Posts Tagged ‘live music’
Jim Suhler and Monkey Beat
DALLAS, TX -
Along with Suhler on guitar and lead vocals, the band includes bassist Calrton Powell, keyboardist Shawn Phares and drummer Jimmy Morgan. Together, they’ve ben terrorizing clubs, theaters and festivals alike with their flamethrower brand of blues/rock. with a major side order of the Texas border mythology added to keep it spicy.
The same take-no-prisoners attitude has prevailed in Jim Suhler’s playing as a guitarist with George Thorogood and the Destroyers, with whom he’s recorded, toured and written songs for over nine years. Suhler has often been included in many of the “Top Ten Guitarists” lists featured in several music publications.
Blasting out Texas blues/rock for over seventeen years, Jim Suhler & Monkey Beat announce the February 17, 2009, release of the band’s new cd, ‘TIJUANA BIBLE’, which will be released in the U.S. on Underworld Records, distributed nationally by Burnside Distribution. Produced by Jim Suhler and Tom Hambridge, ‘TIJUANA BIBLE’ is powered by thirteen original songs, plus unique takes on Elvin Biahop’s “Drunken Hearted Boy” (with Bishop as a special guest on slide guitar), Rory Gallagher’s “I Could’ve Had Religion” and AC/DC’s “Up To My Neck in You”. Additional special guests include Joe Bonamassa on lead guitar (”Deep Water Lullaby”) and Jimmy Hall (Wet Willie) on backing vocals (Po‘ Lightnin’).
“TIJUANA BIBLE’ was recorded at Ocean Way Studios and 1808 Studios in Nasville, as well as Audio Dallas inGarland , Texas. The album takes it’s title from the notorious “Tijuana Bible”, an old time pornographic comic book, typically “starring” famous politicians, film stars and sports heroes of the day. “No one is really sure where they originated, but Tijuana, with it’s creative approach to all things entertaining, is certainly a good place to guess”, says Jim Suhler.
Several of the songs on “TIJUANA BIBLE” are also featured on the 2008 DVD release “REAL TIME: LIVE IN TEXAS”, recorded at Dallas’ Granada Theater, which also includes bonus tracks filmed at the Kwadendamme Blues Festival in the Netherlands and in the historic Deep Ellum section of Dallas.
Walter Trout
Walter Trout
July 22nd, 2010
About Walter Trout -
“People ask me if they should call my music blues or rock, I tell them they can call it ‘Fred’ if they must have a label.”
That remark, along with the exclamation that “the blues shouldn’t be a museum… the music ought to constantly expand and be alive,” have been expressed again and again by Walter Trout during his 35+ year career. With the release of FULL CIRCLE, the statements hold true as Trout and his musical friends demonstrate their appreciation of all shades of the blues genre. The album reflects Walter Trout’s remarkable story, from his humble beginnings as a sideman in many a blues legends’ band through his rising solo star, arriving as one of blues music’s beloved interpreters. Read the rest of this entry »
Johnny A
Johnny A
Saturday April 17th, 9 pm
For Johnny A., the guitar has held a lifelong fascination, her six strings exerting a powerful influence and addictive beauty since the first time he held them. The pursuit of this musical lady with the perfect shape has driven his years - shaping the course of his life – taking him places he never could have imagined. Through inspiring moments of ecstatic improvisation, deep contemplation and inevitable gaps of frustration it has been a stormy affair with a tempestuous hollow-body lover, but the marriage has been nothing less than remarkable.
Johnny A. is widely regarded as one of America’s finest contemporary guitarists. Gibson thinks so – their Custom Shop designed a Signature Edition guitar per his specific requests which, when it was marketed in 2003, placed him in an exclusive club that included legends like BB King, Wes Montgomery, Chet Atkins, Joe Perry, Pat Martino and Les Paul himself. The public thinks so too - Johnny A.’s latest works have sold many thousands of copies as well as being his personal best. The most recent CD’s - 2004’s Get Inside and 1999’s Sometime Tuesday Morning, are the critically acclaimed solo culmination of a lifetime of learning, sharing and bonding in a long parade of bands and players.
As a bright-eyed six-year old in Malden, Massachusetts, Johnny became fascinated with the drums, a habit his father encouraged by buying him a kit. There were lessons and the Jr. High School marching band, but as fun as the skins were, he realized that their melodic capability was quite limited. Rhythm had taken a backseat to melody and since the most melodic instrument in any 60’s beat group was guitar, those six-strings now began their inexorable pull on Johnny A’s life. Once the four “mop-tops” from Liverpool dropped like a bomb from Ed Sullivan’s studio into his living room in 1964, his course was set.
A $49 Lafayette Electronics guitar became Johnny A.’s first girlfriend. A humble beginning for sure, but his mom was no fool and wanted to be safe if this ‘guitar thing’ just turned out to be another passing teenage phase. It wasn’t. Johnny saw the Beatles at Suffolk Downs outside of Boston in 1966 and their magical presence sent the impressionable lad into a blur of activity – sweeping up hair and doing odd jobs at his aunt’s salon to save up the 88 bucks needed to buy a Vox Clubman guitar. Then, of course, he had to have a Gretsch too. No, this was no passing phase.
Fate leaned in and dealt a tough one when the active 13-year old developed a curvature in his spine and suffered massive and painful muscle spasms as a result. Doctors put Johnny in a full body cast for 14 months and eventual body brace for two years to immobilize his back and neck during treatment. As much as this terrible handicap limited the schoolboy in his activities, it didn’t stop him from playing. In fact, the condition actually forced Johnny to improve his skills since he could no longer look down at his fingers while forming chords and picking.
In high school he was freed from the cast, graduated and then went on to a semester and a half at Boston’s Berklee School of Music. Ironically, Johnny had no interest in attending even one of his guitar lessons at the prestigious school - they taught textbook Bebop, while he had moved onto the latest sounds: Progressive Rock and Jazz/Rock Fusion. The instructors preached Lester Young, but Johnny grooved on Mahavishnu Orchestra with John McLaughlin, King Crimson and Return to Forever featuring Bill Connors and Chick Corea. He bid adieu to Berklee and schooled himself, both at home and in Boston’s hippie-era club scene at places like the Ark and Boston Tea Party.
In amongst going to see Ten Years After, Steppenwolf, Edger Winter’s White Trash, Rhinoceros, Spirit and dozens more, Johnny put together his own group called Squanty Roo. They might not have blazed a trail to Budokan, but they did play the Fusion sounds that the guitarist was digging on. After that it was a short pilgrimage to San Francisco to absorb some counterculture and do a brief stint with percussionist Mingo Lewis.
By 1975 Johnny A. had worked out of his progressive phase and hungered to put together a basic rock outfit with the energy of Aerosmith and the melodic fascinations of the Beatles. It was the pre-punk period and Boston was about to become a hotbed of local talent and a leading city to support the brand new wave of bands and attitude. Johnny formed the group The Streets, a leather-clad unit on the ground floor of hard rock that embraced the sounds of 60’s British Invasion pop. When Boston’s punk scene finally climbed out of a handful of dingy rock and roll basements with its first wave of rock recruits for the brand new era, The Streets were there, scoring a major local radio hit with the song “What Gives.”
Eventually, personnel changes killed The Streets, but the guitarist formed other bands – Johnny A.’s Hidden Secret and Hearts on Fire, a unit featuring his wife Beth on vocals. With a sound that drew from country-western twang but rocked solid, Hearts on Fire preceded Maria McKee’s Lone Justice and pioneered a distinctive place within Boston’s thriving mid-80’s local scene. Competing in the 1986 edition of WBCN-FM’s annual Rock and Roll Rumble spotlighting two dozen of the year’s best up and coming bands, Hearts on Fire blazed a trail all the way into the finals, becoming recognized truly as one of New England’s finest and brightest hopes.
But Johnny broke up the group instead after realizing that their direction had become “calculated” and “not honest.” Disillusioned after reaching so far within the band format, he began playing with other artists like former Derek and the Dominos keyboardist Bobby Whitlock before hooking up with legendary J. Geils Band front man Peter Wolf. Johnny stayed with Wolf for seven years, playing on his albums and co-producing one of them – 1996’s Long Line, as well as supporting the charismatic singer onstage around the world. During this period, in 1994, the Gibson Guitar Company first recognized Johnny’s talents, announcing that the company was officially endorsing his fruitful career.
But once again Johnny A. felt he had taken a direction and pursuit as far as he could. The idea began to take hold that he should return to a solo direction – this time creating an album of melodies and music that swirled about in his head. Even though it didn’t seem as if there was any commercial potential in the move, that wasn’t the point – Johnny needed to bring this project to life and it wouldn’t resemble anything he’d been involved in the past. Peter Wolf and Johnny A. parted ways and the guitarist began recording tracks for his new experiment – an album of music made merely to satisfy his own muse with no commercial constraints whatsoever.
The result was Sometime Tuesday Morning, a solo instrumental guitar album that Johnny A. released on his own label for his own enjoyment plus that of a few intrigued friends and family members. But the warmth of its guitar tones and allure of melody made Sometime Tuesday Morning much more – it made the album a surprise hit. After gigs Johnny began selling dozens, then hundreds, and eventually thousands of copies out of his car trunk. The attention led to a re-release and distribution deal with Steve Vai’s Favored Nations label and an ever-widening circle of high-prestige gigs with the likes of B.B. King, Robert Cray, and Jeff Beck plus an appearance at Eric Clapton’s “Crossroads Guitar Festival” in 2004. That success gave Johnny A. the confidence to assemble his second instrumental tour de force called Get Inside, another critically acclaimed album that traveled even deeper into the richness of guitar texture and melody. The release once again garnered national radio airplay and inspired another round of touring commitments and personal appearances. An instructional guitar DVD has followed plus plans for his newest project – a live CD/DVD featuring special guests and new material. It has been a long way from that first $49 guitar to Gibson’s Johnny A. Signature Edition (Metallica’s Kirke Hammett recently bought one), but it’s been a fruitful journey. Johnny A. is still doing what he loves to do the most - play guitar and create music, and he’s still getting better at it all the time.
Monte Montgomery
Monte Montgomery
Monte Montgomery February, 27th 8 pm
Special Guest: TBA
Named as one of “Guitar Player” magazine’s “Top 50 All-Time Greatest Guitarists” and the only artist to win the “Best Acoustic Guitar Player” at the Austin Music Awards seven years straight, Monte Montgomery is world-renowned for his dizzying fretboard wizardry. Guitar hero status aside, Montgomery is also a multi-dimensional songwriter and storyteller as well as a talented arranger and remarkably soulful vocalist. He is one of the very few living guitar gods able to synergize technical shredding with deep soul connection in his songs and performances. Austin City Limits producer Terry Lickona describes the musician perfectly, “Monte Montgomery blows people away. There is no other way to describe it.”
Charlie Musselwhite
The Charlie Musselwhite Band
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Nov 16th Charlie Musselwhite
Blues is tough,” Charlie Musselwhite explains. He could just as easily be talking about himself. Described by the San Jose Mercury News as, “the second coming of Led Zeppelin, with Tom Waits on vocals,” Charlie and his band embody the direct and timeless power of the blues. Charlie continues to deliver that hi-wattage intensity on stage, testifying to the truth of living in real America night in and night out. Whether it’s the rough river town of Memphis of his childhood, the rough South Side Chicago juke joints where he cut his teeth as a performer or the disillusioned Twenty First Century New Orleans, Musselwhite’s music still speaks - loud and clear - to the soul with passion and grace. When Charlie released his first record, 1967’s defiant Stand Back, the country was in the midst of an unpopular war and entering the slipstream of rapid cultural and political change. Fast forward four decades and not much has changed. Neither has Musselwhite’s musical wanderlust nor his creative ambition. His hunger to explore new sounds and possibilities resulted in an acclaimed 2007 collaboration with alt-rock institution Eddie Vedder on the Golden Globe-nominated soundtrack to the film Into The Wild. Vedder’s haunting vocals and Musselwhite’s aching harp strains added to the movie’s already powerful story. Charlie recalls the sessions as a mutual admiration society. “It was great. Sean Penn was there, too. They were fans and knew a lot of my records. We hit it off right away and had great rapport.” Charlie describes this give and take between himself and performers from other generations and different genres as, “a conversation.” It is an ongoing one that has been a key reason why his music remains so vital. “Every situation has something to offer and can spark new ideas,” he explains. “Something new comes out of it.” Musselwhite sums up: “It’s like… I know what I know. What do you know that can make things even more interesting?” Charlie also finds inspiration in diverse cultural experience. An avid traveler, Charlie loves to investigate all music “with feeling / music from the heart.” He and his band go wherever the gigs are - including China, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Brazil. Even though Charlie has already racked up thousands of miles on tour buses and still spends a great deal of time away from his current Sonoma County, California home, he still books tour itineraries that would wear out performers half his age. Charlie finds that these journeys allow him, “to get beneath the surface of the place.” These treks reinforce Musselwhite’s belief in music’s universality. No matter that they were half a world away from the American stages that gave birth to the genre, Charlie remembers hearing, “people playing blues in their own way, their own version.” Like some Jungian archetype, Musselwhite calls this a global “music of lament from the heart,” with, “different takes,” from country to country. Musselwhite’s most recent album, 2006’s critically praised Delta Hardware (released by Peter Gabriel’s Real World imprint), runs a wide emotional gamut from the hip-shaking boogie of, “Church Is Out,” to the haunting Katrina lament, “Black Water.” Charlie’s electric brand of roots music, drawing equally from rock and blues traditions, permeates the disc. But, in addition to the traditional, Delta Hardware finds Musselwhite stretching out and exploring new sounds, including bits of samples and drums loops. When asked if he is writing any new material, Charlie replies, “I’m constantly working on new stuff. It’s an ongoing process.” As if touring the globe, releasing acclaimed albums and embarking on major collaborations wasn’t enough for Musselwhite’s to-do list, he even found time to act in his first feature film, Pig Hunt. A bold, jarring and independent slice of horror dubbed, “cinematic punkabilly,” Pig Hunt isn’t for the faint of heart. But, for Charlie, whose part was created specifically with him in mind by script writer Robert Mailer Anderson, the shoot was, “Very professional… fun, serious work.” Musselwhite was born in the Mississippi - the cradle of the blues. He spent his formative years in another musical hothouse, Memphis, Tennessee. Fortuitously, he arrived during its burgeoning postwar ascent, a vibrant cross-pollenization of down-home country, swinging jazz and soulful R&B. Charlie remembers, “I just figured every place was like Memphis. In the neighborhood, I could take a walk a couple blocks in any direction and come across some guys playing blues, hillbilly, gospel or rockabilly literally on the front steps, or in the yard. You could hear the music, and follow the sound.” Some of the young hotshots just getting their start in the city’s nightclubs at the time were Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash. Charlie often found himself at Elvis’ parties or watching Johnny and Tommy Cash styling through the Memphis streets. Heck, Johnny and Dorsey Burnette lived right across the street from Charlie. Slim Rhodes lived only a couple blocks away. Music had sunk its teeth deep into Charlie, but economic necessity made him move to Chicago in the mid 60’s. Now on his own as a young adult, Musselwhite looked for a good job and a better life. But, inevitably, the South Side scene, filled with legendary players like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and John Lee Hooker, drew him in. Soon, Charlie was living in the basement of Delmark records with Big Joe Williams and meeting the era’s greats. Musselwhite’s prodigious talent and laidback attitude soon won him a place at their sides both on stage or sharing a bottle in the alley out back of the bar. During the course of the remarkable career that followed, Musselwhite has collected a treasure trove of awards and accolades, including 18 W.C. Handy trophies, and six Grammy nominations. Amazon.com named Delta Hardware the best blues album of 2006. Musselwhite has also been honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from The Monterey Blues Festival, the Mississippi Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts and a prestigious Brass Note plaque on Memphis’ Beale Street (prominently placed outside B.B. King’s Club). The latest in this list is the Mississippi Trail Marker on the square of his birthplace, Kosciusko Mississippi. However, probably more meaningful for a true bluesman like Charlie has been the love and respect from his fellow musicians, which he has received in spades. The artists that Musselwhite has worked with reads like a veritable Hall of Fame honor roll: In addition to Eddie Vedder, Charlie has collaborated with Tom Waits, Ben Harper, Bonnie Raitt, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Gov’t Mule, INXS, Mickey Hart, George Thorogood and personal friend and best man at his wedding John Lee Hooker. Ultimately, though, for Charlie Musselwhite the thrill and challenge of engaging an audience fuels his artistry. “It’s about the feeling, and connecting with people,” he explains, “And blues, if it’s real blues, is loaded with feeling.” Charlie continues that, “it ain’t about technique either, it’s about truth, connecting to the truth and communicating with people.”
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Ana Popovic - June 20, 2009
Ana Popovic
Ana Popovic
Appearing live at Oklahoma City Limits Saturday night June 20, 2009
Ever since her debut album was nominated for a BMA for best new artist in 2003 American’s have embraced this Belgrade Serbia native, who now resides in Amsterdam, Ana Popovic will be making her first Oklahoma appearance Saturday June 20th at Oklahoma City Limits 4801 South Eastern.
Ana is yet another European heavily influenced by American blues artists but melds with her own Jazzy style developed listening to her fathers record collection filled with western popular music. Although she played professionally in Eastern European festival at an early age she came in to her own after moving to Amsterdam to continue her studies in graphic design. There she formed a Dutch band and became a fixture on the local music scene. She was signed to Ruf records and from there her career took an international course.
She is now touring in support of her newest release Still Making History on American label Delta Groove records. She has been lauded by such publications as Guitar Player Magazine “Ana is a superb singer and songwriter who can flatpick fluid jazzlines, and deep string bends with SRV-style and emotion.” She stands poised to shake your foundations.” Guitar One magazine.
For the second time Ana and her European band are invited to play at the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise. On high sea Ana jams with Susan Tedeschi, Larry McCray, Bob Margolin and many more. Ana is part of Robert Radler’s guitar documentary ‘Turn it up’ aka TONE, about the worlds best guitars and guitar players.
Site updates
This is 79th Street Soundstage’s new home on the web. While the site has been launched and is here for public consumption over the next few days we will be putting the finishing touches on the information here.
Information on upcoming concerts being promoted by 79th Street Soundstage, backline equipment rentals, and soundstage (rehearsal hall) availability is being updated continuously.
Let us know what you think about the new site by dropping us a line here —- contact us.
Thank you.