this week in music

VIDEO OF THE DAY — STEVE EARLE: NPR MUSIC TINY DESK CONCERT

STEVE EARLE & ALLISON MOORER RESIDENCY
City Winery
155 Varick St. at Vandam St.
Monday nights through February 6, $45-$65
212-608-0555
www.citywinery.com
www.steveearle.com

The always charming Steve Earle and his wife, Allison Moorer, continue their Monday-night residence at City Winery through February 6, joined on January 16 by Charlie Mars, January 23 by Mike Doughty, January 30 by the Mastersons, and February 6 by the Dust. Earle had a strong 2011, releasing the Grammy-nominated I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive (New West, April 2011) in addition to a same-titled novel (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, May 2011) and appearing in the second season of the HBO series Treme. We’ve seen Earle many times over the years, solo, with a band, and with special guests, and he always puts on a helluva show, filled with fun stage patter and both serious and wild and crazy songs.

MLK DAY 2012

MLK Day features a host of special events and community-based service projects throughout the city (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Multiple venues
Monday, January 16
www.mlkday.gov

In 1983, the third Monday in January was officially recognized as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, honoring the birthday of the civil rights leader who was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968. Dr. King would have turned eighty-three today, and you can celebrate his legacy tomorrow by participating in a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service project or attending one of several special events taking place around the city. BAM’s twenty-sixth annual free Tribute to MLK includes a keynote speech by education chancellor Denis M. Walcott, the community art exhibition “Picture the Dream,” a musical performance by Toshi Reagon and BIGLovely and the Institutional Radio Choir C.O.G.I.C. of Brooklyn, and a screening of the stirring documentary The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975. The JCC in Manhattan will be holding a blood drive and a food-service project during the day, then team up with Symphony Space for “Moving Ideas: A Conversation Between Choreographers Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Liz Lerman,” including excerpts from Zollar’s Give Your Hands to Struggle and Lerman’s The Matter of Origins, which were both partially inspired by Dr. King and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel; a concert by Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird; Zalmen Mlotek’s “Soul to Soul: A Celebration of African-American and Jewish Song” with Elmore James, Tony Perry, and Cantor Magda Fishman; and a screening of Nick Parker and Jazmin Jones’s documentary The Apollos. The Museum of the Moving Image will be honoring King with a screening of Michael Roemer’s seminal Nothing But a Man, in which Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln play a young couple battling racism in 1960s Alabama. The Children’s Museum of Manhattan will teach kids about King’s legacy with its “Make a Difference Pledge” and performances by the Harlem Gospel Choir, while the Brooklyn Children’s Museum has “Let’s Join Hands,” a “Historical Snapshot” talk with civil rights activist Yolanda Clarke, and a living legacy collage and hand wreath workshop. And Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola is hosting Jazz at Lincoln Center’s annual “Dr. Martin Luther King Celebration” with the Warren Wolf Quintet, with Tim Green, Christian Sands, Kriss Funn, and Billy Williams.

CRACKER / CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN

Johnny Hickman and David Lowery are set to have another blast at Cracker / Camper Van Beethoven show at the Highline Ballroom (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Highline Ballroom
431 West 16th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Saturday, January 14, $22-$25, 7:00
212-414-5994
www.myspace.com/crackerhatesmyspace
www.highlineballroom.com

In what has become a very welcome annual event, David Lowery will be doing double duty on January 14 as he brings both Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven to the Highline Ballroom. The evening generally begins with a rousing look back at the history of seminal indie rockers CVB, dominated by Lowery’s politically tinged lyrics and Jonathan Segel’s virtuosic violin playing. Expect such favorites as “Take the Skinheads Bowling,” “Eye of Fatima,” and “Joe Stalin’s Cadillac,” along with some cool covers, including the Status Quo’s “Pictures of Matchstick Men,” which was an MTV hit for CVB more than twenty years ago. Then Lowery switches gears for the more amiable, freewheeling Cracker, the Virginia-based band that has scored such hits as “Teen Angst,” “Low,” “Get Off This,” “Turn on Tune in Drop Out with Me,” and one of the great live songs of all time, “Euro-Trash Girl.” Lowery will tell some funny stories, guitarist and cofounder Johnny Hickman will look resplendent, and then the two groups will jam out on an interstellar finale. Nothing but good times, guaranteed.

SONG OF THE DAY — CRAIG FINN: “NEW FRIEND JESUS”

Craig Finn’s debut solo album is due January 24, followed by a tour that will have him holding steady at Mercury Lounge and Maxwell’s (photo by Mark Seliger)

“People say we suck at sports / but they don’t understand / It’s hard to catch with holes right through your hands,” Craig Finn sings on “New Friend Jesus,” one of the tracks from the Hold Steady leader’s debut solo album, Clear Heart Full Eyes, due from Vagrant Records on January 24. “New Friend Jesus,” which you can check out here, is one of eleven songs on the disc, which also includes such tunes as “Honolulu Blues,” “No Future,” “Terrified Eyes,” and “Balcony.” (The first five hundred preorders come with a bonus bandanna.) Finn will be in New York City for two sold-out shows at Mercury Lounge on February 29, but there are still a few tickets left for his March 1 show at Maxwell’s in Hoboken. And you can catch Finn performing the new album’s “Jackson” in his apartment for the A.V. Club here.

YIP DECEIVER

While Of Montreal prepares to go out on tour in support of their upcoming disc, Paralytic Stalks (Polyvinyl, February 7), which includes two nights at Webster Hall March 30-31, band members Davey Pierce and Nicolas Dobbratz will be squeezing in some time with their offshoot group, Yip Deceiver. Pierce and Dobbratz, along with Paul Nunn, will be at Pianos on Tuesday night, highlighting electronic dance pop from their eponymous 2011 debut EP, which includes the songs “Obnoxia,” “For All the Haters,” “Sadie Hawkins Day,” and “Get Strict.” Also on the bill are Small Devices (8:00), Absent Center (9:00), and Dead Leaf Echo (10:00).

FIRST SATURDAYS: OUT AND PROUD

Charles Demuth’s “Dancing Sailors” is part of “HIDE/SEEK” exhibition at Brooklyn Museum (courtesy Demuth Museum, Lancaster, Pennsylvania)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway
Saturday, January 7, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed in advance at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum will be celebrating gay pride in its January First Saturday program, featuring a screening of Rent (Christopher Columbus, 2005) hosted by Peppermint, live performances by Nhojj, Ariel Aparicio, Melissa Ferrick, and 3 Teens Kill 4, an artist talk with Lyle Ashton Harris and a curator talk with Jonathan Katz about the exhibition “HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” live-model sketching, a dance party led by DJ Tikka Masala, a book club reading of Chulito by author Charles Rice-Gonzalez, an artist talk with Kymia Nawabi, the second-season winner of Bravo’s Work of Art, and a multimedia, interactive Brown Bear performance installation by A. K. Burns and Katherine Hubbard that includes free haircuts. Among the other special exhibitions on view are “Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties,” “Sanford Biggers: Sweet Funk — An Introspective,” “Lee Mingwei: ‘The Moving Garden,’” “Eva Hesse Spectres, 1960,” “Matthew Buckingham: ‘The Spirit and the Letter,’” and “ReOrder: An Architectural Environment by Situ Studio.”

TWI-NY TALK: DAN EFRAM — BRIAN ENO’S “HERE COME THE WARM JETS” LIVE

Joe’s Pub
425 Lafayette St.
Sunday, January 8, $15, 9:30
212-967-7555
www.joespub.com
www.facebook.com

Brian Eno might be best known today for such ambient albums as Music for Films and Music for Airports and his production work for a diverse range of artists (U2, David Bowie, Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson, Coldplay), but in the 1970s he made a series of seminal records that served as a kind of bridge between glam and prog rock and avant and experimental pop. After three years as a member of Roxy Music, Eno released the solo LPs Here Come the Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain (by Strategy), Another Green World, and Before and After Science, all within a remarkable four-year period. On January 8 at Joe’s Pub, a group of musicians will gather together to pay tribute to Here Come the Warm Jets by doing something that Eno never did: Play every song from the album live. Initiated by recording engineer Rob Christiansen, produced by Dan Efram, and hosted by WNYC’s John Schaefer, the event features an all-star band consisting of Vernon Reid, Travis Morrison, Sohrab Habibion, Paul Duncan, Joan Wasser, Dom Cipolla, and others re-creating Eno’s masterpiece, which was recorded with such guest musicians as Robert Fripp, Chris Spedding, Phil Manzanera, John Whetton, and Andy Mackay. The scorching guitars of “Baby’s on Fire” and “Blank Frank,” the electronic fun of “The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch” and “Driving Me Backwards,” and the sweet harmonies of “Cindy Tells Me” and “Some of Them Are Old” should fill Joe’s Pub with beautiful sounds, but don’t look for important messages in the lyrics, about which Eno, who came up with the words via scatlike nonsense syllables, has said, “Essentially all these songs have no meaning that I invested in them.” In preparation for what should be a great night, we’ve been listening to Here Come the Warm Jets repeatedly, just as we did in our college years, taking us back and lifting us away all over again. Efram, the founder and president of Tractor Beam and an adjunct professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, also has been having a blast with the record, as evidenced by this twi-ny talk.

twi-ny: What kind of personal associations do Here Come the Warm Jets and Brian Eno have for you?

Dan Efram: My first introduction to Eno was through his production work and only then became aware of his ambient compositions — à la Music for Airports and Music for Films. It was only when I started studying audio engineering myself that some of my musician friends turned me on to Here Come the Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain, and Another Green World. Finding out that he had these extremely broad sensibilities was fascinating — with Warm Jets perhaps the most whimsical ear candy that I had come across.

twi-ny: So many amazing musicians played on the original record; how did you come up with the lineup that will be at Joe’s Pub? How closely will they be re-creating HCTWJ?

Dan Efram: Rob Christiansen, the musical director and a terrific, knowledgeable musician and engineer in his own right, has done a great job in trying to analyze the sounds of the original album. He’s taken great pains in order to figure out the sounds on the album, when the band should experiment and when to replicate. This balance is fun to watch!

We chose our lineup with the goal to represent the many different generations of musicians that are hardcore fans of the album and wanted to celebrate this album in the best spirit possible. As a coincidence, we realized that its fortieth anniversary was nearing and that we could help celebrate its legacy by giving fans this unique chance to experience it for themselves in a live setting. We can only hope that those in attendance get as much of a kick out of listening to it live as the musicians will have performing it for them.

twi-ny: Are there other classic albums, either by Eno or other artists, that you might want to tackle next?

Dan Efram: In early 2011, I was fortunate to produce Big Star’s Third/Sister Lovers album live with musical director Chris Stamey, which really introduced me to the idea that some of these wonderful albums could have a life beyond their vinyl grooves, that people really wanted to experience some of these adventurous albums live — if the program was approached with the correct spirit. If all goes well on Sunday, we are hoping to try to perform Here Come the Warm Jets in selected markets in North America and Europe in 2013. With some good fortune, we have a shot.