Yo La Tengo: Georgia Hubley, Ira Kaplan, James McNew (Photo by Carlie Armstrong)
You can never be sure which Yo La Tengo you’ll see when you go to a show.
The cult-favorite indie rock band is a chameleonic act whose sound can careen from gentle, rhythmic folk rock to noisy guitar freakout to cover-band-style garage rock and back again — sometimes all in the same set.
YLT co-founder Ira Kaplan sat down with me the other day for an interview in advance of the band’s shows at The Town Hall in Manhattan this week — on Wednesday, with Antietam opening, and Thursday with The Feelies.) Tickets to the shows are $32.50 and $42.50, plus fees, and are available by going here to visit Ticketmaster.
We covered a wide range of topics, and Kaplan even dropped a surprising hint about the band’s unique Hannukah shows (eight shows, with multiple guests, over the eight nights of the Festival of Lights) that seemed to come to a screeching halt when Maxwell’s, the revered Hoboken, N.J., rock club that hosted them for more than a decade, closed in 2013.
Read the full interview online now by going here now, or see it in all its print glory by picking up a copy of The Journal News on Tuesday.
The onetime country wild child brings her love letter to family traditions to The Cutting Room in Manhattan on Wednesday Night
You might think that it would be a no-brainer for a blogger who named his blog after a Carter Family song to write about Carlene Carter’s latest album, Carter Girl.
But you’d be wrong.
I’ve been listening to her wonderful collection of a dozen tunes — drawn from three generations of her family heritage — regularly since its April release. But I haven’t been able to bring myself to write about it.
Carter Girl is a loving tribute to Carlene’s family, with songs taken from three generations — her grandparents’, the Carter Family, her mom June and stepdad Johnny Cash’s, and her own.
It’s one of the most heartfelt tributes imaginable, but one that maintains a clear artistic vision that doesn’t fall into a fawning tone. Carlene embraces her family heritage in a seriously loving way, sounding as good as she’s ever sounded.
In a way, Carlene seems to have reached a point in her artistic life much like that of stepsister Rosanne Cash. But while Rosanne used new songs to explore her rootsand more on The River & the Thread, Carlene has tackled family classics to do the job.
Nine of the 12 tunes are credited in whole or in part, to Maybelle or A.P. Carter, her grandparents, who were the original Carter Family. One is her mom’s, one was written by her aunt Helen Carter, and the remaining tune — the unabashedly sentimental tale of her grandparents, “Me and the Wildwood Rose” — by Carlene.
The album features Carlene in some memorable pairings — Willie Nelson duets on “Troublesome Waters” in a version that brings to the fore its heritage as an old Protestant hymn (Fanny Brice’s “Blessed Assurance” from 1873), Elizabeth Cook on the Carter Family take on a traditional song subject, “Blackie’s Gunman,” Kris Kristofferson on “Black Jack David,” another classic reinvented by the Carter Family, and Vince Gill on “Lonesome Valley 2003,” another Carter Family classic re-imagined by Carlene and Al Anderson as a take on her mother’s death.
She won’t have her star helpers with her when she takes the stage at The Cutting Room. But a reviews of her Oct. 12 show in Boston suggests that Carlene and her guitar are more than capable of putting across the Carter Girl tunes, along with some old favorites and some unrecorded gems, quite well.
You’ll be sorry if you miss this show.
If You Go
Carlene Carter performs at 7:30 p.m.. (doors open at 6:30), Wednesday, Oct. 15. The Cutting Room, 44 East 32nd Street, New York, NY. Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 on day of show, and available by tapping or clicking here.
Jay Tag and Kevin Dickson are The Chew Toys. (Photo by Dave Ehrlich)
Northeast LA duo unleashing self-titled debut album on Sept. 2
The infectious sound of The Chew Toys makes them one of the most entertaining new bands in Los Angeles these days.
The self-proclaimed queercore duo comprises married couple Jay Tag and Kevin Dickson, who have been polishing — maybe refining is a better word — their punk sound with dozens of live shows around Northeast LA since 2012.
On Sept. 2, this local legend will take break out of LA and take on the unsuspecting world with their first album, a self-titled collection of 13 songs — 11 of which clock in at well under 3 minutes — that are sure to become earworms.
Check out a video and a SoundCloud song sample after the jump.
It’s a category that didn’t even exist when Stampfel, now 75, was starting out as a young musician, releasing his first album, “The Holy Modal Rounders,” in 1964.
The genre developed to describe the work of current musicians such as Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom, Akron/Family, and the like. But Stampfel was there first, and has provided inspiration and collaboration all along.
The Holy Modal Rounders cofounder is an acquired taste, for some, with his cracked vocals, inimitable fiddling and banjo playing, and genre-busting choice of material.
His is a restless mind, and his art challenges the conventionality at every turn.
I’m sure I don’t know — aside from the fact that she’s also known as Tammy Lang.
While I’ve seen her out and about and out of character in public, I’ve never really interacted her when she’s not playing a role.
She’s a talented singer — and a very good judge of musical talent, based on the people she gets to play in her various bands, especially drummers, who’ve included Pete Thomas, Ron Metz, and Dennis Diken — who seems to have chosen a very challenging career path. Continue reading →
The first time I listened to the latest album from Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs, All Her Fault, I was left wanting more Holly and less Brokeoffs. There was something about Golightly’s albums from her early days as a solo artist (post-Thee Headcoatees) in the 1990s that really touched me.
Maybe it was her damaged, smoky vocals or her equally damaged-sounding persona. Or maybe I simply liked her voice.
But all that seems buried in her latest release. I wanted more Holly.
But maybe that’s exactly the idea — to leave the listener wanting more. It takes a bit of active listening to get to that, but the eureka moment is well worth the effort. Itstrikes me as more personal and less superficially accessible than those that came before. But it winds up being a brilliant, honky-tonk-inflected personal statement of a pretty together couple. Continue reading →
Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? is a labor of love, but sometimes the love of paying the bills takes so much time that there’s not much time for the labor of love. David Bielanko’s request for an item came at one of those times. The idea kept getting moved, of necessity, to the end of the list. Eventually, as happens with many to-do lists — at least mine — it fell off altogether.
So when the album was finally released on Feb. 25, I realized I had to get my hands on a copy and find a few minutes to make up for letting that opportunity slip away.
You might think that Jen Chapin simply had no choice but to become a musician.
More than most American families, hers was full of musicians.
While her dad, the late Harry Chapin, may today be the best known of the lot, he was just one of many. Harry and his brothers, Tom and Steve, performed as the Chapin Brothers long before Harry found his breakout fame as a singer and writer of songs like the enduring “Cat’s in the Cradle.” Tom Chapin remains a regular performer and the Steve Chapin Band still plays from time to time as well. (Tom’s daughters Abigail and Lily perform as The Chapin Sisters.) And her grandfather, Jim Chapin, was a big-band drummer. Continue reading →
Terri Thal and Dave Van Ronk at their home at 190 Waverly Place in Greenwich Village, in August 1963 (Photo by Ann Charters, courtesy Terri Thal)
Moviemakers Joel and Ethan Coen have gone to great lengths to let us know that their new movie, “Inside Llewyn Davis,” is not about Greenwich Village folksinger Dave Van Ronk.
The movie, which has been making the rounds of film festivals throughout the year and started playing in major cities a couple of weeks ago, opens nationwide this Friday.
Yes, Llewyn Davis, as played wonderfully by actor and talented singer Oscar Isaac, affects a Van Ronk look of sorts with his facial hair. And yes, many people, me included, took to calling the flick in early days the “Dave Van Ronk movie.” (That probably was before it had gotten a formal title.) Continue reading →
Revealing interview comes ahead of Hudson Valley premiere of his Whitecaps On The Hudson album Friday at The Turning Point
Singer-songwriter Jamie
Block, a longtime Hudson Valley resident,
will be doing his first Hudson Valley concert in ages at The
Turning Point in Piermont on Friday, Sept. 27. It’ll be the first
time he and his band have played the songs from his latest album,
Whitecaps On The Hudson, in a Hudson River venue. He sat down with
me for a candid discussion of his comeback and his music for
lohud.com/The Journal News. Read
the full interview here.
Friday’s show starts at 8:30 p.m., with doors at 7:30, at The
Turning Point Cafe, 468 Piermont Ave., Piermont. Tickets
are $15 and available by clicking or tapping here. Visit
The Turning Point wesbsite or call 845-359-1089 for more
information
The infectious sound of The Chew Toys makes them one of the most entertaining new bands in Los Angeles these days.
Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone? 