Catch the lady live during her two-day sojourn at downtown soul spot Warmdaddy’s, Aug. 25 and 26. It’s OK. The lighting is right and they got plenty of bourbon.
from the archives: mix tape column: janiva magness
from the archives: mix tape column: tom gillam
PLAY caught up with Tom Gillam, Philly-based rocker extraordinaire, host of a weekly Americana-flavored open mic at Center City bar Whiskey Dix (421 North 7th St., 215-923-2192), and self-declared connoisseur of summertime cruising, top-down dashboard classics. “I’m a music addict. I can make favorite music lists by any category, and by decade,” he says. Gillam has several solo albums and a Best New/Emerging Artist nomination by the Americana Music Association under his belt, plays with his band Tractor Pull, and tours internationally with fellow singer-songwriter and guitarist Joseph Parsons. He’s currently recording tracks for both his next solo effort and with Four Way Street, a singer-songwriter collective that also features Parsons, Ben Arnold and Scott Bricklin. As the music community knows, Gillam suffered three consecutive heart attacks back in March but, thankfully, survived to tell the tale. Since he is recovering, we we’re going to have the poor taste to call this mix “I Saw the Light: Top Ten Summer Tunes Tom Gillam Is Sure Glad He Is Still Around To Rock Out To,” but there’s just not enough room on the little stickers that go on each side of the cassette for all that. You can catch Tom’s next appearance at Roots Rock Revival Night at Whiskey Dix Saloon June 17, check out his full schedule at www.tomgillam.com, and help push the dreaded MySpace Tom further out of his Top 8 at www.myspace.com/tomgillamstractorpull. You’ve got to respect a man whose summer tune list manages Davey Jones and Brian Wilson in the same listening hour, and isn’t scared to admit he still considers Aerosmith, well, at all. Plug in the extension cord and drag the boom box out back and fire up the grill … summer’s coming and we’re feeling just fine …
Tom Gillam returned recently to the music scene after suffering three heart attacks last March. Now he tells PLAY what his picks are for our mixed tape.
from the archives: mix tape column: chris kasper
Sure, it’s getting harder to be a patriot every day (Hi Stephen Colbert! we love you!). But that’s not stopping you from daydreaming about Fourth of July a week early. Roman candles playfully shot at tipsy friends, charred processed meat, gas money spent on impossibly cheap miniature American flags manufactured in other countries. Ah, independence. It’s a good time to think about it. It’s in an independent spirit that we turned to Chris Kasper, award-winning songwriter based in Manayunk, for this week’s mix tape. Chris is gearing up to celebrate the release of his second indie album with a show at World Café on Tuesday, June 27. After letting the songs brew for a few years, Chris took a rare offer to record the album on the cheap in a basement studio in Durham, NC. The result is a record with a signature dreamy acoustic style laced with words worth listening to. You may have caught the single Bit Older on WXPN already. It’s one of those songs that bounces around in your brain after the first listen, a perfectly catchy June tune. In a there-was-some-love-sparkling-in-the-air-and-maybe-it-didn’t-work-out, but-don’t-think-twice, it’s all right kind of way. Chris balances out his solo stuff by moonlighting with The Lowlands, a local bluegrass-folk ensemble where he gets to flash the bluegrass chops he picked up from living in West Virginia before landing here in the heart of brotherly love. The show, according to Chris, is going to be his own little circus featuring a host of friends and cohorts helping him celebrate. Then he’s off to tour with the Highway Girls and carry the celebration into NYC and Boston. So without further ado, ignore Lee Greenwood on the radio, and pop in Pre-game: Chris Kasper’s Favorite Songs by Independent Artists, and get ready for the fireworks.
Chris Kasper had the heart to help us out with a mixed tape this week. Check him out a World Cafe Live on June 27.
from the archives: mix tape column: greg thomas of lesser birds of paradise
Greg Thomas, drummer for Chicago-based trio Lesser Birds of Paradise, graphic designer and self-professed defender of the Garden State, is waxing poetic about the wistful windowpane snapshots one gathers while on the road as he gears up to tour in support of Space Between, the band’s newest release. To give you a glimmer of the Lesser Birds’ sound, critics alternately described 2004’s String of Bees as the type of music you want to paper your apartment with, a nap in a warm blanket, and laid-back porch pop. We caught them downtown at Tritone last summer, and were mesmerized by the shimmering mountain mist conjured up from the ether. Lucky for us, Greg and fellow Lesser Birds Mark Janka and Tim Joyce are heading back into town to play The Fire with local favorites Like Moving Insects and Adam Acuragi on Aug. 4. Meanwhile, even if there’s no roadside produce, Jaybird pit stops or Waffle house breakfast runs in your future this summer, don’t worry – the living is still easy. Slide into the passenger seat and let a Jersey boy by way of Midwest score your sweet-tea soundtrack to the South.
The Lesser Birds of Paradise with Tim Joyce, Mark Janka and Greg Thomas.
from the archives: mix tape column: hezekiah jones
We always appreciate when we get an album in the mail by an artist we’ve never heard of that doesn’t suck. If the album actually earns a life rattling in the side passenger pocket of one of our cars or graduates into the iTunes library to bask among the rest of the ready-for-random-play singles, we careen alarmingly close to expressing enthusiasm. As pseudo-zen postmodernists unsure of the current currency of blitzkrieg irony, genuine excitement for cultural product must be conserved. Like breaths, orgasms and brain cells, we figure you only get so many, and you should use them wisely. Then Hezekiah Says You’re A-Ok, the debut album by Hezekiah Jones came to our door, and we popped it in while in a funk of Star Jones proportions and emerged feeling Tom-Cruise-minus-creepiness (go with us here) psyched. So here it is: official, unabashed endorsement. We were surprised to learn that Hezekiah Jones is the moniker of one Raphael Cutrufello, local musician usually seen playing keyboards with jam bandy locally performing act StillWillis. Because Hezekiah Jones is a totally different thing. It’s full of the kind of songs that scintillate along the glistening strands of forlorn love or something like it. Like Will Oldham, who Cutrufello cites as a major influence, the best songs are little elusive, offering tiny bubbling epiphanies and a bittersweet afterglow. You can check out Hezekiah Jones live and join the celebration of the debut album Thursday Aug. 4 at Milkboy on Lancaster Avenue. Meanwhile, allow Raph to introduce you to some of his favorite lo-fi Sunday morning bedroom music.
Hezekiah Jones will celebrate his debut album at Milkboy in Ardmore on Aug. 4. Show up and meet the guy.
from the archives: mix tape column: bc camplight
It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon during the XPN festival in Camden, and a bunch of us were hanging out, sitting on the grass, and catching a sunburn while letting Jim James from My Morning Jacket rub his heartbreak vocals into our wounds when some friends suggested we head back to the other stage to catch BC Camplight. “It’s real Brian Wilson-y,” was the comment that accompanied the headnod that summarily got us to our feet despite having found a perfect patch in the shade near a Ben & Jerry’s truck. And so it came to be that (after catching another fun set from local bluegrass heroes The Lowlands) we got hip to the swirly rock sunshine of BC Camplight. BC Camplight is the project moniker for the writing and musicianship of one Brian Christinzio, who plays all of the instruments on last year’s sparkling album, Hide, Run Away. Christinzio says he wrote the album and “threw it on a credit card” to get it recorded with Brian McTear at Miner Street Studios last year. “Thank God it got picked up,” he says. Meanwhile, Christinzio took a break from all the good things happening to indulge in a massive dose of recreational melancholy by scoring the soundtrack to our end-of-summer flings (yes, if done properly, this should be plural) and the various universal existential crises that makes us feel so individual. If you take a few spins through Christinzio’s mix you’ll be all wallowed out by the time you catch BC Camplight this weekend at the Tin Angel on Second Street, where you can work on making your drinking seem “social” again.
BC Camplight shows you how to cry and be a man.
from the archives: mix tape column: transistor rodeo
To our pleasant, idle-chattered, blog-reading afternoon surprise, it was one Doug Goldberg. He cruised in all shady-like, lookin’ every which way but loose before breaking out into a big old sh*t-eatin’ grin. He tipped his hat and tossed a raggedy burlap bag into my lap. “I suggest you listen up, ma’am,” he snarled. And with that, he spun on his boot heel and strutted back out into high noon. Inside the bag were two discs. A mix of jailbird songs to listen to on the lonely ride in (perhaps intended for Rick Mariano’s office?) and Goin’ Out in Style, Transistor Rodeo’s most recent album. Perhaps one about going in and one about going out implies we’re somehow incarcerated now? We pondered this for a moment before remembering with relief that we gave up taking our spiritual side seriously after college. And then, we listened. Besides, when whiskey-scented specters appear, we do what they say. And we’ve always been suckers for rock n’ roll cowpunks with a stylish flair for the dramatic (hence the divorce papers) and sick skills. We’ve seen Goldberg and cohorts whip audiences into a sweaty, drink-chugging frenzy firsthand with songs about hanging with friends, heartbreak, the “down and dirty” and drug-smugglin’ bliss. And we’re always feeling the horn section. Something about those horns makes partying in the moment feel as deep and sincere as third-grade patriotism. Then just when you think you don’t care about nothin’ but a good time, front man Bob Jordan can change it up and bust out a ballad with a honey-man voice that makes you want to text message your Lovely that you’re sorry for being such a selfish jerk sometimes. Since a Philly summer without a Transistor Rodeo show is like a winter without downing hot toddies while snowed in at the neighborhood bar, we highly suggest you hightail it over to their next show at Milkboy Coffee on Sept. 9. See you there.
Transistor Rodeo will perform at Milkboy in Ardmore on Sept. 9.
from the archives: mix tape column: gary jules
You can catch Gary Jules at World Cafe Live with Five for Fighting.
from the archives: mix tape column: jim bianco
The Hotel Cafe is a coffeeshop-slash-venue that serves as a sort of home base for the L.A. singer-songwriter community. Bianco says it is to Hollywood what the Bitter End was the to New York City in the ’60s. Here’s how the tour works: Twenty-six musicians who call the Hotel Café home pile into a bus and zigzag wander around the U.S., then Europe. Revolving casts of at least six musicians share the stage in any given show. Zach Braff soundtrack darling Cary Brothers (his “Blue Eyes” was the song playing when you fell in love with Natalie Portman again during Garden State) is the only act that performs at every stop. There are no headliners, per se—everyone just hangs out, plays together and takes turn. Bianco calls it a “brilliantly organized catastrophic circus.” Whatever it is, we sure wish we got to Cameron Crowe it up on the bus. Especially since this is the second year in a row that Bianco is bringing his gigolo-gypsy howls and hums along for the ride. Like the kind of relationship Bianco sometimes sings about, the first time we saw him was also our last—but hopefully, only til the next time he’s in town. It’s worth going back for the aural sex: When he plays, it’s a campfire ghost story lean-in. It’s fascinating to listen to a soul haunted by classic jazz squeeze through a larynx that sounds like it was rinsed in napalm collapse into the swaggering melodies of a boyish cad walking Spanish down the hall. Check it out when he rolls into town to play the World Café Live with the rest of the Hotel Café crew Monday, Oct. 30.
No, this isn’t Jim Bianco. But it is the cover of his new album. Courtesy Photo
Actually, it’s been that kind of year, if you take the Hotel Café tour that’s rolling into town next week into consideration.
from the archives: mix tape column: lori friday of super400
Another urgent email and one bribe for free cocktails later, we entered Abilene’s under cover of night. Now this is where we get all Tipping Point about this epidemic: Maine dude turned us on, and we’re telling you. We sat at a table up front, close enough to the stage to rest our heels on the edge. We were all, a trio huh? Interesting. Hot chick bassist, huh? Very cool. Things were looking up, boyfriends were being eyeballed, ice cubes slowly settling in a most pleasant little vodka bath in the bottom of my glass. Then, Super 400 ripped into the (pause) most (pause) BERSERK blitzkrieg of brutally delicious sound that it was literally shocking. It felt like when your brain rips in half the nanosecond before one of your better orgasms. I mean, This is Rock and Roll, and really, that’s all there is to say. They destroy. Respect! Obviously we’re very psyched that they’re rolling into town this week. Mysteriously, they are playing another unlikely venue, but Grape Street in Manayunk it is. You can deal with it — you know you’ve put up with more for less. This is, after all, a band that had their hometown mayor actually name a day for them. That’s right, Feb. 25 is officially Super 400 day in Troy, N.Y., no jive. Bassist Lori Friday took a moment from her busy tour schedule to make a mix for you. She says they do a lot of night driving while on the road, and that these are some of the songs that have gotten her and the boys through many otherwise monotonous and dangerously hypnotic voyages. Shake vigorously and enjoy.
Super 400
