Photo Credit: Nina Westervelt, PR.

Singer, songwriter, and guitarist Jason Isbell appeared at WFUV for an interview with pre-recorded acoustic performance (at The Beacon Theatre in a special soundcheck WFUV set) of 3 songs taken from his new album Foxes in the Snow: “Bury Me,” “Foxes in the Snow,” and “If We Were Vampires.”  Hear the songs along with the chat HERE.

The music of Hermanos Gutiérrez brings you to another place. It’s a place of saguaro cacti and miles of sun-baked sand. If you’re a fan of spaghetti Westerns, it may suggest a love of Ennio Morricone and perhaps even evoke images of characters named Blondie, Angel Eyes, and Tuco in Sergio Leone’s 1966 epic, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”

The title of the band’s new album, El Bueno Y El Malo, is a wink at that film that gives the Ugly the day off. Brothers Estevan and Alejandro Gutiérrez are an instrumental duo from Switzerland. Listen to an interview and see 3 live musical performances at WFUV Live here.

Hermanos Gutiérrez photo credit: Gus Philippas

American blues, country, and Americana singer, guitarist, and songwriter Charley Crockett is back with a new album, The Man from Waco. It’s a laconic, elegant song cycle that tells the story of a fictional character who has some things in common with the artist but who has a life of his own. Charley and I touched upon a little bit of all of that in our conversation in a WFUV Live session. Check out the interview and 3 song live performances here.
Charley Crockett Photo Credit: Gus Philippas

Steve Earle’s new album is called Ghosts of West Virginia. In this recorded interview, Steve chats with me about what inspired the songs on the album and covers some wide-ranging topics. Steve performs 4 of the songs in a WFUV Live session. The interview can be heard, and performances can be seen here.

Tom Rush Talks Songwriting & Performing – Schimmel Center at Pace University December 9, 2016

When Tom Rush was a student at Harvard University in the early sixties, he hosted a Tuesday evening radio program on the college station WHRB called Balladeers that featured his own performances on the air as well as a different guest each week.  In order to recruit the artists to play on his radio show, he spent time in the coffee houses and cafes around Harvard Square and beyond.   The hours spent in this way didn’t help his grades but did help Rush develop a discriminating ear and eye regarding the best talent on that burgeoning scene.  It also, of course, gave him ample opportunity to cop guitar licks and help him find his own voice.  The legendary Club 47 was one block away from his dorm room.  As Rush told me prior to the show at the Schimmel Center earlier this month, “that was dangerous.”

Tom Rush has never really abandoned the concept of that radio show which paired his work with artists he was excited about it and wanted to share. By recording their songs, he was instrumental to the careers of Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, and James Taylor.  When I asked him what we was most proud of in his career, he passed over his enviable body of work and enduring success as a songwriter or performer.   He replied, “I think I’ve helped some up and comers come up.”  That led to praise for Matt Nakoa and Seth Glier who were part of the event at the lovely 672 seat downtown venue.  Nakoa will again share the bill with Rush in April.  That show, put on by First Acoustics, is at the First Unitarian Church in Brooklyn Heights.  

Rush has been enjoying a fruitful writing period and may head down to Nashville where he recorded 2009’s What I Know (which he considers his finest work) to record an album entirely of his compositions.  

Martha Wainwright CD Release Party At Le Poisson Rouge – November 18, 2016

Martha Wainwright is the daughter of two accomplished singer songwriters: American Loudon Wainwright III and Canadian Kate McGarrigle who died almost seven years ago.  She inherited great expectations along with royal musical blood.  Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole is the title track to Martha Wainwright’s first EP and was included on her self-titled debut album in 2005.  At the risk of a oversimplified conclusion, the song indicted her dad  for being a ghost to her while giving the best part of himself to his songs.  At the time,  interviews suggested she was less than amused about how he had mined their relationship for lyrical fodder while falling down on authentic communication with her in the context of a prominent musical family.  She was kicking out against her whole situation as part of a declaration of independence that followed a move from Montreal to her birthplace of New York City.  The song suggested exploring family relationships is crucial to her expression… It still is.

In the New York era, Martha Wainwright recorded a handful of rewarding albums and evolved as artists and people do.  When it was time for the daughter to become a mother herself, she returned to Montreal.  That transition to another station in life is a driving lyrical force on the new album Goodnight City.  Produced by her husband Brad Albetta along with Thomas Bartlett, it includes half a dozen songs from her pen along with one co-written by her and Glen Hansard and another she collaborated on with her aunt Anna McGarrigle and her cousin Lily Lanken.  Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs, Rufus Wainwright, Beth Orton, and Michael Ondaatje also wrote songs for the project with Martha in mind. 
Having known of their friendship and her covers of songs like The Traitor and Tower of Song, before the interview concluded I asked her to remark about the great loss that was the death of Leonard Cohen earlier this month.  

Bela Fleck Leads Banjo Roundtable At Symphony Space – Sunday 10-23-16

The brilliant Bela Fleck invited some of his favorite banjo players to Symphony Space for an event that highlighted the range of sounds that the instrument can make across models, playing styles, and regional traditions.  The mutual respect and admiration among Bela Fleck, Abigail Washburn, Seamus Egan, Tony Trischka, and Don Vappie was evident as the five musicians took individual turns and teaming up in various combinations.   A pair of four-string banjos played with flat picks, a pair of five-strings played with finger picks, and a five-string played with a raw hand offered dramatic examples of the rich possibilities.

I met Fleck on the afternoon of the show while he was gathered with the artists he would later take the stage with.  He explained that he got the idea for the roundtable by seeing a similar format but with singer/songwriters in Nashville.  It struck him how, with contemporaries staying on the stage even when not active, they really put out and it got the best out of everyone.  He mentioned that rehearsal is at a minimum and spontaneity at a maximum.

After trying the idea a few years ago at Penn State, Fleck decided to put it on in grand style to finish up a handful of performances this month at Symphony Space.  As Egan, Vappie, Trischka, Washburn, and Fleck all have diverse backgrounds, the key to the night was finding common ground and finding ways to complement each other.

Fleck and Washburn have been touring with six or seven banjos on stage and their 3 year-old son Juno on the bus.  They are working on their second duo album together.  He’s also working on new material with Chris Thile and gave me a definite maybe when I asked if he might make it to the Blue Note to sit in with Chick Corea during his 75th birthday run.

Here’s some bonus bits from the interview…

Billy Bragg & Joe Henry Ride Train, Release Album Together

On Saturday -October 1st, 2016 – Billy Bragg and Joe Henry celebrated the unleashing of their first album recorded as a duo, Shine A Light, with a show at Society of Ethical Culture. Recently these two collaborated on Bragg’s excellent Tooth & Nail album of 2013 that Henry produced but they crossed paths initially almost thirty years ago. At that time and in subsequent years, they found they shared plenty of common musical ground; least of which was not a love for Woody Guthrie. In fact, when we were chatting before the show, Bragg compared the depth that he and Wilco were able to achieve in mining Guthrie’s work in on the Mermaid Avenue sessions to that in which he and Henry were able to accomplish with railroad-themed music on this project. He suggested, as a Englishman working with Americans on each, the contrast in perspectives was key to both.

Joe Henry’s extensive production credits include The River in Reverse by Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint, I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise by Bettye LaVette, and The Way of the World by Mose Allison just to name three of my faves. In addition to the over three dozen albums he has produced, he’s issued thirteen Joe Henry albums as well. The most recent being Invisible Hour from two years ago. He’s written songs with Rosanne Cash and Madonna. Atop the myriad skills that his resume implies, Bragg mentioned that Henry is also an outstanding arranger which helped elevate the renditions of these songs to something more personal than mere cover versions.

Henry noted the train and train song is part of our cultural mythology evoking loss and regret but also possibility. Both artists stressed that Shine A Light: Field Recordings From The Great American Railroad is not a nostalgia trip. Bragg said that they wanted to make it an immersive investigation into the railroad song in American history but also to reconnect people to the enduring viability of the railroad.

HERE is a link to a conversation (with performance) Billy Bragg and I had at WFUV in 2013.

Rosanne Cash Crushes Carnegie Hall (Headlining) Debut 2-20-16

One might have thought that an artist of the stature of Rosanne Cash would have headlined Carnegie Hall before but that was not the case and it was clear that Rosanne was excited about the show.  She and her husband of 21 years John Leventhal have both been honored recently.  This past fall, Cash was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and Leventhal won the Instrumentalist of the Year at the Americana Music Honors & Awards show.  The River & The Thread, the most recent effort released by Cash on which they co-wrote the songs, was award winning too and as well-received as any album from her body of work that started with a self-titled LP in 1978.  Still, the Grammys that The River & The Thread pulled in were received in Los Angeles and the songwriting and Americana awards were accepted on Nashville stages.  Saturday night was different.  It was New York where Cash has lived for 26 years and at what Rosanne called ‘America’s venue.’  Damn strait – she was excited.  This was a celebration of her whole career and a triumph of her grit, her determination and perseverance, and most of all her talent.

The band, led by Leventhal on guitar, was of of course stellar: Kevin Barry guitar, Glenn Patscha (of Ollabelle) on keys, Zev Katz – who first worked with Cash on The Wheel and has been crossing paths with Leventhal since the mid 70s – on bass, Dan Rieser on drums, David Mansfield on fiddles as well as guitar, and Catherine Russell on backing vocals and percussion.  Jeff Tweedy who, unless I missed one, last guested on a NYC stage with Dinosaur Jr in December, came on in the second set to sing some a couple of lovely duets with RC and some welcomed bonuses like California Stars.  

Meet Peter Calo

I first met Peter Calo in the fall of 2013.  My friend John Platt, who hosts a great show on WFUV called Sunday Supper, asked to MC a show he was playing at The Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock (a.k.a. the UUCSR) where they do a thing called Soulful Sundown on the second Friday of every month.  They have an excellent house band of top Long Island musicians and that night they were led by Peter Calo. I enjoyed the show immensely and was well impressed at Peter’s masterful, exciting guitar work that drew from a handful of genres and his evocative songs.  Clearly a very musical guy, it was no surprise to learn he had a resume full of recoding sessions and gigs with a long list of well-known musicians including half a dozen or so albums with Carly Simon.  I made a mental note to try to catch PC sometime he was in the city.  I ended up catching him a couple of times and I was clever enough to bring my camera during a recent show at Rockwood 3 which, as Peter mentions in the vid, is a preferred haunt of his because of  the sound and vibe.  Happily, he’ll be there again this Saturday evening (January 23,2016) at 7p and you’re invited…well, you know tickets are on sale.