Wilco tour heads up the East Coast as Blogotheque posts its "Take-Away Show" ... Carolina Chocolate Drops stop off at The Showroom in Spartanburg, South Carolina ... Bill Frisell makes Savannah Music Festival debut on double bill with ngoni virtuoso Bassekou Kouyate ... Phillip Glass plays the Pacific Northwest ... The Low Anthem has shows in Salt Lake City, Boulder, and Omaha ... Brad Mehldau Trio sets up for a weekend at Yoshi's ... and more ...
Wilco continues its fully sold-out US tour of intimate performances, billed as An Evening with Wilco, with two shows at The Wellmont Theatre in Montclair, New Jersey, tonight and tomorrow night, followed by a Sunday-night set at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island.
While on tour in Montreal, the band recorded a "Take-Away Show" performance video for La Blogotheque (pictured at left), featuring the tune "Country Disappeared," off their latest Nonesuch release, Wilco (the album). In landing the performance, the Take-Away team was able to nab a group off its short "fantasy list," also featuring Radiohead, Tom Waits, Chuck Berry, and Cat Power. Watch the video at blogotheque.net.
The Washington Post's Chris Klimek says that, at the Tuesday night set at Strathmore, the band "served up course after tireless course, a three-dozen-song banquet of art rock, folk rock, country rock, and—once Nels Cline strapped on that double-necked guitar—rawk-rock." Klimek says the band's musicianship was "never sharper than with its current six-man lineup." Noting the rewards that have come from this longest-ever iteration of the group, the reviewer concludes that "this is one settled-down version of the band we're lucky to have." Read more at washingtonpost.com.
---
Carolina Chocolate Drops have a show in The Showroom in Spartanburg, South Carolina, tonight. The venue's director tells the Spartanburg Herald-Journal: "They have taken traditional music and given it a contemporary feel ... I had never heard anyone else do anything like it."
---
Bill Frisell makes his Savannah debut at the Savannah Music Festival this weekend with two nights and a compelling double bill. Frisell and his trio, featuring Tony Scherr and Kenny Wollesen, perform two sets tonight and two Saturday, sharing both nights with ngoni virtuoso Bassekou Kouyate and his band Ngoni Ba, featuring his wife, vocalist Amy Sacko. It all takes place at Savannah's Charles Morris Center.
---
Phillip Glass is in the Pacific Northwest for solo piano sets at the Kirkland Performing Arts Center in Kirkland, Washington, tonight, and at the University of Victoria's Farquhar Auditorium in Victoria, British Columbia, on Saturday.
---
The Low Anthem continues its headlining tour of North America with shows each night this weekend with Nathaniel Rateliff opening at each. Things kick off at The State Room in Salt Lake City tonight, followed by a show at the Fox Theatre in Boulder Saturday and one at The Slowdown in Omaha on Sunday. In a preview of Sunday's show, the Omaha World-Herald says the "band delivers hymnlike tunes layered with pretty harmonies and all kinds of instruments. And while its music can fit neatly under the folk/Americana banner, the band changes up from song to song."
---
The Brad Mehldau Trio set in for its four-night residency at Yoshi's in Oakland, California, last night, with two sets to follow on each night this weekend. The Los Angeles Times, reviewing Brad Mehldau's recent solo set at Largo, called his latest Nonesuch release, Highway Rider, "one of the most striking jazz releases of the year," and says, with the pianist "at the peak of his powers, any way he turns sounds like a journey worth taking."
- Log in to post comments