I missed this one, due to reviewing the Derek Trucks Band show. Can't complain! But I'd like to hear how it went. Drop in with comments: How many people showed? How was the band? And whatever else you want to say.
Randazzo and her group, including bassist/arranger David Picchi, play 9 p.m. Nov. 8 at Kirk Avenue Music. If you like jazzy soul and funk, this is your ticket. Go here to read a Q&A I did with her before she played Blues BBQ a little while back.
And while I'm at it, here's the link to the piece we did on Kathy Mattea. I couldn't make the show, but I heard it was the quality. I should've posted this link right after the piece ran, but I don't have it together sometimes.
From a news release forwarded to me too late to do anything substantial with it (for shame, Ferrum PR department!)
>Virginia Rockabilly Music One of the Main Features at Ferrum College’s 35th Blue Ridge Folklife Festival
>The beat of the 50’s returns to the Blue Ridge with a reunion of the Virginia rockabilly band, The Dazzlers, at the 35th Blue Ridge Folklife Festival, Saturday, October 25, 2008. Held on the campus of Ferrum College, the Blue Ridge Folklife Festival is a festival like none other. Admission is $10 for adults and $5 for children and senior citizens. Rain or shine, the festival gates open at 10 a.m., and activities run through 5 p.m. Parking is free.
I woke up this morning, read my Derek Trucks Band review, and nearly got sick. Had to post a correction:
Derek Trucks, who performed Friday night at Jefferson Center, had a glass slide on his left hand. That fact was incorrect in Saturday’s review of the show.
Check out the print review here | Advance story
Trucks and his Gibson SG guitar are practically synonymous. But on Friday night, he started with an ancient Silvertone, and in the mid-set, sit-down portion of the show, he used an old Danelectro. For encore song "Freddie's Dead," he played a gold-top Gibson Les Paul. Nice variety of tones, and the old mail-order axes were really dirty-sounding -- in a good way.
Hull and her band, Highway 111, play Jefferson Center on Sunday. Look for more on Hull in Saturday's Extra section.
From the library's emerging artists guru, River Laker:
>Roanoke, VA - The Wright Kids are performing at Roanoke Main Library, Veteran's Day, Tuesday, November 11, 6-8 pm.
>They will be playing live, hosting a Q&A and signing autographs.
>Cd's will be available and footage from their America's Got Talent participation shown.
>Details, along with the cutest ads ever will be coming soon!
>Phone 540-853-1057 for more information.
>http://thewrightkids.com/
We submitted questions to the band, Here Come The Mummies, who are playing a benefit show tonight at Awful Arthur's, Towers Shopping Center. Answers were submitted by a friend of the band. His name is Baron Von Doompfwagen. He might be a Vampire.
Here's the column: http://www.roanoke.com/extra/wb/181500. (Sound clips are up now.)
Check out the new record label, and tell me what you think about the concept and the music.
Smither is at least 60 -- according to his Web site, he was a contributing author to the book "Sixty Things to do When You Turn Sixty" -- and he's put that experience into a lot of interesting music.
He drew lots of laughter from several women at least 25 years younger as he sang his "Winsome Smile", with such lyrics as, "Time will wound all heels, and it ain't pretty/With any luck at all, she'll find some dope that you can pity."
They weren't laughing a couple of songs later as he warned, "I'll drive you crazy, make you wonder who you are, drive nails in your coffin, but I don't often let it get that far." The song still got big applause, though. Who doesn't appreciate a guy who is that honest about himself?
Smither's fingerpicking owes a lot to Mississippi John Hurt, but in both standard and open tunings, he takes the idiom well beyond three chords, as he showed with a recent song, "Leave the Light On." And for his encore, he tore through Blind Willie McTell's "Statesboro Blues," Delta-style.
But the highlight of the night, at least for me, was his slowed-down, 6/8 version of the oft-covered "Sittin' On Top of the World." Instead of the joyous, uptempo, goodbye reading that most performers give it, he sang it like a failed lie. His voice, strong and resonant despite all the damage he's done to it, complemented the open-stringed arrangement, seemingly revealing the soul of a guy who disappeared for a dozen years inside an ocean of alcohol.
