Joe Lovano is an old school jazzman. He came up in New York City in the 1970s paying his dues with everyone from Woody Herman to Chet Baker to the Mel Lewis/Thad Jones Orchestra. The 1970s was the last decade where the greats of modern jazz walked among us, and Lovano soaked up all those [...]
The idea for the Midnite Disturbers came at drummer Stanton Moore’s kitchen table. He and fellow drummer Kevin O’Day had been tossing around the idea of forming an all-star brass band, and they had called Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews to see what he thought. When he agreed, they started calling friends and ended up with [...]
Once away from the strip malls and family businesses that alternate on Highway 90, the road to the Hollywood Casino in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi winds through the swampy woods until it rises at the back of a parking lot. For a casino, it is a modest one with a hotel on one side and [...]
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 [...]
