this week in music

A TRIBUTE TO THE LATE GREAT CAROLINA SLIM

THE FRATERNAL ORDER OF SOCIETY BLUES
Littlefield
622 DeGraw St. between Third & Fourth Aves.
Saturday, April 19, $10, 8:00
www.littlefieldnyc.com

Brooklyn musician Jeremiah Lockwood has kept his feet wet with a steadily evolving cortege of musical projects over the past decade. Besides leading his acclaimed band the Sway Machinery, he’s embarked on adventures exploring musical forms from Mali and other parts of North Africa while integrating his upbringing, which was steeped in the nigunim of Jewish cantorial music. Lockwood got his start, though, playing in the New York City subways alongside his mentor, the Piedmont blues guitarist Carolina Slim. After meeting the musician as a fourteen-year-old, Lockwood took lessons from him, and what began as an apprenticeship seemingly dreamed up by a jaded screenwriter — the young white teen learning the ropes from the older African American traditionalist — evolved into a vital musical partnership. As Lockwood grew as a musician, the two accompanied each other for more than a decade, playing house parties, street fairs, and throughout the city’s transit system.

Jeremiah Lockwood and Carolina Slim back in 1993; Lockwood will pay tribute to the late blues great at special show at Littlefield on April 19

Born Elijah Staley, Slim hailed from South Carolina and made his home in New York for decades, teaching, composing, and performing in the venerable Piedmont style of blues that stretches back to the early twentieth century and counts such artists as Blind Willie McTell and the Rev. Gary Davis among its progenitors. Carolina Slim passed away this February at the age of eighty-seven, and, along with several other local musicians whom the older guitarist befriended and mentored, Lockwood has arranged a concert celebrating his career and life to be held at Brooklyn’s Littlefield venue. Under the banner of the Fraternal Order of Society Blues, the performers, including jazz percussionist Ricky Gordon, Brotherhood of the Jug’s Ernesto Gomez, and Slim friend Chris Cook, will be gathering for “A Tribute to the Late Great Carolina Slim” on April 19. Lockwood is calling the memorial a “séance of the spirits of American music”; the night should be filled with plentiful memories and great music paying respect to a true character in the long blues tradition.

RECORD STORE DAY 2014

Bruce Springsteen’s brand-new four-track EP will be released for Record Story Day on Saturday

Multiple locations
Saturday, April 19
www.recordstoreday.com

On April 19, music on vinyl will be celebrated at the eighth annual Record Store Day, when purveyors of music around the world will be selling seven-, ten-, and twelve-inch discs that have either been created exclusively for RSD, are special limited runs of previously available material, or are releasing that day. Participating stores in New York City include Rock and Soul Records, Permanent Records, Academy Records, Second Hand Rose Music, Captured Tracks, Rockit Scientist Records, Kim’s Video & Music, Disc-O-Rama, Turntable Lab, A-1, Good Records, Other Music, Record Runner, In Living Stereo, Downtown Music Gallery, Rebel Rebel, Generation Records, Rough Trade, Bleecker Street Records, and Village Music World. Not all releases are available at all locations, so you might want to call ahead to find out if a particular store has just what you’re looking for. The full list includes hundreds of singles, EPs, and LPs from multiple genres; below are some of our favorites.

Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin: Songs from Common Ground
The Animals: The Animals EP
Sam Cooke: Ain’t That Good News
Cut Copy: “In These Arms of Love” / “Like Any Other Day”
Deerhoof & Ceramic Dog: Deerhoof / Ceramic Dog split
Jerry Garcia: Garcia
Green Day: Demolicious
Gil Scott-Heron: Nothing New
Joan Jett and the Blackhearts: Glorious Results of a Misspent Youth
Joy Division: An Ideal for Living
The Julie Ruin: “Brightside” / “In the Picture”
Jon Langford & Skull Orchard: “Days and Nights” / “Here’s What We Have”
The Last Internationale: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Indian Blood
Man Man: The Man in Turban with Blue Face
Nirvana: “Pennyroyal Tea” / “I Hate Myself and Want to Die”
The Pogues: Live with Joe Strummer
Public Enemy: Evil Empire of Everything
The Ramones: Meltdown with the Ramones
R.E.M.: Unplugged: The Complete 1991 and 2001 Sessions
School of Seven Bells: Put Your Sad Down
Ronnie Spector and the E Street Band: “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” / “Baby Please Don’t Go”
Bruce Springsteen: American Beauty
Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction
Tame Impala: Live Versions
Xiu Xiu: Unclouded Sky
Frank Zappa: “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” / “Down in De Dew

VIDEO OF THE DAY: “DIFFERENT DAYS” BY THE MEN

Brooklyn by way of San Francisco quartet the Men have a special relationship with their fans. First, they turn to them to make a video for the second single from their latest album, Tomorrow’s Hits (Sacred Bones, March 2014), then they post on their blog that they are in need of a van to use for their spring tour, which takes them from Cleveland on April 10 to DC on June 7. “Do you have a dependable van for rent or for sale?” they ask, promising, “The Men will return your van in great shape.” Guitarists Marius Atherton and Alex Rather-Taylor, bassist Paul Hanna, and drummer Danny Kendrick certainly do a lot of hard driving on their fourth full-length, a collection of eight songs recorded live in a Brooklyn studio that would sound great blasting out of a van speeding down the highway. (You can currently stream the album, the follow-up to such earlier albums as We Are the Men and Le Bonheur, here.) On Tomorrow’s Hits, the band mixes surf pop, garage rock, psychedelia, and even a little country, evoking Neil Young and Crazy Horse (“Dark Waltz”), Jerry Garcia (“Sleepless”), a frantic Bob Dylan (“Pearly Gates”), and even the Traveling Wilburys with the Velvet Underground (“Settle Me Down”), while ramping up some horns on the wild and crazy “Another Night.” German photographer Helge Mundt won the “Different Days” video contest; you can see his prize-winning entry above. We don’t know what happened with the van. The Men, who sparkled at last summer’s 4Knots Music Festival at the South Street Seaport, will be playing the Wick in Brooklyn on May 10 with the Obits and Nude Beach.

LA SOIRÉE

English Gent Hamish McCann dazzles at LA SOIRÉE (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Union Square Theatre
100 East 17th St.
Thursday – Monday through June 1, $37.95 – $127.95
www.la-soiree.com

If you don’t like La Soirée, well, then you just don’t know how to have fun. The raunchy, risqué mixture of burlesque, cabaret, vaudeville, circus, and Coney Island sideshow that has been touring the world for the last several years — an earlier iteration called Absinthe ran in the Spiegeltent at the South Street Seaport back in 2006 — is playing at the misty Union Square Theatre, where the audience is seated in the round, centered by a small circular platform where most of the often mind-blowing action takes place. Hosted by emcee Aidan O’Shea (among others, depending on which night you go), the two-hour evening features a core group of performers along with special guests. Singer-comic Amy G gets intimate with audience members and uses an unusual part of her body to play an instrument. Rhythmic gymnastics champion Lea Hinz contorts her arms and legs while suspended in the air in a hoop. The self-deprecating Marcus Monroe juggles a home-made combination of dangerous items. Jeans-wearing Joren “Bath Boy” Dawson splashes plenty of water while engaging in acrobatics in and around a claw-footed tub.

LA SOIRÉE is a raunchy romp at the Union Square Theatre (photo by Carol Rosegg)

LA SOIRÉE is a deliciously twisted raunchy romp at the Union Square Theatre (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Marawa the Amazing shimmies with a vast array of Hula hoops. Scrawny, wild-haired Ringling Bros. Clown College graduate Manchego offers a different take on the male striptease. The English Gents (the dapperly dressed — and undressed — Denis Lock and Hamish McCann) dazzle with breathtaking feats of skill and strength, balancing on each other’s bodies; the highlight of the night might just be McCann’s gravity-defying one-man “Singing in the Rain” pole dance. Burlesque star Julie Atlas Muz somehow gets inside a large balloon bubble. Other performers you might catch at La Soirée, which was first presented by Brett Haylock, Mark Rubinstein, and Mick Perrin in London in 2010, include Bret Pfister, Scotty Blue Bunny, Miss Ekaterina, Mooky Cornish, Le Gâteau Chocolat, Ursula Martinez, Cabaret Decadanse, Meow Meow, Jess Love, Miss Behave, and Mario, Queen of the Circus. There’s also free popcorn, a bar that remains open throughout the show, lots of audience participation, and surprises galore in this randy, very adult romp that isn’t afraid to go too low, or too high, to get a laugh, a smile, a gasp, or even a groan.

MATA FESTIVAL 2014

Finnish new music ensemble Uusinta will be performing at the MATA Festival

The Kitchen and other locations
512 West 19th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
April 14-21, workshops and talks free with advance RSVP, concerts $20
www.matafestival.org
www.thekitchen.org

Tired of the same old, same old? Try something rather different at the annual spring MATA Festival. A nonprofit organization founded in 1996 by Philip Glass, Eleonor Sandresky, and Lisa Bielawa, MATA showcases the work of composers and musicians under the age of forty. This year’s fest runs April 14-21 at the Kitchen and other venues, with free workshops and panel discussions (with advance RSVP) and concerts a mere twenty bucks. The lineup features thirty-four composers from seventeen countries, beginning with a sweet sixteen gala on April 14 at Paula Cooper Gallery with live performances by ICE and Matt Evans, a sound installation by Christopher Marianetti, and more. On April 16, Yotam Haber, Melissa Smey, Chris McIntyre, Amelia Lukas, and Mark Peskanov will discuss “On the Art of Curation” at BMI at 7 World Trade Center at 2:00, and the Kitchen will host “Between Noise and Silence,” with Helsinki music ensemble Uusinta playing works by Aaron Helgeson, Alexander Khubeev, Joan Arnau Pàmies, Hikari Kiyama, Ilari Kaila, and Sampo Haapamäki. On April 17 at 3:30, the workshop “The Business of Being a Composer Part 1” will bring together Cia Toscanini, Scott Winship, Paola Prestini, Steven Swartz, Richard Carrick, and Sarah Kirkland Snider at ASCAP at 1 Lincoln Plaza; at the Kitchen at 8:00, “That Which Remains” consists of Rubens Askenar García Hernández’s El Puerperio, André Damião Bandeira’s em_bruto, Natacha Diels’s A Is for Alphabet, a new work by Alex Weiser, and a new MATA commission by Carolyn Chen, performed by such musicians as pianist Vicky Chow, percussionist Matt Evans, and violinist Marina Kiff.

The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) will present U.S. premiere of Oscar Bianchi’s MATRA with Neue Vocalsolisten

On April 18 at 11:00 am, Uusinta is back for an Afternoon Reading Session at BMI; that night, Talea Ensemble and Ekmeles team up on pieces by Šimon Vosecek, Edward Hamel, Clara Ianotta, Todd Tarantino, Martin Iddon, and Josep Sanz for the program “Lives in Miniature.” On April 19 at 8:00 at the Kitchen, Germany’s Neue Vocalsolisten and ICE will present the U.S. premiere of Oscar Bianchi’s Matra, with tubax, contrabass recorder, and bass flute, followed by a Q&A. On Easter Sunday at 1:00 at the Kitchen, the a cappella Neue Vocalsolisten will highlight works by American composers Georges Aperghis, Silvia Rosani, Brahim Kerkour, Zaid Jabri, Francesco Filidei, Gabriel Dharmoo, Lars Petter Hagen, and Jennifer Walshe. The festival concludes on April 21 with the workshop “The Business of Being a Composer Part 2” at BMI at 11:00 am with Ralph N. Jackson, Deirdre Chadwick, Bill Holab, Katie Baron, and Michael Geller; a pair of snare drummers will play David Bird’s Fields on the High Line between Nineteenth & Twentieth Sts. at 1:30 (free, no RSVP necessary); and MIVOS Quartet and Mantra Percussion combine for “Of Circles and Motions of the Others” at the Kitchen at 8:00, performing Lisa Streich’s Playtime, Daniel Wohl’s Progression, Yotam Haber’s Torus, Ansgar Beste’s Pelerinage Fantastique, Paula Matthusen’s The Days Are Nouns, and Ke Xu’s Tai Chi.

TARTAN WEEK: THE KELPIES

Andy Scott’s Kelpies will stand guard in Bryant Park through April 23 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Bryant Park, Fountain Terrace
Sixth Ave. at 41st St.
Sculptures on view through April 23
Festival runs through April 27 at multiple locations
www.thekelpies.co.uk
the kelpies slideshow

A pair of “proud equine guardians” have been posted at the Sixth Ave. and Forty-First St. entrance to Bryant Park, one at rest, head bowed, the other rearing up, neighing toward the sky. The fifteen-foot-high models, constructed of laser-cut steel plates, are the work of Scottish sculptor Andy Scott, smaller versions of the one-hundred-feet-high Kelpies — mythological waterborne equine creatures — he created for the Helix Parkland on the Forth & Clyde Canal near Falkirk, the artist’s father’s hometown, in central Scotland. The Kelpies, which will remain on view in Bryant Park through April 23, are part of the annual Scotland Week (Tartan Week) festivities, a celebration of Scottish culture taking place all over the city. On April 6, there will be a special Tartan Day Observance in Bryant Park at 12:30 with the New York Metro Pipe Band, the Highland Divas, and others, followed by a talk with Scott about the Kelpies at 3:00. That night, the Caledonian Collective will be hosting a concert at Webster Hall with the LaFontaines, Nina Nesbitt, Lau, and Hector Bizerk. Iona in Brooklyn will be presenting a Scottish fiddle workshop on April 7 with Katie McNally, followed by a Live Trad Session with McNally and Neil Pearlman; on April 8, Scottish Octopus with piper Andrew Forbes will be there, and on April 9 Troy MacGillivray will lead a Cape Breton fiddle workshop and a live session with Scottish Octopus. Also on April 9, Whisky Live takes place at Pier Sixty in Chelsea, with tastings, exhibitors, master classes, live music, and more. On April 10, Celtica will play Drom, while the Cape Breton Scots at Jalopy is highlighted by the work of musician and photographer Matt Diaz. Pop International Galleries is showing “As Others See Us” through April 10, and the 92nd St. Y is presenting “Scots Jews: Identity, Belonging, and the Future” through April 27, consisting of photos taken by Judah Passow. And you can see the double bill of Douglas Maxwell’s A Respectable Widow Takes to Vulgarity and Sabrina Mahfouz’s Clean performed by Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre Company through April 27 at 59E59.

TWI-NY TALK: LiV WARFIELD

LiV WARFIELD & THE NPG HORNZ
B. B. King Blues Club & Grill
237 West 42nd St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Sunday, April 6, $35-$65, 8:00
212-997-4144
www.bbkingblues.com
www.livwarfieldmusic.com

Last August, Prince protégées LiV Warfield and Shelby J. tore up City Winery with a week of hot shows with the New Power Generation and the NPG Hornz, including one extremely late night in which they joined their mentor for a rip-roaring set. More recently, Warfield has been making a name for herself on the talk-show circuit in support of her brand-new solo record, The Unexpected (Kobalt, February 2014), knockin’ ’em dead performing “Why Do You Lie?” on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, “Soul Lifted” on The Arsenio Hall Show, and “BlackBird” on Sway’s Universe. (She’s also scheduled to appear on Late Show with David Letterman on April 4.) The Peoria-born singer takes a giant step forward with the explosive new album, the follow-up to her soulful, intimate 2006 debut, Embrace Me, the horn section lifting her to new levels on ten songs bookended by brief instrumentals. On the title track, which was written for her by His Most Royal Purpleness — Prince also cowrote the seven-minute “Your Show” with his former backup singer and serves as the album’s executive producer — Warfield and the NPG Hornz channel Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company; the record is also highlighted by the bold hooks of “Why Do You Lie?,” the foot-stomping blues of “BlackBird,” the pure funk of “Lena Blue,” and the jazzy grandeur of “Freedom.” Warfield will be headlining B. B. King’s on April 6 with the NPG Hornz in what promises to be an electrifying evening. She’ll also be sticking around after the show to meet fans and sign copies of her CD.

twi-ny: You were born and raised in Peoria, went to college and recorded Embrace Me in Portland, Oregon, and are now based in New York City. How has place made a difference in your life and career?

LiV Warfield: Every place that I have been has been so instrumental in who I am as an artist. Peoria provoked interest in music but Portland allowed me to free my talent and discover who I was musically. Now that I live in New York it has opened up so many doors for me and people have welcomed my music and artistry.

Prince protégée LiV Warfield steps out on her own with electrifying new album and tour

twi-ny: It’s been eight years between your first solo record, Embrace Me, and The Unexpected. Why so long?

LW: What took so long is that I had to learn a lot. I was given the opportunity to work with Prince not long after Embrace Me and he has taught me so much. I learned how to write, arrange, and really become a better artist. The wait was worth it to me and I honestly wouldn’t change a thing.

twi-ny: How has it been going from backup singer to being the central attraction again?

LW: Going from a background singer to the central attraction is definitely a different experience but I am now better prepared for what’s to come.

twi-ny: You have a justly celebrated powerhouse voice; why do you open the new record with an instrumental? Is that just a tease?

LW: I wanted to do something unexpected with the open and close. I also wanted it to be very musical and allow you to go on a journey with me.

twi-ny: In “Fly,” you sing, “People don’t define me / I need to be who I need to be.” As your career takes off, has it been difficult to break out of conventional categorizations, especially since your music embraces so many different genres?

LW: Yes, it has been difficult because people do want to box you in. I want to make good music for all to enjoy. I understand that people need categories but my hope is that people will be open and just enjoy it. There is something for everyone on The Unexpected.

twi-ny: What’s the coolest thing about working with and getting to know Prince?

LW: The coolest thing about working with Prince is that I can call him my mentor and I can talk to him whenever I want. I am so thankful for him and sometimes it’s hard to believe.

twi-ny: Is there a specific meaning behind why you capitalize the “V” in your first name (LiV)?

LW: There is significance to it. I work with an amazing group of musicians and I am part of a collective unit. It’s not just about me . . . it’s about the unit. The small “i” reminds me to keep things in perspective.