ROBERT PLANT WILL PLAY ALBUQUERQUE

Robert Plant has re-formed BAND of JOY, and their summer tour will make a stop @ Albuquerque's Sandia Casino Amphitheater July 18, 2010.

The line-up also includes vocalist extraordinaire Patty Griffin, as well as twin studio-powerhouses Darrell Scott and Buddy Miller.

Tickets on sale May 14, 2010. Sandia's website is HERE

Read the Rolling Stone post I got word from HERE

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TnJ 112 (3/25/10)

Special thanks to Eufórquestra for calling in while driving to their Albuquerque gig tomorrow night (El Rey Theater)! You can listen to the conversation if you missed it @ kbac.com

-HOUR ONE-

GOV’T MULE – Tastes Like Wine (4/28/07 Santa Fe Brewing Company, Santa Fe, NM)
JASON ISBELL and the 400 UNIT – Seven-Mile Island (2008 Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit) jasonisbell.com
EUFÓRQUESTRA – Backbone (2009 Soup) *FREE DOWNLOAD*
EUFÓRQUESTRA – Melody Truck (2009 Soup) *FREE DOWNLOAD*
Interview > Matt Grundstad (Eufórquestra percussionist) *LIVE!*
JOHN ELLIS & DOUBLE-WIDE – Héroes de Acción (2010 Puppet Mischief) johnaxsonellis.com
BONERAMA – Hard Times (2009 Hard Times EP) boneramamusic.com

-HOUR TWO-

ROBERT PLANT | ALISON KRAUSS – Rich Woman (2010 Rounder Records 40th Anniversary Concert)
DEER TICK – Houston, TX (2009 Born on Flag Day) deertickmusic.com
THE WAYBACKS – Brundlefly (2003 Way Live) waybacks.com
STRING CHEESE INCIDENT – Jellyfish > Drum Jam > Texas (1999 Carnival ’99)
JOHN BROWN’S BODY – Give Yourself Over (2008 Amplify) johnbrownsbody.com

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JOE BONAMASSA INTERVIEW

Broadcast live on KBAC 3/19/10 - listen back if you missed it HERE


Don't forget to check out Joe's new disc, "Black Rock," due in stores and online March 23, 2010 (^_^)

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TnJ 111 (3/18/10)

-HOUR ONE-

THE RADIATORS – Devil’s Dream (2009 the Lost Southlake Sessions) theradiators.org
WIDESPREAD PANIC – Coconut (7/21/08 Myrtle Beach, CA) livewidespreadpanic.com
JOE BONAMASSA – A New Day Yesterday / Starship Trooper / Würm (2008 Live from Nowhere in Particular) jbonamassa.com
JOE BONAMASSA – Lonesome Road Blues (2009 Live from Royal Albert Hall DVD)
MICHAEL FRANTI & SPEARHEAD – Yell Fire (7/1/07 Taos Solar Music Festival, Taos, NM) festivalink.net
THE CONTRIBUTION – Which Way World (2010 Which Way World) thecontribution.net
MATT BUNSEN and the BURNERS – Sings (2009 Greatest Hits) mattbunsen.com

-HOUR TWO-

THE LOW ANTHEM – Home I’ll Never Be (2009 Oh My God, Charlie Darwin)
HANK WILLIAMS III – Pills I Took (2006 Straight to Hell)
INFAMOUS STRINGDUSTERS – Fork in the Road (2007 Fork in the Road) thestringdusters.com
INFAMOUS STRINGDUSTERS – 40 West (12/6/08 Morse Theater, Chicago, IL) archive.org
GRATEFUL DEAD – Truckin’ (2010 Road Trips, Vol. 3, No. 2, 11/15/71 Austin, TX) dead.net
BUILT to SPILL – Wherever You Go (2006 You in Reverse)
THE SKYS – Turtles (2009 Songs from Small Dreams in an Elevator) homegrownmusic.net
DISCO BISCUITS – Loose Change (2009 Planet Anthem) discobiscuits.com
PHISH – Casino Boogie (10/31/09 Festival 8, Empire Polo Club, Indio, CA) livephish.com

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PHISH ANNOUNCE TELLURIDE, SUMMER SHOWS

Hey, Phish-heads ~

Just got word there will be 2 Phish dates at the breathtakingly gorgeous Telluride Town Park (regular home to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and Telluride Blues and Brews), August 9 and 10. Get your ticket requests in by Friday, March 26, 2010, as whatever's left goes to general public sale on April 2nd.

HERE's the page I linked from. Good luck (^_^)

~ TOAST

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TnJ 110 (3/11/10)

-HOUR ONE-

JOE BONAMASSA – Jockey Full of Bourbon (2009 the Ballad of John Henry) jbonamassa.com
JIMI HENDRIX – Hear My Train a Comin’ (2010 Valleys of Neptune)
moe. – Spaz Medicine (2002 Warts & All Vol. 2, 2/23/02 the Tabernacle, Atlanta, GA) moe.org
ALO – the Champ (2010 Man of the World)
MARK EGAN – Frog Legs (2010 Truth Be Told)
THE DUHKS – Down to the River (2006 Migrations) duhks.com
JOHNNY CASH – Aloha Oe (2010 American VI: Ain’t No Grave)
JIMMY CLIFF – Many Rivers to Cross (1976 – In Concert – the Best of Jimmy Cliff)

-HOUR TWO-

LEGION of MARY – Harder They Come (6/8/75 El Camino Park, Palo Alto, CA)
MANDOMORPHOSIS – Out of the Furnace and into the Fire (2009 2010) mandomorphosis.com
CORNMEAL – When the World’s Got You Down (2009 Live in Chicago, IL Vol. 1) http://www.cornmealinthekitchen.com/
BEN HARPER & RELENTLESS7 – Lay There & Hate Me (2010 Live from the Montreal Int’l Jazz Festival) benharper.com
SWAMP CABBAGE – More Booty with Buddha (2010 Live from New York City… On the In Tune) swampcabbage.com
LAURIE MORVAN BAND – Come On Over to My BBQ (2009 Fire It Up!) lauriemorvan.com

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CONCERT REVIEW - EMMITT-NERSHI BAND

EMMITT-NERSHI BAND – 3/10/10 Santa Fe Brewing Company, Santa Fe, NM

Two giants of the jam genre – Drew Emmitt of Leftover Salmon and Bill Nershi of String Cheese Incident – have spent several years building a viable side project called the Emmitt-Nershi band, drawing heavily from the bluegrass/jazz hybrid style of newgrass (pioneered in the 70s by the likes of Tim O’Brien, Béla Fleck and Sam Bush). This was the first night of the 2010 tour and, after admitting they had no set list and would be making it up “on the fly,” the quartet launched into a 2-hour set of ripping originals, covers, and occasional jams which indicate this combo knows exactly what they’re doing, even if they’re making it up as they go.

Opener was Drew’s “Lonesome Road,” recently from his 2002 solo release “Freedom Ride,” but also on the out-of-print “Ask the Fish” from Leftover Salmon in 1995. Being a newgrass show, I should’ve known this would not be the only time the themes of “lonesome” and “road” would come up. Any mando players at home who want to know Drew’s secret on this one: upstroke. Lots and lots of upstroke.

Second song was Bill’s (he dislikes being addressed as “Billy,” by the way, even though everyone I know calls him that) “These Days,” from the Emmitt-Nershi band’s debut album of 2009, “New Country Blues.” Bill admitted in an interview it’s one of his favorites from the new crop, and it seems like a declaration of sorts for him, trying to carve out a quieter, rootsier niche for himself than the overblown colossus that String Cheese Incident became.

Drew took the lead on song three (“Gold Hill Line”), setting the pattern for a mostly back-and-forth-between-Bill-and-Drew show, with occasional instrumentals and duets thrown in for good measure. You may remember this as the standard pattern Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir fell into during the Grateful Dead’s glory days. Of course, if Emmitt-Nershi were going to borrow more heavily from the jam-band template, they’d have to have 2 drummers or 2 guitarists, but they seem content with the string band configuration of banjo, mandolin, guitar, and – oops, electric bass.

But, as stated earlier, this is not your grandpa’s bluegrass. This is newgrass. All bets are off. I did make a note during the next song (Bill’s “When You Coming Home”) that they could’ve sorely used a fiddle in the mix, but this was the first hint at “jamgrass” they’d laid on us all night. The banjo picker, Andy Thorn (from North Carolina, by way of Colorado, according to Drew), laid down some nice fills, and took the lead on the following instrumental, which Drew dubbed “Thorn Pipe.” Whether this was a surfing or smoking reference, I can’t say, but I hope that track makes it onto a recording someday.

Drew and Bill joined voices to lead the cover of Bill Monroe and Hank Sr.’s “Blue and Lonesome,” which might just be the wellspring from which all bluegrass streams flow – note the recurrence of themes like heartache, loneliness, and the healing power of music. As Steve Martin (now a professional banjo picker himself, in a bizarre twist of fate) once said, it’s hard to feel blue when the banjo’s pickin’.

I’ll call everything up to now a warm-up. Next stop on the Emmitt-Nershi train: the String Cheese classic, “Born on the Wrong Planet,” from the 1997 release of the same name. The band and the audience seemed ready to really stretch out at this point and get into a good, long jam. The overall flavor of the show from here on seemed to adopt a “no shoes required” approach. I would later notice (during the super-jammy SCI call-back “Love Is Like a Train”) that Bill wasn’t wearing any shoes on stage – only socks, and that seemed as good an indicator as any that these guys wanted the show to feel like a good porch session. Mission accomplished. I think we all felt like taking our shoes off at this point. Maybe it just took this long for the pre-show ingestions to kick in

I snuck out back to a spot where I could still hear the band but also feed my nicotine addiction, and noticed their unassuming transportation was a Chevy extendo-van with a Thule rack on top. I smiled to think they were touring the country in such an understated ride, and wondered what Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys might’ve used in the early days. Another microbrew from the bar and I was ready to jump into the second half of the show. No set break, by the way, for the curious.

After the instrumental “Flight of the Durban”, which reminds me of “Cosmic Hippo”-era Béla Fleck, Drew told us it was Andy Thorn’s birthday (which it wasn’t), and the audience spontaneously broke into singing “Happy Birthday, Dear Andy,” like suckers. Drew Emmitt – merry prankster, compulsive liar, or too stoned for public? You be the judge.

Drew claimed the next song, “This House,” was co-written with Jim Lauderdale, and that the SCI jam “Jellyfish” was a “true story, written in 4 different bars in Telluride,” but after the not-really-Andy’s birthday thing I’m not sure when we’re supposed to believe him, exactly. “Jellyfish” seemed a good choice to sample from the SCI catalog, with Bill’s rap about hitching a ride from Telluride to Santa Fe with some girls and getting stranded there without a ride back. Appropriately, “Jellyfish” clocked in at 10+ minutes.

“All Night Ride” is a Drew co-write with Colorado near-legend Benny Galloway from 2005’s “Across the Bridge.” Great song, maybe the best on that album – and the “Look for Sasquatch” jokes played well to those familiar with Monarch Pass – but it got me to wishing there had been more sampling from the Leftover Salmon backlist.

Perhaps Drew Emmitt is determined to draw a line in the sand, as it were, gerrymandering his own territory separate and distinct from LOS, similar to what I inferred from Bill’s “These Days” with regard to SCI. If this is indeed the case, they seem to be off to a great start.

Set List:

01) Lonesome Road
02) These Days
03) Gold Hill Line
04) When You Coming Home
05) Thorn Pipe (instrumental)
06) Blue And Lonesome
07) Born On the Wrong Planet >
08) > "Keep Looking for a Train" Jam
09) Down in the Hollow
10) Good Times Around the Bend
11) Flight of the Durban (instrumental)
12) This House
13) Jellyfish
14) Long Road
15) Love Is Like a Train
16) All Night Ride
17) Black Clouds

Encore:

18) New Country Blues

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THX to Matt Hogan @ SciFidelity for helping me identify most of the song titles!

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CONCERT REVIEW - NEKO CASE

NEKO CASE, KELLY HOGAN, PAUL RIGBY – 3/5/10 Greer Garson Theater, College of Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM

Ethereal, magical, sublime, transcendent - I don’t think I can conjure any adjectives reviewers haven’t already used to describe Neko Case in concert, so I’ll just leave it at this – perfect. Not that mistakes weren’t made (Kelly Hogan’s music box solo during “Middle Cyclone” was marred by a series of thunderous electrical shorts), but Neko and company seemed so comfortable onstage and with each other that they just rolled right through the rough spots with a wink and, more often than not, a quip. Their humorous, self-effacing camaraderie was endearing – almost familial – making it seem less like (fanfare) THE AMAZING NEKO CASE SHOW (more fanfare), than an intimate front porch jam with friends. Okay, maybe a perfectly rehearsed, mic’d, and amplified front porch jam with friends.

Until now, I never realized Neko Case uses a harmony vocalist. Kelly Hogan’s voice matches so perfectly, I had always assumed Neko just doubled her own vocals in the studio. Because they sing SO well together, I wondered how far back they’d been doing it. My guess is early childhood. They might’ve learned to sing together before either could walk. Kelly was always ready with a friendly jab toward Neko too, like, “Oh, another song about an animal, imagine that,” which kept the mood light even when the lyrics implied gloom and foreboding (the song was “The Tigers Have Spoken”). When Kelly returned from what I assume was a bathroom break, to find they were about to launch into the Sparks tune “Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth,” she rolled her eyes and decried it as the “nut-buster” of the set, but nailed it anyway.

Much has been written of Neko’s “well-honed machine” of a voice, and everything you’ve read is true. She must have what my choir teacher in middle school called “perfect pitch,” because even a cappella, she belts out the right note every time, no approach, no waver, no glissando. Even when she aborted her reading of Bob Dylan’s “Buckets of Rain” before finishing the first verse, thinking she had somehow flubbed it (she hadn’t), she got right back on the horse and nailed it a second time. This is a hard one to find in her catalog – only available on the Live from Austin TX disc, or on an obscure compilation called “Sweetheart” from 2005.

Whether due to the acoustic trio arrangement, or due to what they called Santa Fe’s high-altitude “freaky air,” they played a good half-dozen songs that rarely appear on Neko Case set lists, including tracks from the little heard 2001 release “Canadian Amp.” They admitted the oft-requested “Fox Confessor Brings the Flood” is rarely played because it’s “scary,” and Neko characterized the Harry Nilsson cover of “Don’t Forget Me,” (which appears on her latest release, “Middle Cyclone”) as “cruel.” “Scary” to play? “Cruel” to sing? As in, “these notes are such a vocal workout it’s cruel to ask anyone to sing them?” Whatever. They sounded great. Even on the first “high-notes” number of the night (“Maybe Sparrow”), their collective perfection thrilled. It was kinda like watching a trapeze act or a NASCAR race – part of the thrill was in the anticipation it could all go horribly wrong at any moment. But it never did.

“Star Witness” was epic, even for an acoustic trio – a real “show-stopper.” We could’ve all gone home ecstatically happy at this point. The show had already been the length of 2 full Neko Case albums. But, after an almost non-existent encore break – about 15 seconds – they hustled back onstage and admitted they “didn’t really want to leave in the first place,” and proved it by playing a 6-song encore.

I’d be remiss not to mention Paul Rigby, the very-nearly one-man band, who had quite the array of effects pedals for an acoustic performance. He accompanied the madness from start-to-2-hour-finish with a smile, a “Rex Harrison hat” (yes, Neko quoted the John Hughes film “Weird Science”), and just the right amount of flair. If the acoustic trio configuration is this good, I can only imagine what the full band sounds like (not that they were missed at all during this performance). This was my first Neko Case show, but I certainly hope it won’t be the last.

~ Chris Diestler, A.K.A. “Toast”

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Set List:

A Widow’s Toast
Margaret vs. Pauline
I’m an Animal
That Teenage Feeling
Tightly
Polar Nettles
Maybe Sparrow
The Tigers Have Spoken
Favorite
Things That Scare Me
Middle Cyclone
People Got a Lotta Nerve
Hex *Catherine Ann Irwin song*
Dirty Knife
Buckets of Rain *Bob Dylan song*
Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth *Sparks song*
Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
In California *Lisa Marr song*
Star Witness

Encore:

Vengeance Is Sleeping
Sometimes When I Get to Thinkin' *Buffy Sainte-Marie song*
Ghost Wiring
Don’t Forget Me *Harry Nilsson song*
Knock Loud *Sook-Yin Lee song*
John Saw That Number

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TnJ 109 (3/4/10)

-HOUR ONE-

PHISH – The Curtain With (11/1/09 Festival 8, Empire Polo Club, Indio, CA) livephish.com
MAX ALLEN BAND – Carina’s Song (2009 Ending Sun) homegrownmusic.net
MICHAEL ROSE – Sensemilla > How You Fi Do That (1998 Party in Session – Live, 6/21/98 Slim’s, San Francisco, CA)
SLY & the FAMILY STONE – MEDLEY: Music Lover / Higher (2009 the Woodstock Experience, 8/17/69 Woodstock Music and Art Fair)
INDUBIOUS – Presto Chango (2009 Cosmic Seed) indubiousmusic.com
EUFÓRQUESTRA – Soup (2009 Soup) euforquestra.com

-HOUR TWO-

UMPHREY’S McGEE – Wife Soup (12/31/04 Riviera Theatre, Chicago, IL) livedownloads.com
THE DEAD – The Weight (5/7/09 Pepsi Center, Denver, CO)
NEKO CASE – Prison Girls (2008 Middle Cyclone)
JEREMY KITTEL – Woods (2010 Chasing Sparks) jeremykittel.com
EMMITT-NERSHI BAND – Restless Wind (2009 New Country Blues) emmittnershiband.com
GREAT AMERICAN TAXI – One of These Days (2009 Reckless Habits) greatamericantaxi.xom
LEFTOVER SALMON – Breakin’ Thru (12/31/04 Fox Theater, Boulder, CO)
JOE BONAMASSA – India / Mountain Time (2008 Live from Nowhere in Particular) jbonamassa.com

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