| From: SIer formerly known as Joe B. | 3/4/2013 9:04:09 AM | | | | | | *****************************************************************
Former Allman Brothers Lead Guitarist “Dangerous” Dan Toler Passes
SARASOTA, FL - Legendary Southern Rock guitarist Dan Toler died the morning of February 25th, at his home in Sarasota Florida. Dan passed away after a long battle against (ALS) Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.
Dan Toler was celebrated in the late 1970s for his astonishing guitar work as a member of the Dickey Betts & Great Southern band. He was featured on the two albums with Dickey Betts & Great Southern and later become a member of The Allman Brothers Band in 1979 and remained until 1982. Dan’s guitar work was featured on the ABB’s hit album, Enlightened Rogues, in 1979; Reach for the Sky in 1980 and Brothers of the Road in 1981.
Dan Toler and his late brother David (Frankie) Toler were members of the Gregg Allman Band in the 1980s, and were featured on his hit album, I'm No Angel, in 1987; and again on Just Before the Bullets Fly in 1988.
In 2005, Dan along with other Southern Rock Royalty joined “The Renegades of Southern Rock,” whose members included George McCorkle of The Marshall Tucker Band, John Townsend from the Sanford-Townsend Band and Jack Hall from Wet Willie.
In 2008, Dan and his friends Ron Gary and Ed Zinner formed “TGZ,” an ethereal Blues-Jazz combination that received world attention when released on the indie label, King Mojo Records.
Dan teamed up again with John Townsend in 2009 and formed the Toler/Townsend Band. Their self-titled album was released that same year on the Garage Door Records indie label.
Dan Toler is survived by his wife Debbie, their daughter Danielle Franz, her husband Dan and his Mother-in-law, Louise Rose. Memorial arrangements are currently pending and will be announced as soon as they are made available.
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Santana Reforms Santana!
Carlos Santana has confirmed he is putting the original Santana band together for his next album.
In an interview with Noise11.com Carlos said that he is putting the line-up from the first three albums back together for his next record. “So far we have invited the original members like Greg Rolie from the first three albums,” he told Noise11. “It will be like Santana IV because we stopped at ‘Santana III’”.
Journey’s Neal Schon broke the news of the reunion to Noise11 this week and Carlos has confirmed that he has just about everyone on board for the project. “As well as Neal we have the two Mikes, Mike Carabello and Michael Shrieve. I am pretty sure Greg’s going to do it. So that is pretty much everyone,” he says.
Bass player David Brown passed away in 2000.
According to Carlos, the album will have the African feel of the first three Santana records. “We have been checking out a lot of African music, African patterns,” he says. “Each artist has his own thing that he listens to. Led Zeppelin listened to Otis Rush. Cream listened to Freddie King and Albert King. We all had someone that we listened to. It was a beautiful common ground for Santana to play African music”.
The band will start work on the album after Carlos finishes a big year of touring that will see him head to Deniliquin in New South Wales this month for the Deni Blues and Roots Festival. He says to “expect it in 2014”.
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Source: 2013 Punmaster's MusicWire punmaster.com |
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| From: SIer formerly known as Joe B. | 3/4/2013 9:09:21 AM | | | | | | Hot Club of Cowtown has a new CD and tour coming up. I won't be able to make their show at Joe's Pub but I'm hoping their April 13th show from Tupelo Music hall is on Concert Window.
HOT CLUB OF COWTOWN’S RENDEZVOUS IN RHYTHM
TO BE RELEASED IN U.S. MAY 28, 2013,
ON GOLD STRIKE RECORDS
Collection of 14 fiery Gypsy jazz and American Songbook standards
is the Hot Club’s first album
to exclusively celebrate the band’s Left Bank influences.
“It takes considerable bravery to name your band after one of the greatest jazz ensembles of the last century. Hot Club get away with it because they have spirit, originality and skill that would surely have impressed Stephane Grappelli
and Django Reinhardt back in 1930s.”
—The Guardian
AUSTIN, Texas — Hot Club of Cowtown’s new Lloyd Maines-produced release, Rendezvous in Rhythm, out May 28, 2013 on Gold Strike Records, is an exuberant collection of Gypsy songs and American Songbook standards played acoustically and recorded in the hot jazz style of legendary violin and guitar masters Stephane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt. Recorded last July at the Zone Recording Studio in Dripping Springs, Texas, it’s the Hot Club’s first-ever dedicated foray into the Gypsy jazz and French swing of Paris in the ’30s and features the band’s sparkling spins on standards in the style of Reinhardt and Grappelli including “Crazy Rhythm,” “Minor Swing,” “Dark Eyes,” “The Continental,” “I'm in the Mood for Love,” “Douce Ambiance,” and many more.
You’d think a band from Austin, Texas with the word “Cowtown” in its name spends its time off from touring herding cattle at a West Texas ranch or maybe in Nashville writing songs about whiskey and loose women. Not the Hot Club of Cowtown. “We recently took a band vacation to the Gypsy Festival at St. Maries de la Mer in the South of France,” says the band’s fiddler and vocalist, Elana James. Whit Smith, Hot Club’s guitar player and vocalist, is a regular at the prestigious Djangofest Northwest in Whidbey, Island, Washington, and bass player Jake Erwin has the Hungarian folk band Csokolom in regular rotation on his home stereo.
“Our band is fiddle, guitar, and bass, and they can do anything together. We’ve always played a combination of hot jazz and Western swing, but it’s been really a joy to finally distill part of our essence and serve up a record that is purely jazzy,” says James, who in fact was once a horse wrangler in Colorado, as well as a former student of classical music at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France. Says Smith, “Once Elana became aware that in jazz music and swing, you could express yourself more in improvisation, I think that attracted her to it. She still likes classical, and I do too.” Smith grew up hearing his parents play lots of folk music, especially acoustic blues, but as a teenager he naturally rebelled and turned sharply toward hard rock, which still informs his approach to hot jazz and Western swing. The impression that the band is in some way a country act, especially in the current climate of American popular music, is somewhat misleading since the Hot Club’s influences have always been as much the musette music of the smoky bistros of 1930s Paris as they are the hoedowns and Western swing of the mythic American West.
Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that the Hot Club of Cowtown, whose collection of recorded work now stretches to seven studio albums, is finally releasing Rendezvous in Rhythm, a thrilling display of this Texas trio’s breathtaking virtuosity and, for the first time with such focus, its elegant, more European inspirations. “We had lots of people asking us to make a record of standards,” says Smith, “So there you go, here’s a record full of swing standards. We’re not trying to compete with anyone who’s writing the songs. It’s more of a vehicle for one way we really like to play — starting with familiar ground and then improvising from there.” By way of inspiration James adds, “One of the most thrilling nights of my life was when Gheorghe Anghel (the violinist from legendary Romanian Gypsy band Taraf de Haidouks) came over to my house and he and Whit and I jammed on songs like ‘Avalon’ and ‘Exactly Like You’ in my living room ’til four in the morning. And then he asked if he could use my phone to call home to Romania. It was absolutely the coolest thing ever.”
We can all be grateful then, for whatever inspiration an insistent fan base or a visiting Romanian fiddler may have sparked, for Rendezvous in Rhythm is an utterly superb collection of traditional material, by far the Hot Club’s most polished and sophisticated work to date. From the first hypnotic phrases of the lead track “Ochi Chornye” (a Russian folk song also known as “Dark Eyes”), which builds from an atmospheric reverie into a frenzy à la Ravel’s “Bolero,” Rendezvous in Rhythm takes us on a lively, deeply satisfying journey of raw joy and authentic energy. Disarmingly intimate ballads (“If I Had You,” “I’m Confessin’”) give way to instrumental virtuosity in the extreme (“Dark Eyes,” “Minor Swing,” “Douce Ambiance”). Pre-WWII influences abound throughout, as with “Back in Your Own Backyard,” a classic made famous by Billie Holliday, Al Jolson’s “Avalon,” and Fred Loesser’s “Slow Boat to China.” “Crazy Rhythm,” through which James sings and swings with sassy authority — including an obscure verse on fiddling while Rome burns — first appeared in 1928 but sounds as current as any of the band’s original material. “The Continental,” a Reinhardt and Grappelli showpiece, has been intricately rearranged by Smith, whose vocal and hot twin lines warn of the dangers of dancing and the spells it can cast. Smith’s lush treatment of the Fields and McHugh masterpiece “I’m in the Mood for Love” is alone worth the price of admission.
Though many songs in this collection — some of the finest and most familiar songs in history — have been resuscitated in recent years by well-known artists, Rendezvous in Rhythmis the first release by a major touring act to ignite this material with the danceable, swinging vivaciousness that first put it on the map. In order to capture lightning in a bottle, says Smith, “We went back to our way of having everyone in the room together. We recorded it live, right there next to each other so we could hear each other play. I play acoustic on it — not big news, but usually in the past, I would play a mixture of electric and acoustic and sometimes overdub the electric guitar or vice versa. The majority of this album is the three of us there and playing acoustic. We tried to capture the feel of our live shows as much as possible.”
TOUR DATES
Wed., March 6 AUSTIN, TX Continental Club
Wed., March 13 AUSTIN, TX Continental Club
Sat., March 16 GRUENE, TX Gruene Hall 1-5 p.m.
Wed., March 20 AUSTIN, TX Continental Club
Fri.,, March 22 PROVO, UT BYU Department of Dance
Wed., March 27 AUSTIN, TX Continental Club
Tues., April 9 VIENNA, VA Jammin’ Java
Wed., April 10 WILMINGTON, DE Grand opera house
Thurs., 11 NEW YORK, NY Joe’s Pub
Fri., 12 MARBLEHEAD, MA (BOSTON) Me and Thee Coffeehouse
Sat., April 13 WHITE RIVER JUNCTION, VT Tupelo Music Hall
Sun., April 14 TRURO, MA Payomet
Fri., April 19 BURBANK, CA (LOS ANGELES) Joe’s Great American
Sat. & Sun., April 20 & 21 SANTA CLARITA, CA Cowboy Festival
Fri., May 3 GENOA, NV Cowboy Poetry Festival
Sat., May 4 RAMONA, CA Ramona Bluegrass and Western Festival
Sun., May 5 SAN DIEGO, CA AMSD
Fri., May 17 EDWARDSVILLE , IL (ST. LOUIS) Wildey Theater
Sat., May 18 KANSAS CITY, MO Knuckleheads
Sun., May 19 IOWA CITY, IA Englert Theater
Tues., May 21 CHICAGO IL City Winery
Wed., May 22 MINNEAPOLIS, MN Dakota Jazz Club
Thurs., May 23 WISCONSIN RAPIDS, WI McMillan Memorial Library
Sat., May 25 BLACK FOREST, CO MeadowGrass Music Festival
More dates at click.icptrack.com |
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| From: SIer formerly known as Joe B. | 3/7/2013 12:36:00 PM | | | | | | Crowd Chatter Incites Bob Weir to Walk Off Stage at Sweetwater
Grateful Dead legend gets angered by people who reportedly wouldn't stop talking while he played a solo acoustic set. He later returned for a set with his new Ratdog Quartet.
Bob Weir performing at the Sweetwater Music Hall on March 4, 2013. Credit Bob Minkin Photography/Courtesy
In a move the Sweetwater Music Hall's manager called "heartbreaking," Grateful Dead legend and Mill Valley resident Bob Weir walked off the stage at the venue Monday night in the face of unrelenting crowd chatter.
Weir, who was playing a solo acoustic set prior to a performance by his new Ratdog Quartet, walked off angrily in the middle of a rendition of Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall.” The walk-off was preceded by a number of indications that Weir was growing irritated with the chatter, and he asked those engaged in extended conversation if he was interrupting them (5:20 in the video above).
After a few more seconds, Weir said, "OK I give up. I'll be back up later with an electric band and we'll be loud enough and that will be that."
Venue manager Aaron Kayce said a disruptively talkative crowd is one of the one of the most difficult aspects to navigate for a music hall, especially considering that everyone in the audience – "some to listen, eyes closed, immersed in the music, others to blow off steam and catch up with friends" – bought tickets to the show.
"Though we can encourage people to be quiet, and in retrospect I wish we had taken more steps to ensure a quieter room, there is unfortunately no law or rule against talking at a bar," Kayce said. "We hope that folks who have spent their hard earned money to come see an artist will be quiet when said artist is performing, but we also know that's not always the case and people go to shows for different reasons."
Kayce said the incident has caused venue management to implement some new protocols and reinstitute some old ones for acoustic shows. Those include making solo acoustic shows by big-name artists seated affairs, which they've done in the past for Weir as well as Justin Townes Earle.
"When we know it's a more delicate show, we will also make an announcement before the set reminding folks to be aware of their volume levels and ask that if they really need to chat to please head into the cafe," Kayce said, adding that they'll be posting signs to that effect for similar shows.
"And we'll have security guards going through the room asking folks to please keep it down, though we did this to an extent but it simply got away from us," Kayce said.
Weir later returned to the stage with his new RatDog Quartet, telling the crowd, “It’s okay, we’re not going to try to do anything particularly delicate now,” before kicking off the set with “Friend of the Devil” and “Deep Elem Blues,” according to Jambands.com.
Weir was evidently still frustrated with those in the crowd who would not stay quiet, as he shouted “Shut the f**k up,” in the middle of the encore rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Knocking On Heaven’s Door,” Jambands reported.
The incident sparked a backlash on social media Tuesday, particularly on the Sweetwater's Facebook page, with Johnny Dempster writing, "In 34 years of me going to see Bob Weir either with the GD ..Solo ..or Ratdog, I have never seen him get upset with the audience ...respect the artist and show some class ... Everyone should have gotten the message when he first told the audience 'shhh' ..the band deserves an apology from those in the audience who made him have to say, 'shut the f**k up ...Twice!" |
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