From the opening slow rising track through the march-like rhythms and resigned vocals that close this compact disc, Rotary Downs’ new Cracked Maps and Blue Reports hits on all cylinders. Over the last couple of years, Rotary Downs as a live band has grown more confident and assertive onstage, and this is reflected in this [...]
Saxophonist Fred Anderson is one of the great elder statesmen of improvised music. He has been playing, teaching, or sponsoring it for the last three-plus decades at his Chicago barroom, The Velvet Lounge. One of his great partners over the years has been his counterpart in New Orleans, the great Edward “Kidd” Jordan. Their tenor [...]
Mike Dillon’s Go-Go Jungle’s new CD, Rock Star Bench Press, combines a lot of different styles that would be almost too in-your-face except for the inherent lightness of his preferred instruments, the electric vibraphone and xylophone. There are the stop-and-switch song sections that echo prog rock. There is some rapping, and in many songs Dillon [...]
On the two-disc set, American Routes with Nick Spitzer: Songs and Stories from the Road, producer and interviewer Spitzer offers some of the more interesting interviews from his internationally distributed radio program. Spitzer is an incisive interviewer, asking questions that on the surface seem innocuous, but entire worlds are explained in the answers they provoke. [...]
Although New Orleans has a reputation as a brass/jazz/funk playground, it has been a home to songwriters since the beginning of the 20th Century. From Clarence Williams to Jelly Roll Morton to Dave Bartholomew, from Allen Toussaint and Earl King to more recent tunesmiths such as Paul Sanchez, Anders Osborne and Ed Volker, there’s a [...]
Alex McMurray’s long awaited new album, How to Be a Cannonball, could be the record that gives him the recognition as being one of the best songwriters working today. Every week there is some new hype about some two-bit indie rocker kid from Laurel Canyon, Hyde Park, or Alphabet City whose songs are “compelling,” “cinematic,” [...]
In the years since the Honey Island Swamp Band released its first record, it has crossed the country and been the secret force behind swamp soulster Eric Lindell. Now it has released its second record, Wishing Well, a record that shows off its roadhouse-right rock ’n’ roll. Wishing Well splits its songs between their two [...]
“When Danny first approached me, I saw him as someone who was quite cool,” remembers trumpeter Leroy Jones with a smile as he recalls one of his great influences, guitarist, singer, bandleader, writer, teacher, and New Orleans griot Danny Barker. “He was always Mr. Barker to all of us. He was so cool. He had [...]
From the beginning moments of Mardi Gras Indians parading, Skull and Bones groups eerily taunting, and Baby Dolls shaking their moneymakers over the immortal Carnival music of Professor Longhair that opens All on a Mardi Gras Day, producer Royce Osborn’s fantastic documentary about Black Carnival, there is a tone set of both fun times and [...]
He had the character (or some might say “characters”) and the sheer virtuosity befitting his full name, James Carroll Booker III. But he wasn’t just another New Orleans pianist who acted out of his head and did outlandish things. Booker was the quintessential New Orleans musician. His life, music, and career encompass the good and [...]
