Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER When Father John Misty took the River Stage at WXPN’s XPoNential Music Festival last night it became immediately apparent that wasn’t going to deliver a conventional set of pastoral folk rock ballads for an adoring crowd of dad rockers in khaki cargo shorts. “What the fuck is going on?!” he bellowed, refusing the guitar a roadie tried to hand to him. The bearded troubadour glided right past his mic stand with a long, lanky stride, and with a lit cigarette smoking between his fingers perched himself on a sound monitor, poised to confront the crowd. This […]
BEING THERE: Macca @ Citizens Bank Park
Photo by BEN PELTA-HELLER Rick Warren can suck it. If you want a congregation of people waiting to experience love and grace, Paul McCartney brings it like no other. When I was a kid, before I knew about drugs, I would listen to Best Of The Beatles on my Walkman CD player, and “Hello Goodbye” used to do it for me, let me tell you. At any rate, at a certain point, in college or whatever, it becomes clear that The Beatles are not cool, and Paul McCartney is the least cool Beatle. He’s the one who you would want […]
BEING THERE: Dylan @ The Academy Of Music
Artist’s rendering EDITOR’S NOTE: This originally posted in November of 2014. The Academy of Music opera house in Philadelphia opened in 1857, which, if memory serves, is where and when Bob Dylan first went electric — much to the consternation of the stovepipe-hatted folkies in attendance, who felt he was selling out the purity of old-timey steam-powered protest anthems. It is said that Stephen A. Douglas was so incensed he attempted to chop the cable supplying power to the Academy stage with an axe and had to be wrestled to the ground by none other than Abraham Lincoln, who “licked […]
BEING THERE: Bas @ The Foundry
Photo by DYLAN LONG “Are you Derick?” “Nope, I’m Bob.” Bob was the fifth person I had asked if their name is Derick, who was the tour manager coming to give me photo credentials for the sold-out Bas show at The Foundry. I’d been waiting for a delightful hour and a half downstairs at this point, passing the time away with my +2 — neither of us were on the list for the show, despite publicist assurances to the contrary. I’ve come to expect at least one thing to go completely not as originally planned when covering shows, so I […]
NATIVE GUNN: A Q&A With Matador Recording Artist Steve Gunn, Straight Outta Drexel Hill Yo
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER BY JOSH PELTA-HELLER Recently, at a claustrophobic club that opened less than a year ago in the East Village underneath the decades-old 2A, Philly-native-turned-Brooklyn-indie-it-boy Steve Gunn and his band calibrated their instrument levels, getting ready to air out some cuts from their new record Eyes On The Lines. The album’s nine songs credit as many musicians, over twice the number of players they could have comfortably fit onto that stage with just enough room left over to turn back around with guitars in hand. But even as the band began to experiment with their volume, they […]
INCOMING: In Bob We Trust
It is difficult to overstate the contributions of Bob Dylan, but it is also, for similar reasons, difficult to say anything meaningful about him that has not been said. It’s like talking about the weather or something, “You know, I really like it when it’s raining.” Me too, man. Me too. However, if one were to attempt to overstate the contributions made by Bob Dylan you could begin with thinking about the word “prophet.” Fate wears some people like a glove, and Mr. Robert Zimmerman seems a likely candidate. Like Saul on the road to Damascus – “Zap!” – […]
RIP: Scotty Moore, Bitterly Estranged Elvis Guitarist & Architect Of The Rockabilly Sound, Dead @ 84
NEW YORK TIMES: Scotty Moore, a guitarist whose terse, bluesy licks on Elvis Presley’s early hits virtually created the rockabilly guitar style and established the guitar as a lead instrument in rock ’n’ roll, died on Tuesday at his home outside Nashville. He was 84. In 1954, Mr. Moore was performing with a country group, Doug Poindexter and the Starlite Wranglers, and recording at Sun Records in Memphis when Sam Phillips, the label’s owner, asked him to audition a young singer that his secretary kept mentioning. On July 4, Presley showed up at Mr. Moore’s house. Bill Black, the bass […]
RIP: Dr. Ralph Stanley, Man Of Constant Sorrow
NEW YORK TIMES: Though widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of bluegrass, Mr. Stanley said on numerous occasions that he did not believe his music was representative of the genre. “Old-time mountain style, that’s what I like to call it,” he explained in a 2001 interview with the online music magazine SonicNet. “When I think of bluegrass, I think of Bill Monroe.” Mr. Stanley, Charles McGrath wrote in The New York Times in 2009, “is one of the last, and surely the purest, of traditional country musicians.” “He’s such a stickler that he has no use for the […]
Win Tix To See Low Anthem @ Underground Arts
“Apothecary Love,” an old-timey charmer from The Low Anthem’s drop-dead gorgeous Smart Flesh LP, has been making me smile for since it came out in 2011. It vibes like a summery cross between The Band’s Music From Big Pink and Beck’s Mutations – all mournful, moonlit country lilt and coal mountain melody waltzing matilda across the fruited plains and purple mountain majesties of the warm, narcotic American night. Its like old time country lemonade for your ears. The singer sounds like an Appalachian Cat Stevens telling it on the mountain, the harmonica wheezes like a far-off train whistle in […]
Q&A With Guitarist Marc Ribot, American Master
BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE DAILY NEWS In the course of Marc Ribot’s critically acclaimed four-decade career, the chameleonic guitarist has mapped a steady path from edgy lower Gotham upstart to Zen-like American master. Long a fixture of New York’s downtown improv scene, Ribot is probably best known as Tom Waits’ longtime side-man, having played on seven Waits albums and corresponding tours since 1985’s Rain Dogs. He has lent his six-string sorcery to recordings by Elvis Costello, Robert Plant, the Black Keys, John Zorn, Philadelphia-born soul legend Solomon Burke, and the late, great beat poet Allen Ginsberg. The 22 […]
Q&A With Nick Spitzer, Professor Of American Boogie & Host Of NPR’s American Routes
Illustration by ALEX FINE EDITOR’S NOTE: Like many of you, we were deeply disappointed to learn that WHYY-FM has elected to drop American Routes from their weekend programming, where it has been a fixture for more than a decade. (Boo-stink!) But fear not local lovers of Americana, WXPN has stepped in and offered American Routes a home on its airwaves. American Routes will air on Sundays from 3-5 pm starting Sunday June 19th. (Hooray!) To celebrate, we are re-running our in-depth 2009 interview with American Routes host Nick Spitzer. Enjoy!) BY JONATHAN VALANIA Nick Spitzer is a folkorist, ethnographer, professor […]
Win Tix To See Dolly Parton @ The Mann Center
There was a time in America, an awful time of bad clothes, bad drugs, bad presidents, and bad mustaches, known as the 1970s, when Dolly Parton was the living punchline to a running national joke about big boobs and dumb blondes. Four and half decades later, nobody’s laughing at Dolly Parton any more. Circa now, Dolly Parton is a country icon, a feminist icon, a gay icon, and a living testimonial to the Picture Of Dorian Gray-like power of plastic surgery, in the right surgeon’s skilled hands and on the right face, to do less harm than good. Long […]
BEING THERE: Roots Picnic 2016
DMX by DYLAN LONG The ninth annual Roots Picnic took place this past Saturday at Philly’s Festival Pier, sporting potentially one of the most buzzed-about lineups in its entire history. With headliners such as R&B legend Usher (backed by The Roots of course), Future, one of the don dadas in rap right now, and soul sensation Leon Bridges, one could wonder how this lineup could get any sweeter for hip hop and R&B fans far and wide. Lo and behold, The Roots succeeded immensely once again in gathering some of the most hot and groundbreaking artists in the game right […]