Archive: 2011

While Phish has famously kept its lineup intact for the past 25 years, guitarist Trey Anastasio has tinkered with the lineup of his solo band frequently since first forming TAB in 1999. Twelve years after that first tour, Anastasio seems to have settled on his ideal ensemble as he returns to the road on Friday in Portland, ME backed the same set of musicians from last year’s TAB tour.

[Photo by Adam Kaufman]

Just as he did on that first tour in 1999, Trey will start things off with an acoustic set before welcoming the rest of his seven-piece band for a full electric set. Reaction from the fans to the tour has been enthusiastic as tickets to 10 of the 12 shows on the run sold out quickly, including the septet’s first-ever west coast dates.

For the next five days, we’ll dedicate one post a day to previewing the upcoming solo jaunt as part of Hidden Track’s Trey Week. Today, we present the first part of our two-part e-mail interview with Anastasio in which Trey shares his thoughts on the current lineup of TAB, the return of the acoustic set, the signs that have popped up at Phish shows and much more…

Hidden Track: The size of your band has constantly grown and retreated over the years, but for this tour you will keep the size of the ensemble at seven pieces as you did in 2010. What was it about the size and composition of this group that made you want to keep the lineup the same for this tour?

Trey Anastasio: That’s a good question. We need a minimum of three voices in the horns if we want arrangements that use any kind of rich chord voicings, (which we do). When the section got up to five horns at one point, it was a big full sound, but it was overpowering the rest of the band a bit. I really don’t feel the need for alto or soprano sax right now. I love throatier, lower, brassier horn sounds.

Russell plays baritone and tenor, Natalie plays trombone and Jennifer trumpet. It’s an ideal combination for three horns. We also needed two female singers, and Jennifer and Natalie sound fantastic together, like sisters. We can cover a lot of territory now with only three people. Russell also doubles – or triples – on flute, and the flute has always worked extremely well in this band. [Anastasio suggests checking out the flute solo on the title track of his 2007 release, The Horseshoe Curve]

The miraculous thing was meeting Natalie last year. It was like the final puzzle piece falling into place. The rest of us have been friends and playing together for many years, and Natalie fit right in, both musically and personally. She is just a wonderful person to spend time with. We all feel really lucky to be playing and traveling with her.

READ ON for more of our chat with Trey Anastasio…

Last night, the National Academy Of Recording Arts & Sciences hosted its 53rd annual Grammy Awards ceremony, handing out trophies in 31 categories ranging from Song Of The Year to Best Hawaiian Music Album to Best Album Notes. While we generally don’t take much stock in who they had hand out awards to, there were a handful of noteworthy performances from last night’s telecast – Cee-Lo dressed like Elton John circa 1973 with The Muppets, Mick Jagger honoring the late Solomon Burke and John Mayer, Norah Jones and Keith Urban paying tribute to Dolly Parton with a cover of Jolene.

HT’s most anticipated performance of the night though was the impressive trifecta of Mumford & Sons, The Avett Brothers and Bob Dylan. The two rising stars of the roots-Americana scene each got to show off just what makes them must see live acts, as Mumford & Sons tore through a raucous version of The Cave, while the Avetts delivered a powerful crescendo building take Head Full of Doubt, Road Full of Promises. The performance climaxed with both acts backing Dylan for a ramshackle, foot-stomping take on Maggie’s Farm, with Zimmy front and center…

We’d like to congratulate HT faves The Black Keys, Ray LaMontagne, Mavis Staples, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Jeff Beck, Paul McCartney and Them Crooked Vultures for taking home Grammys, as well as Arcade Fire, who were the big winners of the night, walking away with Album Of The Year honors.

READ ON for a full list of winners from last night’s ceremony…

While the New Porns went with a fake biopic as the basis of their new music video, The Black Keys upped the ante with their faux-movie trailer inspired clip for Howlin’ For You. The Nashville via Akron-based duo, or Las Teclas De Negro as they are billed in the video, created a full-on Tarantino-esque, grindhouse-style […]

You can always count on Radiohead to buck the trend of spending months promoting the release of a new album. This morning, the British megastars announced that The King of Limbs, the group’s eighth album, is currently available for pre-order and will be downloadable starting Saturday. Always the innovators, The King of Limbs will be […]

James Murphy recently announced that LCD Soundsystem would play their final show ever on April 2 at Madison Square Garden. Tickets sold out in literally seconds last Friday leading the group to add four shows at Terminal 5. But on Monday, the group will make an additional NYC appearance with a visit to the Colbert […]

Baseball and rock music make for great debate, so why not combine the two?  Such has been the ethos of The Baseball Project; a whimsical collaboration between Steve Wynn, Peter Buck, Scott McCaughey, and Linda Pitmon. 

The Twilight Singersare pleased to announce their US tour in support of their upcoming new album Dynamite Steps.  The 23-city tour will launch in Oxford, Mississippi on May 4th and conclude in New Orleans, LA on June 3rd.  Tickets for all shows will go on sale next week.  For the most up to date information […]

2012 marks The Residents’ 40th Anniversary. With more than 60 albums to their credit – about half of those comprised of new studio material, and having pioneered in a plethora of areas ranging from independent recording to multimedia technology to innovative stage performances. Now, nearly four decades since they began their residency on this planet, […]

A sold out show means fan support, great marketing, and most importantly – a great artist.  It is obvious that Ryan Bingham and his band, The Dead Horses, already have a high level of both fan and industry attention.  Their Academy Award win and Grammy nomination for the feature film soundtrack for Crazy Heart, are proof of that, as was this El Rey sell out.

Showroom of Compassion, Cake's newest album, is no exception to this recipe. After a nearly seven year break (Has it really been that long?), McCrea and company have returned with another great—not mind-blowing—but great album. Which is totally fine—in today's "Make A Grand Statement" age, it's nice to know that Cake are still the great little band we've always loved, even if they aren't blowing anyone's minds. This time around, the band did decide to record with 100% solar energy, which is undeniably impressive, but outside of that press release-clogging tidbit, pretty much nothing has changed.

Radiohead are releasing their new album ‘The King Of Limbs’ on Saturday (February 19). The band announced the news on their official website, Radiohead.com, this morning (February 14). It is available to order online at Thekingoflimbs.com. The record will be available as a download from Saturday, then released physically on May 9 as what the […]

In last night’s Grammys, The Black Keys and Arcade Fire were among many of the big winners, along with many other surprises that  included Esperanza Spalding knocking Justin Bieber out as Best New Artist.  Here is a list of all the winners of interest for the 2011 Grammys….. Album of the YearArcade Fire- The Suburbs […]

Florence + The Machine's success in the United States seems to have no intention of slowing down. After performing at last night's 2011 Grammy Awards as well as the Oscars and Elton John's annual Oscar party on February 27th, Florence Welch and her very talented Machine are pleased to announce shows this summer in the […]

Mike Gordon was last night’s musical guest on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The Phish bassist and his solo band played a “radio-friendly” version of the Moss track Horizon Line… Mike Gordon – Horizon Line The Mike Gordon Band’s next tour starts on March 5th in Eugene, OR.

After a morning that saw an unusually – even for sold-out events – small fraction of fans score tickets to the group’s final show at Madison Square Garden on April 2nd, LCD Soundsystem have added four shows on March 28 – 31 at the nearby Terminal 5 to try to satiate the ridiculous demand. We raised many of the concerns raised by our readers in the comments of our post on this morning’s LCD @ MSG onsale to a Ticketmaster PR representative and were given a blanket “no comment.”

[Photo by Jeremy Gordon]

LCD Soundsystem mastermind James Murphy was as confused and upset by this morning’s events as we were. He took to the band’s twitter feed to promise that tell fans that he was “looking for clarity from ticketmaster” and would “pass on anything I find.” Murphy finally settled on adding the additional shows in hopes of lowering demand for the grand finale. My new hero then penned one of the most honest, heartfelt and at times hilarious letter in the history of bands communicating with their fans…

fuck you, scalpers. terminal 5 shows added.

holy shit

this here is just to say that we were more than taken aback and surprised about the speed of ticket sales for the april 2nd msg gig, as well as the effectiveness of scalper pieces of fucking shit at getting their hands on said tickets before fans could, and it’s knocked us on our asses.

no—we didn’t have a smart paperless ticketing system in place, and no—we didn’t have the pre-sale worked out very well, but this is simply because we’ve never sold anything out so quickly in our lives, and certainly never sold out anything as big as msg. i personally thought i was being bold in suggesting to our manager that we might sell it out “in 10 days”. that was my bold claim. everyone laughed at me. it’s us and liquid liquid. that’s it. we had meetings and meetings about the “other band” we needed to “fill the place”, as we were definitely considered to be nowhere near big enough (most of these bands were, like, way bigger than us, by the way

READ ON for more of James Murphy’s letter…

In this week’s audio and video recap, we lead off with a section from Big Sam’s Funky Nation that taper Z-Man pulled in Cambridge, MA. Z-Man is one of the tapers with the quickest turnaround, and he recently has moved to Massachusetts, so expect to see more uploads from that area. Also, we’ve got a rarely played cover from Gov’t Mule that Warren likes busting out in Caribbean climates it seems, a recording from a concert by Keller Williams showcasing his children’s songs, Umphrey’s McGee laying down a fantastic jam on an old classic and a crisp recording from Yo La Tengo.

If you don’t want to stay on the site for an hour streaming the individual tracks, you can download all of this week’s audio in one easy to listen to MP3 that we call the Last Week’s Sauce Podcast. Click here to download.

[Thanks to AHappyHourHero for this week’s photo]

Big Sam’s Funky Nation – I Came To Party > Big Sam Funky Nation > Gimme That Funky Horn
Date & Venue: 2011-02-03 – Middle East – Cambridge, MA
Taper & Show Download: Z-Man

Fresh off wowing fans on Jam Cruise, Big Sam’s Funky Nation delivers this 19+ minute segment to start us off this week. Big Sam’s Funky Nation [tour dates] plays tonight at Dan Electro’s Guitar Bar in Houston, TX.

Video from Saturday’s For the One Month to Mardi Gras party in NYC:

READ ON for tracks from Mule, Keller, Umphrey’s and Yo La Tengo…

The Michael Dorf-produced Neil Young Tribute took place at Carnegie Hall last night and our friends at Thrasher’s Wheat have a full report on the event. Among the highlights were Joan Osborne singing Old Man, J Mascis tackling Cortez The Killer, Sugar Mountain by The Wood Brothers, Keller Williams’ version of Comes A Time, Evan […]

One Month to Mardi Gras @ Le Poisson Rouge feat. Eric Krasno and Chapter 2 & Big Sam’s Funky Nation, February 5

When people think of Mardi Gras, they think of N’awlins. And when people think about the music associated with the Crescent City, jazz and funk come to mind. Saturday night, on the site of the old Village Gate where jazz and soul greats from The Duke and Coltrane to Nina and the Queen of Soul once performed, two bands of slightly different minds came together to tear the roof off the sucker.

[All photos by Marc Millman]

Around 10PM, Eric Krasno (guitar & vocals) and Nigel Hall (keys & vocals) took the stage with Chris Loftlin (bass) & Nikki Glaspie (drums, backing vocals) for 90 minutes of tight jazz, funk and soul…or what in the ’70s came to known as fusion. After opening with ’76 and Be Alright, Krasno led Chapter 2 into an instrumental cover of Get Back keeping in line with what he and Hall recently did with one of their other bands on Rubber Soulive.

From there, the band worked their way through a ten song set that featured four tunes from Krasno’s latest offering, Reminisce. Highlights of the set included a killer version of Band of Gypsys’ Power of Soul that clocked in at just over 10 minutes (during which keyboardist James Hurt sat in for a solo near the end where he left it all on the stage. He also returned during their last song before the encore) and an incredible version of Stevie Wonder’s beautiful composition Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers made famous by Jeff Beck on his album Blow By Blow – the album that defined the Fusion era. It was here that Krasno showed just how good he is. You don’t attempt to cover the greatest living guitar god unless you have some serious chops of your own.

• Marc’s One Month to Mardi Gras Videos: Get Back, Power to Soul Pt. 1, Power to Soul Pt. 2, Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers, Everybody Wants to Rule The World, Big Sam Jam #3 Pt. 1, Big Sam Jam #3 Pt. 2, Big Sam Jam #3 Pt. 3, Give Up The Funk, Crazy & Fuck You, When The Saints Come Marching In
• Previously From Marc Millman: Ozomatli, Early Elton, Soul II Soul,

READ ON for more on One Month to Mardi Gras…

Tickets to LCD Soundsystem’s “last show ever” at Madison Square Garden on April 2nd went on sale this morning via Ticketmaster and sold out in seconds. For us, we couldn’t even get the Ticketmaster event page to show that tickets were actually available until 11:05 and any queries entered were met with the dreaded “No […]

I’m going to just say it, the New Pornographers have made the most clever and quite possibly the best music video you’re going to see all year. The Canadian indie-pop collective, who in the past have made some pretty inventive videos, outdid themselves with the clip for Move. The video, whose storyline is an imaginary biopic […]