Happy Memorial Day
May 31st, 2010
A Night with Tracy Morgan
May 28th, 2010Tracy Morgan – The Wellmont Theatre – May 27, 2010
(Photo: Andy Keilen)
Somewhere in between jokes about Adam and Eve having sex, colostomy bags and the dangers of anal beads, Tracy Morgan had a moment that bordered on poignant. He inadvertently burped into his microphone (no, that’s not the poignant part). While the audience began to laugh, Morgan paused and then very naturally said, “We family, right?” So went the rest of the night, which was much less like a stand-up routine and much more like the stories your crazy uncle won’t stop telling at family gatherings (albeit the ones he tells a few drinks into the proceedings).
Tracy Morgan brought that raunchy conversational act to The Wellmont Theatre last night, filling the space normally reserved for loud riffs and echoing vocals with tearful laughter and wild shouts from the audience. The hour-and-a-half set ranged from his spacey, almost incoherent late-night appearances to topical humor, including the immigration situation in the Southwest and the BP oil spill. Morgan’s advice on the latter: “Leave that shrimp scampi alone from now on.” The best material of the night was a running gag about previous girlfriends, which always began with the same line and always ended with a different (and increasingly hilarious) sexual twist. By the end, the final story had gone far past painfully funny and nearly revolting, something extremely fitting for the uncle telling the joke onstage. —Sean O’Kane
Road Trip: Portland, Maine, Style
May 27th, 2010
The Bowery Presents and Alex Crothers of Higher Ground Presents have signed a deal to reopen the State Theatre in Portland, Maine. Lauren Wayne, a music-industry veteran and Portland local, will be general manager and lead the charge in booking. Before the venue reopens, we’ll be upgrading the interior and exterior to restore the place to its former glory. The State Theatre has been closed since 2006, which has created a void in the Portland music scene—often bands will play Boston and then Montreal while skipping Maine altogether. That will change starting this fall. Expect about 80 shows a year with a cross section of the live music we’ve been providing for years. It’s a great city and a great venue. So get ready to head north to the Pine Tree State.
Get Lost in the Music on Friday Night
May 27th, 2010Husband Jace Lasek and wife Olga Goreas are music people. They own the Montreal recording studio Breakglass Studios and formed the Besnard Lakes (above, playing “And This Is What We Call Progress”) in 2003. The couple self-recorded the majority of Volume 1, the band’s debut album, at their studio when time allowed, and then self-released it. They later added band members and a second album, The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse, in 2007. Their third disc, The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night, released in March, is filled with slow-building, psychedelic-tinged music. “We want the listener to get lost in the song. It needs time to get under your skin, so it can’t be three minutes long,” said Lasek. “I don’t do drugs, but this is a drug record.” Find out for yourself when the Besnard Lakes (with Land of Talk and Holopaw) play The Bowery Ballroom tomorrow night.
A Cult Hero Returns
May 26th, 2010Roky Erickson – Webster Hall – May 25, 2010
Troubled rock legend Roky Erickson brought his wild catalog to Webster Hall last night, replete with moments both brash and reflective. Being backed by Okkervil River was the perfect complement, as Will Sheff and his bandmates blended country smoothness and hazy, loose blues to match Erickson’s erratic rock sound. Fresh off releasing an album together, True Love Cast Out All Evil, the collective was a wonderful marriage of sound and personality. Sheff took the lead through the early parts of the performance, shouting out the set list and interacting with the crowd. Erickson’s reticence and nervousness gave the feel of an old mass, with his back to the audience, only turning to his rock and roll worshipers to speak in his strange tongue.
But somewhere between the mid-set Little Richard cover and “I Walked with a Zombie” at the end, a flip was switched in Erickson, and he came to life with personality and bravado. As he and the band dove deep into songs from his 13th Floor Elevator days—like “Goodbye Sweet Dreams” and “Reverberation (Doubt)”—his lucidity grew and he embraced the fans before him. Instead of looking at Sheff for which chords to play, Erickson furiously ripped through them as his signature voice rang out as loud as his 62 years would allow. He even engaged the crowd, cracking jokes about his oldest songs now being on CDs. As if this middle-of-the-show awakening didn’t do enough to envelop the audience in joy, Erickson finished his encore with “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” a song that even casual rock fans know, and turned Webster Hall into a psychedelic-rock dance party deserving of Roky Erickson. —Sean O’Kane
Photos courtesy of Sean O’Kane | seanokanephoto.com
Let Your Soul Glow
May 26th, 2010
Michael Fitzpatrick got schooled in Stax and Motown at a young age. So it’s no surprise that when he went to record his first EP that it would be filled with soul-influenced pop. Wanting to add brass to his sound, he reached out to a horn-playing friend, James King. They worked on the songs together and things moved quickly form there. “I had a keyboard player in mind,” said Fitzpatrick. “He had a backup singer he wanted to use. Five phone calls between the two of us,” and Fitz & the Tantrums (above, playing “Breakin’ the Chains of Love”) were born. That EP, Songs for a Break Up, came out last year. And with a little bit of luck—Adam Levine heard the disc in an NYC tattoo shop—the band was soon on the road with Maroon 5. They’ve since toured with others, and now they’re coming to Mercury Lounge on Friday, which means you can get your three-day weekend started with a little bit of neo soul.
Get to Know Holly Miranda Tomorrow at The Bowery Ballroom
May 25th, 2010
Holly Miranda is quite precocious. She learned to play the piano at six before picking up the guitar at 14. Two years later, she left Detroit for New York City and earned a record deal that ultimately didn’t pan out. But then nine years ago, before she’d even turned 20, the singer-songwriter released her debut album, High Above the City: Evolution. Two years later, she met producer-keys player Alex Lipsen and they formed the Jealous Girlfriends. That band put out two discs and toured the country, but sometimes you need to go it alone, and so Holly Miranda (above, covering Lauryn Hill’s “Ex-Factor” for The Black Cab Sessions) released a second solo effort, The Magician’s Private Library (with TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek as a producer), this past February. And now she’s on her very own tour, which brings her to The Bowery Ballroom tomorrow night. Come check out her big voice for yourself.
Grow a Pair: Win Free Tickets to See Dylan Fest on 5/27
May 25th, 2010
Thursday’s Dylan Fest at The Bowery Ballroom celebrates the music of Bob Dylan and his 69th birthday. There are special guests galore, and as you can imagine, the show is sold out. But have no fear because The House List is giving away two tickets. Want to Grow a Pair? It’s easy. Just fill out the form below, including your name, e-mail address, which show you’re trying to win tickets to (Dylan Fest, 5/27) and a brief message explaining which Dylan song is your favorite. Eddie Bruiser, an “Isis” kind of guy, will notify the winner by Thursday. Good luck.
A Taste of Bluegrass on Houston Street
May 25th, 2010
Trampled by Turtles, the Duluth, Minn., quintet, have been putting a modern, thrashing twist on bluegrass music for seven years. Like the Avett Brothers and Old Crow Medicine Show before them, the band uses banjos, fiddles and mandolins—plus layered harmonies—to get their point across. They released their first album, Songs from a Ghost Town, in 2004 and have been touring steadily ever since. Their most recent disc, Palomino, came out last month and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Bluegrass Chart. And now Trampled by Turtles (above, playing “Feet and Bones” for Minnesota Public Radio) come to Mercury Lounge tomorrow night. Welcome them.
A Killer Dance Party at Terminal 5
May 24th, 2010LCD Soundsystem – Terminal 5 – May 21, 2010
On Friday night, Terminal 5 went to full capacity to try to grasp LCD Soundsystem’s official return to New York City. And this isn’t even entirely true: Friday’s show was the second of a sold-out four-show run, spanning Thursday to Sunday and numbering 12,000 tickets. So as fans packed themselves between the stage and the bar, they were part of something achingly fun. Distilled as an English sentence: This was happening.
From the outset, the band made clear their desire to destroy any vestige of collective boundaries. On the stunning opener, “Us v Them,” from their 2007 release, Sound of Silver, LCD Soundsystem poked fun at the divisions that brought their audience in the door as individuals in the hopes of having them move in unison. Later in the set, frontman James Murphy directed, in quick succession, possible second single from the brand new This Is Happening, “All I Want,” the band’s thesis statement, “All My Friends,” and “I Can Change,” each full of the Confucian-style wisdom (“I wouldn’t change one stupid decision/ For another five years of life”) that breeds such a sense of unity among those who subscribe to their recommendations.
The night closed with “Losing My Edge,” a song about the fragility and impermanence of youth, and “New York, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down,” a darkly romantic ode to the city, a sense of a rapidly fading moment and the impossible mission of recapturing it. Balloons poured from the ceiling and a few thousand individual orbs all bounced together. —Geoff Nelson
Photos courtesy of Michael Jurick | music.jurick.net
A Double Dose of New Musical Adventures
May 24th, 2010Hurricane Bells/Army of Me – Mercury Lounge – May 22, 2010
Saturday night saw a pair of shaggy-haired singers showcasing their new musical ventures at different levels of their infancy to the Mercury Lounge crowd. Vince Scheuerman, the last man standing in what used to be the full band Army of Me, started the early show with refreshed renditions of said band’s songs, joined only by friend Tyler Strickland. Even with a glaze of sadness cast over the semi-posthumous songs, Scheuerman brought life and joy to them with a radiant personality and a pure voice that drew in the growing crowd. He and Strickland rotated positions from keyboard to guitar, rounding out a still-lush sound in the stripped-down performance by smartly using the effects and tones available for each instrument.
A second lovely performance followed, provided by Hurricane Bells, a side project of Longwave’s Steve Schiltz. Saturday’s show served as the homecoming from the band’s first headlining tour, with Schiltz getting help from Longwave drummer Jason Molina and Ashen Keilyn (of NYC band SCOUT) to form a stellar live lineup. Schiltz led the band through a full complement of the project’s new full-length, Tonight Is the Ghost. Keilyn constantly matched his pristine vocals in the louder, uptempo songs like “Freezing Rain” and in the more reserved moments like during “I Can’t Remember.” The sumptuous sounds Schiltz was able to create with whichever busted-looking guitar he pulled from his arsenal were worth the price of admission alone. —Sean O’Kane
Photos courtesy of Sean O’Kane | seanokanephoto.com
Music Without Limits on Saturday Night
May 21st, 2010
After graduating from the estimable Berklee School of Music in Boston, organist/pianist Marco Benevento made his way to Brooklyn and eventually reunited with childhood friend Joe Russo, a drummer. What began as a series of shows at the old Knitting Factory became the experimental-instrumental Benevento-Russo Duo. And when Benevento and Russo aren’t playing together or with Trey Anastasio and Mike Gordon or doing Zeppelin covers, Benevento has his own music. Speaking of which, his third studio album, Between the Needles and Nightfall, came out just last week. With a new disc comes a new tour, and since Benevento plays his material—and some covers—live with drums and bass, the Marco Benevento Trio (above, performing “Atari”) will be at The Bowery Ballroom tomorrow night. You should be, too.
A Band Moving Forward
May 20th, 2010Apollo Sunshine – Mercury Lounge – May 19, 2010
After a year and a half of radio silence, Apollo Sunshine has returned to gigging with a vengeance. Last night’s show at Mercury Lounge was already their third layover in the city since March, and they clearly seem determined to get back to “Where have you been all my life?” form. The three band members went their separate ways after touring the heck out of 2008’s critically acclaimed album Shall Noise Upon, with drummer Jeremy Black heading out west, guitarist Sam Cohen trying his luck in Brooklyn and Jesse Gallagher staying up in Boston. But like a comet whipping around the sun, they are back together and in the wobbly, raw stage of prepping for their next record.
In town for some studio work, they had the midweek Merc late shift, testing out some new material, reworking some old stuff and delving hot and heavy into their genre-defying catalog. Fleshed out special-guest style to a quartet for the evening, Apollo Sunshine flipped between ecstatic psychedelic rockabilly and beautifully crafted gems like “Breeze” (with extra special guest-iness on lap steel) and “Singing to the Earth,” every fuzzy bass note and helter-skelter drumroll seemingly perfectly placed. But for each well-formed foray, the Sunshine had plenty of explosive moments.
Unpredictable and engaging, this is the band that drops the philosophical (“If the universe ends, then how does it end and if doesn’t end, well, how is that possible?”) into a raging, 10-minute blues jam and then does a groovy, exploratory key-heavy Walter Murphy on Bach to keep the audience’s hips loose. For the crowd-insisted encore, everything came together in a guitar-colliding “Lord” that peeked backward but clearly signaled that the future is where it’s at for Apollo Sunshine. —A. Stein
