My son and I are once again at the fabulous Forecastle music festival in downtown Louisville on the banks of the Ohio River. Here is the first installment of my daily photo journal. We arrived earlier than expected and got to hear a few songs from Roadkill Ghost Choir. All I have to say about […]
I can’t imagine there being a better series of home shows than the ones at Live @ Drew’s. Since February 1997, Drew’s house on the lake near the NJ/NY border has hosted 146 shows in its spacious living room overlooking the water. More than just shows, these events offer serious music lovers a chance to […]
Hot off the press, here is my comment that appeared today on page three of the Nashville Scene. It pretty much speaks for itself although I will have more to say in my forthcoming review of the Americanarama show. For more on Music City’s real music venues, have a look here at a page I […]
There is currently a handful of critically-acclaimed but commercially has-been artists that still make a decent living gigging in the New York/New Jersey area. Artists like Garland Jeffreys, Willie Nile, and Southside Johnny continually play the area’s many small theaters, clubs, and house concerts while seldom, if ever, venturing outside this proximity. Another artist that […]
Lower Manhattan’s City Winery is an exquisite, albeit expensive, music venue that carries on in the tradition of Greenwich Village’s historic Bottom Line. Over the years, it has become a premier spot to enjoy a great meal and to comfortably listen to a wide assortment of artists, many of whom were around back in the […]
It’s hard to believe that it has been 38-years since I first saw Daryl Hall and John Oates perform. Well before their MTV-fueled era of superstardom, they were well known locally thanks to free-form radio. That first time they were merely an opening act for Leo Sayer at New York City’s intimate Bottom Line. I […]
Nashville is a great town for free outdoor concerts, and the new East Side Hootenanny event is the latest to join the mix. I was quite excited to see the recent show there by Nashville’s own, Those Darlins. It turned out to be a lovely spring day, and I arrived late afternoon to an East […]
I am usually willing to see a new artist in concert even though I may be more familiar with their name than their music. These days thanks to Spotify, I can first sample their completed works without even having to open my wallet. Such was the case recently for the Ryman show by British electronic […]
Even though they had already played the Bridgestone Arena to a packed house back in October 2011, it is still quite surprising to me that North Carolina’s Avett Brothers have a big enough local fan base to play a venue this size. The sold-out audience of about 15,000 fans filled the place. (The upper nose-bleed […]
Hearing 40-year old songs performed from the Ryman stage is not in itself unusual. However, hearing songs that have been pretty much kept from American audiences for that long is another story. Such a story is the tale of Sixto Rodriguez. His tale was recently brought to light in the brilliant, 2012 Academy Award winning […]
Music City Mike 