Columns

Sir Paul McCartney returns to the Ed Sullivan Theatre in NYC tonight for an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman. If you don’t have tickets to the taping,

From last night’s Late Show with David Letterman… Wilco & Feist – You & I

Ah, the truth – the hard-to-figure point that lies somewhere between the two sides of a story. Today, we got one side of the story thanks to a detailed explanation from bass player Bryan Dondero about why he left Grace Potter and the Nocturnals four months ago. In a very web 2.0 move, Dondero took Potter to task with a post on his blog.

[Potter and Dondero in happier times]

The bassist is in the middle of a contentious negotiation with the Potter Camp over proceeds from GP&tN’s 2007 release This Is Somewhere and let us know exactly what he’s looking for and what he’s been offered…

My terms remain firm: along with the agreements made on NBTW and the other tracks that I have already signed off on, I am standing behind asking for 10% of This Is Somewhere from release through the life of the copyright. Thus far, you have firstly agreed that 10% was a fair number so long as it does not include the retroactive money (ie. money that was made in the publishing from songs appearing on Grey’s Anatomy, One Tree Hill etc….) and would only be for a 5 year period. Then you agreed to include everything but Apologies. After you finally agreed to include Apologies, and the retroactive money, you decided to increase the amount that I owed the band since my leaving…

Towards the middle of his post Dondero basically transcribes a conversation he had with Potter that led to his departure which shows some diva behavior from both participants…

Grace: I feel like the things you do go against the grain of the rest of us.
Me: Like what? Give me an example.
Grace: This may sound vain, but the things you wear on stage…I think some of the things you do like putting your foot on the monitor or jump on the riser are at really inappropriate moments.

READ ON for more of Bryan’s post on leaving The Nocturnals…

As was the case last year, NPR Music will broadcast live from George Wein’s Folk Festival 50 – aka Newport Folk Festival – and CareFusion Jazz Festival 55 – aka

Wilco’s a peculiar musical addiction: most of their songs don’t quite bowl you over as much as sneak up on you, and you’re hooked long before you know it. On what, exactly? It’s different for everyone, but is some variation on songs and a core sound that are an uneasily balanced dichotomy: pastoral melodies that give way to apocalyptic sounding guitar squalls; plangent pop and alt-country tunes that find themselves torn open to reveal molten jams and psychedelic cores churning beneath. Jeff Tweedy seems to wear all that on his face: a goofy grin has a way of morphing into a teeth-baring growl, a bemused smile into a terrified caterwaul. His band mates seem like nice enough chaps. They also give no quarter when there’s rocking to be done.

You Never Know – Wilco w/ Feist and Ed Droste

Wilco (The Album) is Wilco’s latest, and like most Wilco albums grows on you insistently. There’s nothing on it to match 2004’s A Ghost Is Born (to these ears, the band’s masterpiece, indulgences and all), although the gems, such as the gorgeous One Wing and the stormy, head-splitting Bull Black Nova, have definitely revealed themselves. Wilco mined heavily from the new record on a laid back, groovy, immensely satisfying two-plus hours at the home of the Cyclones in Brooklyn: a show that took some time to get going – sluggish band and sluggish crowd alike – but once it hit its stride, made for that classic Wilco balance of mess and finesse.

I maintain – and it’s hardly a unique opinion – that hiring Nels Cline is the best decision Tweedy’s ever made. Cline plays guitar as if it’s an extension of a seizure, his arms and torso shaking as he peels off fuzzy, sheety sounds and hot-toned blasts of guitar noise, dismantling Wilco delicacies like Handshake Drugs and Impossible Germany and forcing them into oblivion, with the rest of the band by now well aware of when to follow him down the rabbit hole. At Keyspan, keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen, especially, was as animated as I’ve ever seen him, tucking all sorts of filigree in behind Cline’s machinations. Tweedy himself was playful and mischievous, spinning his microphone chord, stalking around the stage and making warm banter with a crowd that awoke sometime around that “Germany” and from that point kept up its end, too.

READ ON for more of Chad’s thoughts on Wilco at Keyspan Park…

The Treasure Island Music Festival will return for a third year of genre-defying fun in the San Francisco Bay on October 17 and 18. This year’s lineup is chock full