RACHAEL SAGE AND CASSANDRA KUBINSKI
DROM
85 Ave. A between Fifth & Sixth Sts.
Saturday, June 20, $23.49 (plus $20 table minimum per person), VIP $46.97, 7:00 dromnyc.com rachaelsage.com cassandrakubinski.com
“Every time that you touch my hand I feel love / Every time you look in my eyes I feel love / Every time that you touch my cheek I feel love / Every time you give me a squeeze I feel love,” Rachael Sage sings on “Just Enough,” the lead track on her beautiful 2025 album, Canopy. It’s hard not to feel love when listening to the Port Chester native’s music, either across more than twenty LPs and EPs or live with her band, the Sequins.
“I wished and I waited / So quiet, so patient / I thought I would never hear it come / But here it comes now / I want it to thrill me / Cut through me, come fill me up / I’m ready, so let me / Sing it out, sing it out,” Cassandra Kubinski sings out on “This Is the Sound,” the lead track on her alluring 2023 EP, The Saratoga Sessions: Songs + Stories. It’s hard not to feel the thrill when listening to the Connecticut-born, NYC-based artist’s music, either across more than a half dozen LPs and EPs, as bandleader on The Never Settle Show, or as a featured songwriter on Dance Moms (as is Sage).
On June 20, the two singer-songwriters will team up for a special concert at DROM, playing separately and together. Joined by the Sequins, Sage will highlight tunes from her upcoming record, Under My Canopy, an acoustic reimagining of Canopy. Kubinski will focus on tunes from her upcoming record, Dance Moms Acoustic & Lyrical Solos, which includes such tracks as “Timeless,” “Save You Tonight,” and “There Is Only Love.”
“I am bursting with excitement to finally share the stage with Cassandra after so many years of knowing one another and having both had our music so heavily featured on the TV show Dance Moms,” says Sage, the founder, president, and art director of MPress Records and winner of three Great American Song Contests, the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, the Billboard Songwriting Contest, four OUTmusic Awards, and five Independent Music Awards. “What makes this upcoming show so special isn’t only that we’re both unveiling new material and unique acoustic arrangements — along with a video premiere — but that we are and have long been two fiercely independent, strong female artists who’ve advocated for and enjoyed intense community with the NYC music scene for decades. That shared sensibility of wanting to show up for and lift up other women while pursuing our creative bliss has always been something that’s bound us within the New York scene . . . and now we’ll finally get a chance to sing together — and about what it means to be resilient and inspired by one another’s journeys. Plus, I just adore her songwriting and vocal abilities, so there’s a ton of respect and admiration right now, which will make this night especially fun.”
Kubinski agrees wholeheartedly.
“I’m so excited to premiere songs from my forthcoming album. I’m also looking forward to sharing the stage with Rachael Sage for the first time,” adds Kubinski, who is also a voice actress, the former global co-chair of membership for the international nonprofit Women in Music, and winner of a Women in Sync Award. “It’s a unique connection, as our music has been central to the world of dance competitions. It’s gratifying when these different creative threads combine to form something memorably distinctive. I so respect Rachael’s songwriting and work ethic. Playing in NYC, the heartland of the arts, is a very special honor, and it’s a city I’ve loved performing in over the years.”
Tickets for the DROM show are $23.49 with a $20 table minimum per person; the VIP package is $46.97 and comes with priority seating, a signed, personalized commemorative poster, and autographed CDs from both Sage and Kubinski.
On “Nexus (Acoustic),” the first single from Under My Canopy — originally written about nonbinary high school student Nex Benedict, who died by suicide after being bullied and whose death became a national incident — Sage sings, “We can lift each other up with our resolve instead of doing nothing / We can lift each other up with our resolve instead of giving up.”
There should be a lot of lifting up at DROM on June 20 when these two extraordinary women take the stage.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City features numerous events tied to the World Cup
SUMMER FOR THE CITY: TOGETHER, WE MOVE
Lincoln Center
June 10 – August 8, free or choose-what-you-pay www.lincolncenter.org
The fifth iteration of Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City features art, film, music, comedy, workshops, discussions, meditation, silent discos, and more, but its focus is on dance — along with World Cup–related soccer programs.
Describing the series, which features an outdoor installation by Clint Ramos, Chief Artistic Director Shanta Thake explains, “Lincoln Center becomes a celebration of bodies in motion — dancing, gathering, and connecting people from all walks of life.” There are hundreds of events, with performers from around the globe.
All presentations are free or choose-what-you-pay, and some require advance RSVP; below are twi-ny’s don’t-miss highlights.
Reg Bloor will conduct her late husband Glenn Branca’s symphony for one hundred guitars at Lincoln Center on June 12 (photo by Maria Jose Govia)
Glenn Branca’s Symphony No. 13 (Hallucination City) for 100 Guitars
Wu Tsai Theater, David Geffen Hall
Friday, June 12, choose-what-you-pay, 7:30 www.lincolncenter.org
On June 13, 2001, avant-garde composer Glenn Branca premiered Symphony No. 13 (Hallucination City) for 100 Guitars on the plaza at the World Trade Center. Writing about the piece for Sound American, Reg Bloor, guitarist Reg Bloor, Branca’s wife, explained, “This is the first time Glenn had done anything like this with volunteers, so we had no idea if anyone was going to show up. I’ll never forget walking around the corner of the North Tower onto the World Trade Center Plaza for the first rehearsal and seeing people sitting there on their amps waiting for us. This was really going to work. . . . The piece was a swirling cauldron of consonance and dissonance, like a giant swarm of bees trapped in a cyclone, the single movement a long, gradual build of dynamics, pitch, and tempo to a crescendo bouncing off the towers and ringing through the plaza, spilling out onto the streets of Lower Manhattan. It’s a sound that stays with you for the rest of the day after the piece is over. You hear it coming out of the subway tunnel or in the air conditioning. You can’t get it out of your ear until whole world starts to sound like Glenn.” Bloor will conduct the symphony at David Geffen Hall on June 12 at 7:30, with one hundred guitarists along with drummer Greg Fox.
Lincoln Center honors Juneteenth with three special performances that, unfortunately, overlap one another: Carl Hancock Rux’s Oh Sankofa at Hearst Plaza at 7:00, boasting a talented cast exploring the importance of folklore during the Transatlantic Slave Trade; Jeremy Nedd’s from rock to rock . . . aka how magnolia was taken for granite at Alice Tully Hall at 7:30, which looks at the Milly Rock; and Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks’s The Tune Up at the David Rubenstein Atrium at 7:30, directed by the Flea’s Niegel Smith.
The music of Labelle is celebrated by original member Nona Hendryx at David Geffen Hall
Nightbirds, the Music of Labelle
Wu Tsai Theater, David Geffen Hall
Sunday, June 28, choose-what-you-pay, 7:30 www.lincolncenter.org
In 1974, Patti LaBelle, Nona Hendryx, and Sarah Dash, known as LaBelle, took the country by storm with the monster hit “Lady Marmalade.” The trio had been together in other forms since 1961, broke up in lurid circumstances in 1976, the re-formed from 2005 to 2009. On June 28, Dream Machine Studio is presenting “Nightbirds, the Music of Labelle” at David Geffen Hall, led by Hendryx, joined by the original Labelle backing trio of guitarist Eddie Martinez, bassist Carmine Rojas, and percussionist Jose Rossy, along with Tony winner Adrienne Warren, Kimberly Nichole, Ledisi, and Sandra St. Victor.
Shen Wei Dance Arts and Guangdong Modern Dance Company team up for site-specific MindScape on Hearst Plaza (photo by Gabe Palacio)
Shen Wei Dance Arts | Guangdong Modern Dance Company: MindScape
Hearst Plaza
July 1-3, free, 5:00 www.lincolncenter.org
Chinese-born, NYC-based choreographer, director, and painter Shen Wei brings together Shen Wei Dance Arts (SWDA) and Guangdong Modern Dance Company for MindScape, a forty-five-minute piece that incorporates poetry, calligraphy, painting, and movement on Hearst Plaza. SWDA has presented dazzling dances in the Park Ave. Armory Drill Hall, at the Prospect Park Bandshell, in the Met’s Charles Engelhard Court, and other unique locations, so it should be fascinating to see what they’ll be doing outdoors at Lincoln Center. MindScape is part of Lincoln Center’s Dance Encounters series, which also has performances by Omari Wiles / Les Ballet Afrik (New York Is Burning), Ogemdi Ude (Major), Anna Sperber (Bow Echo), Benjamin Akio Kimitch (Tiger Hands), and Vangeline (Naiad Metal), which takes place in and around the Milstein Reflecting Pool, as well as Chinese Arts Week, which also includes Chinese-born, NYC-based Pulitzer Prize winner Du Yun’s family-friendly The Ocean Etched in the Forest.
Akram Khan’s Thikra is part of Summer for the City at Lincoln Center
Akram Khan Company: Thikra: Night of Remembering
Alice Tully Hall, 1941 Broadway
Thursday, July 2, 7:30; Friday, July 3, 7:30; Sunday, July 5, 2:00, choose-what-you-pay www.lincolncenter.org
English choreographer Akram Khan, who melds the Indian kathak form with contemporary dance, collaborates with visual director Manal AlDowayan on Thikra: Night of Remembering, a piece for between nine and eleven women set to “Gyura Beli Belo Platno” by the London Bulgarian Choir and “The Elephant’s Funeral” by Sushma Soma with Aditya Prakash. “As I stand humbled within the vastness of this epic desert known as AlUla, I feel the urge to unearth the many cultures that have passed through here,” Khan says about the work, which explores the ancient Saudi Arabia desert civilization. Thikra: Night of Remembering is part of the Lincoln Center Contemporary Dance Festival, which also features Jeremy Nedd, Yinka Esi Graves, Sung Im Her / Her Project, Rachid Ouramdane / Compagnie de Chaillot, and others.
Documentary reveals how Elizabeth Streb and her Extreme Action Company (including Jackie Carlson, seen here) take dance to a whole new level
For more than fifteen years, New Yorkers have gotten the chance to see Elizabeth Streb’s Extreme Action Company perform such dazzling works as Ascension at Gansevoort Plaza, Kiss the Air! at the Park Avenue Armory, and Human Fountain at World Financial Center Plaza as her team of gymnast-dancer-acrobats risk their physical well-being in daring feats of strength, stamina, durability, and grace. In addition, Streb herself walked down the outside wall of the Whitney as part of a tribute to one of her mentors, Trisha Brown. Catherine Gund takes viewers behind the scenes in the exhilarating documentary Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity, going deep into the mind of the endlessly inventive and adventurous extreme action architect and the courage and fearlessness of her company. Gund follows Streb as she discusses her childhood, her dance studies, the formation of STREB in 1985, and her carefully thought out views on space, line, and movement as her work stretches the limits of what the human body can do. “I think my original belief and desire is to see a human being fly,” Streb says near the beginning of the film, which includes archival footage of early performances, family photos, and a warm scene in which the Rochester-born Streb and her partner, Laura Flanders, host a dinner party in their apartment, cooking for Bill T. Jones, Bjorn Amelan, Anne Bogart, Catharine Stimpson, and A. M. Homes. Gund also speaks with current and past members of the talented, ever-enthusiastic company — associate artistic director Fabio Tavares, Sarah Callan, Jackie Carlson, Leonardo Giron, Felix Hess, Samantha Jakus, Cassandre Joseph, John Kasten, and Daniel Rysak — who talk about their dedication to Streb’s vision while using such words as “challenge,” “velocity,” “endurance,” “magic,” “invincibility,” and “risk” to describe what they do and how they feel about it. The film is screening on Hearst Plaza on July 10 at 6:00 as part of Lincoln Center’s Dance Encounters series, which also includes “Movement on Film: Athletic Shorts” July 15–17.
Double Dutch Fusion Freestyle & Open Jump
The Dance Floor, Josie Robertson Plaza
Thursday, July 16, free, 5:00 www.lincolncenter.org
One of the most exciting events of every summer at Lincoln Center is the National Double Dutch League strutting its stuff with breathtaking displays of athleticism. It’s three hours of exhilarating movement, including an open jump where visitors are encouraged to participate.
Five troupes come together for annual BAAND Festival (Francesca Levita by Rachel Neville, Christopher R. Wilson by Andrew Eccles, Fangqi Li by Karolina Kuras, Taylor Stanley by Paul Kolnik, DTH Company Artist Kamala Saara by Nir Arieli)
BAAND Together Dance Festival
David H. Koch Theater
Tuesday, July 28, through Sunday, August 1, choose-what-you-pay www.lincolncenter.org
The sixth BAAND Together Dance Festival takes place July 28 thorugh August 1, with five exciting troupes performing in the David H. Koch Theater: Ballet Hispánico New York, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, and Dance Theatre of Harlem. It doesn’t get much better than that. Each company will also host a family-friendly dance workshop every day.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]
The life and career of Billy Preston held many surprises revealed in documentary
BILLY PRESTON: THAT’S THE WAY GOD PLANNED IT (Paris Barclay, 2024)
Maysles Documentary Center
343 Lenox Ave./Malcolm X Blvd. between 127th & 128th Sts.
June 12, 7:00, June 13, 7:00, June 14, $15 (reduced price $7), 4:30 maysles.org www.billyprestonfilm.com
“Will it go ’round in circles? / Will it fly high like a bird up in the sky?” Billy Preston sang in his 1973 smash hit. He might not have realized it then, but that line foretold his career, which had a seemingly endless series of ups until it all came crashing down.
The rise and fall of one of popular music’s most talented and beloved figures is intimately detailed in Paris Barclay’s revelatory documentary, Billy Preston: That’s the Way God Planned It.
Born in 1946 and raised in the church by his mother, gospel singer Robbie Lee Williams, Preston began playing the piano at age three, appeared on The Nat “King” Cole Show in 1957, accompanied Mahalia Jackson and Pearl Bailey on keyboards in the 1958 film St. Louis Blues, played with the gospel group the Cogics (Church of God in Christ), and as a teenager toured with Little Richard and the Rolling Stones. An enthusiastic man with an infectious gap-toothed smile and a collection of impressive wigs, Preston was soon recording with the Stones, Sam Cooke, Sly Stone, Ray Charles, and Aretha Franklin.
He singlehandedly rescued the Beatles when the Fab Four was preparing the Let It Be album and concert, just dropping by to say hello but then taking a seat at the organ and starting to improvise with John, Paul, George, and Ringo, infusing them with the energy they had been previous lacking as rumors swirled that the band was breaking up. The tabloids nicknamed him the Fifth Beatle and the Black Beatle. “He never put his hands in the wrong place,” Starr says in the film.
Preston might have been the ultimate sideman, but when performing he couldn’t help himself, often getting up and dancing wildly, joy emanating out of every pore. He couldn’t read music and never used charts but just felt the music blaze through him, even when playing backup. “He would steal the record without you even knowing until later, and you’d go, ‘He’s done it again,’” Eric Clapton explains.
When Preston brought an original song to George Harrison for a potential solo LP, the Quiet Beatle quickly assembled an all-star roster to back him up: Harrison, Clapton, Keith Richards, and Ginger Baker.
In the 1970s, he hit the charts with such songs as “Outa-Space,” “Will It Go Round in Circles,” “Nothing from Nothing,” and “With You I’m Born Again,” all of which are featured prominently in the film. He was a musical guest on the very first episode of Saturday Night Live. Most people don’t realize that Preston wrote and originally recorded “You Are So Beautiful,” made famous by Joe Cocker; one of the highlights of the documentary is Preston’s performance of the song at the Apollo 50 celebration, joined by Cocker and Patti LaBelle on vocals. We also learn that it is a love song — to his mother, who he also plays it with in the film.
But his life started falling apart as he got lost in a haze of drugs and alcohol (Courvoisier, coke, eventually crack), starred as Sgt. Pepper in the ill-fated movie Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and continued to hide his sexuality, even though his friends, family, and musical colleagues knew he was gay going back to his youth. He was often seen with young men he referred to as cousins, but he was overcome with loneliness.
In their debut documentary, three-time Emmy winner Barclay (NYPD Blue,Glee) and cowriter Cheo Hodari Coker (Ray Donovan,Luke Cage) also delve into the sexual abuse Preston suffered as a child, which added to his problems as an adult. In the 1990s, he was arrested for DUI, charged with assault and child molestation, and spent time in prison, but he kept on playing music until his death in 2006 at the age of fifty-nine.
“He couldn’t move on,” soul and gospel singer Merry Clayton says. “No one knew what had transpired but us, the inner circle, family people. He’d have that smile, but his heart would be broken.”
Producer Suzanne de Passe notes, “Billy Preston was a gifted, genius, wonderful, talented human being, and he had a very, very self-destructed aspect to who he was. I wish I could have been more of a help in the parts that weren’t any of my business.”
Similarly, engineer Bob Margouleff says wistfully, “I don’t think anyone, including me, knew how to help him.”
The film has a bevy of revelatory archival material, from photographs and home movies to rare clips of Preston from childhood through his entire career, including key segments from a 2004 live appearance. Barclay also speaks with Billy Porter, producer Tony Jones, recording artists Gloria Jones and Blinky Williams, Pastor Sandra Crouch, musician Cory Henry, A&M publicist Don Mizell, biographer David Ritz, Preston’s cowriter Bruce Fisher, his nephew Derrick Preston, his managers Bob Ellis and Joyce McRae Moore, and numerous members of his bands, who all share poignant stories of Preston as a performer and a human being, a man bursting with life but hiding so much inside.
“I just want to be free, to play the music that God’s given to me,” Preston says.
It’s a tragic, if not unfamiliar, story, in this case happening to a cherished person who could not conquer his demons. But as he sang in his first big hit: “Let not your heart be troubled / Let mourning sobbing cease / Learn to help one another / And live in perfect peace.”
If you missed the theatrical release of Billy Preston: That’s the Way God Planned It earlier this year at Film Forum, you can catch it at Maysles Documentary Center from June 12 to 14.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]
The annual Israel Day parade will march up Fifth Ave. on May 31 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
ISRAEL DAY ON 5th
62nd to 74th St. up Fifth Ave.
Sunday, May 31, free, 11:30 am – 4:00 pm israeldayon5th.com
On May 14, 1948, “The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel” proclaimed, “The State of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice, and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race, or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education, and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.” Israel’s existence has been fraught with controversy since the very beginning, but especially now since the October 7 attacks by Hamas and Benjamin Netanyahu’s military response in Gaza, but the nation perseveres, and on May 31 its seventy-eighth birthday will be honored with the annual Israel Day parade. This year’s theme does not back away from the growing vitriol, making a point: “Proud Americans, Proud Zionists.”
On Sunday, tens of thousands of marchers are expected to make their way from Sixty-Second to Seventy-Fourth Sts. up Fifth Ave., including members of synagogues and youth organizations, musicians, dancers, political figures (but not Mayor Zohran Mamdani), community and advocacy groups, civil servants, with lots of flag waving and singing, but the specific roster of entertainers is not being made public in advance of the event. There will be tighter security than ever, for participants as well as viewers; you can check out the details here. As a sign of the times, the grand marshal is police commissioner Jessica Tisch, who said in a press conference, “To be blunt, we are not messing around with security at this year’s parade.”
Onlookers. celebrants, and well-wishers can enter on Madison Ave. at Sixty-First, Sixty-Third, Sixty-Sixth, Seventieth, and Seventy-Third Sts.; the parade will also be broadcast on MY9 and livestreamed here.
STEVIE: A LIFE IN THE KEY OF SONGS
Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
May 14–16, $36-$97, 7:30 www.bam.org
PoetWarrior Productions’ Black Masters Concert Series, which has paid tribute to such artists as Curtis Mayfield and Sly & the Family Stone, continues May 14–16 at BAM with “Stevie: A Life in the Key of Songs.”
On a Sunday in the fall of 1976, as part of my father’s bar mitzvah present to me — a record a week for one year — I picked up Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life, and I was never the same again. The music industry, from the Billboard charts to radio airplay to live performance, would never be the same again either.
The double LP features such killer tracks as “Love’s in Need of Love Today,” “Village Ghetto Land,” and “Sir Duke” (as well as “I Wish,” “Pastime Paradise,” and “Isn’t She Lovely”) that crossed genres and racial boundaries. It was the culmination of a remarkable four-year period in which Wonder released five classic albums: Music of My Mind (1972, “Superwoman”), Talking Book (1972, “You Are the Sunshine of My Life,” “Superstition”), Innervisions (1973, “Living for the City,” “Higher Ground”), Fulfillingness’ First Finale (1974, “Boogie On Reggae Woman,” “You Haven’t Done Nothin’”), and Songs in the Key of Life. In the middle of it all, Wonder was in a car accident that left him in a coma, and he temporarily lost his sense of smell.
The albums will be celebrated by the BRC (Black Rock Coalition) Orchestra on May 14 (Music of My Mind and Talking Book), May 15 (Innervisions and Fulfillingness’ First Finale), and May 16 (Songs in the Key of Life) at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House. The band, under the music direction of Darrell M. McNeill and LaFrae Sci, consists of keyboardist Ray Angry, vocalists and guitarists David Ryan Harris and Peter Lord, singer-songwriter Sandra St. Victor, harmonica virtuoso Gregoire Maret, guitarist Mark Whitfield, and, for the last two shows, Corey Glover and Vernon Reid from Living Colour. The setlist will also include tunes from the same period that Wonder wrote for other artists.
The Michigan-born Wonder turns seventy-six on May 13, so this should be one fabulous birthday party.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Who:Laurelyn Dossett,Bet Williams What: Songwriting Studio and live concert Where:Jalopy Theatre, 315 Columbia St. between Woodhull & Rapelye Sts. When: Saturday, May 9, $60, 2:00; Saturday, May 9, $25, 8:30 Why: “There are secrets / Secrets I swore I’d never tell / But the ones that I loved are all good gone dead / So listen, children, listen well,” Laurelyn Dossett sings on “Run to the River” on her debut solo album, How Many Moons (August 28, Sycamore Road). The North Carolina native has written songs that have been recorded by Levon Helm and the Carolina Chocolate Drops and for the theater (Brother Wolf,Radiunt Abundunt) and has toured with Rhiannon Giddens, Alice Gerrard, and others, but she now takes center stage, joined by her longtime friend and Penn State college roommate, Bet Williams, who is currently recording a new LP, Magic Beauty Pain, the follow-up to such discs as Rose Tattoo,Elephants and Angels, and The 11th Hour. Williams and Giddens appear on How Many Moons, along with Sophia Catanoso, Kari Sickenberger, Charly Lowry, M. C. Taylor, and the Glory Glory Chorus, made up of friends and relatives singing on a family porch.
Produced by Taylor (Hiss Golden Messenger), How Many Moons is an intoxicating mix of Americana, folk, country, jazz, and blues, built around Dossett’s lovely voice. “Laurelyn Dossett is a songwriter and human that I find immensely inspiring. A survivor and a wonder-er. I know she has played a huge part in the lives of so many creative people, and I’m honored to have played a part in her new album,” Taylor said in a statement.
Dossett and Williams come to the Jalopy Theatre in Brooklyn on May 9, first for a two-hour Songwriting Studio workshop at 2:00 in which they will share their musical knowledge, giving advice on tunes that participants can bring with them. At 8:30 they take the stage for a reunion concert; despite knowing each other for four decades, they have never performed together before this tour. Expect a rollicking, poetic evening of gorgeous and camaraderie, as evidenced in the below brand-new video.
“It’s all about the music, yes,” Dossett explained about the record. “But I have pulled together some stuff, and some experiences, that come from me, my friends and family, and this beautiful place I call home. It’s all of a piece of me — the music, the people I love, the land, the river, the flora and fauna. And you, the listener.”
So listen, everyone, listen well.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Who:James Mastro,Richard Barone What:Nuts & Bolts Revisited Tour Where:The Loft at City Winery, 25 Eleventh Ave. at Fifteenth St. When: Sunday, May 3, $30-$42, 7:30 Why: Forty-three years ago, Hoboken legends the Bongos went on the road in support of their EP Numbers with Wings, the follow-up to their breakthrough debut LP, Drums Along the Hudson. The tour included a memorable gig at Columbia University that you can listen to here. During that time, guitarist and vocalist Richard Barone and multi-instrumentalist James Mastro wrote songs that they recorded with Mitch Easter of Let’s Active in North Carolina; the result was the folk/power pop album Nuts & Bolts, with one side comprising songs by Barone, the other by Mastro. Among the tunes were the former’s “I’ve Got a Secret” and “Flew a Falcon” and the latter’s “Time Will Tell” and “Angel in My Pocket.”
Mastro is one of the hardest-working musicians in the business; he just can’t put down his guitar. He has played with Ian Hunter, Alejandro Escovedo, Patti Smith, Richard Hell, Megan Reilly, the Health & Happiness Show, Rachael Sage, and countless others in addition to opening Guitar Bar and art gallery/performance venue 503 Social Club in Hoboken. In February 2024, the consummate sideman released his debut solo record, Dawn of a New Error, to widespread acclaim. Meanwhile, Barone made such highly regarded albums as Cool Blue Halo,Primal Dream, and Glow, produced numerous tribute and benefit concerts, and wrote the memoir Frontman: Surviving the Rock Star Myth.
I’ve had a long connection with both of them; I’ve known Mastro since the late 1980s and have seen him play in many configurations. Around that same time, the woman who would become my wife won a signed copy of Cool Blue Halo that she presented to me, and then we went to see Barone perform a killer set at the Bottom Line, a seminal moment in our courtship.
Mastro and Barone, who have gotten together for Bongos reunions, are back on the road for a brief tour celebrating the rerelease of Nuts & Bolts on Iconoclassic Records, fully remastered and complete with such bonus tracks as a live version of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” from a United Nations gig. The tour started in Philly, Rhode Island, and Woodstock and comes to City Winery on May 3 before concluding in Freehold. The first set focuses on Nuts & Bolts, while the second features solo tunes from throughout their individual careers.
They’re both wonderful storytellers, so this is a terrific opportunity to catch what should be a very special show.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]
