Fifteen years ago, when Phish completed their three-night stand at the Roxy in Atlanta the shows were instantly thrust into the limelight as among the greatest evs. Apparently the band
While most musicians would use an unexpected break in their schedule to take a well deserved rest, Luther Dickinson isn’t most musicians. Earlier this week, the Black Crowes announced that
It’s been quite some time since we last brought you a new edition of Tour Diary, but our next installment was worth the wait. Former Blips artist The Brew recently made their first appearance at moe.down and then headed over to the Stone Church for what they thought at the time would be their last appearances at the landmark venue. Bassist Joe Plante gets us started…
[All photos by Ashley Plante]
August 30, 2008
Driving. It feels much better when you are driving to moe.down, even if a few early hitches come up. Hitch # 1: The night before we arrive at our hotel in East Burke, VT after a long couple of sets, find we are down a couple of beds and a room. It is 3:00AM. Chris Plante (keyboards) and Andrew May (sound engineer) are the self appointed “chosen ones” to deal with going back to the venue for a second option. Long story short, they drive around boondocks Vermont, get offered a potential sleeping spot, but it is the home of about 400, mythically gargantuan, hermit-crab-size spiders, which the owner ( a really cool, down to earth girl) loves. Andrew is just a little intimidated by this. Actually, he is petrified. After trying to sleep in a less than comforting environment for paranoid arachnophobes, they drive back to the hotel parking lot to sleep in the van with a hungry flock of mosquitos waiting. That was 4:30 AM. Two hours later is wake up call. The poor guys got about an hour of sleep and an hour of swatting. No time for bitching, just laughing this time. And time for moe.down!
We all pile into the van, turn on our GPS, affectionately named Gertrude (yes, she is a sexy bitch whom we spoon when nobody is looking), and we think we are looking at a 7 hour drive to moe.down. Little did we know Gertrude had planned on taking us through Canada to get there. I almost drive into the nightmare that would have been the Canadian Transit Authority without passports. That is Hitch #2. We turn around, having wasted two hours of our trek to nothing but technology and now we are looking at 8+ hours across the backroads of Vermont, NH, and New York, until the infamous I-90. A little shitty, but still amped for our prime time slots at moe.down!
READ ON for more of The Brew’s adventures at moe.down…
Some Dude hipped me to the setlist from the first show of David Byrne’s tour and it looks incredibly nasty. Nice to see that he’s playing the classics… [youtube]F6sfFFscN5M[/youtube] David
After spending only one year at Big Cypress in the Florida Everglades, the Langerado Festival heads back to the bright lights of the city on March 6-8 at Bicentennial Park
Jamtronica innovators the Disco Biscuits may have taken the fall off from touring, but a couple of Bisco side projects are ready to rage. Conspirator featuring Aron Magner and Marc Brownstein of tDB will embark on a special October run hitting venues along the East Coast. Meanwhile, Electron (feat Aron Magner, Marc Brownstein, Joe Russo, and Tom Hamilton) is teaming back up to play a special string of dates in the Northeast that same month.
Here’s a look at what else is goin’ on this hump day…
READ ON for the full list of Conspirator and Electron tour dates…
When popular rock band Phish reunited at Brad Sands’ wedding on September 6, I decided to start a website to keep track of all the new Phish blog posts, new
Back in the days when jambands were called H.O.R.D.E. bands, Boulder’s The Samples made a name for themselves by writing a ton of catchy songs and inserting a slew of
Gov’t Mule Designated Bassist Andy Hess for assignment. Purchased the contract of Bassist Jorgen Carlsson from AAA Low Millions. [Jambase]
As Little Feat prepares to the celebrate their 40th anniversary together in 2009, the group has just put an extraordinary new album that pays tribute to the band’s past, present and future. It’s hard to classify Join The Band, as the disc is equal parts tribute, cover and reworked greatest hits album. A number of legendary performers who have either influenced or been influenced by Little Feat including Emmylou Harris, Bob Seger, Dave Matthews and Jimmy Buffett, have joined the septet on their best release in years.
We spoke with Little Feat keyboardist Bill Payne, who also co-produced Join The Band, about how this collection of memorable tunes came together, the dark days of Little Feat and many other topics. Also, be sure to check out Glide’s main site for an interview with drummer Richie Hayward and keep your eyes out later this week for our interview with co-producer, special guest and Coral Reefer Band member Mac McAnally. Here’s our talk with Bill…
Scott Bernstein: I’ve been listening to Join The Band for the last couple of weeks now and I really dig the album. It’s an album that flows nicely from the first track to the last. I don’t know what you’d call it…
Bill Payne: I was hoping you’d say that!
SB: It’s certainly not a tribute album or a straight greatest hits album. How did this album come about? I know it’s been four years in the making, can you take us through the timeline?
BP: Let’s go back about four or five years before that even. I tried to bring some people to the Fox Theater in St. Louis to play a large Little Feat show with a buncha different artists. That proved to be too complicated, but Dave Matthews actually signed on to do it. So, four or five years later when (Jimmy) Buffett’s people called him, Dave’s people they said “we told Billy we’d do it way back then and we’ll do it now.” So he was on both times.
But really what brought it together, honestly, was Jimmy Buffett. He more or less helped not only finance the album but really brought this thing into reality in terms of giving us an actual platform to do something. He provided his studio down in Key West. It was amazing to get a chance to work in the studio with Mac McAnally who produced that album and then work with Alan Schulman who was the engineer and Mike Utley of Jimmy’s band. When the idea for this album was born, I called Mac up and asked him if he would produce something with me for this record and he said sure. Then Jimmy came onboard and everything kinda fell together.
READ ON for much, much more from Little Feat’s Bill Payne…
