When Vanessa Niemann takes the Fais-Do-Do Stage with her Honky Tonk Revue, she’ll be wearing Gal Holiday’s signature “fancy” cowboy boots. But don’t expect the classic vintage western wear that once defined the Gal Holiday look. “Those high-waisted pants are just too constricting to sing in,” says Niemann, who now favors jeans and retro-chic Trashy [...]
Ryan Scully’s got the cure for what ails you. But he’s also part of the disease that afflicts your “sin-sick soul.” On Halloween night, he closes out Voodoo’s Bingo! Parlour with a one-night only reunion of the Morning 40 Federation, the sin-sickest bunch of miscreants ever to emerge from the Lower Ninth Ward. Come Sunday [...]
During his five-year stint in the Crescent City, Craig Caffall earned his Ph.D in New Orleans music, playing back-up for Irma Thomas and gigging with everyone from Rockin’ Dopsie, Jr. to Cyril Neville while playing with his own band, Big Train. But it was “Mudbugs and Dixie Beer” that really put him on the map. [...]
Wilco (the band) didn’t preview any songs off Wilco (the album) when it played at Jazz Fest a couple months before the CD’s release. But from Jeff Tweedy’s porkchop banter to the band’s amp-jumping antics and the bare-chested cowbell guy, the Fair Grounds set captured the goofy spirit of “Wilco (the song),” the album’s opening [...]
Last year during an unprecedented live tour, Lucinda Williams recreated five of her classic albums in their entirety. Were she to try that concept again, Little Honey wouldn’t make the cut. With several tracks devoted to finding true love—great for personal fulfillment, if not for artistic development—a gal who cut her teeth on shattered dreams [...]
Longtime Blues Traveler fans baffled by the band’s detour into faux ’70s prog rock on the Jay Bennett-produced Bastardos! (2005) should welcome their latest effort with open arms—and open ears. The set list reads like a greatest hits album, but Cover Yourself does exactly what the title implies: It makes the old faves fresh by [...]
After years of doing things the hard way to brilliant effect—Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was the masterful afterbirth of very public labor pains, while A Ghost Is Born burrowed under the skin to the festering core of addiction—Jeff Tweedy takes the easy way out with Sky Blue Sky, relaxing into a groove with his band and [...]
Lucinda Williams has always worn her heart on her sleeve, but on West it’s a mourning band. Written after the death of her mother and a painful romantic breakup (is there any other kind?), her meditation on love and loss picks up the broken pieces and turns them into poetry.
“Are You Alright?” the album’s quietly [...]
