleasure or are still convinced Little Feat went under when Lowell George did.
In recent visits to the Big Apple, the band’s favored the Concert Hall at the New York Society for Ethical Culture: a pretty place for sure, with good acoustics and a comfortable vibe. It wasn’t quite full — I’d guess about 75-80 percent, with low-end tickets north of $50 with fees — but the Feat brought the heat for two hours, leaning hard on bluesadelic jams that favored carving songs out from within more often than straight, with you-solo-now-you-solo structures.
READ ON for more from Chad on Little Feat in NYC…
The more I listen to BuzzUniverse, the more I find them harder to peg, which is a good thing. You don’t want to be too obvious or too pigeonhole-able. You also don’t want to be all things to all people: that loosey-goosey jamband that suddenly goes funk, or goes Latin, or goes jazz, or goes trip-hop, or busts into a Phish song, or a Medeski Martin & Wood song, or a Robert Randolph song, or whatever else might seem endearing in the moment because wow, this could be fun, brah.
[All photos by Jeremy Gordon from BuzzU @ Brooklyn Bowl]
In fact, the more I listen to BuzzUniverse, the more they sound like themselves: a groove band at heart, but one in which funky violins, Latin rock percussion rhythms and guitar work that’s both vertiginous and angular can coexist and thrive without sounding like disparate elements patchworked together. Or, hey, it’s a groove band that can sell an ace opening cover of Grand Funk Railroad’s I’m Your Captain (Closer to Home), and then knock out an hour and half-plus of worldly grooves, plus tuck in an oddly, aptly titled song called Lovelight Babylon, a Pink Floyd cover and an an a capella (I think?) holiday bon mot in Dear Santa. I had a casual interest in BuzzUniverse before their second annual Jingle Jam show at Ace of Clubs Friday. I am now, decidedly, a fan.
The band usually brings its best to shows like these, and at Ace of Clubs — that most pleasant of Greenwich Village caverns — they were cooking. New songs made the rounds — a corker called Hey Soul Lover is still in my head — and they offered a few well-integrated guest turns, including by Licorice guitarist Dave Lott for at least three songs, and some cameos by flautist Stefanie Seskin and Afroskull drummer Jason Isaac.
READ ON for more of Chad’s thoughts on the Jingle Jam…
Jim DeRogatis has a long-held reputation as a firebrand, and he’ll be the first to remind you he’s more than a bit of a contrarian. But we’ve always found those labels a little disingenuous, especially for someone so obviously passionate about not only music, but about being as much reporter and informed critic as opinionated scribe.
In a music critic landscape circa 2009 that’s as much lazy, laurels-resting old hands as unedited, brutally overwrought bloggers, credit the man for valiantly bucking both trends. He’s best known as the pop music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, but DeRo is also a prolific author, blogger and, with Greg Kot, his opposite number at the Tribune, host of Sound Opinions, to us one of the few music radio talkshows that’s as informative as it is passionately music geeky.
This fall came his latest book, a visual history of the Velvet Underground called The Velvet Underground: An Illustrated History of a Walk on the Wild Side
HIDDEN TRACK: Being a well documented Velvet Underground fanatic, this must have been a fun one for you. Tell me about the genesis of this book.
JIM DEROGATIS: Voyageur Press has been doing a number of coffee table art books devoted to bands and memorabilia. They did one on Led Zeppelin and I’d contributed an essay on “Houses of the Holy” to that. They had this notion of doing a Velvets art book and they called me up and said could you do the connective tissue historical essay and corral some other writers, and I said, well shit yeah, Merry Christmas. They’ve very generously put my name on the cover.
I have a shelf full of a dozen if not more Velvets and Lou Reed and John Cale books, but being even a huge fan as I am, there is a tremendous amount of artwork in this book that I’d never seen before. It’s nice to be given that context to do some of the writing. The goal wasn’t to do a definitive history for fans, it was to show them a lot of the art they hadn’t seen before, rounded up in one place.
READ ON for more of Chad’s chat with Jim DeRogatis…
Dark Star Orchestra on Monday confirmed that guitarist/singer John Kadlecik is leaving the band. The official word on Kadlecik, who has played “Jerry” in the well-traveled, well-oiled Grateful Dead tribute since its 1997 inception, is that he has officially resigned.
[Photo of Jeff Mattson and John Kadlecik by David Gans]
According to a statement from the band, Kadlecik’s last show with Dark Star Orchestra will be its Dec. 5 date in Buffalo, NY. Kadlecik has in recent months been playing with Furthur, the Bob Weir/Phil Lesh project that has New York, New Jersey and Connecticut dates scheduled in early December and will ring in the New Year in San Francisco.
Kadlecik will be replaced on a temporary basis by Zen Tricksters frontman Jeff Mattson, who was already announced as a fill-in guest for several of the band’s upcoming dates, and will be with the band for its New Year’s run, its upcoming spot on Jam Cruise and a Winter Tour that will kick off in February.
Dark Star Orchestra publicist Dave Weissman tells Hidden Track that Mattson’s assignment will be temporary, and that DSO has begun a search for a permanent replacement.
READ ON for more on this breaking story…
