Posts by Doug Collette

As soon as the Felice Brothers straggled on to the stage and took up their instruments in the Showcase Lounge of Higher Ground, James Felice set the tone for the evening by offering a jolly holiday wish and expression of thanks to the comparatively small but adoring crowd. Seconds later this motley group of upstate […]

On March 26th, behind the not so big city bright lights of the Jay Peak Hotel, Jay Farrar and his accompanists, plus a small but devoted audience, conjured up in a cozy living room atmosphere in what  otherwise might’ve been the sterile likes of the Foeger Ballroom. The former leader of Uncle Tupelo and frontman […]

If Van Morrison’s career had never progressed past his years with Them, he might still deserve his own chapter in the history of contemporary rock and roll. And that’s because his galvanizing presence, transcends the familiar trademarks of mid-Sixties stylists: a knowledge and reverence for blues roots and, at his/Them’s best, an intuitive grasp of […]

The luminous crescent moon that hung in the night sky over Higher Ground in South Burlington March 12 wasn’t so enchanting as the performance of Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams had just offered. In fact, it’s a safe bet the Showcase Lounge in the South Burlington venue hadn’t seen such a spell cast in recent […]

It was mere seconds after the Wood Brothers began the understated percussion intro to “Never and Always” that the ballroom at Higher Ground became a warm, comfortable place on March 3rd. And this isn’t a statement about the frigid weather or even a reflection of the nine year span of time during which the group […]

[rating=8.00] Fans of The North Mississippi Allstars and perhaps even casual attendees of their shows may quickly recognize more than a few of the songs on Luther Dickinson’s musicological endeavor Blues & Ballads. But “Bang Bang Lulu” and “Shake (Yo Mama)” sound markedly different in the understated form in which they appear on A Folksinger’s […]

Even the most erudite Deadheads will be equally surprised and delighted with This Is All A Dream We Dreamed. Surprised by insight offered here, not quite so vividly reflected in other books on the iconic band, such as a portrait of scurrilous Lenny Hart as graphic in its own way as the depiction of Jerry […]

The Eagles’ set-lists from the two shows roughly a week apart during the summer of 1974 didn’t vary terribly much, but the performances did. Moving from the informality of the Lenox Music Inn and then on, in very short order, to the one-of-a-kind shed that remains the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, the band seemed to […]

[rating=8.00] During the course of their thirty year performing career, the Grateful Dead turned more than one cliche inside out, but the deeper into the vault  archivist David Lemieux dives, the more he reaffirms the veracity of the old saying “Hindsight is 20/20.” The various phases in and out of which this iconic band morphed […]

If it begs credulity to state the music Brad Mehldau creates in a solo piano setting is more intense than that musicianship within the intricate interplay of his trio. One listen to this self-compiled, decade-spanning collection will fundamentally alter that perception. On his own as with his group, Mehldau plays with almost equal parts purpose […]