The band finished with one more blues tune, a Memphis Slim cover of ‘Mother Earth’ before stepping away as Lauper sent the appreciative audience home with the gentle ‘True Colors’. It was just enough of the popular hits to satisfy her loyal followers and everyone left in awe of Cyndi Lauper, the blues singer.
The Durham Performing Arts Center has quickly become known as the finest upscale venue in central North Carolina, and one of the best on the east coast. In hosting everything from Wicked to Wilco to Lewis Black to Leonard Cohen, the 2700-seat room has made an impact on a wide variety of people since it opened less than two years ago. The impeccable sound and performance-enhancing power of the ultra-modern building was on full display as Norah Jones stopped in Durham on her seemingly endless The Fall tour.
It took awhile, but the Levon Helm Band finally made it to California soil. Ever since the iconic drummer of the Band returned to performing after a nearly career-ending bout with throat cancer about a decade ago, he’s rarely played beyond the northeast. In fact, he’s rarely even left the grounds of his property in the Catskill Mountains of Woodstock, New York
Natalie Merchant recently broke a seven-year silence with her rapturous, albeit lengthy, double album Leave Your Sleep. The offering was met by many fans with resistance, and at some level ambivalence. It had been almost ten years since a fully Natalie Merchant-penned album, so while she wasn’t digging up and reviving older folk songs (as was done on 2003’s The House Carpenter’s Daughter), Leave Your Sleep is comprised of 26 songs whose lyrics come from 19th and 20th Century poetry, all dealing with or written by children.
It was Lyle Lovett, in town for an outdoor show at the Lowell, MA Boardinghouse Park on a perfect summer evening, here to tell us that for tonight we were forgiven for not being Texans, and for a few hours he took us in, boots, belt buckle and Texas twang. Lovett was back on the road, in support of his new record Natural Forces, halfway through a tour that started in July in Oklahoma and will wind up at the end of the month outside of Burlington, VT.
Held during the weekend of August 13-14, 2010, the two-day festival featured 16 panels, 14 stages and over 150 musical acts. Hosted by Lafayette Hotel, the panels covered everything from music industry basics, to legal issues, tour budgets, and the resurgence of independent labels. Panelists came from a variety of backgrounds and attendants participated in the sessions, with the hopes of learning how to make it in the exciting, yet competitive industry of music.
Supporting their most recent effort Power Patriot that came out in late 2009 on the stellar Royal Potato Family label, Garage A Trois made no reservations about being playing the part of entertainers. With two one hour sets, the quartet put whimsicality and energy first, while placing compositional perfection somewhere down the priority line, but it didn’t matter – this is a live band and these four guys toss any preconceived jazz notions by way of prog and rock leanings.
Appropriately, Dax Riggs took to the stage during the witching hour for his compact set of dark rock on Saturday Night/Sunday Morning in lower New York City. The first of two shows in town, Dax was tighter then some past NYC performances which could have to do with his full backing band of Julian Primeaux on guitar, Charley Seiss on drums and bassist Kevin Fitzsimmons.
Closing this summer where they basically began last summer, Tuesday night’s fans were offered the perfect benchmark to see how far Phish has really come in their first year back. The Jones Beach ‘09 run showed great promise, featured a few debuts that are now set staples, and gave a glimmer of hope that the band was taking this third time around with a revived focus and commitment. One year later, all of that has apparently changed. People working the lot for a ticket were shutout, concise ‘09 debuts are being stretched and explored, and from the opening notes of “Fluffhead,” they delivered a top-to-bottom blowout that offered a heated first set and a second set that dipped into Type II territory.
To say that Joanna Newsom is a Bay Area favorite would be both selling her short and reducing her to a trend among the hipsters, techies and young cosmopolitans that propel a constant search for those artists, figures or places that are the most innovative, cultural conscious and thought-provoking. Certainly Joanna Newsom shares quite a bit of celebrity throughout the United States, but rarely have I witnessed such ardent fervor over her and her music as that of a Bay Area Joanna Newsom fan. Perhaps it comes from the fact that she grew up near here, or that she is second cousins with mayor Gavin Newsom; however, there is no exact answer save the fact that she holds the power to keep her fans always wanting more, while satisfying and exceeding their own expectations of her.
