Hitting the road for Feb-March trek.

By Blurt Staff

Seattle's These Arms are Snakes will be touring behind their latest full-length Tail Swallower & Dove (Suicide Squeeze) starting in late February. They'll be traveling coast to coast with support on the  first leg by All The Saints, then when the tour dips southward Young Widows will come on board.

Need convincing? Here's what BLURT had to say about the album, in part: "The muscle and power of Snakes' music doesn't obscure their intelligent song construction and unabashed love of nerding out with exacting riffs. Fans of sensitive indie schmaltz take note: this isn't the album for you, but a listen or two might give you the fortitude to step up and accept the mysterious power of careening, distorted guitar playing."

Tour Dates:

Feb 22 2009 Marquis Theatre Denver, Colorado w/ All The Saints
Feb 24 2009 Jackpot Saloon Lawrence, Kansas w/ All The Saints
Feb 25 2009 The Picador Iowa City, Iowa w/ All The Saints
Feb 26 2009 Triple Rock Social Club Minneapolis, Minnesota w/ All The Saints
Feb 27 2009 The Cactus Club Milwaukee, Wisconsin w/ All The Saints
Feb 28 2009 Subterranean Chicago, Illinois w/ All The Saints
Mar 1 2009 The House Dekalb, Illinois w/ All The Saints
Mar 2 2009 Magic Stick Detroit, Michigan w/ All The Saints
Mar 3 2009 Grog Shop Cleveland, Ohio w/ All The Saints
Mar 4 2009 Soundlab Buffalo, New York w/ All The Saints
Mar 5 2009 The Middle East - Upstairs Cambridge, Massachusetts w/ All The Saints
Mar 6 2009 The Polish Club Poughkeepsie, New York w/ All The Saints
Mar 7 2009 Music Hall of Williamsburg    Brooklyn, New York w/ All The Saints
Mar 10 2009 The Barbary Philadelphia, Pennsylvania w/ All The Saints
Mar 11 2009 Rock And Roll Hotel Washington, Washington DC w/ All The Saints
Mar 13 2009 Drunken Unicorn Atlanta, Georgia w/ Young Widows
Mar 14 2009 Common Grounds Gainesville, Florida w/ Young Widows
Mar 15 2009 The Social Orlando, Florida w/ Young Widows
Mar 17 2009 Spanish Moon Baton Rouge, Louisiana w/ Young Widows and Mazarati
Mar 22 2009 Launchpad Albuquerque, New Mexico

By Fred Mills

Sam "The Bluzman" Taylor, 74, died Monday, Jan. 5, at his Islandia, NY, home, from complications related to heart disease. The popular guitarist/singer had been performing since the ‘50s, working with some of the greats including Otis Redding, the Isley Brothers, Sam & Dave and B.T. Express (the latter for whom he served in a production and arranging capacity.

Ironically, though, it wasn't until 1995 that he released a quote/unquote straight blues album; Bluzman was followed by a steady string of critically hailed records, including his final album, 2006's The Funky Side of Fame. Taylor was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1995 and was also a member of both the Long Island Music Hall of Fame and the Arizona Blues Hall of Fame - he lived in Tucson for an extended period from the mid ‘80s to the mid ‘90s and was a familiar fixture on the club scene there.

Yours truly, in fact, saw him perform on a number of occasions during my own decade-long tenure in Tucson. You could spot him a mile away, perennially sporting a huge smile under one of his trademark captain's caps.

There's an excellent profile and remembrance of Tucson at the Arizona Daily Star currently on line. In the article, KXCI-FM blues DJ Marty Kool is quoted as saying, of Taylor, "Sam was dripping with soul. When he sang, he put everything he had into it. You could hear it in his songs. Not many people could sing like Sam Taylor, with that kind of feeling."

Amen to that.

BLURT contributor Rev. Keith Gordon also has a nice tribute to Taylor posted to his blog at the About.com Guide to the Blues.

Four week residency and a lot more, including a new album.

By Blurt Staff

Marco Benevento will call Northern California home in February when he hosts a four week residency at Yoshi's in Oakland. Supporting his new release, Me Not Me (available February 3 from The Royal Potato Family), Benevento is set to appear every Tuesday of the month at the prestigious east bay jazz venue with a different set of special guests.

He'll launch the run on February 3 with an album release party featuring his core trio comprised of bassist Reed Mathis and drummer Andrew Barr. They'll also perform a handful of shows later that week in the northwest. The following Tuesday, Benevento revisits the "two drummers and a saxophone" band from his storied 2008 Sullivan Hall residency with drummers Billy Martin and G. Calvin Weston and tenor saxophonist Skerik. The following night the same lineup heads south for an appearance at Largo in Los Angeles. On February 17, week three, guitarist Jeff Parker of Tortoise joins Benevento along with the Nels Cline Singers' rhythm section, bassist Devin Hoff and drummer Scott Amendola.  Rounding out Benevento's four consecutive Tuesdays at Yoshi's will be "Quartet The Killer," performing the music of Neil Young, for which Benevento will be joined by his partner in The Duo, drummer Joe Russo, along with tenor saxophonist Peter Apfelbaum and trombonist Josh Roseman.

Me Not Me finds Benevento interpreting the work of artists such as Deerhoof, Leonard Cohen, George Harrison and My Morning Jacket among others. Benevento also contributes three original compositions, including "Now They're Writing Music," which was first performed as a rough sketch last spring when the Brooklyn-based pianist appeared on "The World Cafe With David Dye." In addition to Benevento, the album features the aforementioned Mathis and Barr along with drummer Matt Chamberlain. The set was recorded in Seattle at Chroma Sound and mixed in Brooklyn by Bryce Goggin.

Tour Dates:

January 10 / Winter Jazzfest at Sullivan Hall / New York, NY
February 2 / Don Quixote's International Music Hall / Felton, CA
February 3 / Yoshi's / Oakland, CA
February 5 / The Triple Door / Seattle, WA
February 6 / Axe & Fiddle / Cottage Grove, OR
February 7 / The Goodfoot / Portland, OR
February 10 / Yoshi's / Oakland, CA
February 11 / Largo / Los Angeles, CA (w/ Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey)
February 17 / Yoshi's / Oakland, CA
February 24 / Yoshi's / Oakland, CA
March 7 / The Bell House / Brooklyn, NY

Hot off the press release pile comes this official announcement...

By Blurt Staff

Multi-award winning soul singer and musical legend Van Morrison is set to release "Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl," an in-concert reworking of his historic 1968 gold-certified solo album. Recorded live over two nights at the Hollywood Bowl this past Nov. 7 and 8, the album marks the premiere release on Mr. Morrison's new EMI-distributed label, Listen to the Lion Records. "Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl" arrives in stores Feb. 10, 2009. A double-vinyl edition with three bonus tracks (including a live version of "Gloria") arrives in stores the same day.

The concerts marked the first time Mr. Morrison ever performed "Astral Weeks" in one complete concert set. Joining him was an orchestral string section and a band composed of world-class musicians, some of whom played with Van on the original "Astral Weeks" sessions 40 years ago. Tracks on the CD include: "Astral Weeks/I Believe I've Transcended," "Beside You," "Slim Slow Slider/ I Start Breaking Down," "Sweet Thing," "The Way Young Lovers Do," "Cyprus Avenue / You Came Walking Down," "Ballerina," "Madame George" and two bonus tracks, "Listen to the Lion / The Lion Speaks" and "Common One."

"The Hollywood Bowl concerts gave me a welcome opportunity to perform these songs the way I originally intended them to be," says Mr. Morrison, who amazingly held only one rehearsal prior to the concerts. "There are certain dynamics you can get in live recordings that you just cannot get in a studio recording.  I love listening to live recordings. You get the whole thing right there, unabridged, raw and in the moment. There was a distinct alchemy happening on that stage in Hollywood. I felt it."

To rework "Astral Weeks," Mr. Morrison added his signature stretching of songs in a manner unlike any before by creating new sections of songs live on stage. As producer of the record, Morrison insisted there be no post-production engineering. It is straight up raw from the Hollywood Bowl stage - pure resonant sound.

"These songs are timeless and as fresh today as the day they were written, actually even more so," Mr. Morrison added . "I was happy to perform them at the Hollywood Bowl and delighted to release a live album which really captures the essence of the original for today's audiences with every taste in music. It's got it all, jazz, blues, folk, classic. You name it."

Fans and critics present at the Hollywood Bowl those two nights grasped the momentous nature of the concerts. Rolling Stone Magazine noted that Mr. Morrison "took charge of the music with the authority that comes with four decades of performing. It seemed that once he breathed in the perfume of these eight songs, he didn't want them to end - and looking at the enraptured crowd, he wasn't the only one." Added the Los Angeles Times, "Transcendence is what Morrison has been after with his music from the beginning... the wondrous youthful timbre of his voice... has evolved over the years into a richer, fuller instrument, with every bit of its remarkable elasticity very much intact."

Unbeknownst to Mr. Morrison at the time he planned the Hollywood Bowl shows, the concerts coincided exactly with the 40th anniversary of the release of "Astral Weeks." He took it as a sign this project was destined to be. Universally regarded as one of the most important albums in pop music history, "Astral Weeks" broke new ground with its experimental free-flowing arrangements and deeply reflective songs. Mr. Morrison's motivation to rework the music was to get back to his original signature sound: a blend of jazz, blues, classical and folk unique to Van Morrison.

Both Bowl shows were filmed in high-definition, and will later be available as a commercial DVD concert film. Due to overwhelming demand, Mr. Morrison will perform "Astral Weeks" again, in show at the Theater at New York's Madison Square Garden, on Friday and Saturday, Feb. 27 & 28. Accompanied by two different bands, Mr. Morrison will play two sets per show: one of "Astral Weeks" cover to cover, the other of rarely played Van Morrison classics. He may even pull out rare gems "TB Sheets," "Mystic Eyes," "Who Drove the Red Sports Car" and "Baby Please Don't Go."

A Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Mr. Morrison is responsible for some of the greatest recordings of the last fifty years. A Belfast native of proud Scottish heritage, he grew up listening to American music with his parents, his favorites artists being greats like Ledbelly, Mahalia Jackson, Lightnin' Hopkins and other legends of blues and soul. With more than 200 of his compositions featured in major motion pictures over the years, Mr. Morrison was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame by the late Ray Charles in June 2003.

As Mr. Morrison said, "I'm not just a singer. I am a soul singer." His "Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl" proves exactly that, over and over again.

Much-loved singer-songwriter singles out second-hand store unnecessarily - and possibly illegally, too.

By Fred Mills

Brooklyn-based Singer-songwriter John Wesley Harding is normally the model of decorum, good taste and, last but certainly not least, memorable tuneage. He's a pretty fine author, too. In fact, his forthcoming album Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, due March 17, is among BLURT's "Most Anticipated" releases for the first quarter (and is featured in our Most Anticipated '09 feature currently on our site). The man's got the gift, bottom line.

But he may have crossed a line back in December when he marched into a used CD store and demanded that they hand over an advance promotional copy of WWCAWWD. According to a post last month at Harding's MySpace blog, he spotted a copy of his own CD in the bins - clearly the result of someone unloading their promo at the store and the store subsequently putting it back up for resale. Here's how Harding explained matters in his blog:

"In a second hand CD store the day before yesterday, I found the first secondhand copy of "Who was Changed and Who was Dead"! This was quite bizarre as you can imagine. It wasn't the nice two CD set with the live album that most of you now own, but the single CD copy, with a Not For Sale sign, that went out to press about three days previously. (Even though it doesn't come out until March, it's still high time to get it out to the press.) This means that some journalist barely gave this a once over before taking it to his or her local secondhand store in order to get the 50 cent value of the CD. The owner of the CD store (not his fault, nice guy etc) then went to the trouble of shrink-wrapping the CD and putting a $10.99 sticker on it: "hey," he said, quite reasonably, "at least I put it in the new CDs rather than the secondhand." He also pointed out that this was the only way he could keep his edge over new record stores.

"So, what was I to do? Well, I announced myself in a friendly way as the copyright holder, and then, as is my legal right since the CD is not for sale for three months, removed the CD from his store. I felt a little bad about this so I also bought the new Neil Young reissue CD and a Fleetwood Mac Box Set that I didn't honestly want. He then thanked me for being a good sport about it, and I went on my way.

"And that is how I became the first person in America to leave a record store with a copy of Who was Changed and Who was Dead by John Wesley Harding. It sits next to me right now with its sticker and shrink-wrap."

This bears a slightly closer look.

On the one hand, there's no question that artists have the right to be angered when they see their records in used stores, particularly if they are promos from which no income (either via eventual royalties or a direct sale) is generated for them. (As a writer, if I wrote a book, passed out copies of it, and then learned that a recipient cashed his copy in, I'd be ticked off.) However, unless an artist can honestly say that he or she has never bought a used CD - or, for that matter, never taken a load of CDs down to the record store and sold them in order to pay the rent, get their gear out of hock or just be able to eat - then it's hypocritical to outwardly express that anger.

ATTENTION MUSICIANS: this is part of the cost of doing business in the music world, one of the byproducts of promoting your career and your records. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous at the very least. So just grit your teeth, grin and fucking bear it. If you don't want to get your music into the hands of the media, then do what Steve Albini and Will Oldham do - don't allow promotional copies of your records to be distributed.

For Harding to come into a store and insist that a store owner who purchased said CD in good faith as part of his daily business routine hand it over on the basis of Harding being "the copyright holder," well, that is an act of hubris on the highest order - some seriously large huevos being waved around. Harding's entire attitude, as expressed in the blog posting, suggests someone working up, after the fact, a head of indignant woe-is-the-beleaguered-artist steam, but actually he's just gloating to his legions of MySpace friends about how he scored some vague moral/ethical points, and how cool is that?

His action certainly had no legal basis, that's for sure. Allow us to direct your attention, once more, to the federal court case earlier this year in which a federal judge "shot down bogus copyright infringement allegations from Universal Music Group (UMG), affirming an eBay seller's right to resell promotional CDs that he buys from secondhand stores." In a June 11 article posted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation detailing how the judge's ruling "affirms [the] right to resell promo CDs," the notion of the First Sale Doctrine was revisited - in a nutshell, the federal courts have affirmed that "once the copyright owner sells or gives away a copy of a CD, DVD, or book, the recipient is entitled to resell that copy without further permission."

Harding, or one of his representatives, gave away a copy of the new CD, most likely to a journalist. Although it could have also been to one of Harding's neighbors, a friend, a former lover, his probation officer, the doorman at his apartment building, who knows? It doesn't matter who it was. The recipient, according to the federal courts, had the right to do whatever the hell he wanted with it - review it, give it to a fellow Harding fan, take a shit on it and frisbee it out the window, even, oh yeah, trade it in at a used record store. It would be a stroke of wonderful irony if in fact it was a journalist, one who sat down to pen a positive review of it prior to selling the disc. If that happened, could a claim be mounted that, in effect, Harding had "bought" a good review for his new record, since his blood, sweat and tears essentially is what netted the writer his dough down at the record store? Is 50 cents the going rate for a "good review" nowadays?

Sarcasm aside, in case some of you haven't noticed, the economy sucks right now and a lot of writers are struggling just as hard as musicians to get by, so sometimes we tote a load of CDs down to the record store in order to make rent, get our bikes out of hock or even just be able to eat. Guess what: we have the legal right to do so, just like we have the right to sell our old furniture, clothing and dinner ware at a Saturday morning yard sale.

Sorry Wes, but you were wrong. You fucked up.

Just to bring the matter back down earth: Harding indicates that the store owner was cool about it all. Well, why not? He was probably embarrassed and looking for the quickest way out of an awkward situation! It should be noted that the owner also crossed a line of sorts when he placed the promo CD in the new bins instead of the used bins, as that was essentially misrepresenting his merchandise to the buying public. Pricing it at $10.99 seems pretty shitty too. Used CDs should be in the $5.99 to $7.99 range, max, so the store owner isn't really all that good a sport when you think about it. If anyone reading this can figure out what Brooklyn store Harding is talking about, you should let the owner know he's ripping folks off. But I digress... None of this really changes the basic facts of this story.

Full disclosure: I worked for ten years in a new/used record store, and I think I can say in all honesty that if a musician had come in and a similar scenario unfolded, particularly if the musician was civil about things, I'd hand over the disc in question. (There was one instance when a touring musician passing through town was shopping in our store and he spotted a live bootleg by his band; when he brought it up to the counter and casually asked about the disc - it was used, by the way, part of a collection that had been sold to the store - we let him have it, no hassles, and all was cool.) Of course, if he was a dick about it and tried to make some bogus copyright claim, assuming I was already aware of any relevant court case ruling such as the UMG one, I'd probably challenge him on the matter. And if he attempted to remove the CD from my store I'd have him arrested.

Now THAT would make for some interesting news headlines: "Much-loved singer songwriter busted for shoplifting."

[Photo Credit: P. Matsos]

UPDATE:

A member of BLURT's crack legal team (okay, so it's actually just a fellow writer who finds all this copyright stuff fascinating, but he's pretty damn smart, so we listen to him), wrote in to point out that "although the courts have consistently ruled that the First Sale Doctrine allows for the sale of promotional CDs and DVD (and books, too), the ‘Family Entertainment And Copyright Act' that was passed by Congress in 2005 suggests otherwise. Most interpretations of the law feel that any ‘unauthorized' pre-release distribution of a commercial entertainment product (music or movie), either physically or digitally, is a violation of the law and subject to fines and/or jail time."

Fair enough. According to the fairly well-researched Wikipedia entry (yeah, I know... grain of salt and all that) on The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005, the legislation was aimed specifically at the piracy of movies and software - for example, filming a movie in a theater and then distributing that film-of-the-film, or distributing movies/DVDs/software before they become publicly available. If one takes the view that the Harding CD is "software" (would it also be retroactively assigned "software" status if the offending item were an LP or an 8-track tape, however?), and that taking a promotional CD that was circulated to the press and making it available prior to the official street date does in fact meet the above criteria, well... maybe. Only a judge could decide that.

There's an interesting article worth reading about a case from 2006 involving two guys who uploaded to a fan site Ryan Adams songs prior to the official release of Jacksonville City Nights. Essentially, the young men were charged with piracy under a section of the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act. More recently a guy was arrested by the feds after he uploaded some then-unreleased Guns N' Roses songs and streamed them from his website. So one does wonder what would happen if, say, instead of Harding it had been a major label attorney walking into the Brooklyn store and spotting a pre-release CD from one of his label's clients.

But again, the Act appears to be more concerned with duplication and/or distribution - and the Wikipedia entry addresses that too, saying, "anyone who makes a work that the copyright owner expects to distribute commercially, but is not yet distributed, shall be punished if the work is ‘made available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution'."

In any event, the UMG court case referenced above dealt with matters purely on First Sale Doctrine terms and did not appear to touch at all upon any issues related to the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act. I still believe that the Harding scenario falls into the former, and not the latter, territory. There's a big difference between uploading copyrighted content to the Internet for millions to access, and selling a single CD to a used record store.

Interestingly, if you look at his website and his MySpace page, it appears Harding was selling a 2-CD limited edition version of the new album (along with a digital download of it) via his website roughly around the same time as the incident at the Brooklyn record store. If any finished copies, physical or digital, were already in the hands of his fans at that point, that would completely negate the whole no-selling-before-street-date argument, because in effect, the album had already streeted, March 17 or no March 17.

 Regardless, it's Harding's smug, holier than thou tone in his original blog posting that's probably the biggest offense here. As my writer friend puts it, "Harding blew a golden opportunity -- he should have autographed the damn CD for the store."

By Blurt Staff

BONNAROO 365, a program by which fans can relive the Bonnaroo festival experience year round (minus the mud, mosquitos and heat stroke), is about to debut this week, on Jan. 11.  Select performances will be streamed at no charge on bonnaroo.com periodically throughout the year.  All performance footage will be taken directly from the festival's exclusive master tapes while the audio will be remixed from the festival's pristine soundboard recordings.

The debut installment features The Raconteurs, whose furious and blistering Friday afternoon set is viewed as among the best of the 2008 event.  Four of the songs will be available as free audio downloads - one will be available to everyone, while the other three can be downloaded by Bonnaroo Community members only (membership sign-up is free). The songs that will be available are: "Consoler Of The Lonely," "Old Enough," "Blue Veins" and "Top Yourself." To coincide with the launch, select radio stations across the country will broadcast the entire set on Sunday, January 11th 2009.  A full list of stations is below.

The Raconteurs arrived in Manchester, TN, that hot June day on the heels of their Grammy-nominated  (best rock album and best engineered) second record Consolers of the Lonely.  As proven on tape, The Raconteurs that showed up in Manchester, TN, on June 13th, 2008, were feeling good, loose and ready to dive headfirst into Bonnaroo.  On January 11th the complete performance will be available to relive or experience for the first time at www.Bonnaroo.com.

Bonnaroo will take place June 11 - 14, 2009 on the same beautiful, 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee, 60 miles southeast of Nashville. The initial artist lineup for this year's festival will be announced on February 3rd.

An audio track from the Raconteurs performance can now be streamed at  http://bonnaroo.com/news/2009/01/07/bonnaroo-introduces-bonnaroo-365.aspx

The full set list is below:

Consoler of the Lonely
Hold Up
The Switch and the Spur
You Don't Understand Me
Top Yourself
Old Enough
Store Bought Bones
Steady, As She Goes
Rich Kid Blues
Blue Veins
------------
Many Shades of Black
Level
Salute Your Solution
Broken Boy Soldier
Carolina Drama

The following radio stations will be broadcasting the set on January 11, 2009:

KUFO-FM (Portland, OR)
WXRT-FM (Chicago, IL)
WZGC-FM (Atlanta, GA)
WKRK-FM (Cleveland, OH)
WPBZ-FM (West Palm Beach, FL)
WRXP-FM (New York, NY)

Building on success of JapanPopShow

By Blurt Staff

After a successful set of performances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music-hosted Red Hot + Rio 2: The Next Generation of Samba Soul, São Paulo's Curumin is back in the US for a full coast-to-coast tour. Starting in San Diego and continuing through to New York (with special guests Money Mark, Blackalicious, Lateef, and Tommy Guerrero at a few key shows), the drummer/singer/cavaquinho-player will be mixing up samba, soul, psychedelic funk, and hip-hop.

A review of Curumin's latest album, JapanPopShow (Quannum Projects) is in the current, Dec-Jan, issue of the BLURT digital magazine, reading in part, "Curumin's mixture of samba, reggae, funk, rock, and jazz does share some traits with hip-hop at large, it is really closer to the specific brand of rap music that is Quannum's bread and butter. This means that breakbeats are softened with live instrumentation, and when rhymes do surface in the mix, they are more thoughtful than thuggish."

Tour Dates:

Jan 20 San Diego, CA @ The Loft

Jan 21 Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo (w/special guest Money Mark)

Jan 22 San Francisco, CA @ Slim's (w/special guests Tommy Guerrero, Blackalicious and Money Mark)

Jan 24 Seattle, WA @ Nectar

Jan 26 Cedar Rapids, IA @ Legion Arts

Jan 27 Minneapolis, MN @ Cedar

Jan 28 Chicago, IL @ Old Town School Jan 29 Milwaukee, WI @ Stonefly Brewery Jan 30 New York, NY @ Mercury Lounge (w/special guest Money Mark, and opening set by Chin Chin)

The song "Caixa Preta" (off JapanPopShow), was recently featured on RCRD LBL. You can download it here:

http://www.worlds-fair.net/shared/Label_Group/Quannum/Curumin/Caixa_Preta.mp3

[Photo Credit: Ze Gabriel]

Cult hero makes rare (only) Southern appearance in Asheville, NC.

By Fred Mills

Pretty much anyone with their ear even just partly to the ground in 2008 caught a bit of the Rodriguez buzz - Sixto Rodriguez, whose 1970 album Cold Fact, long a gem for crate-diggers and collectors of obscure psych/soul/folkrock, was reissued by Light In The Attic. NPR aired an in-depth profile of the man back in the fall, while among the many critical kudos he garnered, your friendly neighborhood BLURT named the album one of our top archival releases for '08, just behind Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue, if you can dig that.

Our previous coverage of Rodriguez includes the CD review itself and details on a handful of live performances, including a show in NYC in September and a radio station session in Detroit in October. Since then there have also been a couple of West Coast gigs, including one in San Francisco on Nov. 23 featuring a 10-piece backing band composed of members of The Fresh & Onlys. Reviewing it for Jambase.com, Jim Welte observed that while Rodriguez' voice does betray some of the vicissitudes of age and that the man's stage presence "was as awkward as you'd expect from someone who hasn't spent much time on a stage in recent years," the experience was still a great one featuring songs "so good and so emblematic of their era." Concluded Welte, "Rodriguez would be hard-pressed to capitalize on the renewed interest in his music with new albums, but he's earned the right to keep showing off the two he's already made."

So this weekend, Saturday 10^th, Rodriguez appears in Asheville, NC, at music venue the Grey Eagle. It's a push on the part of local indie store Harvest Records to bring the man to a wider audience, and for the event a local supergroup of sorts, fronted by Greg Cartwright (Reigning Sound mainman, natch), will be backing Rodriguez. Certainly the pick-up nature of the backing band may have had something to do with the man's perceived awkwardness in San Francisco so there's no predicting how things will go down in Asheville - but I have it on good authority that the band has been tirelessly rehearsing 15 songs and has ‘em down solid, so my gut feeling is that a good time is guaranteed for all.

It's not every day you get to see a legend in the flesh.

Details: The Grey Eagle www.thegreyeagle.com/

Harvest Records: www.harvest-records.com/

Rodriguez on the web: www.sugarman.org/

Early dates in Jan. followed by tour in March.

By Blurt Staff

Songbird Eleni Mandell, whose forthcoming album Artificial Fire is one of BLURT's "Most Anticipated Releases" for the first quarter of 2009 (see the feature HERE), is billed, quite accurately, as "a supremely talented and critically acclaimed songwriter with a singular gift for writing wry, literate songs that synthesize jazz, country, folk, blues, rock and pop."  Artificial Fire builds on her 2007 breakthrough, Miracle of Five, adding a more direct, full-band sound to Mandell's sharp-edged tales of romance, lust and love.

Miracle Of Five ended up on a slew of critics "Best of 2007" lists, including Paste, Harp, ABC News and the Los Angeles Times.  LA CityBeat described Mandell's music as "a kind of pop-out-of-time, often dark yet somehow comforting, and as unforgettable as a warm winter day."  In an "A-" review of ‘Miracle Of Five,' Entertainment Weekly said Mandell's lyrics explore "the elusive promise of romance with wry wit and moony wistfulness." The New Yorker says "Mandell was weaned on artists like Tom Waits and X, and her dark and sexy songs have been compared to those of everyone from Chan Marshall to Patsy Cline. She has a sometimes smoky, sometimes wistful delivery, and, more often than not, her songs take on love from some new perspective."

Based in Los Angeles, Mandell is a leading light in the city's Silver Lake music scene, and is part of The Living Sisters, a local "supergroup" also featuring Becky Stark (Lavender Diamond) and Inara George (The Bird and the Bee). All the songs on Artificial Fire were written by Mandell, and arranged, recorded and produced with her longtime band (Drake on guitar, Ryan Feves on bass and Kevin Fitzgerald on drums.), allowing the group's cohesiveness and musical acumen to shape the tracks while Mandell's articulate lyrics hold centerstage. Guests include DJ Bonebrake (X, The Knitters), fellow Living Sister Inara George, and Silver Lake music scene regulars Jason Borger, Danny T. Levin and Charlie Wadhams.  The album was produced by Mandell, Drake, Feves, Fitzgerald and Dave Trumfio.

Check the MP3 of "Artificial Fire" and the stream of "Right Side":

"Artificial Fire" (MP3)
"Right Side" (audio stream)

Tour Dates:

January 16     Los Angeles         Hotel Café (8 PM)   

January 30     Los Angeles         Hotel Café (8 PM)
March 5          New York City      Joe's Pub
March 19        San Francisco      Cafe Du Nord
March 22        Seattle, WA         Triple Door
March 26        Chicago, IL          Schuba's
March 27        Minneapolis, MN   The Cedar
March 28        Kansas City, MO    Davey's Uptown

Compiled by Blurt Staff

206 digital, satellite and hi-def channels and nothin' on? Not likely. Here are BLURT's top music television picks of the day. The time is followed by the network/cable/satellite channel, then the name of the program and/or featured artist(s). All times are EST.

TIME (EST) / CHANNEL / PROGRAM / ARTIST(S)

Tuesday, January 6:

6:00 & 10:30 Rave HD: Beautiful Noise: Sloan

10:00 HBO Comedy: David Cross - The Pride Is Back

11:30 CBS David Letterman: Erin McCarley

11:35  NBC Jay Leno: Pussycat Dolls

12:05 ABC Jimmy Kimmel: Kathy Griffin, Mike Birbiglia

12:35 NBC Conan O'Brien: Bang Camaro

1:30 VH1: Rock Docs: NWA The World's Most Dangerous Group

1:35 NBC: Carson Daly: Quincy Jones, Little Joy

Wednesday, January 7:

11:00 Rave HD: Beautiful Noise: Black Angels

7:00 Rave HD: Elvis Costello Live in Montreal

9:00 Sundance: Spectacle: Elvis Costello w/The Police

11:30 CBS David Letterman: Okkervil River

12:05 ABC Jimmy Kimmel: Gabe Dixon Band

12:35 Craig Ferguson: William Shatner

1:45 Sundance: Rolling Stones/Brian Jones -  Stoned