After a full and musically satisfying Friday at the Newport Folk Festival with the family last weekend, the heat got to me Saturday morning while waiting to get back in for Day 2. The medics on-site determined it was dehydration and did a work up in their M*A*S*H tent. (“You’ve seen M*A*S*H, right? You have …
Americana
I always told people I wanted to grow up to be Pete Seeger. That was a lie. I wanted to be Chad Mitchell. Chad had a great tenor that rode over the often acerbic and histrionic harmonies that were the Chad Mitchell Trio’s signature on Woody Guthrie’s “Great Historical Bum” and Michael Brown’s takedown of …
BROOKLYN, NY; March 6, 2020—Riva is probably right — she usually is: No one would dare cough or sneeze in a theater right now. You’d be stared down and tsk-tsk’ed right up the coronavirus-disinfected aisle. But it’s a tense, respectful, hold-in-your-stomach quiet we’ve experienced in theaters the last few weeks, the kind of quiet that …
BROOKLYN, NY; Feb.26, 2020—I can’t tell you what a joy it was — and continues to be days later — to have hosted Christine Lavin performing a house concert in our home last Saturday night. We’ve had professional jazz musicians play in the past, typically as background for parties. And a young classical pianist played …
Love Tanya Tucker’s new album “While I’m Livin’,” produced by Brandi Carlile and Shooter Jennings, with Carlile and bandmates Phil and Tim Hanseroth providing backup and writing many of the songs evoking Tucker’s story. Her vocals are as evocative as they were (in a different way) when I got to meet her and review “Would …
Stunning aural and visual interpretation of Come All You Coal Miners and Take Me to Harlan by Bela Fleck, Abigail Washburn and Pilobolus. Wrenching and sweet all at once.
It is not easy to feel great about America right now. But there is an antidote. My wife Riva and I spent nine weeks this summer on a cross-country trek in our trusty 2005 Toyota Camry with three hubcaps. “We’re from Brooklyn,” said Riva when I wanted to replace the missing hubcap before we ventured …
BROOKLYN, NY; OCTOBER 5, 2016—In the late 1960s/early ’70s I took a course on New York City Street Songs with Oscar Brand and Theodore Bikel at the New School for Social Research (as the full name was known then). Learning to think of jump rope songs as “folk music” changed the way I thought of …
Marie & Rosetta is a stirring and often rousing musical biography of the life of gospel popularizer (and rock and roll predecessor) Sister Rosetta Tharpe. The work focuses on Tharpe’s relationship with her protégé Marie Knight, who Tharpe pulled from Mahalia Jackson’s backup choir and with whom she performed for three years. Kecia Lewis and …
BROOKLYN, NY; August 18, 2016—I was 18 in 1970 when I started writing about music for the Village Voice, often covering what is now referred to as “Americana,” but was then just known as “folk music.” Much of what I wrote about was pretty rarefied: Blind Alfred Reed, Aunt Molly Jackson, Michael Cooney but also …
nightmayer 