In his foreword to the 2012 book The Road Most Traveled, consisting of stories of life on the road by dozens of musicians, singer-songwriter Chuck Ragan wrote, “Despite the joy I have for playing music, despite the camaraderie that I surround myself with on the road, and despite traversing this planet, I do look forward to the end of the trail and taking off these boots.” Fortunately, the former member of Hot Water Music and the man behind the Revival Tour is not hanging up that footwear just yet. The folk troubadour, who has released a series of solo records, is now set to debut his first album with his band the Camaraderie, Till Midnight (SideOneDummy, March 25). Produced, engineered, and mixed by Blind Melon guitarist Christopher Thorn, the album features such songs as “Non Typical,” “Vagabond,” “Something May Catch Fire,” and “Bedroll Lullaby,” recorded with Lucero’s Todd Beene on electric guitar and pedal steel, Social Distortion’s David Hidalgo Jr. on drums, Jon Gaunt on fiddle, and Joe Ginsberg on bass, aka the Camaraderie. The group will be at Irving Plaza on April 18 with the White Buffalo and Jonny Two Bags; one dollar from each ticket and package purchase goes to the Wildlands Network, whose mission “is to ensure a healthy future for nature and people in North America by scientifically and strategically connecting networks of people restoring and protecting networks of wildlands.”
this week in music
VIDEO OF THE DAY: “FUNKY CÉILÍ” BY BLACK 47
For twenty-five years, the Celtic rock band Black 47, named after the devastating mid-nineteenth-century potato famine in Ireland, has been a fixture on the New York City music scene, particularly come St. Patrick’s Day. But the party band is calling it quits this year, on November 15, as evidenced by the title of what the group has announced is its final album, Last Call. Their ferocious touring schedule is coming to an end as well, as they will be playing their last St. Paddy’s Day concert this Monday, at B.B. King Blues Club. (They will also be performing that day on VH1’s Big Morning Buzz Live and Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show.) The new disc features thirteen songs, including “Salsa O’Keefe,” “US of A 2014,” “Queen of Coney Island,” and “Shanty Irish Baby.” On “St. Patrick’s Day,” cofounder and guitarist Larry Kirwan sings, “Come dance with me, darlin’ / Don’t give it away / Those boys from the Bronx / Just want more of the same / The streets are explodin’ / (They’ll use you, abuse you) / But I’ll see you okay / If you hold on to me on St. Patrick’s Day / I’ll love you forever on St. Patrick’s Day / If you hold on to me on St. Patrick’s Day.” Black 47, which currently consists of Geoffrey Blythe on saxophone, Joe Burcaw on bass, Thomas Hamlin on drums, Fred Parcells on trombone and pennywhistle, and Joseph Mulvanerty on Uilleann pipes and flute, had its biggest hit back in 1991 with “Funky Céilí (Bridie’s Song),” about which Kirwan notes, “I remember the first time we did ‘Funky Céilí.’ It was in the Irish Arts Center on W. 51st Street. We had given it a run through immediately after setting up the PA. It sounded pretty good to me and I was keen to see how the audience would respond. They never even noticed the song that would soon change our lives but kept on dancing. I suppose that, in itself, was good. None of us had any idea that within a few years so many baby girls would be given so many versions of the name — Ceili, Kaylee, K-Lee, K-leigh, Kayleigh, Kayleey, Quaylee, and others.” Fans are sure to notice the song when the band plays it for the last time at a St. Patrick’s Day celebration Monday at B.B. King’s.
TICKET GIVEAWAY: MY MOTHER HAS 4 NOSES
Jonatha Brooke gets personal in poignant one-woman show, MY MOTHER HAS 4 NOSES
MY MOTHER HAS 4 NOSES
The Duke on 42nd St.
229 West 42nd St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Thursday – Sunday through May 4, $55 – $75
646-223-3010
www.4noses.org
www.dukeon42.org
Three and a half years ago, singer-songwriter Jonatha Brooke put her career on hold as she cared for her mother, a poet and clown who had contracted Alzheimer’s. She has turned that experience into an album and a poignant new one-woman show, My Mother Has 4 Noses, which her failing mother encouraged her to write. “Almost daily she would say, ‘Boolie [my nickname], that’s good!’” Brooke explains on the show’s website. “‘Are you getting this down? We should make a play out of it!!’” Brooke, who has released such records as 10 Cent Wings, Steady Pull, and Careful What You Wish For, adds, “My Mother Has 4 Noses is my story, but it’s everyone’s story.” Among the songs Brooke wrote for the show are “My Misery,” “Superhero,” “Scars,” “Time,” “How Far You’d Go for Love,” and “What Was I Thinking?” all of which you can sample here.
TICKET GIVEAWAY: Directed by Jeremy Cohen, My Mother Has 4 Noses is running at the Duke on 42nd St. through May 4, and twi-ny has four pairs of tickets to give away for free for performances through March 30. (Saturday matinees in March will be followed by a talk back with Brooke and various specialists on dementia and caregiving.) Just send your name, daytime phone number, and all-time-favorite play or movie about a mother and daughter to contest@twi-ny.com by Monday, March 17, at 12 noon to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; four winners will be selected at random.
VIDEO OF THE DAY: “HENDRA” BY BEN WATT
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British musician Ben Watt is starting the next phase of his varied career with his first solo record in thirty years, Hendra (Unmade Road, April 29). The cofounder of Everything But the Girl with then-partner, now-wife Tracey Thorn, Watt has also been a DJ, promoter, record label owner (Buzzin’ Fly, Strange Feeling), internet radio host, and author of Patient: The True Story of a Rare Illness, which detailed his battle with Churg-Strauss syndrome. The new album, recorded with guitarist Bernard Butler, features such tracks as “Forget,” “Spring,” “Golden Ratio,” “Matthew Arnold’s Field,” and “The Heart Is a Mirror.” On his website, Watt describes Hendra, which was made following the death of his sister, as “‘a folk-rock album in an electronic age.’ Ten songs. Unsentimental. Impressionistic. Songs about close family and strangers, resilience and hope. All set in vivid landscapes where the outside comes inside and clings to the stories.” Watt and Butler will be at Joe’s Pub on April 1 and Rough Trade on April 2, highlighting songs from the new record. In addition, Watt’s second memoir, Romany and Tom, which focuses on his mother and father as well as himself, will be released by Bloomsbury in the U.S. on June 10. “We only ever see the second half of our parents’ lives — the downhill part,” Watt writes in the book’s preface. We are now fortunate to see what is essentially the third (or fourth? fifth?) part of Watt’s career, which appears to be far from going downhill.
VIDEO OF THE DAY: STEAFÁN HANVEY
Northern Irish singer-songwriter Steafán Hanvey was born in 1972, right in the midst of the Troubles. Both of his parents were musicians; his father, Bobbie, was a photojournalist and radio host as well. On his second album, last winter’s Nuclear Family, the follow-up to his 2006 debut with his band, the Honeymoon Junkies, Hanvey, “a man whose bad dreams have already come true,” explores the complications of relationships on such songs as “Secrets and Lies,” “Marta’s Always Coming Home,” “Darling Please,” and “Leaving What You Know.” He has combined his past with the present in his deeply personal and political traveling show, “Look Behind You! A Father and Son’s Impressions of the Troubles in Northern Ireland through Photograph and Song,” which is profiled by NPR in the above video. On March 8, Hanvey will be giving a rare solo performance for “Belfast Rocks the Craic” at Mercury Lounge, part of the sixteenth annual Craic Fest; Duke Special and Rams’ Pocket Radio are also on the bill.
VIDEO OF THE DAY: “DON’T TRIP ON THE GLITTER” BY AMY LYNN & THE GUNSHOW
Amy Lynn Zanetto goes full Jackson Pollock over an ex in the video for “Don’t Trip on the Glitter,” the second single from the upcoming debut album of the same name from Amy Lynn & the Gunshow, following their cover of the Shangri-Las’ “Remember (Walking in the Sand).” “Drink my wine / Sleep in my bed / Funny how / I kinda want you dead / No, I don’t want you dead / I want you out of my life / I’ve given you everything everything everything / But you still can’t get it right,” she forcefully sings while dancing and throwing paint. The soulful powerhouse vocalist and her brass-heavy six-piece band — arranger (and husband) Alex Hamlin on baritone sax, Jeff Hermanson on trumpet, Ed RosenBerg III on tenor sax, Michael Ross on drums, Ben Gallina on bass, and Brian Whitted on keyboards, along with “black-up” singers James Jackson and Ladiva Burns — are also joined by strings on several songs on the disc, due out April 29. The album, produced by Steve Greenwell, features such other tunes as “West Village Blues,” “Last Call,” “Can’t Put My Finger on It,” and “Dirty Mouth.” The New York City-based band will celebrate the release of the album with a special show May 8 at Joe’s Pub.
THE HITCHCOCK 9: EASY VIRTUE
Isabel Jeans stars as a woman unfairly wronged in Alfred Hithcock’s silent melodrama EASY VIRTUE
EASY VIRTUE (Alfred Hitchcock, 1927)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Tuesday, March 4, 6:45
The Complete Hitchcock: February 21 – March 27
The Hitchcock 9: February 21 – May 4
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org
Loosely based on a Noël Coward play that was recently made into a film starring Colin Firth, Jessica Biel, and Kristin Scott Thomas, Alfred Hitchcock’s Easy Virtue is another of the Master of Suspense’s cleverly told melodramas, a risqué tale of a woman unfairly placed in a lurid situation. Isabel Jeans stars as Larita Filton, a loving wife whose husband, Aubrey (Franklin Dyall), has commissioned her portrait by painter Claude Robson (Eric Bransby Williams). Just as Claude makes a play for Larita, she fights him off and Aubrey walks in. He misinterprets the scene, shots ring out, the artist is dead, and Claude files for a highly publicized divorce case in which Larita is found guilty of misconduct. Trying to put her notorious past behind her, she heads for the Mediterranean, where she meets John Whittaker (Robin Irvine), a wealthy mama’s boy who falls instantly in love with her and brings her back to his parents’ country estate. But once there, Whittaker’s nasty mother (Violet Farebrother) and conniving sisters (Dacia Deane and Dorothy Boyd) do everything they can to ruin the relationship, seeking to uncover Larita’s history while also attempting to put her son back together with longtime family friend Sarah (Enid Stamp Taylor). Easy Virtue, which features yet another Hitchcock blonde, is a gripping film about honesty, reputation, individuality, and character as an innocent woman is forced to face undeserved consequences in the superficial world of high society. Hitchcock, who makes his cameo holding a walking stick, gliding past Larita while she sits by a tennis court, includes several wonderful touches involving circles and ovals, from a close-up of a judge’s wig to a shot through a tennis racket’s strings to a dining room dominated by a group of elongated, haloed saints on one wall. Easy Virtue is also one of Hitchcock’s dourest silent melodramas, lacking any comic relief as a wronged woman desperately tries to right her life. Easy Virtue is screening on March 4 at 6:45 as part of the Film Forum series “The Hitchcock 9,” with live piano music by Steve Sterner. “The Hitchcock 9” continues through May 4 with Blackmail, The Pleasure Garden, Champagne, The Farmer’s Wife, The Ring, Downhill, and The Manxman (all featuring Sterner on piano), in conjunction with “The Complete Hitchcock,” which runs through March 27 and includes all of Sir Alfred’s feature narratives. In addition, the Paley Center will be hosting “The Complete Hitchcock: Television” on March 29-30 and April 5-6, consisting of all episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents that the master directed, as well as documentaries, interviews, and other bonuses.