Full disclosure and a true confession:  I don’t play guitar, and I both admire and envy those that can and do.  But if I ever run into the Guitar Genie, and should he then offer to grant me just one wish to play like anyone in the world, my response would be immediate and unambiguous.

            “Genie,” I’d say, “I want to play swamp-heavy, voodoo-inflected, rapid-fire, chunky, chooglin’ riffs that seamlessly bridge the gap between the best of 1950s and 1970s rock & roll.  I wish I could play songs with irresistible hooks that once upon a time thunderstormed like audio fire out of American radios.  Genie,” I’d drawl, “can y’all fix it so’s I can play guitar exactly like John Forgerty?”

            And I’m sure the Guitar Genie would scratch his head, shoot me a long sorrowful look, and shrug.  “Hey, I’m only a genie,” he’d apologize, “not a miracle-worker.”

            John Fogerty and the Blue Ridge Rangers hit the stage at 8:15 p.m. Saturday night at Buffalo Bill’s Star of the Desert Arena, and for the next two hours the music rained down in rock & roll torrents.  Starting with the familiar screaming opening chords of “Up Around The Bend” and culminating with the iconic “Proud Mary,” Fogerty and his high-octane band raged through an amazing show that included much of the Creedence Clearwater Revival songbook, a sampler of Fogerty’s solo material, and a handful of cover songs from the new CD.

            The covers first:  scattered throughout the show, Fogerty delivered heartfelt and countrified slices of seminal musical history.  There was Phil Everly’s “When Will I Be Loved,” Rick Nelson’s “Garden Party,” Buck Owens “I Don’t Care (Just as Long as You Love Me),” and John Prine’s “Paradise.”  Old folk chestnut “The Midnight Special” made an appearance, as did a long instrumental break that paid homage to Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl.”  Wow, extended and semi-psychedelic jams, man, just like the 60s.  When was the last time you heard that kind of sonic onslaught, outside of a Phish concert?

            Then there were songs from Fogerty’s many “comebacks,” and here was where I thought The Blue Ridge Rangers really shone.  The band dug hard into the grooves for “The Old Man Down The Road” and pounded out the silly-but-clappable beat of “Centerfield.”  One guy several rows back of me kept yelling for “Rock and Roll Girls,” and finally was rewarded about three-quarters through the show with a fiery rendition. Then came an unexpected highlight:  an inspired, drawn-out version of “Big Train (From Memphis),” Fogerty’s paean to Elvis Presley and the King’s sweeping musical and cultural impact.  Fiddle player Jason Mowery made the most of his solos, playing lightning-fast bluegrass riffs and mournful moaning blasts that sounded like, well, distant train whistles.  Mowery and Fogerty dueled playfully and energetically, with Jay Bellerose and Chris Cheney on bass and drums keeping the tune on track.

            Surprisingly, Fogerty declined to play any cuts from his latest release of original songs, 2007’s respectable Revival.   He might have called for any one of a string of concert- friendly tunes- “Don’t You Wish It Was True,” “Gunslinger,” “It Ain’t Right,” “I Can’t Take It No More,” “Somebody Help Me”- but apparently made a conscious decision to leave them home for the night.  Our loss, and a small but significant gap from Fogerty’s long recording career.

            Fogerty stocked a small arsenal of guitars onstage.  For a while, I thought he was going to need a different ax for every single song he would play.  A grip named Timmy fed him a Stratocaster, a Taylor acoustic, a Les Paul Gold, a Les Paul Jr., a Telecaster, another Taylor, a red sunburst of a Gibson, a deep blue electric something-or-other, and so on.  Forgerty is known as something of a perfectionist with his songwriting, and he seemed intent on finding the exact musical timber needed for each individual song.  I’m going to assume that all his fussing and pickiness pays off in the end.  The sound was sweet and crisp and clean as it rang out from the stage, all over the arena, all over the world.

            And then he showcased a number of singles from the CCR catalogue, and bedlam reigned.  Briefly, it’s worth re-telling the famous story of Fogerty signing away the rights to his early hits in order to break his contract with Fantasy Records and embark on a solo career.  It was a brave and foolhardy move, one that reportedly left him bitter for years, years when he made a conscious decision not to play Creedence songs in concert.  Then, happily, he reversed that decision sometime in the late 80s.  He made peace with the fact that he was the author and spiritual owner of those magnificent artifacts of rock & roll history, and again started playing them before live audiences.

            Lucky for us, because what a treasure trove of classic songs they are:  “Green River,” “Lookin’ Out My Back Door,” “Have You Ever Seen The Rain?”, “Down on the Corner,” “Hey Tonight,” “Fortunate Son,” and “Keep On Chooglin’.”  His distinctive vocals were as strong as ever.  He displayed his lighter side during “Bad Moon Rising” when he pointed stage right and sang that old misunderstood refrain, “There’s a bathroom on the right.”  Fogerty is in the Rock & Roll Songwriters’ Hall of Fame, and tonight he provided plenty of proof that he belongs.  I was disappointed that he excluded from his set “Lodi,” “Almost Saturday Night,” “Travelin’ Band,” and especially “Who’ll Stop The Rain?”  But really, if he’d played every song I wanted to hear, it would’ve been a five-hour concert.  Sadly, that wasn’t going to happen.

            Another song that Fogerty did not play, Revival’s “Creedence Song,” might have served as an appropriate coda for the entire show.  The simple, immodest, but oh-so-true chorus goes:

                                    Well you can’t go wrong

                                    If you play a little bit of that Creedence song

                                    Doo doo!  Doo doo!

            By the time Fogerty and the Blue Ridge Rangers were wrapping things up, with the crowd lustily belting out, “Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ on the river,” Fogerty was hopping about like a twenty-year-old and playing his guitar with joy and abandon and amazing precision.  A week later, my ears are still ringing and I’m sneaking in a few moments here and there to practice my air guitar moves, wishing I could play the real thing one-tenth as well as John Fogerty.

            Guitar genie, are you listening?

Review Written by Rod Williams – LMA Street Team Member

            In a perfect world, you really ought to hear a legendary performer at a legendary venue.  Such was the case on December 5^th, when Americana icon Tom Russell performed to a packed house at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica.

            Russell is typically credited with co-founding (along with Dave Alvin) the Americana/roots music movement that’s been resurgent these past couple of decades.  His songs are heavily informed by country music and folk lyricism, but his interests can be all over the map.  For this concert, he chose to showcase almost all of the songs from his fine new CD, Blood and Candle Smoke, which contain compositions ranging from calypso to Mexican to African (“A little palm wine music for your listening pleasure,” he informed the audience at one point).

            Russell is at his best when he’s storytelling, both with his music and his onstage patter, and this evening he was really on his game.  It’s pertinent to remember that his eclectic background includes him being a novelist, a painter of some renown, and (as one of his new songs declares) “a master in the art of criminology.”  He has an eye for detail, a talent for mythologizing his own past adventures, and an empathy for the downtrodden, and he spins those qualities into the pure poety of his lyrics.  Like him or not, he writes songs like no else in America.  During this show, he veered from autobiography (“East of Woodstock, West of Viet Nam”) to tribute (“Nina Simone”) to social commentary (“Mississippi River Runnin’ Backwards,” “The Most Dangerous Woman in America”) to character study (“Darkness Visible”) to travelogues (“American Rivers”).  It takes a rare artist to insist on playing his new, largely-unfamiliar material to an audience hungry for “the old songs,” but Russell carried it off admirably.

            It helps that he is an expert raconteur with a sardonic sense of humor who tells stories between his story-songs.  Here again, you won’t find another songwriter who, in the course of one evening, can tell tales that make off-hand references to Dory Previn, Graham Greene, Ernest Hemingway, Charles Bukowski, Dave Van Ronk, Mother Jones, Pablo Picasso, and the Beat poets.  The man expects his audience to be plugged-in and literate, and leavens his more serious meditations with moments of caustic humor, often directed at himself.  Before one song, he tried re-tuning his guitar for several long moments, then laughed and gave up.  “Who the hell do I think I am, Ry Cooder?” he grumbled good-naturedly.  During another interlude, he spoke about his new marriage (“Finding You” is a very uncharacteristic Russell love song) and about how he never crosses the bridge from El Paso (where he currently lives) to Juarez any more because (in a mealy-mouthed, henpecked-husband voice), “My wife won’t let me.”  Of course, he also regaled the audience half-a-dozen times with his trademark snarl of, “Bastards.”  The crowd seemed to love it.  

            (Here I’d like to add that Russell can be an acquired taste.  Although he’s been featured several times on Dave Letterman’s show and has fans like author Annie Proulx and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, widespread popularity has eluded him.  “Bruce Springsteen did one of my songs in a sound check once,” he says wistfully.  I attended the show with my wife and a good friend.  The friend liked the show, but my wife remained unimpressed.  “I just don’t find his stories that interesting,” she says.  “And he’s not the best-looking guy in the world to look at, either.”  Okay, well, some things are out of the artist’s control, you know?).

            Russell is a serviceable guitarist, so it’s good that he always seems to tour with an accomplished musician who can augment his oftentimes spare melodies.  This time around, it was Thad Beckman who provided the six-string mastery.  Beckman is a solo artist in his own right who is primarily blues-influenced, but proved to be fully capable of following Russell wherever he led.  Russell yielded the stage to Beckman for a series of chameleonic guitar samplings that included Mississippi John Hurt, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Robert Johnson, and Gatemouth Brown.  Beckman also performed Brownie McGhee’s “Sportin’ Life Blues,” revealing a finely-honed bluesy voice to go along with his finger picking talents.

            In that same spirit of sharing-the-stage generosity, Russell briefly turned the microphone over to under-the-radar songwriting legend Steve Young, who was in attendance for the show. Russell praised Young’s many contributions to the Americana genre, then balanced that sentiment by saying, “Go ahead and do a song.  It’ll give me a chance to use the bathroom.”  Young obliged and played a stripped-down version of “Seven Bridges Road,” much to the audience’s delight.

            Besides playing the new CD in its near-entirety, Russell also reached back into his vast catalogue to resurrect crowd favorites like the classic “Blue Wing,” “Stealing Electricity,” and the award-winning and controversial “Who’s Gonna Build Your Wall?”  This last song, about the plans to erect a wall on the U.S./Mexico border, is about as political as Russell ever gets.  But again, he declawed some of its seriousness by recalling a time when he miscalculated and played it “in front of a group of Minutemen down in southern Arizona.”  Needless to say, the lyrics went over better with the Southern California crowd:

            Who’s gonna build your wall, boys

            Who’s gonna mow your lawn

            Who’s gonna cook your Mexican food

            When your Mexican maid is gone

            (And) if Uncle Sam sends the illegals home

            Who’s gonna build the wall

            McCabe’s Guitar Shop has been around now for more than fifty years, and as the concert came to a close and my party walked out of the room and down the corridor crowded with all kinds of guitars, fiddles, banjos, dulcimers, mandolins, and you-name-it stringed instruments, I couldn’t help thinking that there was no better place to have seen one of the true giants of Americana music.  And I think the sold-out audience agreed. 

McCabe’s Guitar Shop is located at 31010 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica.  Phone number is (310) 828-4497, website is www.mccabes.com.

Review Written by Rod Williams – LMA Street Team Member

Eliza Gilkyson

One of the best singer-songwriters roaming the Americana scene recently played in front of about seventy people at the Grant R. Brimhall Library in Thousand Oaks as part of the Bodie House concert series.  Midway through the show, when Eliza Gilkyson called for requests, she received the predictable response:

“’Man of God’!”  chorused half-a-dozen front-row folks.

“Y’know, I’m taking a break from that one for a while,” Gilkyson drawled thoughtfully about the song that is a scathing indictment of the Bush administration’s policies and actions.  “I think we have enough on our hands to worry about these days, don’t we?”

Gilkyson’s always had a knack for wedding original melodies with eloquent lyrics. Her singing voice is truly unique, simultaneously silken and smoky.  She also boasts a bit of a musical pedigree:  her father was Terry Gilkyson, the well-regarded songwriter (perhaps best known for penning “The Bare Necessities” from The Jungle Book) and a member of the  50s folk group The Easy Riders.   Her brother Tony played guitar for L.A. cowpunk bands X and Lone Justice.  And while Eliza has been recording since 1969, her career has risen to a new level over the past half-dozen years, starting with the release of Land of Milk and Honey in 2004.  That CD was Grammy-nominated for “Best Contemporary Folk Album,” and paved the way for the gorgeous Paradise Hotel and her most recent release, Beautiful World.  

“Man of God” was a defining moment for her at a particular time in her career, and her soft refusal to play it this evening indicated a slight change in focus for Gilkyson.  Tonight, she steered clear of politics and the insightful lyrics that have fueled some of her modern protest songs.  Instead, she and accompanying guitarist Nina Gerber performed nearly two-and-a-half hours of her best tunes about love, loss, hope, and bittersweet memories.  The audience seemed intimately familiar with her work, and Gilkyson obliged the many requests that were called out:  “Coast,” “Borderline,” “Think About You,” “Lights of Santa Fe,” “Dark Side of Town,” and many more.  She drew heavily from the Beautiful World CD (“Clever Disguise,” “The Party’s Over,” “Dream Lover,” “Runaway Train,” a singalong on “Wildewood Springs,” a whistle-along on “Emerald Street”), but wasn’t shy about lifting tunes from all phases of her impressive body of work.  It’s always good to hear “Beauty Way” and “Welcome Back,” and for pure fun you can’t beat the swaggering suggestive “Mama’s Got A Boyfriend.”  Changing gears, Gilkyson then unveiled the heart-breaking “Tender Mercies,” an Eliza classic as well as a textbook example of how to write a wholly original, yet traditionally structured, song. 

Gilkyson is an adequate and understated guitarist, so it was good to hear her songs framed and highlighted by quiet Americana legend Gerber.  Gerber always seems to know which notes to play and, equally important, when not to play at all.  For her, intuitive silences are part of the musical spectrum.  She has played with everyone from Kate Wolf to Dave Alvin (on his recent “Guilty Women” tour), and she proved to be a perfect complement to Gilkyson’s strumming and chording style.  Gerber wasn’t flashy, but she provided subtle indoor fireworks throughout the evening.  She played both within and along the outskirts of Eliza’s melodies, adding a jazzy flavor here, a Spanish accent there, now and then a totally original and surprising country & western harmonic line.  Gerber is more than capable of tearing loose with a shredding solo, but that wasn’t her role with Eliza.  She remained in the background, rarely saying a word, wearing an easy smile, readily conceding the spotlight so that the star could shine.  Her only extravagance?  That would be having her gentle traveling canine companion (cross my heart, I think she said the dog’s name was Tootsie Roll) share the stage with the two musicians.

Two and a half hours is a pretty long concert, and so there was a brief break between sets.  Now here’s a word about intermissions at the Bodie House shows:  there’s always a potluck table replete with desserts and side dishes, with desserts being the dominant theme.  One sturdy, health-conscious soul had gallantly brought a vegetable tray, but the curling carrot sticks and soggy celery stalks were poor competition for the orgy of chocolate surrounding them.  Blame hostess Renee Bodie, who gleefully encourages the decadence by repeatedly coaxing, “There’s no such thing as too much chocolate.”  Between devouring junk food, stepping outdoors for a cleansing breath of cool autumn air, and socializing with the affable Tootsie Roll, we returned refreshed for the second half of the concert.

Back to the music, and it’s worth noting that Joan Baez has recently recorded two of Gilkyson’s songs, “Rose of Sharon” and “Requiem.”  Eliza performed both of these tonight, with “Requiem” being her masterstroke of the evening.  She wrote the song in response to the horrific Asian tsunamis of late 2004, and it resonated exponentially almost a year later when Hurricane Katrina struck and flooded much of New Orleans.  “Requiem” is both a lament and a call for salvation, beautifully sung and played:

                        Mother Mary, full of grace, awaken

                        All our homes are gone, our loved ones taken

                        Taken by the sea

                       Mother Mary, calm our fears, have mercy

                        Drowning in a sea of tears, have mercy

                        Hear our mournful plea

                        Oh, mother Mary, come and carry us in your embrace

                        That our sorrows may be faced

Tough tune to follow, and maybe that explained my disappointment with Eliza’s subsequent performance of “Beautiful World”.  First, it’s never been one of my favorites, even on CD.  Its repetitive chorus (“Beautiful world, beautiful world, beautiful world…”  You get the idea.) is, I think, supposed to work a mellow, memorable groove in your mind, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with the song’s noble sentiments.  I just think it’s one of her weaker latter-day efforts, almost atonal, and her live performance did nothing to endear me it. However, it was the one song that she played on the library’s fine piano, and it was a treat seeing and hearing Gilkyson on keyboards.

But then, of course, she finished strong, saving one of her father’s better-known songs for the encore.  “Memories are Made of This” was popularized by Dean Martin, and Eliza turned it into a feel-good, audience sing-along show-closer.  It was a sweet daughterly tribute and a hummable way to end the evening.  Eliza Gilkyson tours the Southland almost every October, and I’ll be one of the first in line to see her again in 2010. 

The Grant R. Brimhall Library is located at 1401 E. Janss Road in Thousand Oaks.  For more information about Bodie House concerts, log on to www.bodiehouse.com.

Review by Rod Williams – LMA Street Team Member

 I’ve heard live music in all sorts of different settings:  concert halls, homes and coffeehouses, clubs and casinos, auditoriums, amphitheaters and churches and, once, at a Laundromat on Sunset Boulevard.  Until last week, however, I’d never heard a show on the outdoor patio of a seafood restaurant.

 It was a chilly Friday night in Palm Springs, just before Halloween, and the restaurant in question was really two restaurants built on one site: Fisherman’s Market and Grill facing the street, and Shanghai Red’s, a small tavern and oyster bar, nestled in back.  In a little alcove in between was wedged the Barry Baughn Blues Band.

 No doubt every little city in Southern California has its own tight-knit, highly-energized, and unknown-outside-its-own-zip-code bar band that regularly blows away locals and tourists alike every Friday and Saturday night.  You know the ones I mean.  They leave you muttering things like, “There are so many talented musicians out there” and “Why aren’t these guys major stars instead of (fill in the blank with your own favorite hated-pop-celeb)?”

 Barry Baughn and his crew are evidently well-known and well-regarded around the Coachella Valley blues circuit.  Baughn is the lead guitarist and vocalist and sometime original songwriter for the band.  He lists his influences as “A to Z, everyone from Aaron ‘T Bone’ Walker to Z.Z. Hill,” and if you don’t get his musical references, well hey, “That’s what Google’s for.”  His band-mates are drummer Alan Diaz, bassist Bob Gross, and John “Mad Dog” Ruiz on the Hammond B3 and piano, and they’re all dynamite performers and backing vocalists who know how to get a crowd dancing and singing along.

I was finishing off my mahi mahi platter when Baughn kicked off the first set with a hard-driving original tune, “Rack ‘Em Up.”  The infectious, electric blues beat catalyzed a ripple of head-nodding and toe-tapping throughout the audience, and set the stage for a string of covers both familiar and obscure.  In addition to being a stellar guitarist, Baughn is blessed with a classic dirty-blues growl of a voice.  He used it to great advantage on songs by Junior Wells and Howlin’ Wolf, on “Messin’ with the Kid” and on “Pride and Joy.”  Just as impressively, he dialed things back a little and mixed in nostalgic slow-burners like “Tell It Like It Is” and “You Don’t Know Me.”  He called up a woman from a table up front, a red-hot, blue-haired mama, and she guest-sang a sultry version of “Route 66” to the delight of the audience.  “Seventy-something years old,” one of the waiters murmured on his way past, balancing a tray of dirty dishes and glassware, shaking his head in bemusement.  “She’s still got it.”  She finished and sat down to monstrous applause, into which Baughn segued another original tune called “Help Me.”  The bass-line and haunting organ borrowed heavily from “Green Onions,” but no one seemed to mind the similarity.

 Because here’s the thing:  nobody needs a music critic to have a little fun with a fine band like this on a Friday night in Palm Springs, or anywhere else for that matter.  I looked around and everywhere I saw people grinning ear-to-ear.  The patio was crowded, but the vibe was good.  Women were shaking their hips, men were swinging their arms.  Most were mildly buzzed and enjoying the crisp fall air, the band’s mesmerizing blues beats, the temporary yet significant sense of community.   A seven-foot-tall man tried to waltz with a potted fichus.  Gray-haired couples nuzzled one another, shuffling their feet to another slow tune.  A dapper man in his eighties danced with a series of thirty-something women, one after the other.  A good-natured Canadian man in his cups shouted out offbeat requests after every song and was roundly ignored.  Didn’t stop him from socializing, though, or from drinking, or from loudly singing the band’s praises.

 So next time you’re in a little joint listening to a little local band giving its all to pass on a little pleasure to its little audience, give a little thanks to the music gods above.  Regardless of the fickleness of fame and fortune, it’s no small gift to make people happy, even for a little while.  And next time you’re in Palm Springs on a Friday or Saturday evening, swing by Shanghai Red’s and check out Barry Baughn and his crew.  You won’t be disappointed.

Fisherman’s Market & Grill and Shanghai Red’s Restaurant is located at 235 South Indian Canyon Drive in Palm Springs, (760) 322-9293.

By Rod Williams – LMA Street Team Member

John Wort Hannam - Slater-Lunsford House Concert 10/25/09

A Canadian with a Country Voice?  This is amongst my first thoughts that come to my mind when attending the Slater-Lunsford house Concert on Sunday, October 25th, Lancaster, CA.  But then again, do I really know what a Canadian sounds like in the first place?

House Concerts are becoming more popular for touring performers on their available days.  It was actually my first House Concert and was a real Joy on a Relaxing Sunday afternoon.  You have to first adjust to the comfy surroundings of being inside a home – being the early bird, I pick the plush couch with the pleasure of carrying on a conversation with the performer about his Martin OM28 and his previous back-ground.  This is not an opportunity you have in a performing arts theater…

Now on to the concert!  John Wort Hannam is an absolute pleasure to listen to.  His guitar style has significant influences of Gordon Lightfoot.  Although his guitar technical abilities would be considered “so-so” by guitar critics, his guitar playing was very clean and more than adequate for the need.  What does this mean?  Well, John Wort Hannam has a very unique and excellent singing voice that carries well and pure in tone – an outstanding country voice that would brand his name well!

John writes all his original music from his background growing up in Southern Canada with his breath-taking home view of country mountains and through-running rivers.  His performance is a history lesson of his life’s experiences that has a pleasing comedic character to it when describing the significance of the song.  A tiny bit lengthy at times John for a performance, but I well enjoyed them just the same.

Overall, I enjoyed John Wort Hannam’s performance and his very pleasing voice; it would be a nice evening of a Dinner and Show.

Jack Miller – LMA Street Team Member

Left - Doug Moon, Center - El Javi, Right - Lenny Dodge

Saturday, October 17th, AVGS sponsored an AVGS (Antelope Valley Guitar Society) Showcase of some of it’s top performing members – that Butler’s Coffee justifiably promoted as “Guitar-A-Rama-Jama.”  The Showcase featured Jason Woodell, Lenny Dodge, El Javi, and Doug Moon.  It was a packed house of great entertainment for the evening.

Jason Woodell (picture below) started off the evening with a set of original music with a little country and a little funk, and a voice that almost needed no mic that had a hint of Stevie Wonder.  Jason is the Director of Youth and Worship for the Lancaster United Methodist Church.

Jason Woodell

Lenny Dodge was up for the second set with his very unique style of original music of singing and guitar.  Lenny brought a variety of guitars for his performance that included a Taylor 815 jumbo, Breedlove 12 string, as well as his Rainsong Graphite Composite Guitar – a guitar that not only looks awesome, but plays awesome with really nice low-end base projection.  Lenny is a seasoned professional of the music industry and has performed with many of the industry greats such as Loggins & Messina.

Third on the list was El Javi (Javier Gutierrez), Flamenco Guitarist, who also debuted his new CD “Flamenco Sketches.”  El Javi Barraged the audience with Traditional Spanish and Flamenco guitar with perfection and dynamics that influenced standing applauds from the listeners.  Javier picked up the guitar at the age of twelve, went on to study at the Fermatta Musical Academy in Mexico City, and voyaged to Los Angeles to continue studying at Musicians Institute.

Our closing performance was by Doug Moon who brought his guitar and banjo and entertained us with Folk, Bluegrass, and a few bluesy styles of country jigs.  Doug is an original member of the Captain Beefheart band, Doug is also a multi-year award winner at the Topanga Banjo and Fiddle Contest.

It was a great evening of entertainment at an affordable cost of just a cup-o-coffee at Butler’s Coffee in Palmdale.

Jack Miller – LMA Street Team Member

James Hurley at Butler's Coffee - October 16th, 2009

 Have you ever gone to a really good show, you smiled, laughed, enjoyed the music, and you felt really great because you had a chance to get out and really enjoy the evening?  Well, this is how I felt after seeing James Hurley perform at Butler’s Coffee on Friday, October 16th.  James Hurley was just pure entertainment value 101…

He had my attention, and the audience as well, from start to finish.  This is a performer that was as nice and as appreciative of a person as you would ever meet.  His talent is second to none with his very unique, tight and clean guitar phrases that varied from Rock, Folk, Blues, to advanced style Classical Guitar passages.  Hi voice and style has many flavours that I could comfortably state is unique to James Hurley as well as great interaction with the audience interjecting humor and commentary.

I could go on with James about his technical aspects, voice and performance, but all that really needs to be said is that I really enjoyed the show and I haven’t been entertained to the point of laughing, tapping my feet, and leaving feeling great that I was present in quite some time.  Great Show James Hurley!

Jack Miller – LMA Street Team Member

Jimmy LaFave, Live at The Bodie House (9/20/09)

We’ve all seen utilitarian, multi-purpose rooms like this before in so many schools, churches, and offices:  plain rectangular rooms done up in neutral colors, built for generic function, devoid of personality.   This one at the Grant R. Brimhall Library in Thousand Oaks is different for three specific reasons:

1. A banner hangs front and center, announcing that, for tonight, this is the home for the much-respected and ongoing Bodie House concert series.
2. Four colorful tapestries hang, two on each side of the banner, depicting a half-moon and guitars, guitars and orchards, a full moon, floating musical notes…and did I mention guitars?
3. Troubador and Red House Records recording artist Jimmy LaFave is taking the stage, backed by a red curtain, dangling strings of tiny white Christmas lights, and one hell of a phenomenal band.

LaFave has been at this for awhile, and over the years he’s developed a number of skills.  He’s an accomplished guitarist, a unique vocalist with a remarkable range, an original songwriter, an eclectic interpreter of other people’s songs, a jokester, a generous bandleader, a storyteller, a revivalist, and an easy-going performer.  He’s reported to be completely comfortable performing before big festival crowds, but tonight he’s playing a more intimate setting, about a hundred-fifty in the audience.

Half-kiddingly, LaFave describes what he plays as “red dirt music,” conjuring his Oklahoma days, although he’s lived in Austin for twenty years now.  Some call it Americana, or folk, or roots, or simply “authentic” music.  Throughout the evening, we g hear shimmering love songs and lonesome ballads.  These are interspersed with road blues, old-fashioned rock-and-roll, and even some gospel. LaFave’s expression is perpetually calm and his band seems to follow his lead effortlessly, regardless of the music’s rhythms or pace.

I expected LaFave to heavily mine the material from his latest release, the gorgeous “Cimarron Manifesto.”  But he surprised me by playing just two tunes from that CD (“Hideaway Girl” and a rollicking “That’s The Way It Goes”), preferring instead to delve into his early career catalogue (“Deep South 61 Delta Highway Blues,” “Only One Angel,” “Desperate Men Do Desperate Things”) and audience favorites from the “Blue Nightfall” sessions (“Revival,” “Bohemian Cowboy Blues,” and the very first Jimmy LaFave song I’d ever heard, the beautiful “River Road”).    He mixed these original tunes with one surprise cover after another:  Springsteen’s “Secret Garden,” Dylan’s “Just Like A Woman” (sidenote:  LaFave has a serious Dylan addiction; I saw him a couple of years ago in San Diego, and during the show he played no fewer than half-a-dozen homages to Bob), Woody Guthrie’s “Deportee,” and Van Morrison’s “Have I Told You Lately.”

The individual solos were rich and plentiful, particularly those by renowned electric and lap steel guitarist John Inmon (“He’s been playing guitar since 1966.  He’s played with everyone,” said LaFave.  “Delbert McClinton, Marcia Ball, Jerry Jeff Walker, Omar and the Howlers, and a whole lot more.” Inmon nodded in agreement and, with a smile, muttered, “Can’t keep a job.”).  His strings moaned, wept, screamed, whispered, and mourned, all as a perfect complement to LaFave’s playing, and at all the just-right interludes.

Radoslav “Rad” Lorkovic was another standout, mostly on piano, but also strapping on the accordion several times.  Lorkovic always looks happy, sporting a goofy, delighted smile at everything LaFave says and does.  LaFave cultivates a playful relationship with Lorkovic onstage (sample one-liner from LaFave:  “My idea of a gentleman is someone who can play an accordion…and doesn’t.”), and the keyboardist provided moments of exuberance by tossing his long hair about while playing, channeling Jerry Lee Lewis on one rocking number, and evoking an eerie, near-classical atmosphere on the preamble to one song that LaFave described as “a cross between Texas blues and Croatian folk music.”

Rounding out the band was upright bassist Glenn Schuetz, whose quieter personality and excellent musicianship kept the longer songs and extended solos solidly on track.

If I had one small caveat with the show, it was that the pacing lagged a couple of times.  At one point, the band played four slower songs consecutively, all of them well-executed, and I felt a little mean-spirited in wishing for a faster tune to shake off my drowsiness.  But one man’s drowsiness is another’s tranquility, and yet another’s sense of intimacy and communion.  From the audience’s reaction, LaFave could do no wrong.  He told tales and interacted casually with the crowd, then struck two tremendous grace notes with his rendition of “Walk Away Renee” and the popular singalong of The Youngbloods’ “Get Together” (Sure, you know it:  “C’mon, people now/Smile on your brother/Everybody get together/Try and love one another right now.”).

Concert series founder Renee Bodie said at intermission that she has started calling the performer “Jimmy MyFave.”  By the end of the last encore, an exhilarating, raise-the-roof gospel number, she had a lot of folks tapping their feet in complete and total agreement.

For more information about the Bodie House concert series, email Renee Bodie at bodiehouse@aol.com.  The Grant R. Brimhall Library is located at 1401 E. Janss Road in Thousand Oaks.

Review by Rod Williams – LMA Street Team Member

A very appreciative and lively audience at Butler's in Palmdale

[FROM TRACY VIA WAYNESL] Last night, we played Butler’s Coffee in Palmdale. (www.butlerscoffee.com.) They’ve really got their sound system together out there. I loved the fact that each of us singers had our own little monitor perched on a waist-high stand. That really helps when you’re harmonizing.
We weren’t scheduled to go on until 8, but we got there at 5 for a serious sound check. Wayne Slater Lunsford (DesertSong Productions – http://desertsong.net) worked with us, and it really got good. Dave Edwards (Wayne’s partner in crime) was handling a mixer which he had in the back of the house in a cute little semi-enclosed child nursery area. Dave also plays a mean jews harp from back there.

So we really got our sound worked out beforehand. Unfortunately, because there’s an open mic before the featured act (us), all the stuff we set up was changed. There’s got to be a way to deal with that. That’s a problem at several places we’ve played. I guess agreed upon levels should be written down. The sound ended up great, but it took a few songs to get it all back to those great sound check levels.

Butler’s has a stage, which is cool. It’s quite small. Besides the Reinforcements — Lorie Doswell and Gene Lippmann, I often bring a stand-up bass player, (John Cartwright.*) Last night I also brought John O’Kennedy who plays mandolin, dobro and Weisenborn. The five of us were very crowded up there! Fortunately, my drummer, Doug Knoll, was out of town. We definitely missed him, but where would we have put him? Next time we play there, he will be with us. Yikes.

The acts before us were quite varied. There are some good songwriters out there in Palmdale. A guy named Dave played two very tasteful acoustic guitar instrumentals. Lennie Dodge, (a dynamic guitar man who I remembered from Kulak’s Woodshed in North Hollywood,) did two songs. A young guy named Marlon James played with his dad, Paul — (who looked way too young for that,) and a percussionist whose name I don’t know but who was really enjoying himself. Marlon plays guitar and sings. He has a really good, memorable sound. They did a John Mayer song, then an original and ended with “Free Falling.” There was even a harpist in the Open Mic named William Blair. I forgot how much I love that sound.

By the time we started, there were maybe 30-35 people there. Admission is free at Butler’s, but there’s a tip jar. They sell sandwiches and coffee drinks. Also, ice cream and shakes. A lot of people ordered the shakes. I have the feeling it’s a specialty there. One guy had a chocolate-mint shake that looked pretty good to me. He had a big smile on his face after his first sip. I’ll get that next time.

The audience was very attentive and appreciative. I felt like they followed every word I sang. Big laughs for “Waffle Boy” and my carpool song; tears during “Laraine.” One thing I loved: My song about Merle Haggard, “Table Nine,” really hit a nerve out there. Plus, everyone knew who the song was about! That doesn’t always happen. The Reinforcements each sang an original, too. Lorie did “Dream Drivin’,” which is the title song on her new CD, (www.loriedoswell.com.) And Gene did his one and only finished song, “I Can’t Seem to Dial You In.” They were both really good, as always, and well received.

I have to mention that some of the sight lines are a bit of a problem in that room. There’s a big display shelf right in the middle of everything. I think on music nights, the whole thing could be slid to the back wall, so that another few tables could be put in and everyone would be able to see. I hope they can do that next time we play. The owners, Pam and Dave Logan, seemed to enjoy the show. Maybe they’ll agree to that. (Pam is part of a trio with her sisters called The Brown Sisters. Celtic, I think. I hope to hear them soon.)

Oh! Damn! I meant to buy a Butler’s Coffee cup! The black one with the white inside and the Butler’s Coffee logo on it. Oh, well. Next time.

* John Cartwright was Harry Belafonte’s bass player for 35 years!
Am I lucky or what?

 

 

Tracy & gang enthralled Butlers' Friday night crowd.

The Antelope Valley folks knew they were getting a special treat.

Photos by WayneSL

Tracy’s website: http://www.tracynewman.com/