Archive: 2011

Robert Plant and Band of Joy join domestic goddess Martha Stewart as Dave Letterman’s guests tonight. Plant is in the middle of a tour to support the Band of Joy LP that takes him to North Charleston, SC this evening. [via @MarthaStewart] Friday, February 4 [All times EST] Robert Plant on David Letterman [CBS 11:35PM] […]

Our quick, random stabbing of ten new albums

You wouldn’t peg jam stalwarts Widespread Panic as a band that would play a showcase at SXSW, but Austin 360 is reporting that the Georgia-based band will perform at the new Austin City Limits Live venue during the famed festival. The group’s show will be taped for a future episode of PBS’s Austin City Limits. […]

Last week, a band celebrated its 33rd anniversary, two guys both named Billy teamed up for a great show in San Fran, one of the contestants in this week’s Cover Wars did us the favor of playing Row Jimmy in their encore slot, an HT fave had a great matrix show up on the Live Music Archive and another band played their cover of Radiohead’s National Anthem for a second time. To figure out who these bands are, have a listen to Last Week’s Sauce.

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 tbrown4 for this week’s photo]

Billy Martin and Wil Blades – Blue Pepper
Date & Venue: 2011-01-29 – Boom Boom Room – San Francisco, CA
Taper & Show Download: Burris T. Ewell

Drummer Billy Martin and Keyboardist Wil Blades teamed up for this show cleverly titled illyB+wilB. They were joined at times throughout the show by Cornelius Boots (baritone sax), Allen Herman (drums), Mike Olmos (trumpet), and Corey Wright (tenor sax). Medeski Martin & Wood [tour dates] hit the road March 2nd in Beaver Creek, CO.

READ ON for tracks from The Decemberists, PGroove and The Radiators…

The year 2010 marked a huge milestone in the career of Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. The band broke out in virtually every conceivable way: they were featured on VH1 Divas Salute the Troops, Grace sang a duet with Kenny Chesney and the band had songs prominently featured in the feature films, Tangled and Alice in Wonderland. Shortly after the VH1 Divas performance, the band even outsold the Beatles on iTunes as the single top selling artist. Let’s just say the past few months have been nothing short of life-changing in the world of Grace Potter and the Nocturnals.

[All photos by Jeremy Gordon]

“It’s always a funny thing when things start happening quickly,“ Grace comments. “You know that these things have been in the works for a long time and all of the sudden they get delivered to the world. Sometimes things hit really big and sometimes they don’t. I was really pleased with how quickly people responded to everything from the Tangled song to the VH1 Divas performance to the duet with Kenny Chesney. All that exposure hit a fever pitch, and I guess people finally had to look us up online. Our website crashed the day of the VH1 performance. It was really rewarding to finally hit that moment where everything really fell into place.”

It’s rather ironic how the VH1 Divas performance breached the tipping point whereby Grace Potter and the Nocturnals catapulted into the limelight, because for years Grace has playfully shunned the diva mentality. Even in performing on the program, she sensed VH1 chose her based on the perception that she was going to show up as the Vermont girl in the flannel and boots, yet got a big surprise when she appeared in one of her emblazoned mini-dresses. Even now that she has embraced her style and performs in much flashier outfits, Grace still gets a good laugh out of the whole idea of herself as any kind of diva. READ ON for more…

The ownership of band names is a tricky subject, which has filled the wallets of many lawyers thanks to the dozens of lawsuits filed over the years. As the groups of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s start to age, many acts have had to figure out who has the right to tour under the original name. This week’s B List looks at 11 groups with only one original member left in the band as of 2011.

There’s a variety of reasons why there’s only one member left in these bands. Some of the groups are a band in name only and are really a solo vehicle, some have lost members due to death and illness, while others splintered due to lawsuits and bad business decisions. Here’s our list…

11. Iron Maiden

Steve Harris – Bass

The leader of Iron Maiden started the band in 1975 as a 19-year-old in London. Over the past 35+ years, Maiden has gone through a number of lineup changes with Harris left as the only person who has been a member of Iron Maiden since the group’s inception. Guitarist Dave Murray, who remains with the band, joined Maiden just just two months after they formed.

READ ON for 10 more bands with only one original member left…

While we don’t usually fancy ourselves as a destination for financial news, we did think this was an important enough story to share: on Tuesday it was announced Citigroup has agreed to take over troubled music company EMI. The deal will decrease the label’s debt by 65% from an astonishing $5.5 billion to roughly $1.9 […]

Fresh off his gig opening for Robert Plant & Band of Joy at the Beacon, Cody Dickinson of the North Mississippi Allstars joined HT faves Leroy Justice at Rockwood Music Hall for a cover of Led Zeppelin’s Hey Hey What Can I Do and the group’s original All My Life. Enjoy this clip of All […]

Following up on today’s God Street Wednesdays column comes the announcement that keyboardist Jon Bevo and bassist Dan Pifer have been added to the lineup for GSW guitarists Aaron Maxwell and Lo Faber’s acoustic show at Joe’s Pub in New York City on February 25th. If you recall from today’s post, Lo and Aaron used […]

Is David Lowery going solo these days? Yes and no, according to him. His latest collection, The Palace Guards, takes Camper and Cracker’s frontman to untouched territory within his mind and music.  What may sound familiar is the trusted circle of musicians Lowery has relied on for over 17 years and who are once again instrumental in creating the sounds for The Palace.

Beavis and Butt-Head look set to return to MTV later this year. A new series of the cult cartoon is reportedly being written by the show's creator, Mike Judge, who also looks set to reprise his role of voicing both characters. The New York Post reports that MTV sources confirmed that the duo will still […]

Umphrey’s McGee – January 28th, Best Buy Theater

Words: Scott Bernstein
Images: Jeremy Gordon

Since first performing at the iconic Wetlands Preserve in 1999, the Big Apple has served as a home away from home for the Chicago-by-way-of-South Bend sextet Umphrey’s McGee. The band has watched the size of its NYC fanbase grow from a handful at those early gigs, to the thousands who have packed the group’s Best Buy Theater performances over the past five years by constantly returning to the city about every six months.

[All photos by Jeremy Gordon]

Just when fans got used to having Umphrey’s around, the band took a break from New York City shows by not scheduling any gigs within 30 miles of the country’s largest city  for the 11-month period leading up to the group’s long-awaited return this past Friday. Not only would UM perform at the mid-sized Best Buy Theater on Friday, but they also scheduled a more intimate show at Brooklyn Bowl three nights later. Adding to the intrigue was  sound caresser Kevin Browning’s announcement that he would be working from the band’s Chicago headquarters after 12 years on the road starting on February 1st, a date that would make the Brooklyn Bowl show his last behind the board.

The two shows were completely different in terms of not only the music, but the composition and energy of the crowd. Fans over 16 could attend the Best Buy performance, while only those over 21 years of age could get in to the Brooklyn Bowl. Younger Umphreaks, who were found in large numbers on Friday night, were much more outwardly enthusiastic and it was hard not to get caught up in their excitement. Brooklyn Bowl featured a much more subdued audience, but that’s not to say the crowd was playing tiddlywinks and chatting the night away.

READ ON for more on Umphrey’s return to New York City…

After releasing remastered editions of three shows from the first leg of Phish’s Summer Tour 2010, JEMP Records put out three more remasters from the second leg yesterday. For each of these releases, Fred Kevorkian takes Live Phish engineer Jon Altschiller’s original live mixes and remasters them for our pleasure. The latest batch of remasters includes the second and third nights of the Greek Theatre run (8/6 & 8/7/2010), plus the second night of the Deer Creek run (8/13/2010).

[Photo by Dave Vann]

Our friends at JEMP have provided us some remastered tracks to share, so you can sample the quality of these releases. They also sent a few blurbs about each performance written by Phish archivist Kevin Shapiro to give a little background on these shows.

Show #1 = 8/6/2010 – Greek Theatre

• Sample: Simple

Kevin Shapiro on 8/6/2010: On Friday August 6, 2010, Phish played the second show of a sold out three-night stand at the Greek Theatre. The Greek Berkeley is a Greek Revival style, open-air amphitheater built in 1903 with a cozy capacity of about 8,500 and stunning views of the San Francisco Bay including the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges. This run, which began Leg 2 of the summer tour, was the band’s first visit to this venue since they closed their epic summer 1993 tour there. J.J. Cale opened the show in 1993 (joined by Trey and Mike for a sit-in) but in 2010 it was just three smoking nights of Phish. After a solid opening night on Thursday, during which Trey debuted his latest custom guitar with a special chant for luthier Paul Languedoc, the band really opened up for the Friday night show.

READ ON for more remastered Live Phish samples and notes…

Reports as to whether The White Stripes would ever tour again ranged from “no chance” to “as soon as Meg is ready” over the past few years, so it can’t come as the biggest surprise that Meg and Jack White announced the end of the band this afternoon via an announcement on whitestripes.com… [Click for full-sized […]

New York City gets a rare treat on February 10th, when two of nation’s finest jamgrass bands meet up with a local upstart for a killer triple bill. Two of the bands who impressed me most on Jam Cruise – Greensky Bluegrass and Cornmeal – are teaming up with Brooklyn string band the Union Street […]

The Brooklyn-based High Highs took full advantage of a clever New York City art installation this past summer which strategically placed 60 pianos all over town. With a high 8 camera in tow, the band and director Thomas Beug used the vibrantly decorated ivories as the backdrop of their summery number, Open Season. The end […]

Back in 1988, soon-to-be God Street Wine guitarists Lo Faber and Aaron Maxwell gigged on Cape Cod under the name Dos Heteros. The pair worked plenty of jazz-oriented material into their sets as they honed the skills and communication that would pay dividends the next decade. Lo and Aaron have revived Dos Heteros in what […]

Snoop Dogg performing at the Cabooze, Minneapolis, MN on January 25th, 2011.

The New Pornographers have announced a new Spring Tour, with The Walkmen and Menomena. The 13-show tour starts on April 13th in Boulder, and heads across the US. Full dates and ticket information below. Tour Dates April 13 / Boulder, CO / Fox Theatre *April 14 / Albuquerque, NM / Sunshine Theater *April 15 / Tempe, […]

Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band have announced the first two dates for their upcoming American tour: They'll be playing the Dow Event Center in Saginaw, Michigan on March 29th and the Huntington Center in Toledo, Ohio on March 31st. The Michigan show goes onsale on February 12th at 10:00 a.m. ET and the […]