Blogs

Some swing, some West Coast cool, some soul jazz, and more tonight!
Benny Goodman * Shorty Rogers & His Giants * Stan Getz with Gerry Mulligan * Big Miller & the Bob Florence Big Band * James Clay * Ella Fitzgerald * Oscar Peterson * Stéphane Grappelli & Stuff Smith * Johnny Hodges & Wild Bill Davis * Clark Terry & Chico O'Farrill * Clark Terry with the Oscar Peterson Trio * Earl Hines * Rosemary Clooney & John Pizzarelli * George Benson

The KDRT crew broadcasts live from Armadillo Music for 2nd Friday ArtAbout on February 12th with Alex Roth and his wild and woolly West Nile Ramblers. This event is free, open to all. Stop on by at 6:00 pm, listen to the interview, enjoy the performance, meet the band! RSVP on Facebook. :)

Davisite Evan Daly is well known in Northern California. His own band, the Evan Daly Blues Band, creates a soul-searching experience of blues-rock and a mighty fine guitar. Evan's involvement in multiple bands, including Tha Dirt Feelin, is made possible by his absolute control of the guitar--he can play to fit most any genre. Evan's stage persona is electrifying, and he's been known to drive the dance floor into a frenzy. Let's hear what drives this young man.

Stealing a line from this Pitchfork review, "Nearly every proper song on Currents is a revelatory statement of Parker’s range and increasing expertise as a producer, arranger, songwriter, and vocalist while maintaining the essence of Tame Impala: Parker is just as irreverent working in soul and R&B as he is with psych-rock."

I'm not one to rely heavily on P4K, but when they rate an lp 9.3 out of 10, I may give it a try. Currents ended up in their Top 5 for 2015, (Top 3 Reader's Poll) and in my list of fifteen favorite discoveries for the year.

Let It Happen and The Moment drew me in to this solo project and the rest grew on me shortly afterward. I recently picked up the double-lp from Armadillo Music and am pleased to share it during my turn of AoTW. Mr. Parker will be touring (with a full band) at the Greek in Berkeley early September. One of the two nights still has tickets remaining as of this post.

60’s jazz tonight! Soul, blues, gypsy guitar, and more. Ella Fitzgerald * Phineas Newborn Jr. * Don Wilkerson * Cannonball Adderley * Billie Poole * Brother Jack McDuff * Illinois Jacquet * Gabor Szabo * Eden Atwood * Pat La Barbera & Don Thompson

Gordon is a multi-instrumentalist, producer and songwriter based out of Oakland, California. Starting with the Scottish fiddle at the age of 4, his passion for music has grown to encompass a wide variety of styles. On the violin, this has included jazz, folk, celtic, bluegrass, r&b and reggae. As a vocalist, he has done everything from shape-note singing to opera to beatboxing. Among other credits, he was introduced to choral music by the legendary Chanticleer, briefly competed in a barbershop quartet, and directed a pop acappella group at UC Davis. In college, his tastes as a dance facilitator and budding producer lead him to house music, electroswing, and glitch hop. Gordon's current projects aim to bring together these diverse influences – his sounds have been described as "gospel folk" and "post apocalyptic railroad blues." As a musician, producer and performer, Gordon hopes to unite people of all backgrounds and make them dance. You can follow him online at soundcloud.com/buskproject

All Listening Lyric shows are live on Fridays from 4:00PM to 5:00PM.(PST) on KDRT 95.7FM. For those outside the listening area, the show will stream live online at KDRT.org . It will also be available for replays in the show archives or as an podcast on iTunes under LISTENING LYRICS.    Listening lyrics on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter

AotW this week is Push the Sky Away (2013), Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds' first new recorded material in five years’ time. Cave spent those five years on projects unrelated to the Bad Seeds, including soundtracks, screenplays, and his musical side project Grinderman. Sky is a fairly quiet album for Nick and the Seeds, featuring misty tableaus and twisted love stories. The arrangements are subtle, wonderfully orchestrated, and well-suited to the material. In the end, it’s Nick Cave’s vocals that carry the day--equally tender and forceful, quite and dark...always a bit threatening. 

The Blessing and the Curse is Lance Canales' sophmore solo LP, his first studio album since These Hands, which was released all the way back in 2008. Canales brings all the bluesy, down-to-earth Americana sound one could ask for on the album, armed mostly with a simple yet well-utilized acoustic guitar and a deep, rusty voice that makes other Americana singers sound angelic by comparison. The themes on the album are very remeniscent of southwestern pioneer life, most notably on songs like the uptempo lead track "California or Bust," "The Farmer," and "Deportee," a song about a Mexican immigrants in America. Thematically, the album gets very dark at times--especially on "Death Got No Mercy," which is as depressing and downtrodden as it sounds--but ends on an energetic high note with the electrifying "Stomp it Out." Overall, this album is very good if not particularly ubpeat--a solid Americana album that uses strong lyrical imagery to get its ideas across about the troubles of life in the American West.