This collection should please fans of revivalist music from bands like The Carolina Chocolate Drops, The Avett Brothers, and the Squirrel Nut Zippers and hopefully serve as a light on the performers who originated the style on hundred years ago.
The Felice Brothers were always at their best when they balanced on that thin edge between discord and harmony, raw talent and musical limitation, guitar, accordion, and violin clashing in minor keys over a loose, driving snare, Ian and James’s deadpan vocal phrasing telling stories of souls lost, gunfights, and jilted lovers. Appreciation came from the tension created.
Do you know of an old building, abandoned church, warehouse, a cave in the mountains? An old tool from the barn, a saw perhaps? If so, contact The Low Anthem right away, they’ll be coming through your town soon and they are the clearinghouse for such things. This is, after all, the band that scoured dumpster for cereal boxes to fashion the jackets for their first CD.
After a seven year sabbatical taken to concentrate on family, New Jersey singer/songwriter Kate Jacobs returns with her fifth album. Recorded with her long-time band, Paul Moschella, James MacMillan, and Dave Schramm, who also produced the album, Home Game is a delightful collection devoted to the art of the three minute acoustic pop song, though two of them do clock in at a comparatively long four minutes.
Seated on stools at either side of the stage with third member Arthur positioned in the middle, they were three equals; more like friends jamming together at a local bar; with not Harper or Dhani being the focus of the evening. If anything Arthur played perhaps the larger role, handling a good deal of the vocals and banging occasionally on drums when not playing his guitar.
Raul Malo and his band made a stop at Johnny D’s supporting his new album, Saints and Sinners. The club’s space is well suited to his music, has just enough bar area, just enough dance floor for the 300 plus standing room only crowd, who danced and clapped from the start.
It is a marvel how bands with virtually no radio play can come to town and fill a venue with fans who know every word to their songs. Obviously I underestimate the internet and to a lesser extent non-commercial FM stations. Whatever the source of their connection, the Carolina Chocolate Drops; Dom Flemons, Justin Robinson, and Rhiannon Giddens, fit that description.
Concord Record’s John Burk, has compiled an album’s worth of songs worthy of inclusion in the Charles canon. Burk, with cooperation from RPM studios where Charles' music is stored, culled through four decades of tapes, looking for material. “We narrowed it down to what was actually unreleased, and narrowed that down to songs that feel connected, like an album”, Burk noted. What he chose were ten songs, two from the 70’s, six from the 80’s, and two from the 90’s.
Four years after “Live, Vol 2” was recorded in 2005, the Avett Brothers this month release Live Volume 3, , and it’s interesting to compare the two releases to see what the Brothers have been up to over the past four years.
Fresh off a summer tour with his band Galactic, Stanton Moore kicked off a new run with The Stanton Moore Trio. The first stop was Boston for a gig at the newly renovated and expanded Paradise Club. The current Trio lineup was to include Will Bernard on guitar and Robert Walter on the Hammond B-3, with Stanton behind his Gretsch kit, but on the Boston show at least, the B-3 was handled by Wil Blades.
