Monthly Archives: June 2013

The Dough Rollers defy expectations at Brooklyn Bowl

The Dough Rollers, Brooklyn Bowl, June 26, 2013, © 2013, Steven P. Marsh

The Dough Rollers perform at Brooklyn Bowl on June 26, 2013. (Photos © 2013, Steven P. Marsh)

We don’t mind change. We may grow to love a band’s sound, but if it never evolves, a band can quickly becomes a parody of itself.

The Dough Rollers started off in 2008 as a high-concept conceit cooked up by two celebrity kids. Malcolm Ford (son of Harrison Ford) and Jack Byrne (son of Gabriel Byrne and Ellen Barkin) bonded over the love of old blues music, and started playing together. Their act — two guys in sharp, retro outfits, hair slicked back, etc. — tried to replicate the classic sound of the blues. While the two of them were the core of the group, they often had fiddle-vocalist Julia Tepper as a co-conspirator. (She joined them on their first, and so far only, album, the self-titled disc.)

The Dough Rollers in their earlier incarnation at The Bell House in Brooklyn, April 24, 2010. (Photo © 2010, Steven P. Marsh)

The Dough Rollers in their earlier incarnation at The Bell House in Brooklyn, April 24, 2010. (Photo © 2010, Steven P. Marsh)

Few acts could sustain the conceit. Leon Redbone is the only one that springs to mind at the moment, and his whole performing life is in character.

Click through to the jump for more photos and info. Continue reading

Bang on a Can Marathon: 9 hours of New Music in a new home this Sunday

A crowd of listeners at the 2011 Bang on a Can Marathon at the Winter Garden. (Photos © 2011, Steven P. Marsh)

A crowd of listeners at the 2011 Bang on a Can Marathon at the Winter Garden. (Photos © 2011, Steven P. Marsh)

This Sunday is a special day.

Yes, it’s Father’s Day, but that’s not it.

Sunday is also the day that Bang on a Can is throwing its big, genre-bending musical party for New York City — the Bang on a Can Marathon.

Mark your calendar and don’t miss it. But don’t head to the Winter Garden at the World Financial Center, where the free marathon New Music concert has been held for the last few years.

From 1-10 pm on Sunday (be sure to take Dad to brunch early and then bring him along to the show afterward), Bang on a Can will fill Pace University’s Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at 3 Spruce Street with nine hours of music — some of it familiar, some you’ve probably never heard before.

It’s the kickoff event of the River to River Festival, one of the city’s great free performing-arts series.

Bang on a Can had to move the marathon this year because the Winter Garden is under construction. The Schimmel Center is a smaller venue, a concert hall with fixed seating rather than a mall atrium with open, casual seating. So that means changes in the format.

Asphalt Orchestra performing at the 2011 Bang on a Can Marathon.

Asphalt Orchestra performing at the 2011 Bang on a Can Marathon.

For starters, you’ll need to get a free seating pass before you go in to sample the sounds. That’s just so the organizers can make sure the audience never exceeds the capacity of the 743-seat hall. They’ll be handing out the passing starting at noon — an hour before the first onstage event — on a first-come, first-served basis, so get there early to snag a good seat.

In addition to listening to the music, be sure to jump in on Twitter, too, by following on @bangonacan.

While most of the action is in the hall, if you get there early, you’ll encounter Bang on a Can’s Found Sound Nation. From noon until 5 pm, it’ll be operating its Street Studio, where anyone who wants to give it a try can create and record original music. Look for it at Park Row and Spruce Street.

Check out the full schedule after the jump.

Continue reading

One night only: Dave’s True Story reunites tonight

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Dave’s True Story: David Cantor, guitar, Kelly Flint, vocals, Jeff Eyrich, bass

It’s been years since the band Dave’s True Story broke up.

And tonight (Thursday, June 6) they’re getting back together in a living room on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

Sultry singer Kelly Flint tells us it’s a one-time thing. No prospect of a reunion tour or anything. It’s just Kelly, guitarist and band namesake David Cantor and bassist Jeff Eyrich (Kelly’s ex-husband) getting together once for old times as favor for friends who run a little music series called Music on 4.

If you aren’t already booked to attend, prepare to cry in your beer, because you won’t be able to get in. That’s what we’ll be doing along with you tonight.

And if you feel bad about missing a great show you didn’t know about, think how we feel — missing it because we hesitated too long before trying to book tickets.

This show has special meaning for Marisha and Ihor, the couple who run Music on 4 (a lovely, intimate house concert series) in their comfortable living room just off Central Park West. Marisha explains in the invitation to tonight’s show:

Dear Friends,
Of all the amazing bands who have passed through our home, this is THE band closest to our hearts.
No other group has ever inspired Marisha to write the invitation!
They have been there since the very beginning; DTS shows were our date nights – remember the Howard Johnson’s in Times Square?
As a couple, we followed them to the far-flung reaches of the state (where was Middleburg?)
Once Ihor finally said, “Yes”, DTS played at our wedding.
When Music on 4 was born, Jeff Eyrich was our midwife, making those early shows possible when we were still twisting our friends’ arms to make up an audience.
Now, five years later, we could not be happier that they’ve come together again to play for you. If you’ve heard them you love them already. If not, come prepared to fall hard.

It seems like DTS, once a vital part of the New York City music scene, has been gone for ages. It has been more than half a dozen years.

By the time the trio won a Vox Populi award in the Independent Music Awards in 2007, it had pretty much given up the ghost. Flint (a Westchester County resident) had fully immersed herself in a return to her roots as a singer-songwriter, leaving the loungey sounds of DTS behind.

We love what Kelly’s done on her own — working in media, doting on her wonderful son Ben (talk about memories — we remember a pregnant Kelly performing in heat aboard the museum barge in Red Hook) and still creating  interesting music. Jeff and David also have gone on to do their own things, too.

But none of their separate projects has caught the wave the way DTS did. In 2000, critic Terry Teachout did a full-page piece for The New York Times that some would say really helped the band take off.

Now, 13 years later, we have three solo careers and a bunch of recordings, most of which are available from the usual outlets, and possibly from the band’s website (although it’s not clear that the site is maintained).

If you’re lucky enough to attend tonight’s show, please send us a photo or two, or a few lines about it. We’re sorry to miss it.

Scott Miller tribute in New York City on June 29; now with free download info

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Artists including A.C. Newman of The New Pornographers, Ted Leo, Will Sheff of Okkervil River, Charles Bissell of the Wrens, Kleenex Girl Wonder (with Matt LeMay on drums), Tim Thomas of Babe the Blue Ox will pay tribute with performances and readings to the late Scott Miller on June 29 at Cake Shop in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

Scott Miller

Scott Miller

Miller , who died April 15 at 53, was a San Francisco-area musical mainstay and founder of the influential bands Game Theory (1981-1989) and The Loud Family (1991-2006+)

Tickets, at $30 plus a small service charge, go on sale Monday via Brown Paper Tickets by clicking here.

The proceeds go to The Scott Miller Family Memorial Fund in support of his widow, Kristine, and their two daughters, Julianne Elizabeth and Valerie. the fund already has raised $47,000.

Read about a West Coast tribute and learn how to get free downloads of much of Scott’s music after the jump. Continue reading