Tag Archives: Joe’s Pub

More video of Stew, Heidi and The Negro Problem at Joe’s Pub

It’s time for a better taste of The Negro Problem‘s fantastic show at Joe’s Pub on Jan 7 .

Here’s all the video Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? managed to shoot in the crowded room.

The first clip is just an excerpt, the last minute or so of one of my favorite Stew/TNP songs, “Peter Jennings,” performed with as much joy and excitement as I’ve ever seen.

After that is “Willow Song,” a Stew and Heidi number that many in the audience hadn’t heard before. It was written for last summer’s production of Othello for Shakespeare on the Sound, an outdoor community Shakespeare program in Connecticut. (Stew and Heidi tackle Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing for SotS Artistic Director Joanna Settle this summer.) It’s a beautiful, dreamy number that worked well in the play, but also stands alone surprisingly well.

Finally, for all you Passing Strange fans, there’s “Amsterdam.”

Enjoy!

The Negro Problem at Joe’s Pub: Video

I promised video of The Negro Problem‘s fantastic show at Joe’s Pub on Jan 7 . Here’s the first one, with more to come as soon as the overworked staff at Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? can find the time to process it.

This clip is just an excerpt, the last minute or so of one of my favorite Stew/TNP songs, “Peter Jennings,” performed with as much joy and excitement as I’ve ever seen.

Clips still to come are longer. But this will give you a good idea of the show’s energy.

The Negro Problem: Stew, Heidi and friends come home to Joe’s Pub

Stew, Heidi Rodewald and The Negro Problem at Joe's Pub on Friday, Jan. 7, 2011. (Photos copyright 2011, Steven P. Marsh)

Stew, Heidi Rodewald and their current incarnation of The Negro Problem came home to NYC — to Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater — on Jan. 7.

What a homecoming it was.  The show was rocking and well-paced, with old favorites — many reimagined in one way or another — and newer material from last fall’s Brooklyn Omnibus, a show premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

“Ken,” the never-fails-to-get-laughs tune about Barbie’s boyfriend Ken secretly being gay, was done with a reggae feel to it. And they did “Willow Song” from their music for last summer’s Shakespeare on the Sound production of Othello. They also did a great rendition of Stew’s self-proclaimed best song ever, “Gary Come Home,” written for TV’s SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon show.

The current incarnation of The Negro Problem, Stew and Heidi’s first project together, is really just the pair of them backed by Joe McGinty‘s Loser’s Lounge crew plus awesome longtime guitarist Jon Spurney. (Spurney wasn’t in the earliest incarnations of The Negro Problem, but then again, neither was Heidi. Spurn was, however, involved from the beginning with the material that eventually became the acclaimed musical, Passing Strange.)

The place was packed. The show was great. And it seemed to go by in a flash.

Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? was thrilled to be there. We’ll shut up now so you can look at the photos. (Video will come later!)

Stew in his Utilikilt with a new approach to hairstyling, and Heidi at Joe's Pub.

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Great news: As predicted, Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival returns to MASS MoCA in 2011

When Wilco arrived at MASS MoCA last summer, the band even took over the museum's sign. (Photos copyright 2010, Steven P. Marsh)

Fantastic festival can only get better

We don’t like to brag (well, okay, sometimes we do), but Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? predicted that Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival would become an annual event — even before this year’s inaugural gathering wrapped up.

Wilco HQ announced the news with an email this morning:

Greetings and Happy Holidays. We’ve got a last bit of news before heading home for the break. The big story here is that Solid Sound 2011 is officially ON and happening the weekend of June 24-26, once again at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA. if you were there last year, we know you’ll be back. If not, well, this year you should know better. Ticket information and more will be announced on January 18. So keep an eye and ear out.

Safe travels and sweet holidays to you all. Thanks again for another great year in Wilcoworld. We’ll see you in 2011 with what will undoubtedly be a whole bunch of news regarding Wilco tours, records, the festival and so on. Cheers.

the HQ Staff

This years three-day event was held  in mid-August. It gave thousands of fans of all ages the run of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in the Berkshires town of North Adams, Mass. Participants got to hear lots of music from Wilco, the side projects of band members like Jeff Tweedy, Nels Cline, Pat Sansone, their friends, and got to sample comedians and films along with the spectacular art on the gritty former factory campus. It was well run, well curated and surprisingly chill.

The music was great, the scheduling tight without being overwhelming, the facilities were superb and the food and drink never seemed to run out. Everything worked together to make it one of the best and most memorable festivals around.

Wilco perfoms on the main stage in Joe's Field at MASS MoCA.

Museum management was thrilled to have as many as 5,000 well-behaved patrons on site at once, and obviously saw the festival as something worth bringing back. Museum Director Joe Thompson was singing the praises of the event all weekend, and made no secret of the fact that he supported the idea of doing it again in 2011.

And Cline brimmed with excitement about the festival when we spoke with him at Joe’s Pub in New York City, where he and fiancee Yuka Honda were checking out Sean Lennon and Charlotte Kemp Muhl‘s new project, The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger.

Next year’s festival is earlier in the summer — June instead of August. So save the date and stay tuned for an update in a month.

Victoire: Finally, a full-length CD

Victoire at Joe's Pub. (Photos copyright 2010, Steven P. Marsh)

Composer Missy Mazzoli and her band, Victoire, celebrated the Sept. 28 release of their first full-length CD, Cathedral City, on the wonderfully adventurous New Amsterdam label with a show at at Joe’s Pub on Saturday, Oct. 2. The band’s performance made it pretty evident that much of the quintet’s new material isn’t new at all.

That’s not a bad thing. It’s just illustrative of how long it can really take to put together an album — something that Mazzoli, an obvious perfectionist, underscored at Joe’s.

Victoire, an rock-influenced electroacoustic quintet, was founded back in 2008 as an outlet for Mazzoli’s wilder compositions. We first heard the band not long after that, but Victoire really made an impression at the Bang on a Can Marathon in June 2009, on the heels of the March release by eMusic of the band’s A Door Into The Dark E. All four songs from that EP — but different versions — are included on the eight-track Cathedral City. So fully half the CD, including the dark, slightly hallucinatory i am coming for my things, is quite familiar by now. Continue reading

Sean Lennon and Charlotte Kemp Muhl get a Joe’s Pub homecoming

The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger (Sean Lennon and Charlotte Kemp Muhl) at Joe's Pub on Thursday, Aug. 19. (Photos copyright 2010, Steven P. Marsh)

Enthusiastic reception for sean and charlotte’s band and preview of charlotte’s other project: the duo Kemp and Eden

It was a lovely, silly, weird scene at Joe’s Pub early Friday morning when The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger, the band comprising  Sean Lennon and Charlotte Kemp Muhl, performed what Sean described as the last stop on their “international tour.” (Though it sounds like his idea of international mostly involves going out of state!)

Sean Lennon mugs during his Joe's Pub set.

Lovely because their low-key chamber pop was full of beautiful melodies, deceptively good playing and smart lyrics.

Charlotte Kemp Muhl of The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger.

Silly because of the duo’s deftly goofy banter and off-kilter titles.

And weird, or maybe just surreal, for a lot of reasons. For instance, Sean’s ex-girlfriend (and current business partner), Yuka Honda, formerly of Cibo Matto, was front and center in the audience. At her side was Nels Cline, the awesome Wilco guitarist and The Nels Cline Singers frontman, who also happens to be Yuka’s fiance. Sean invited Nels onstage to sit in on one Saber Tooth Tiger song, and nearly sat in Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone?’s lap while briefing Nels.

Click through to the jump for news of Yoko Ono and a look at Charlotte’s other band! Continue reading

Hello again: The Last Goodbye

Jeff Buckley Meets William Shakespeare

Romeo (Damon Daunno) and Juliet (Kelly Barrett) in the Williamstown Theatre Festival production of The Last Goodbye. (Photo by Sam Hough)

When The Last Goodbye blossomed on the stage of downtown Manhattan nightspot Joe’s Pub in April 2009, Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? knew director Michael Kimmel (who also conceived and adapted this show) and his collaborators were onto something good. The idea of pairing the lyrics and music of tragic pop star Jeff Buckley with Shakespeare’s story of tragic lovers, Romeo and Juliet, had an instant appeal.

And it took shape well onstage. My mind was blown by that early reading. It went through some changes, was re-presented in New York City this March, and now it’s taking a polished form at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts.

Many members of that original Joe’s Pub cast remain with the show. And that’s for good reason. They’re great.

Word of mouth

We haven’t yet seen this fully staged version, which opened on Saturday and runs through Aug. 20. But the word is very good. A friend of this blog who saw the Joe’s Pub version calls the Williamstown production “quite good,” with “much better integration of the bard’s language.”

Audience reaction was good:

Check out the first review

The first detailed review we’ve found, on the blog This Is Somewhere, is also quite positive.

For more about this show, and details on how you can see it, click through to the jump. Continue reading

Free dance party today in Manhattan’s Riverside Park

GlobeSonic Dance System's DJs: Fabian Asultany, Bill Bragin (aka DJ Acidophilus) and Derek Beres.

Looking for a way to enjoy the great outdoors today and get your dance on? Check out the free GlobeSonic Sound System dance party in Riverside Park today. The party starts on the early side, at 4 p.m., and runs until 11 on the Hudson River pier at 68th Street. This is the sixth season of GlobeSonic parties on the pier.

All you need to bring is your dancing shoes. And did I mention that admission is free?

GlobeSonic features three DJs, Fabian Alsultany, Derek Beres and Bill Bragin (director of public programming at Lincoln Center and former director of Joe’s Pub), plus Duke Mushroom on percussion.

We’ve been to GlobeSonic parties before, and they’re always a great mix of beat-heavy international tracks. Today will be our first time seeing GlobeSonic on the pier. It should be a wild party.

EXCLUSIVE: How you can attend a reading of The Last Goodbye

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Daily Variety reported last night that The Last Goodbye, New York director Michael Kimmel’s musical play pairing Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet with the music of Jeff Buckley, is headed to the stage next season. The item also said there would be a developmental reading in NYC soon. What Variety didn’t tell you is when that reading will be and how you can attend. But Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? has those answers for you exclusively.

The reading will be held at 2 pm on Friday, March 12. The New York City venue hasn’t been named yet, though the creative team will have that finalized soon.

As for getting tickets, it’s a bit of a crap shoot, but the rules are simple: Just drop an email, including your full name, email address and telephone number to newsletter@jeffbuckley.com by 12 am ET on March 1. That will put you in the running for a free pair of tickets.

I’ve been a huge fan of Jeff’s work for ages. After I saw the concert version of this show at Joe’s Pub last year, I wrote that it blew my mind and I couldn’t wait to see it develop. That time is fast approaching!

Colman’s Big-Ass 40th Birthday!

Colman Domingo does the dance of the flaming pastry with De'Adre Aziza, Soara-Joye Ross and Eisa Davis. (Photos copyright 20009, Steven P. Marsh)

Actor Colman Domingo‘s birthday is Nov. 28. He celebrated at home with some close friends.

Colman channeling Maya Angelou.

Two nights later, on Nov. 30, he turned Joe’s Pub into a reasonable facsimile of his living room two nights later when he threw Colman Domingo’s BIG ASS 40th Birthday Party for his friends, family and fans. It was an evening of irresistible fun.

The stage was filled with singing and stories from Colman’s varied acting career, some from Passing Strange (De’Adre Aziza, Eisa Davis and musical director Jon Spurney) and others, including Ari Gold, Marva Hicks, Soara-Joye Ross and director Charles Randolph Wright, from other acting ventures.

Colman, who is one of the sweetest and most genuinely real actors I know, was touched by the audience’s enthusiasm. And he was thrilled to donate the evening’s proceeds to the Save the Children charity.

If you missed it, nothing I can write here could really recreate the moment, so just sit back and enjoy lots more photos after the jump.

Colman, De'Adre, Eisa, Ari, Marva and Neil Totton join voices.

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