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Playlist: Southwest Stages's Portfolio

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An Evening with Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers

From Southwest Stages | Part of the Southwest Stages series | 59:00

An hour of music and interviews with Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers recorded live at the Rialto Theater in Tucson Arizona in 2006

Roger_clyne_small An hour of music and interviews with Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers recorded live at the Rialto Theater in Tucson Arizona in 2006. This program was first broadcast during Southwest Stages fourth year of programming in early 2008.

An Evening with Little Feat Vol-1

From Southwest Stages | Part of the Southwest Stages series | 58:25

An hour of Little Feat music recorded live at the Taos Solar Music festival, in Taos NM in 2001.

Fred-shaun-_-paul-_cape-2-2_small_small An hour of classic Little Feat music (including a 40 min version of Dixie Chicken) recorded live at the Taos Solar Music festival, in Taos NM in 2001. The Taos Solar Music Festival is held in Kit Carson Park in the heart of Taos NM. This program first aired in Southwest Stages 4th year of programming in the Fall of 2007

An Evening with Joe King Carrasco

From Southwest Stages | Part of the Southwest Stages series | 58:59

An hour of music and interviews with Joe King Carrasco recorded live at the El Rey Theater in Albuquerque, NM in 2007.

Joe_king-3_small An hour of music and interviews with "The King of Tex-Mex Rock & Roll" Joe King Carrasco recorded live at the El Rey Theater in Albuquerque, NM in the Fall of 2007. This program was first broadcast during Southwest Stages fourth year of programming in early 2008.
Since the early 1980's "Joe King Carrasco" has been the toast of Texas as the crown regent of the "nuevo wavo" crowd. In 1978 he released an LP titled Tex-Mex Rock & Roll with his band El Molino. Somehow this record made its way to England and was re-released by Big Beat Records. Elvis Costello remarked in the press that it was "better than the Police".
In 1980 Joe and his new band, The Crowns, released their first single, Party Weekend, and the label chase began.The band became one of the first American groups signed to England's legendary Stiff Records. During this time Joe toured extensively throughout Europe, Central America, Bolivia and Columbia as well as across the USA and Canada, consistently delivering high energy performances where dancing was numero uno priority.
Rounding out his assault on the International music scene with an in-depth interview in Rolling Stone Magazine and an appearance performing his music on Saturday Night Live. His song Party Weekend which is still known as the quintessential party anthem, was re-released by MTV as Party Christmas, making Joe King Carrasco a household name to MTV viewers across the country.
Even with all this going on Joe knew he was ready to take his music to a new level. It was on the Stiff Records, Sons of Stiff Tour, while traveling with a British-born Jamaican band called The Equators, that Joe picked up much of his reggae influence. After returning from a very successfull year on the road, he put this experience to work and recorded the reggae flavored song "Don't Let a Woman (Make a Fool Out of You)" on his album Synapse Gap for MCA Records where he had the King of pop, Michael Jackson, singing background harmonies.
Joe's music is enhanced with an even greater Latin influence after living and studying in Nicaragua in the mid 1980's. His songs dealt with the unjust political situation of that period in Central America, and the resulting albums were; "Bordertown", "Bandido Rock" (off of which the song "Pachucco Hop" was recorded by the French group Mano Negra on thier first platinum selling CD), "Royal Loyal & Live" (with the only live recording of Party Weekend), and his latest "Dia De Los Muertos".
Several years ago, His Majesty took a few left turns at Nogales and wound up playing with his band at a bar called Pancho y Lefty's in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. There, the Tex-Mex fell into a slow cool cumbia/reggae groove. This style seemed to be the musical answer to what Joe had been searching for from the Mayan pyramids to the shores of Lake Titicaca. This mystical conbination of Latino and Caribbean, with a little bit of Sam The Sham thrown in for a spicy flavor, has evolved into a style Joe has termed "tequila reggae".
In 1995 MCA Records released a compilation CD set of Joe's music, though this set merely scratches the surface of this seasoned songwriter's catalogue. In early 1996 joes' song Tell Me was recorded by The Texas Tornados, and sung by Freddy Fender, on their latest CD. He also plays guitar on the song A Little Bit is Better than Nada in Kevin Costners new movie The Tin Cup. In 1999 Joe released his album Hot Sun which has receieved lots of air play and promises to be a must have for cellectors of Joe King's music. Four of the thirteen songs on this CD were placed in the soundtrack for the movie Borderland . Several more from this recording session are being looked at and are expected to be placed in other movie soundtracks in the year 2000. Hot Sun also marks the first project co-produced by Joe and his long time live audio engineer and office manager Bruce Warren.
For many years, Joe has donated his time and music to make P.S.A.'s for the Tx. Parks & Wildlife Dept., helping to spread the word about keeping our beaches clean. In 1978 Joe's father was killed by a drunk driver. So he welcomed the opportunity to work with and support Tx.'s S.O.B.E.R. program, educating people about the pitfalls of driving while intoxicated. With thousands of live performances under his belt, a dozen albums to his credit, and fans circling the globe, it's little wonder Joe King Carrasco is still the ..1 party act in music circles around the country.

An Evening with Dave Alvin & The Guilty Men

From Southwest Stages | 58:29

An hour of Music & Interviews with Dave Alvin and The Guilty Men, recorded live at the 2006 Thirsty Ear Festival in Santa Fe, NM.

Dave_bw_2_small The Thirsty Ear Festival is held at the Eaves Movie Ranch just south of Santa Fe, NM. This program features live music and an interview with Dave Alvin by Southwest Stages guest host Jerome "Putney" Thomas. This program first aired on Southwest Stages 3rd year of programming in the spring of 2007.
The original Blasters consisted of Downey, California brothers Phil (vocals, harmonica, guitar) and Dave Alvin (guitar) along with bassist John Bazz and drummer Bill Bateman. The rare first album, American Music, was released in 1980, recorded in Rockin' Ronnie Weiser's garage. They signed with Slash records in 1981 and released The Blasters later that year. The Blasters featured Gene Taylor on the keys and the dynamic saxophone duo of Steve Berlin and Lee Allen.
1982 saw the release of a live album, Over There, recorded live in London. Non Fiction, their second Slash studio album was released in 1983 and Hard Line, their most recent studio release came out in 1985, without either Steve Berlin (now with Los Lobos) or Lee Allen. The Blasters also appeared in the movie, Streets of Fire and have two songs on the 1984 soundtrack: One Bad Stud and Blue Shadows.

Dave Alvin left in 1986, having already branched out in 1983 with The Knitters, featuring future fellow X members, John Doe and Excene Cervenka, and joined X only to leave a short time later to go solo, releasing his first solo album, Romeo's Escape in 1987. The album was produced by Steve Berlin (who also played a little saxophone on the album) and featured Jerry Angel on drums. David Hidalgo of Los Lobos also made a few guest appearances. The Knitters album, Poor Little Critter in the Road, featuring Dave, was released in 1985. He also appears on 1986's X's album, See How We Are. In 1984, he played on two tracks of Gun Club's album, Las Vegas Story.

The Blasters, meanwhile, filled Dave's slot with a long line of replacements: the late Hollywood Fats, aka Michael Mann (previously with the James Harmann Band), Billy Zoom (who, ironically had Dave's slot in X), Greg "Smokey" Hormel, James Intveld,and the current guitarist, Keith Wyatt. John Bazz is still with the band, but drummer Bill Bateman is not, having been replaced by David Carrol and currently, Jerry Angel.

In the late 1980s, the band took a hiatus while Phil pursued his math degree (MA) and some solo work. He has released two solo albums, the second of which includes some songs with the James Intveld lineup Blasters. The first, Unsung Stories, was released in 1986 on Slash and features Sun Ra and the Arkestra along with The Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Also helping out on a few tracks were Lee Allen and Gene Taylor whose own solo album,Handmade came out in 1986 on Spindletop Records and featured Bill Bateman on drums. He, Gene Taylor, now lives in Austin, Texas and is playing around with Kim Wilson of the Fabulous Thunderbirds.

Phil's second solo album (says Phil, "I made a mistake and needed some money, so I cut a new record...."), County Fair 2000 was released in 1994 on Hightone Records with a supporting cast of thousands. The two songs attributed to the Blasters, County Fair and Blue Line, include the then current lineup of the band with guitarist James Intveld and Jerry Angel on drums. Phil has also been playing with the Faultline Syncopators, creating a more jazzy sound as heard on a few tracks of County Fair 2000.

An Evening with the Be Good Tanyas

From Southwest Stages | Part of the Southwest Stages series | 58:29

An hour of Music & Interviews with The Be Good Tanyas, recorded live at the 2006 Thirsty Ear Festival in Santa Fe, NM.

Tanyas_small The Thirsty Ear Festival is held at the Eaves Movie Ranch just south of Santa Fe, NM. This program features live music and an interview with the members of The Be Good Tanyas by Southwest Stages' guest host Luther Watts. This program first aired on Southwest Stages 3rd year of programming in the spring of 2007.

THE EMERGENCE OF THE BE GOOD TANYAS
By Ken Cox
(December 2006)

Adherents to the postmodernist philosophy tend to embrace nostalgia. Video catalogs are filled with TV shows transferred to DVD – shows that were in existence as far back as the 1960's. Perhaps there's a tension that there is no absolute truth and everyone’s opinion should be equally embraced, which is relieved by going back to a time when problems were solved in twenty minutes plus commercials. The CD reissue market grows larger each day as a desire to hear music from a bygone era exists. Supposedly, times were better then – simpler, more rational, and less threatened by nuclear holocaust and local crime waves. The postmodernists need look no farther than Vancouver, British Columbia to get the purest modern/old-timey/roots music available. The Be Good Tanyas have let themselves shine out in the darkness of the music realm. What they sing about, oddly enough, makes America the pluralistic, multi-faceted, musically foundational country she is.

This trio – Sam (Samantha) Parton, Frazey Ford, and Trish Klein – got their name from a song by music pioneer Obo Martin ("Be Good Tanya") and now have three albums to their credit along with having a song or two in movies such as Because of Winn Dixie. There was, actually, an earlier Be Good Tanya – folk artist Jolie Holland, part songwriter, musician, and existentialist with a fiddle. But rambling blues bit her and bit her hard and she moved on to obtain solo status although she is featured with buddy Sam in the Tanyas’ newest album Hello Love on a Mississippi John Hurt tune, "Nobody Cares for Me."

Sam has the softest voice of the three – think of her as a feminine "Whispering" Bill Anderson. Her love for the blues comes striding forth in every project – from albums Blue Horse and Chinatown (not the town of the movie or the famous location, but a small spot near Tanyaland). Sexy and smart, she holds a copy of a D.H. Lawrence book on the back cover of an early project; literature by Zora Neale Hurston appeals to her as well. Her songwriting focuses on subjective realism – the death of a beloved dog, Sherpa; a lost lover who appears at a distance but never approaches her; a brother who comes back home to his sister’s home because his addiction has decimated him. On video that can be seen at The Be Good Tanya’s website on MySpace, the raven-haired beauty prances around boldly in contrast to her quiet demeanor. Sam is not content to be placed in a musical box of stereotypical behavior.

Frazey Ford is the maternal one in the group – literally having a baby during the group’s recent hiatus. She often sings lead on Tanya projects and sings passionately at that. Frazey is comfortable singing traditional blues and even old-fashioned gospel-type numbers: "Out of the Wilderness" and "I Wonder What They’re Doing in Heaven Today" from their Hello Love CD. In fact, Frazey wrote the title song and co-writes with her other two compatriots. She also can belt out "House of the Rising Sun" from the Chinatown CD. Frazey is the Mick Jagger of folk/roots/American music as her enunciation is often hard to decipher- usually, you can't figure out what Frazey is singing unless one has a lyric sheet nearby. She claims that it is a genetic occurrence – a trait existing in family members long before her. Therefore, the songstress is not oblivious to such an observation and freely admits her phrasing is not intended to be a role model for diction. Like Jagger, such enunciation does provide a mysterious quality to The Be Good Tanyas sound. Nonetheless, this powerhouse is a presence not to be dismissed.

Of the three, Trish Klein is the quietest, providing harmony vocals. However, she is the instrumentalist par excellence in the group. All three play but Trish is the foundation of the musical underbelly of the group’s sound. She is so proficient that she was a member of a group called Po' Girl and came out with a CD from that group during the hiatus while Frazey was giving birth and the members were scattered in various locations. Trish can play anything with a string attached to it and make beautiful music burst forth. The pony-tailed performer is integral to the trio but she is content with providing sound over which Sam and Frazey soar.

Some have called these three anachronistic – they dress in outfits that hearken back to the Roaring Twenties; their Chinatown cover is decorated with Tetley Tea graphics from long ago. Perhaps they are neoclassicists; perhaps they are pacifistic postmodernists; perhaps they just love the old songs and love writing and singing new songs that just sound old. It is amazing that a group from Vancouver, British Columbia shows Americans what their own music sounds like. The Be Good Tanyas make modernly nostalgic music; one listen to any of their projects (especially the Stephen Foster song "Oh, Susanna" on Blue Horse) and one is hooked permanently.

If someone's looking for traditional American sounds that return to the Jimmie Rodgers/Carter Family era, he or she can find those sounds in this trio. If a person longs for sparse instrumentation along with voices that do not bellow or boast, he or she can find musical peace with these three ladies. If a person wants to hear performers who embrace the folk, country, and blues roots of American music with a little touch of the contemporary, then The Be Good Tanyas are voices that come out of the wilderness and onto center stage, performing music that transcends their birthdates and transports their listeners from the past to the present and vice-versa. Sam, Frazey, and Trish are an open-ended musical time capsule in suspended animation – out of the wilderness and into CD speakers and human ears – awaiting a musical feast.

 



An Evening with Koko Taylor

From Southwest Stages | Part of the Southwest Stages series | 58:28

An hour of Music & Interviews with Koko Taylor, recorded live at the 2003 KBAC Summer Blast Music Festival in Santa Fe, NM.

Koko_portrait_4_small The KBAC Summer Blast Music Festival was held at the Paolo Solari Ampitheater in Santa Fe, NM in 2003. This program features live music and an interview withKoko Taylor by Southwest Stages guest host Ijah Umi and host John Strader. This program first aired on Southwest Stages 2rd year of programming in the summer of 2005.

“QUEEN OF THE BLUES” KOKO TAYLOR 1928 - 2009
from Alligator Records, posted: 06/03/2009

Grammy Award-winning blues legend Koko Taylor, 80, died on June 3, 2009 in her hometown of Chicago, IL, as a result of complications following her May 19 surgery to correct a gastrointestinal bleed. On May 7, 2009, the critically acclaimed Taylor, known worldwide as the “Queen of the Blues,” won her 29th Blues Music Award (for Traditional Female Blues Artist Of The Year), making her the recipient of more Blues Music Awards than any other artist. In 2004 she received the NEA National Heritage Fellowship Award, which is among the highest honors given to an American artist. Her most recent CD, 2007’s Old School, was nominated for a Grammy (eight of her nine Alligator albums were Grammy-nominated). She won a Grammy in 1984 for her guest appearance on the compilation album Blues Explosion on Atlantic.

Born Cora Walton on a sharecropper’s farm just outside Memphis, TN, on September 28, 1928, Koko, nicknamed for her love of chocolate, fell in love with music at an early age. Inspired by gospel music and WDIA blues disc jockeys B.B. King and Rufus Thomas, Taylor began belting the blues with her five brothers and sisters, accompanying themselves on their homemade instruments. In 1952, Taylor and her soon-to-be-husband, the late Robert “Pops” Taylor, traveled to Chicago with nothing but, in Koko’s words, “thirty-five cents and a box of Ritz Crackers.”

In Chicago, “Pops” worked for a packing company, and Koko cleaned houses. Together they frequented the city’s blues clubs nightly. Encouraged by her husband, Koko began to sit in with the city’s top blues bands, and soon she was in demand as a guest artist. One evening in 1962 Koko was approached by arranger/composer Willie Dixon. Overwhelmed by Koko’s performance, Dixon landed Koko a Chess Records recording contract, where he produced her several singles, two albums and penned her million-selling 1965 hit “Wang Dang Doodle,” which would become Taylor’s signature song.

After Chess Records was sold, Taylor found a home with the Chicago’s Alligator Records in 1975 and released the Grammy-nominated I Got What It Takes. She recorded eight more albums for Alligator between 1978 and 2007, received seven more Grammy nominations and made numerous guest appearances on various albums and tribute recordings. Koko appeared in the films Wild At Heart, Mercury Rising and Blues Brothers 2000. She performed on Late Night With David Letterman, Late Night With Conan O’Brien, CBS-TV’s This Morning, National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, CBS-TV’s Early Edition, and numerous regional television programs.

Over the course of her 40-plus-year career, Taylor received every award the blues world has to offer. On March 3, 1993, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley honored Taylor with a “Legend Of The Year” Award and declared “Koko Taylor Day” throughout Chicago. In 1997, she was inducted into the Blues Foundation’s Hall of Fame. A year later, Chicago Magazine named her “Chicagoan Of The Year” and, in 1999, Taylor received the Blues Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2009 Taylor performed in Washington, D.C. at The Kennedy Center Honors honoring Morgan Freeman.

Koko Taylor was one of very few women who found success in the male-dominated blues world. She took her music from the tiny clubs of Chicago’s South Side to concert halls and major festivals all over the world. She shared stages with every major blues star, including Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King, Junior Wells and Buddy Guy as well as rock icons Robert Plant and Jimmy Page.

Taylor’s final performance was on May 7, 2009 in Memphis at the Blues Music Awards, where she sang “Wang Dang Doodle” after receiving her award for Traditional Blues Female Artist Of The Year.

Survivors include Taylor’s husband Hays Harris, daughter Joyce Threatt, son-in-law Lee Threatt, grandchildren Lee, Jr. and Wendy, and three great-grandchildren.

Funeral arrangements will be announced.

###

Koko Taylor is the great female blues singer of her generation. Raw vocal power and blustery swagger.”
– Rolling Stone

Koko Taylor is a national treasure…she packs firepower a lot of youngsters only wish they had.
– Chicago Tribune

Koko Taylor is the blues…a growling goddess of down-and-dirty. Sheer, unstoppable shouting power, full steam ahead and damn the torpedoes. There are many kings of the blues but only one queen. Koko’s voice is capable of pinning a listener to the back wall.
– Boston Globe

Raucous, gritty, good-time blues…Taylor belts out blues in a gravel voice with ferocious intensity. Foot-stomping music that’ rough, raw and wonderfully upbeat.
-- People

Chicago’s best blues singer…she has fire in her lungs.
--Chicago Sun-Times

An Evening with Gillian Welsh

From Southwest Stages | Part of the Southwest Stages series | 58:28

An Evening of music with Female Folk Icon Gillian Welsh, recorded live at the 2004 Four Corners Folk Festival in Pagosa Springs, Colorado.

Gillian_2_test_small

Gillian Welch first appeared on the folk scene as a young singer/songwriter armed with a voice and sensibility far beyond her years, earning widespread acclaim for her deft, evocative resurrection of the musical styles most commonly associated with rural Appalachia of the early 20th century. Welch was born in 1967 in Manhattan and grew up in West Los Angeles, where her parents wrote material for the comedy program The Carol Burnett Show. It was as a child that she became fascinated by bluegrass and early country music, in particular the work of the Stanley Brothers, the Delmore Brothers, and the Carter Family.

In the early '90s, Welch attended the Berklee School of Music in Boston, MA, where she began performing her own material, as well as traditional country and bluegrass songs, as part of a duo with fellow student David Rawlings. After honing their skills in local open mike showcases, the duo began performing regularly throughout the country. While opening for Peter Rowan in Nashville, they were spotted by musician and producer T-Bone Burnett, who helped Welch and Rawlings land a record deal. With Burnett producing, they cut 1996's starkly beautiful Revival, an album split between bare-bones duo performances -- some even recorded in mono to capture a bygone sound -- and more full-bodied cuts featuring legendary session men like guitarist James Burton, upright bassist Roy Huskey, Jr., and drummers Buddy Harmon and Jim Keltner.

Her sophomore album, Hell Among the Yearlings, followed in 1998. The years following her second release found Welch involved in several soundtracks (O Brother Where Art Thou, Songcatcher), tribute albums (Songs of Dwight Yoakam: Will Sing for Food, Return of the Grievous Angel: A Tribute to Gram Parsons), and guest spots on other artists' albums (Ryan Adams' Heartbreaker, Mark Knopfler's Sailing to Philadelphia). Following the success of O Brother, Welch and Rawlings found themselves in the center of a traditional American folk revival and released their third album, Time (The Revelator), in mid-2001. Steady touring, guest appearances, and the release of a DVD (The Revelator Collection) kept the pair busy, but in 2003 they found time to record Soul Journey, their second release on their own Acony Records label. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide

An Evening with Guy Clark

From Southwest Stages | Part of the Southwest Stages series | 58:18

An Evening of Music and Interviews with Texas Legend Guy Clark, recorded live in May of 2005 at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, NM.

Guy_clark_pic_small

The Historic Lensic Theater is just off the plaza in the heart of Santa Fe, NM. This program features live music and an interview with Guy Clark by Southwest Stages guest host Luther Watts. This program first aired on Southwest Stages 4th year of programming in the Fall of 2007.

Songwriting legend Guy Clark doesn't merely compose songs; he projects images and characters with the kind of hands-on care and respect of a literary master.  Clark works slowly and with strict attention to detail, and has produced an impressive collection of timeless gems, leaving very little waste behind. The emotional level of his work, as well as the admiration and esteem of his peers, consistently transcends sales figures and musical genres. Using everyday language to construct extraordinary songs for more than 35 years, Clark continues to be the type of songwriter whom young artists study and seasoned writers, as well discriminating listeners, revere.

Born in Monahans, Texas, on November 6, 1941, Clark grew up in a home where the gift of a pocketknife was a rite of passage and poetry was read aloud. At age 16 he moved to Rockport, on the Texas Gulf Coast. Instructed by his father’s law partner, he learned to play on a $12 Mexican guitar and the first songs he learned were mostly in Spanish.

Moving to Houston, Clark began his career during the “folk scare” of the 1960s. Fascinated by Texas blues legends like Mance Lipscomb and Lightnin’ Hopkins and steeped in the cultural sauce piquante of his border state, he played traditional folk tunes on the same Austin-Houston club circuit as Townes Van Zandt and Jerry Jeff Walker.  “It was pretty ‘Bob Dylan’ in the beginning,” Clark said. “Nobody was really writing.” Eventually, Clark would draw on these roots to firebrand his own fiddle-friendly and bluesy folk music, see it embraced as country and emerge as a songwriting icon for connoisseurs of the art.

Moving to San Francisco in the late 1960s, as social unrest was erupting through racial and generational fissures, Clark worked briefly in a guitar shop, returned to Houston for a short time, and then moved to the Los Angeles area, where he found work building guitars in the Dopyera Brothers’ Dobro factory and signed a publishing agreement with RCA’s Sunbury Music before pulling up stakes and relocating to Nashville in 1971.

The following year, country-folk singer-songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker, then newly ensconced in Austin, released an eponymous album featuring the Clark composition “L.A. Freeway,” which became an FM radio hit. In 1973, Walker released Viva! Terlingua, recorded live in a Texas dance hall and including Clark’s ballad “Desperados Waiting for a Train.” As much as any others, these two Clark songs may arguably be said to have set the tone for a musical revolution that was first known as progressive country. By 1975, many of the revolutionaries would be defined as the Outlaws. Like the Bakersfield sound of the 1960s, the new sounds were a reaction to the formulaic rigidity and paternalism of Nashville's record producers and label executives. 

In this alternative musical world of the late 1960s, inspired by the storytelling poems of Robert Frost and Stephen Vincent Benet, Clark began to write what he knew “with a pencil and a big eraser.” “L. A. Freeway,” for example, blueprints his fish-out-of-water experience in Los Angeles. “Desperados Waiting for a Train” is based on his memory of an oilfield worker who was a resident of his grandmother’s hotel. Like almost all his songs, then and now, these two early masterpieces are expressions of personal memory and experience, further characterized by words that have a melody all their own.

Clark’s move to Music City, one of three cities where Sunbury had offices and where his pal Mickey Newbury would make him welcome, proved fortuitous. Clark and his wife, Susanna, would become the axis for a groundbreaking fraternity of singer-songwriters for whom Nashville felt like “Paris in the ‘20s.”   Among them were Newbury, Van Zandt, Rodney Crowell, Billy Joe Shaver, Steve Earle, Dave Loggins and David Allen Coe. Bonded by their egalitarianism, the troupe’s favored sidewalk café was the Clark’s dining room table, where they gathered frequently for “guitar pulls” and show-and-tell song swapping sessions, and where they celebrated their successes and facetiously threatened to kill whoever had presented the best new song. Susanna Clark, a talented painter, tossed her brushes aside for awhile, joined the invasion and began writing hit songs herself.  

In 1975, after using his big eraser on his first try at cutting an album, Clark made his recording debut on RCA Records with Old No. l, ten critically applauded originals built to last, including “L. A. Freeway,” “Desperados Waiting for a Train,” “Texas, l947,” “Instant Coffee Blues,” “Rita Ballou,” “She Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,”  “Let Him Roll,” “A Nickel for the Fiddler,” “That Old Time Feeling” and “Like a Coat From the Cold.” On the cover, the songwriter is pictured with his wife’s painting of his chambray “work shirt,” customary attire emblematic of his values. During the next 20 years, Clark would continue to record albums that worked like a stun gun on other artists in search of new songs.

An Evening with John Mayall

From Southwest Stages | Part of the Southwest Stages series | 58:24

An Hour of Music and Interviews with British Blues Legend John Mayall, recorded live in August of 2006 at the Telluride Jazz Celebration.

Mayall_small This program contains an hour of Blues Music and an Interview with British Blues Legend John Mayall by Southwest Stages' host John Strader. This performance was recorded live in August of 2006 at the Telluride Jazz Celebration, held annually in Telluride Colorado's beautiful Town Park. The Telluride Celebration is an annual event showcasing great Jazz along with other types of music for three days nestled in the high Rocky Mountains of southern Colorado.
John Mayall was born 29th of November 1933 in Macclesfield, an English town near the industrial hub of Manchester--a far cry at that time from the black American blues culture we are familiar with today. The eldest of three from humble working class origins, and in the shadow of WWII, this skinny English lad grew up listening to his guitarist father's extensive jazz record collection and felt drawn to the blues. Strongly influenced by such greats as Leadbelly, Albert Ammons, Pinetop Smith, and Eddie Lang, from the age of 13 he taught himself to play and develop his own style with the aid of a neighbor's piano, borrowed guitars, and secondhand harmonicas.

John Mayall's first brush with fame, however, was not for his music. As a teenager, he decided to move out of the house, and, showing the signature eccentricities and artistic qualities that have added to his legendary status, he moved into his backyard treehouse. This gained him notoriety enough to receive newspaper attention. Even more so, since, upon returning from a stint in Korea, he brought his first wife Pamela to live with him there.

From an art college training, to three years with the British Army in Korea, to a successful career in graphic design, his blues singing and playing took a back seat until he reached the age of 30. From 1956 until 1962, John was performing publicly on a part-time basis fronting The Powerhouse Four and, later on, The Blues Syndicate. It was then that Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated pioneered what was to become known as The British Blues Boom of the Late 60's. Alexis was quick to encourage and help John make his move to London where he soon secured enough club work to be able to turn professional under the name John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. After a couple of years and a constant turnover of musicians, he met his soulmate in Eric Clapton, who had quit the Yardbirds in favor of playing the blues. This historic union culminated in the first hit album for the Bluesbreakers and resulted in worldwide legendary status.

After Clapton and Jack Bruce left the band to form Cream, a succession of great musicians defined their artistic roots under John's leadership, and he became as well known for discovering new talent as for his hard-hitting interpretations of the fierce Chicago-style blues he'd grown up listening to. As sidemen left to form their own groups, others took their places. Peter Green, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood became Fleetwood Mac. Andy Fraser formed Free, and Mick Taylor joined the Rolling Stones. As Eric Clapton has stated, "John Mayall has actually run an incredibly great school for musicians."

In 1969, with his popularity blossoming in the USA, John caused somewhat of a stir with the release of a drummer less acoustic live album entitled "The Turning Point", from which his song "Room To Move" was destined to become a rock classic. He received a gold record for this album. Attracted by the West Coast climate and culture, John then made his permanent move from England to Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles and began forming bands with American musicians. Throughout the 70's, John became further revered for his many jazz/rock/blues innovations featuring such notable performers as Blue Mitchell, Red Holloway, Larry Taylor, and Harvey Mandel. He also backed blues greats John Lee Hooker, T-Bone Walker, and Sonny Boy Williamson on their first English club tours.

The year 1979 proved to be a pivotal, transitional, and climactic year for John Mayall, both personally and professionally. With the public climate being at an all-time low for blues music, Mayall struggled to keep his live and recording career afloat. Personally, however, he began the 20+year relationship with his current wife Maggie (Parker, née Mulacek), a singer/songwriter from Chicago who had been hired with Harvey Mandel's band as Mayall's backup. And extreme misfortune came his way when a brush fire destroyed his hand-crafted and legendary Laurel Canyon home, taking with it his scrupulously-kept diaries, his father's diaries, master recordings, extensive book & magazine collections, Mayall artwork, and much much more. Determined to rise from the ashes, Mayall persevered.

Motivated by nostalgia and fond memories, in 1982, John (together with Mick Taylor and John McVie) decided to re-form the original Bluesbreakers for a couple of tours and a video concert film entitled Blues Alive, which featured Albert King, Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, Etta James, and Sippie Wallace and others. A whole new generation of followers could get a taste of how it all sounded live two decades before at the birth of the British Blues explosion. By the time Mick and John had returned to their respective careers, public reaction had convinced Mayall that he should return to his driving blues roots. As John McVie returned to Fleetwood Mac and Mick resumed his solo career, Mayall returned to Los Angeles to select his choices for a new incarnation of the Bluesbreakers. Officially launched in 1984, it included future stars in their own right, guitarists Coco Montoya and Walter Trout, as well as drummer Joe Yuele, who is still John's rhythmic mainstay.

With onstage popularity gaining each year, the 90's kicked in with the release of several John Mayall albums that have set new standards in rock blues: "Behind The Iron Curtain", "Chicago Line", "A Sense of Place", and the Grammy-nominated "Wake Up Call" that featured guest artists Buddy Guy, Mavis Staples, Albert Collins, Mick Taylor. In 1993, Texas guitarist Buddy Whittington joined the Bluesbreakers and over the years he has energized the band with his unique and fiery ideas. Making his recording debut on Mayall's "Spinning Coin" album, he proved to be more than equal to following in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessors. After that, they released two modern classics: "Blues For the Lost Days" and "Padlock On The Blues", (the latter co-produced by John and his wife Maggie, featuring a rare collaboration with the great blues legend John Lee Hooker, who had been Mayall's close friend since the early 60's). These albums have all garnered great reviews, critical and popular acclaim and represent Mayall's ongoing mastery of the blues and his continuing importance in contemporary music. In addition, Mayall released three CD's through his own private label, Private Stash Records. They are "Time Capsule" (containing historic 1957-62 live tapes-no longer available), "UK Tour 2K" (live recordings from the Bluesbreakers 2000 British tour), and a selection of solo performances from John entitled "Boogie Woogie Man". Mayall continues to strive to remain true to the timeless music that first inspired this skinny young British lad, living in the shadow of WWII, to teach himself the guitar, harmonica and piano so many years ago.

This millennium has proved to be as productive so far:
2001: On "Along For The Ride", Mayall re-teamed with a number of his former mates, including Peter Green, Mick Taylor, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, as well as ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, Jonny Lang, Steve Miller, Billy Preston, Steve Cropper, Otis Rush, Gary Moore, Jeff Healey, Reese Wynans of Steve Ray Vaughan's band and Shannon Curfman for an amazing display of blues power at its finest. Produced by David Z, this album featured Mayall duets with soul great Billy Preston, blues legend Otis Rush and young blues/rock teen sensation Shannon Curfman. "Along For The Ride" also features the first appearance together in over 30 years by Bluesbreakers alumni Peter Green, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, who last appeared together as members of the original Fleetwood Mac.

In 2002: Mayall with the Bluesbreakers, again produced by David Z., recorded the release "STORIES," which debuted the Billboard blues charts at #1, and followed it with an extensive world tour. 2003: John Mayall turned 70 years old. After extensive touring, John Mayall and The Bluesbreakers capped it off at a 70th Birthday celebration in Liverpool, with a concert in aid of UNICEF and featuring Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor and Chris Barber. This concert was filmed, recorded and released as a DVD and double CD in December 2003. To top off the year, BBC aired an hour-long documentary on John Mayall's life and career, entitled "The Godfather of British Blues".

2003: "The Godfather of British Blues" plus a 1969 documentary were released on a DVD by Eagle Records entitled “Godfather/The Turning Point”, as well as "The Turning Point Sound Track" CD.

2004: Private Stash released a live show from Australia on DVD – “Cookin’ Down Under’ and John compiled a collection of his all time favorite classic boogie woogie tracks on a CD for Document Records.

2005: Saw the release of the studio album “Road Dogs.”
John Mayall was awarded an OBE by The Queen's Honours list.

Spring 2007 brought John Mayall's 56th album release, on Eagle Records: "In The Palace Of The King," an entire studio album that honors and pays tribute to the music of the Mayall’s long-time hero of the blues, Freddie King.

The release of this popular tribute album led to such a heavy touring schedule that it began to take its toll on John physically. He therefore reluctantly decided to take time off to re-evaluate his career. In October 2008 he made the decision to disband and retire the long standing Bluesbreakers, which caused quite a stir in blues circles and led to rumors about total retirement. Since then Mayall has made some guest appearances with Mark Hummel's Harmonica Blowout and so enjoyed the freedom that he decided to put together some new musicians with a view to touring on a more limited basis. The reaction to this plan has been so positive that two tours of Europe have been put together for 2009, including several shows with BB King in the UK. Eagle Records have also commissioned John to record a new album, which is slated for release in fall 2009. Meanwhile we hope that fans will enjoy the rocking blues contributions of Rocky Athas, Greg Rzab, Jay Davenport and Tom Canning.

As for the man himself, the father of six and the grandfather of six, John Mayall, at 75, hopes to keep the blues alive for many more years to come.

 

An Evening with Soulive

From Southwest Stages | Part of the Southwest Stages series | 58:24

An Hour of Funk, Jam and Soul Music with Soulive with Special Guest Vocalist Toussant, recorded live in August of 2006 at the Telluride Jazz Celebration.

Soulive-2_small

This program contains an hour of Funk, Jam and Soul Music by the group Soulive with special guest vocalist Toussant. This performance was recorded live in August of 2006 at the Telluride Jazz Celebration held annually in Telluride Colorado's beautiful Town Park. The Telluride Celebration is an annual event showcasing great Jazz along with other types of music for three days nestled in the high Rocky Mountains of southern Colorado.

March of 2009 marks Soulive’s 10th Anniversary – ten years since Eric Krasno, Alan Evans and his brother Neal Evans got together for the first time at a home studio just outside of Woodstock, NY and recorded Get Down.Over the past 10 years, Soulive has covered a lot of ground – musically and literally.

The band has traveled to nearly every corner of the world, touring Ghana, Russia, nearly all of Europe, Brazil, and Japan (nine times!). They’ve been across America on dozens of tours. New Orleans Jazz Fest has become a home away from home. And in their actual home, New York City, they are closing in on their 100th show. Not many bands can say they’ve recorded with Chaka Khan, Dave Matthews, Talib Kweli and John Scofield. Nor can many bands open for The Rolling Stones on one tour and have Stevie Wonder sit in with them on the next tour. The musical relationships the band has developed, from the aforementioned artists to Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, Robert Randolph, Joshua Redman, Kenny Garrett, Fred Wesley, The Roots, Ivan Neville and so many others, speak volumes about both how versatile these talented musicians are. Jazz, hip-hop, rock, soul, funk, R & B, Blues – musically, there is not much the band hasn’t done.

In developing their own history, Soulive has been in the company of legends both new and old. In 2000, Bruce Lundvall signed the band to Blue Note Records and Soulive became part of recorded music’s greatest jazz legacy. Soulive joined the ranks of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Jimmy Smith, Wayne Shorter and Grant Green and was part of the niche label’s rise as Norah Jones captivated the nation.  Six years later, Soulive would be the first band signed to the new incarnation of Stax Records, joining the incredible soul tradition built by the likes of Isaac Hayes, Sam and Dave, and Otis Redding.

Soulive has always been creatively restless, never content to ride a sound (or a look) for too long. The band has led their fans through many incarnations:  both male & female singers, a horn section, and repeated returns to the trio format. The band and the fans have endured, grown and morphed. Consistent through all of the different line-ups, though, was the groove – Neal’s club-shaking left hand pounding out bass lines, Alan’s ride propelling the music forward, and Eric’s solos soaring on top. Every show has that moment where Neal leans on the organ up high and the whole band breaks free. Every Soulive fan knows that moment. That is something that has never changed.

While ten years is something to celebrate, Soulive is not a band to look backward. The band is more concentrated on the future than concerned with revisiting its past. Unencumbered by record contract and fully equipped with a state-of-the-art recording studio, Soulive is embracing the new music business model by launching their own record label, “Royal Family Records.”  With a focus on digital distribution, the label will be an outlet for all Soulive recordings as well as numerous Soulive affiliated projects such as Lettuce, Eric’s project “Chapter 2”, Alan’s and Neal’s solo records and Break Science featuring Adam Detch. The label will also sign emerging talent and develop them on tour with Soulive. The first artist to join up is soul singer Nigel Hall, who will release an EP this spring and join the band on the road.

Soulive will launch their label with the release of their new studio effort Up Here. The LP was recorded in Alan’s new studio in South Deerfield, Mass in the fall of 2008. “This is the Soulive album I've always wanted to record – it’s what I've been hearing in my head for years,” says Alan, who also tracked and mixed the record. “It's like when people say ‘if I could go back in time knowing what I know now.’  Well, that's what we did with Up Here.  The session had the vibe and energy of Get Down but with all of our experiences

Up Here isn’t the only thing Soulive has on tap for 2009. The band has a double-live LP recorded in Japan last summer that will be released as four separate EPs throughout the year. There is also a full length live DVD from the same sessions. Soulive also hopes to have another studio record ready for public consumption by the fall. 

 

An Evening with Soulive

From Southwest Stages | Part of the Southwest Stages series | 58:24

An Hour of Funk, Jam and Soul Music with Soulive with Special Guest Vocalist Toussant, recorded live in August of 2006 at the Telluride Jazz Celebration.

Soulive-2_small

This program contains an hour of Funk, Jam and Soul Music by the group Soulive with special guest vocalist Toussant. This performance was recorded live in August of 2006 at the Telluride Jazz Celebration held annually in Telluride Colorado's beautiful Town Park. The Telluride Celebration is an annual event showcasing great Jazz along with other types of music for three days nestled in the high Rocky Mountains of southern Colorado.

March of 2009 marks Soulive’s 10th Anniversary – ten years since Eric Krasno, Alan Evans and his brother Neal Evans got together for the first time at a home studio just outside of Woodstock, NY and recorded Get Down.Over the past 10 years, Soulive has covered a lot of ground – musically and literally.

The band has traveled to nearly every corner of the world, touring Ghana, Russia, nearly all of Europe, Brazil, and Japan (nine times!). They’ve been across America on dozens of tours. New Orleans Jazz Fest has become a home away from home. And in their actual home, New York City, they are closing in on their 100th show. Not many bands can say they’ve recorded with Chaka Khan, Dave Matthews, Talib Kweli and John Scofield. Nor can many bands open for The Rolling Stones on one tour and have Stevie Wonder sit in with them on the next tour. The musical relationships the band has developed, from the aforementioned artists to Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, Robert Randolph, Joshua Redman, Kenny Garrett, Fred Wesley, The Roots, Ivan Neville and so many others, speak volumes about both how versatile these talented musicians are. Jazz, hip-hop, rock, soul, funk, R & B, Blues – musically, there is not much the band hasn’t done.

In developing their own history, Soulive has been in the company of legends both new and old. In 2000, Bruce Lundvall signed the band to Blue Note Records and Soulive became part of recorded music’s greatest jazz legacy. Soulive joined the ranks of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Jimmy Smith, Wayne Shorter and Grant Green and was part of the niche label’s rise as Norah Jones captivated the nation.  Six years later, Soulive would be the first band signed to the new incarnation of Stax Records, joining the incredible soul tradition built by the likes of Isaac Hayes, Sam and Dave, and Otis Redding.

Soulive has always been creatively restless, never content to ride a sound (or a look) for too long. The band has led their fans through many incarnations:  both male & female singers, a horn section, and repeated returns to the trio format. The band and the fans have endured, grown and morphed. Consistent through all of the different line-ups, though, was the groove – Neal’s club-shaking left hand pounding out bass lines, Alan’s ride propelling the music forward, and Eric’s solos soaring on top. Every show has that moment where Neal leans on the organ up high and the whole band breaks free. Every Soulive fan knows that moment. That is something that has never changed.

While ten years is something to celebrate, Soulive is not a band to look backward. The band is more concentrated on the future than concerned with revisiting its past. Unencumbered by record contract and fully equipped with a state-of-the-art recording studio, Soulive is embracing the new music business model by launching their own record label, “Royal Family Records.”  With a focus on digital distribution, the label will be an outlet for all Soulive recordings as well as numerous Soulive affiliated projects such as Lettuce, Eric’s project “Chapter 2”, Alan’s and Neal’s solo records and Break Science featuring Adam Detch. The label will also sign emerging talent and develop them on tour with Soulive. The first artist to join up is soul singer Nigel Hall, who will release an EP this spring and join the band on the road.

Soulive will launch their label with the release of their new studio effort Up Here. The LP was recorded in Alan’s new studio in South Deerfield, Mass in the fall of 2008. “This is the Soulive album I've always wanted to record – it’s what I've been hearing in my head for years,” says Alan, who also tracked and mixed the record. “It's like when people say ‘if I could go back in time knowing what I know now.’  Well, that's what we did with Up Here.  The session had the vibe and energy of Get Down but with all of our experiences

Up Here isn’t the only thing Soulive has on tap for 2009. The band has a double-live LP recorded in Japan last summer that will be released as four separate EPs throughout the year. There is also a full length live DVD from the same sessions. Soulive also hopes to have another studio record ready for public consumption by the fall. 

 

An Evening with Big Head Todd & the Monsters, Volume-2

From Southwest Stages | Part of the Southwest Stages series | 58:59

The show features another hour of Music and Interviews with Big Head Todd & the Monsters, recorded live at the Historic Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, NM.

Big_head_todd_1_small

 

The Historic Lensic Theater is just off the plaza in the heart of Santa Fe, NM. This program features live music and an interview with Guy Clark by Southwest Stages guest host Luther Watts. This program first aired on Southwest Stages 4th year of programming in the Fall of 2007.


Songwriting legend Guy Clark doesn't merely compose songs; he projects images and characters with the kind of hands-on care and respect of a literary master.  Clark works slowly and with strict attention to detail, and has produced an impressive collection of timeless gems, leaving very little waste behind. The emotional level of his work, as well as the admiration and esteem of his peers, consistently transcends sales figures and musical genres. Using everyday language to construct extraordinary songs for more than 35 years, Clark continues to be the type of songwriter whom young artists study and seasoned writers, as well discriminating listeners, revere.


Born in Monahans, Texas, on November 6, 1941, Clark grew up in a home where the gift of a pocketknife was a rite of passage and poetry was read aloud. At age 16 he moved to Rockport, on the Texas Gulf Coast. Instructed by his father’s law partner, he learned to play on a $12 Mexican guitar and the first songs he learned were mostly in Spanish.


Moving to Houston, Clark began his career during the “folk scare” of the 1960s. Fascinated by Texas blues legends like Mance Lipscomb and Lightnin’ Hopkins and steeped in the cultural sauce piquante of his border state, he played traditional folk tunes on the same Austin-Houston club circuit as Townes Van Zandt and Jerry Jeff Walker.  “It was pretty ‘Bob Dylan’ in the beginning,” Clark said. “Nobody was really writing.” Eventually, Clark would draw on these roots to firebrand his own fiddle-friendly and bluesy folk music, see it embraced as country and emerge as a songwriting icon for connoisseurs of the art.


Moving to San Francisco in the late 1960s, as social unrest was erupting through racial and generational fissures, Clark worked briefly in a guitar shop, returned to Houston for a short time, and then moved to the Los Angeles area, where he found work building guitars in the Dopyera Brothers’ Dobro factory and signed a publishing agreement with RCA’s Sunbury Music before pulling up stakes and relocating to Nashville in 1971.


The following year, country-folk singer-songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker, then newly ensconced in Austin, released an eponymous album featuring the Clark composition “L.A. Freeway,” which became an FM radio hit. In 1973, Walker released Viva! Terlingua, recorded live in a Texas dance hall and including Clark’s ballad “Desperados Waiting for a Train.” As much as any others, these two Clark songs may arguably be said to have set the tone for a musical revolution that was first known as progressive country. By 1975, many of the revolutionaries would be defined as the Outlaws. Like the Bakersfield sound of the 1960s, the new sounds were a reaction to the formulaic rigidity and paternalism of Nashville's record producers and label executives. 


In this alternative musical world of the late 1960s, inspired by the storytelling poems of Robert Frost and Stephen Vincent Benet, Clark began to write what he knew “with a pencil and a big eraser.” “L. A. Freeway,” for example, blueprints his fish-out-of-water experience in Los Angeles. “Desperados Waiting for a Train” is based on his memory of an oilfield worker who was a resident of his grandmother’s hotel. Like almost all his songs, then and now, these two early masterpieces are expressions of personal memory and experience, further characterized by words that have a melody all their own.


Clark’s move to Music City, one of three cities where Sunbury had offices and where his pal Mickey Newbury would make him welcome, proved fortuitous. Clark and his wife, Susanna, would become the axis for a groundbreaking fraternity of singer-songwriters for whom Nashville felt like “Paris in the ‘20s.”   Among them were Newbury, Van Zandt, Rodney Crowell, Billy Joe Shaver, Steve Earle, Dave Loggins and David Allen Coe. Bonded by their egalitarianism, the troupe’s favored sidewalk café was the Clark’s dining room table, where they gathered frequently for “guitar pulls” and show-and-tell song swapping sessions, and where they celebrated their successes and facetiously threatened to kill whoever had presented the best new song. Susanna Clark, a talented painter, tossed her brushes aside for awhile, joined the invasion and began writing hit songs herself.  


In 1975, after using his big eraser on his first try at cutting an album, Clark made his recording debut on RCA Records with Old No. l, ten critically applauded originals built to last, including “L. A. Freeway,” “Desperados Waiting for a Train,” “Texas, l947,” “Instant Coffee Blues,” “Rita Ballou,” “She Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,”  “Let Him Roll,” “A Nickel for the Fiddler,” “That Old Time Feeling” and “Like a Coat From the Cold.” On the cover, the songwriter is pictured with his wife’s painting of his chambray “work shirt,” customary attire emblematic of his values. During the next 20 years, Clark would continue to record albums that worked like a stun gun on other artists in search of new songs.

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This program features another hour of Music with Big Head Todd & the Monsters with special guest Hazel Miller, recorded live in February of 2006 at the Historic Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, NM. The Historic Lensic Theater is just off the plaza in the heart of Santa Fe, NM. The show features great live music and interviews with the band by Southwest Stages' host John Strader. This program first aired on Southwest Stages 3rd year of programming in the Fall of 2006.
BIG HEAD TODD AND THE MONSTERS - Though his band has racked up seven studio albums and countless miles since he first picked up a guitar as a Colorado teen, Big Head Todd and The Monsters front man Todd Park Mohr still uses the word “discovery” when he talks about writing songs. He says of “Blue Sky,” from the group’s forthcoming album, All the Love You Need: “We befriended this guy who’s in research and development for NASA, and he asked us to come up with a song for their launches. But I’m not the kind of person who can say, ‘Okay, I’ll write you a song about a particular topic.’ A few months later, though, I discovered a piece of music I knew would be great; I just sort of fell upon it.”

More than anything, it’s Mohr’s excavation of his imagination that continues to drive Big Head Todd and The Monsters – singer-guitarist Mohr, bassist-singer Rob Squires, drummer-singer Brian Nevin and keyboardist-guitarist-singer Jeremy Lawton. The fact is, BHTM could have begun resting on their laurels back in 1993, when their Top 10 singles “Bittersweet,” “Broken Hearted Savior,” “Circle” and “It’s Alright” pushed the album Sister Sweetly to platinum certification. However, Mohr says, “I’ve fought throughout our career not to be a one-trick pony, to be the kind of band that has depth and diversity in its catalogue. I’m a fan of this band, and I’m constantly looking forward to what comes next.”

Asked how All the Love You Need – produced by Grammy winner David Bianco (Tom Petty, Mick Jagger, AC/DC) – departs from the band’s last studio album, 2004’s Crimes of Passion, for instance, Mohr begins, “There’s a punk-rock element.” His assessment is unexpected considering the disc’s expansive melodies, diverse arrangements and sophisticated wordplay. “It isn’t so much the angst or anger of it,” he clarifies, “but a rhythmic aggressiveness, especially on songs like ‘Spanish Highway’ and ‘Fortune Teller’ and definitely ‘Beautiful Rain.’ I’ve always loved the spirit of punk rock.” He pauses, then deadpans: “I guess you could call those tracks ‘punk-rock epic ballads.’”

The title track, too, finds Mohr challenging himself, venturing into uncharted thematic waters. He diverges from the traditional love song with the tale of a woman who takes him by the hand and says, “Let me let you in on a secret/ You’ve already got all the love you’re needing/ In your heart, in your mind, in your imagination/ You’ve already got all the love you need.”

This rather revolutionary notion was inspired by Mexican writer Don Miguel Ángel Ruiz. Mohr explains: “In his book The Mastery of Love, he imagines a magic kitchen, where you have all the ingredients to make anything you want. It’s a metaphor for our inability to see what we have and have faith in it. There’s so much love in our hearts to give and receive but we just aren’t willing to believe it or act on it. That’s a really powerful idea.”

Mohr is particularly fond of Spanish art and literature. “It tends to be very dramatic and romantic,” he illuminates. “There’s a tremendous emphasis on death and tragedy and this classic macho outlook.” “Spanish Highway” is among the more personal outings on All the Love You Need. Written while he was mourning the death of his mother, the song returns to the image of an empty runway. “It’s about life’s departures,” he says. “The plane has flown off and you’re left standing there alone.” “Spanish highway, driving back to what belongs to you, longs for you,” Mohr sings of the aftermath of loss.

He informs that Bruce Springsteen, whose work with The E Street Band has surely influenced Big Head Todd and The Monsters, has himself been influenced by the richness of Spanish culture and storytelling. Coincidentally, the narrative of the standout All the Love You Need track “Fortune Teller” came to Mohr in a dream obliquely related to Springsteen. “It was the vibe of his early stuff, running around in Jersey, to bars and pool halls with this friend of his, this poet who was so in love with one of Bruce’s girlfriends that he took the rap for her after she killed her abusive husband. The dream was so vivid,” he relates. “I wrote the song from the poet character’s point of view.”

Mohr stresses the involvement of producer David Bianco (who, in another bit of serendipity, recorded Springsteen’s tour for Darkness on the Edge of Town) in the creation of “Fortune Teller.” “We really benefited from David’s musical vocabulary on this record,” he attests. “He has a great feel for the mechanics of songwriting and arrangements. One of the records he did that sold us on working with him was Tom Petty’s Wildflowers. It has that sound where you just hear a band playing but with this heightened sense – when you close your eyes you can see the musicians playing together live. He doesn’t pile on the sounds; he just brings out the essence of what’s there.”

The essence of Big Head Todd and The Monsters – a rootsy, emotionally direct variety of rock ’n’ roll that lends itself particularly well to a live setting – has been winning fans since Mohr, Rob Squires and Brian Nevin started playing together in high school (Jeremy Lawton joined in 2004). Needless to say, the three never expected to be in the same band at this late date, but, as Mohr points out, “It was a really fortunate combination of musical personalities, and we’re still partners in every sense of the word.”

The band spent seven years developing their chemistry and amassing a following, boosted significantly by the independent releases Another Mayberry (1989) and Midnight Radio (1990), before being “discovered” by the listening public at large with 1993’s Sister Sweetly. After a major-label stint (Sister Sweetly, 1994’s Stratagem, 1997’s Beautiful World), during which the trio increasingly found itself frustrated artistically, they reclaimed their independent status (2001’s Riviera, 2004’s Crimes of Passion). “If it were not for our ability to do things for ourselves, we would have disappeared a long time ago,” Mohr allows.

Among the chief perks of independence is, of course, the songwriter’s freedom to pursue his muse, but it also enables a uniquely committed relationship with BHTM’s fans. “We love playing music for people,” Mohr states matter-of-factly, “and we don’t need a record company standing between us and the fans. We got rid of the middleman and we’re still here and we’re doing great business.”

Much of that business involves touring. BHTM calibrates carefully the number of dates they perform each year (among them their annual throw-down at Denver’s Red Rocks and yearly New Year’s Eve blowout) to make sure everyone’s happy – not least of all themselves. “There was a period in my life where I was on tour nine months of the year,” Mohr reveals. “It felt endless; it just wore me down. I was a very unhappy person. Now, we play about 35 dates a year, plus a lot of festival shows, and we really enjoy it. I do like traveling. For 20 years I’ve watched the country go by. It’s a magnificent place, and I feel very lucky to know it as well as I do and to have made fans and friends all over. That’s the way it should be.”

The band is so devoted to its fans, in fact, that they’ve logged three fan excursions, two cruises to the Caribbean and a land-lovers jaunt to Hawaii. “We play a bunch of shows, and we never play the same song twice, which we all love,” Mohr says. “We don’t make any money off the trips, but we have a blast and there’s really no better way to get to know your fans.”

Still, for Big Head Todd and The Monsters, remaining connected to their audience means taking creative risks and inviting their longtime followers to grow alongside them while also welcoming new fans into the fold. “We’re never going to be one of those bands that relies on their hits,” Mohr says. “I think All the Love You Need is the best record we’ve ever done. I’m enjoying being a performer and a songwriter more than I ever have, and I think that’s the payoff for making new music, discovering something fresh and interesting and ultimately, worthy of our fans.”

(Biography) from www.bigheadtodd.com

Todd Park Mohr (Guitars, Vocals)
Rob Squires (Bass, Vocals)
Brian Nevin (Drums, Vocals)
Jeremy Lawton (Keyboards, Steel Guitars, Vocals)

The Best of Joan Osborne

From Southwest Stages | Part of the Southwest Stages series | 58:30

An Hour of Music and Interviews with Joan Osborne, recorded live at the 2002 and 2005 at the Telluride Blues and Brews Festival.

Joan_osborne_small

This program contains an hour of Funk, Jam and Soul Music by the group Soulive with special guest vocalist Toussant. This performance was recorded live in August of 2006 at the Telluride Jazz Celebration held annually in Telluride Colorado's beautiful Town Park. The Telluride Celebration is an annual event showcasing great Jazz along with other types of music for three days nestled in the high Rocky Mountains of southern Colorado.

 

March of 2009 marks Soulive’s 10th Anniversary – ten years since Eric Krasno, Alan Evans and his brother Neal Evans got together for the first time at a home studio just outside of Woodstock, NY and recorded Get Down.Over the past 10 years, Soulive has covered a lot of ground – musically and literally.

The band has traveled to nearly every corner of the world, touring Ghana, Russia, nearly all of Europe, Brazil, and Japan (nine times!). They’ve been across America on dozens of tours. New Orleans Jazz Fest has become a home away from home. And in their actual home, New York City, they are closing in on their 100th show. Not many bands can say they’ve recorded with Chaka Khan, Dave Matthews, Talib Kweli and John Scofield. Nor can many bands open for The Rolling Stones on one tour and have Stevie Wonder sit in with them on the next tour. The musical relationships the band has developed, from the aforementioned artists to Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, Robert Randolph, Joshua Redman, Kenny Garrett, Fred Wesley, The Roots, Ivan Neville and so many others, speak volumes about both how versatile these talented musicians are. Jazz, hip-hop, rock, soul, funk, R & B, Blues – musically, there is not much the band hasn’t done.

In developing their own history, Soulive has been in the company of legends both new and old. In 2000, Bruce Lundvall signed the band to Blue Note Records and Soulive became part of recorded music’s greatest jazz legacy. Soulive joined the ranks of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Jimmy Smith, Wayne Shorter and Grant Green and was part of the niche label’s rise as Norah Jones captivated the nation.  Six years later, Soulive would be the first band signed to the new incarnation of Stax Records, joining the incredible soul tradition built by the likes of Isaac Hayes, Sam and Dave, and Otis Redding.

Soulive has always been creatively restless, never content to ride a sound (or a look) for too long. The band has led their fans through many incarnations:  both male & female singers, a horn section, and repeated returns to the trio format. The band and the fans have endured, grown and morphed. Consistent through all of the different line-ups, though, was the groove – Neal’s club-shaking left hand pounding out bass lines, Alan’s ride propelling the music forward, and Eric’s solos soaring on top. Every show has that moment where Neal leans on the organ up high and the whole band breaks free. Every Soulive fan knows that moment. That is something that has never changed.

While ten years is something to celebrate, Soulive is not a band to look backward. The band is more concentrated on the future than concerned with revisiting its past. Unencumbered by record contract and fully equipped with a state-of-the-art recording studio, Soulive is embracing the new music business model by launching their own record label, “Royal Family Records.”  With a focus on digital distribution, the label will be an outlet for all Soulive recordings as well as numerous Soulive affiliated projects such as Lettuce, Eric’s project “Chapter 2”, Alan’s and Neal’s solo records and Break Science featuring Adam Detch. The label will also sign emerging talent and develop them on tour with Soulive. The first artist to join up is soul singer Nigel Hall, who will release an EP this spring and join the band on the road.

Soulive will launch their label with the release of their new studio effort Up Here. The LP was recorded in Alan’s new studio in South Deerfield, Mass in the fall of 2008. “This is the Soulive album I've always wanted to record – it’s what I've been hearing in my head for years,” says Alan, who also tracked and mixed the record. “It's like when people say ‘if I could go back in time knowing what I know now.’  Well, that's what we did with Up Here.  The session had the vibe and energy of Get Down but with all of our experiences

Up Here isn’t the only thing Soulive has on tap for 2009. The band has a double-live LP recorded in Japan last summer that will be released as four separate EPs throughout the year. There is also a full length live DVD from the same sessions. Soulive also hopes to have another studio record ready for public consumption by the fall. 

 

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This program contains an evening of Soul Music by the incredible female vocalist Joan Osborne. These performances were recorded live in September of 2002 and 2005 at the Telluride Blues & Brews Festival held annually in Telluride Colorado's beautiful Town Park. This show originally aired during the Fall of 2006 during our Third Season.
The Telluride Blues and brews Festival is the premier Blues festival in the southwest. The festival showcases great Blues, Funk, Rock along with other types of music for three days nestled in the high Rocky Mountains of southern Colorado.
Singer Joan Osborne was born on July 8, 1962, in the town of Anchorage, KY, but it wasn't until relocating to New York City in the early '90s (to study at NYU's film school) that she began to take a singing career seriously after singing Billie Holiday's classic "God Bless the Child" at a local bar's open-mike night. In addition to Holiday, Osborne looked to such legendary vocalists as Etta James and Ray Charles as role models, as the up-and-coming singer decided not to cater to major record companies and formed her own label, Womanly Hips, which resulted in such releases as 1992's in-concert Soul Show, among others. But eventually Osborne decided to sign on with a major label, Mercury, which in turn issued the singer's next release, Relish, in March 1995. The album proved to have a long life, as almost a year after its initial release the track "One of Us" became a massive MTV and radio smash, camping out at the number one spot on the U.S. singles chart for two weeks, and Relish eventually racked up sales of three million copies. Further tracks ("Right Hand Man" and "St. Teresa") failed to match the success of Osborne's first hit, but the singer still managed to connect with a large and appreciative audience, especially during touring as part of the 1997 edition of Sarah McLachlan's Lilith Fair tour. Osborne also received numerous Grammy nominations in both 1996 and 1997.

Producing a worthy follow-up to Relish proved to be a time-consuming challenge for Osborne. Mercury tried to buy some time by issuing a compilation release, Early Recordings (which collected the early releases Live at Delta '88 and Blue Million Miles). In the meantime, Osborne focused on supporting a few groups/causes she felt strongly about, such as Rock the Vote and Planned Parenthood (eventually being named an honorary member of Planned Parenthood's board of advocates), in addition to covering "I'm Just a Bill" as a duet with Isaac Hayes on the 1998 Schoolhouse Rocks the Vote! benefit album. She also studied briefly with late Qawwali master Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and performed alongside such notables as Stevie Wonder, Melissa Etheridge, Taj Mahal, Luciano Pavarotti, Spearhead, Bob Dylan, and the Chieftains. September 2000 finally saw the release of Osborne's next all-new studio album, titled Righteous Love, which failed to match its predecessor's commercial success and sank from sight shortly after release. She bounced back in 2002 with How Sweet It Is, a collection of covers that leaned heavily on classic soul and R&B tunes from the 1960s and '70s. A career retrospective, One of Us, followed in 2005. Vanguard picked her up shortly after this, and Osborne released her first full-length on that label, a country-tinged effort called Pretty Little Stranger, in 2006. It was followed in 2007 by Breakfast in Bed and in 2008 by Little Wild One.

Greg Prato, All Music Guide

An Evening with Burning Spear Volume-1

From Southwest Stages | Part of the Southwest Stages series | 58:25

An Evening of Music and Interviews Legendary Reggae Icons Burning Spear, recorded live at the Historic El Rey Theater in Albuquerque, NM.

Burning_small This program features an hour of Music with Reggae Legend Burning Spear and Interviews with Spear's founder Winston Rodney by special guest host Ijah Umi. The show was recorded live in May of 2006, at the Historic El Rey Theater in Albuquerque, NM. The Historic El Rey Theater is on Old Route 66 downtown in the heart of Albuqueruqe, NM.  This program first aired on Southwest Stages 3rd year of programming in the Fall of 2006.

Once in a great while, an artist emerges that has a profound effect on popular culture. Burning Spear is such an artist. A certifiable musical legend, Spear’s career has already spanned over three decades and shows no sign of slowing down. His concerts regularly last over two hours, a live show that delivers more energy and vibrancy than many rock and roll bands that are half his age. Its no surprise that Spear was the only reggae artist included in the 2002 music issue of Vanity Fair. But it is not just the music that generates the excitement, it is also the message. Carrying the torch for the gospel of Marcus Garvey, Burning Spear is one of the single greatest proponents of self-determination and self-reliance for all African descendants; but his message is not exclusively based on the teachings of Garvey. Through his music, Burning Spear has consistently been able to educate, inform, and uplift people the world over with his positive message based on honesty, peace, and love.


Growing up in the parish of St Ann’s Jamaica, the same musical hotbed that produced Bob Marley and the Wailers, Burning Spear made his first recording of "Door Peep" in 1969 for the esteemed Studio One label. In fact, it was Bob Marley himself that referred Spear to Studio One.

As Spear recalls: "The way the whole thing came about is that I found myself moving along up in the hills of St. Ann’s and I ran into Bob (Marley) at the same time. And Bob was going to his farm. The man was moving with a donkey and some buckets and a fork, and cutlass and plants. We just reason man to man and I-man say wherein I would like to get involved in the music business. And Bob say, ‘All right, just check Studio One.’"

While at Studio One, Burning Spear recorded his first two classic albums, Burning Spear and Rocking Time.
Building on this solid foundation, Spear went on to record for Island Records in the 70’s, releasing three albums (Marcus Garvey, Man in the Hills, and Garvey’s Ghost) that not only reshaped the face of reggae music, but also saw the emergence of Burning Spear as an international artist whose artistic vision began to permeate popular culture around the world. He followed these up with the release of Hail H.I.M. for EMI and set the stage for a prolific string of releases through the 80’s and 90’s, including the Grammy winning Calling Rastafari, as well as Rasta Business, The World Should Know, Fittest of the Fittest, and more.
And now, Burning Spear is ready to embark on a new journey with the launch of Burning Spear Records and his first release, Live At Montreaux Jazz Festival 2001. A stellar collection of now classic Spear anthems, including "Slavery Days", "Columbus", "Rocking Time", and more, Live at Montreaux is just the first of several planned releases that will also include the re-issue of previously unavailable Spear recordings as well as a new studio album in 2003.

 

An Evening with Big Head Todd & The Monsters, Volume-1

From Southwest Stages | 58:23

An Evening of Music and Interviews with Big Head Todd & the Monsters, recorded live at the Historic Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, NM.

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The Historic Lensic Theater is just off the plaza in the heart of Santa Fe, NM. This program features live music and an interview with Guy Clark by Southwest Stages guest host Luther Watts. This program first aired on Southwest Stages 4th year of programming in the Fall of 2007.


Songwriting legend Guy Clark doesn't merely compose songs; he projects images and characters with the kind of hands-on care and respect of a literary master.  Clark works slowly and with strict attention to detail, and has produced an impressive collection of timeless gems, leaving very little waste behind. The emotional level of his work, as well as the admiration and esteem of his peers, consistently transcends sales figures and musical genres. Using everyday language to construct extraordinary songs for more than 35 years, Clark continues to be the type of songwriter whom young artists study and seasoned writers, as well discriminating listeners, revere.


Born in Monahans, Texas, on November 6, 1941, Clark grew up in a home where the gift of a pocketknife was a rite of passage and poetry was read aloud. At age 16 he moved to Rockport, on the Texas Gulf Coast. Instructed by his father’s law partner, he learned to play on a $12 Mexican guitar and the first songs he learned were mostly in Spanish.


Moving to Houston, Clark began his career during the “folk scare” of the 1960s. Fascinated by Texas blues legends like Mance Lipscomb and Lightnin’ Hopkins and steeped in the cultural sauce piquante of his border state, he played traditional folk tunes on the same Austin-Houston club circuit as Townes Van Zandt and Jerry Jeff Walker.  “It was pretty ‘Bob Dylan’ in the beginning,” Clark said. “Nobody was really writing.” Eventually, Clark would draw on these roots to firebrand his own fiddle-friendly and bluesy folk music, see it embraced as country and emerge as a songwriting icon for connoisseurs of the art.


Moving to San Francisco in the late 1960s, as social unrest was erupting through racial and generational fissures, Clark worked briefly in a guitar shop, returned to Houston for a short time, and then moved to the Los Angeles area, where he found work building guitars in the Dopyera Brothers’ Dobro factory and signed a publishing agreement with RCA’s Sunbury Music before pulling up stakes and relocating to Nashville in 1971.


The following year, country-folk singer-songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker, then newly ensconced in Austin, released an eponymous album featuring the Clark composition “L.A. Freeway,” which became an FM radio hit. In 1973, Walker released Viva! Terlingua, recorded live in a Texas dance hall and including Clark’s ballad “Desperados Waiting for a Train.” As much as any others, these two Clark songs may arguably be said to have set the tone for a musical revolution that was first known as progressive country. By 1975, many of the revolutionaries would be defined as the Outlaws. Like the Bakersfield sound of the 1960s, the new sounds were a reaction to the formulaic rigidity and paternalism of Nashville's record producers and label executives. 


In this alternative musical world of the late 1960s, inspired by the storytelling poems of Robert Frost and Stephen Vincent Benet, Clark began to write what he knew “with a pencil and a big eraser.” “L. A. Freeway,” for example, blueprints his fish-out-of-water experience in Los Angeles. “Desperados Waiting for a Train” is based on his memory of an oilfield worker who was a resident of his grandmother’s hotel. Like almost all his songs, then and now, these two early masterpieces are expressions of personal memory and experience, further characterized by words that have a melody all their own.


Clark’s move to Music City, one of three cities where Sunbury had offices and where his pal Mickey Newbury would make him welcome, proved fortuitous. Clark and his wife, Susanna, would become the axis for a groundbreaking fraternity of singer-songwriters for whom Nashville felt like “Paris in the ‘20s.”   Among them were Newbury, Van Zandt, Rodney Crowell, Billy Joe Shaver, Steve Earle, Dave Loggins and David Allen Coe. Bonded by their egalitarianism, the troupe’s favored sidewalk café was the Clark’s dining room table, where they gathered frequently for “guitar pulls” and show-and-tell song swapping sessions, and where they celebrated their successes and facetiously threatened to kill whoever had presented the best new song. Susanna Clark, a talented painter, tossed her brushes aside for awhile, joined the invasion and began writing hit songs herself.  


In 1975, after using his big eraser on his first try at cutting an album, Clark made his recording debut on RCA Records with Old No. l, ten critically applauded originals built to last, including “L. A. Freeway,” “Desperados Waiting for a Train,” “Texas, l947,” “Instant Coffee Blues,” “Rita Ballou,” “She Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,”  “Let Him Roll,” “A Nickel for the Fiddler,” “That Old Time Feeling” and “Like a Coat From the Cold.” On the cover, the songwriter is pictured with his wife’s painting of his chambray “work shirt,” customary attire emblematic of his values. During the next 20 years, Clark would continue to record albums that worked like a stun gun on other artists in search of new songs.

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This program features an hour of Music with Big Head Todd & the Monsters with special guest Hazel Miller, recorded live in February of 2006 at the Historic Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, NM. The Historic Lensic Theater is just off the plaza in the heart of Santa Fe, NM. The show features great live music and interviews with the band by Southwest Stages' host John Strader. This program first aired on Southwest Stages 3rd year of programming in the Fall of 2006.
BIG HEAD TODD AND THE MONSTERS - Though his band has racked up seven studio albums and countless miles since he first picked up a guitar as a Colorado teen, Big Head Todd and The Monsters front man Todd Park Mohr still uses the word “discovery” when he talks about writing songs. He says of “Blue Sky,” from the group’s forthcoming album, All the Love You Need: “We befriended this guy who’s in research and development for NASA, and he asked us to come up with a song for their launches. But I’m not the kind of person who can say, ‘Okay, I’ll write you a song about a particular topic.’ A few months later, though, I discovered a piece of music I knew would be great; I just sort of fell upon it.”

More than anything, it’s Mohr’s excavation of his imagination that continues to drive Big Head Todd and The Monsters – singer-guitarist Mohr, bassist-singer Rob Squires, drummer-singer Brian Nevin and keyboardist-guitarist-singer Jeremy Lawton. The fact is, BHTM could have begun resting on their laurels back in 1993, when their Top 10 singles “Bittersweet,” “Broken Hearted Savior,” “Circle” and “It’s Alright” pushed the album Sister Sweetly to platinum certification. However, Mohr says, “I’ve fought throughout our career not to be a one-trick pony, to be the kind of band that has depth and diversity in its catalogue. I’m a fan of this band, and I’m constantly looking forward to what comes next.”

Asked how All the Love You Need – produced by Grammy winner David Bianco (Tom Petty, Mick Jagger, AC/DC) – departs from the band’s last studio album, 2004’s Crimes of Passion, for instance, Mohr begins, “There’s a punk-rock element.” His assessment is unexpected considering the disc’s expansive melodies, diverse arrangements and sophisticated wordplay. “It isn’t so much the angst or anger of it,” he clarifies, “but a rhythmic aggressiveness, especially on songs like ‘Spanish Highway’ and ‘Fortune Teller’ and definitely ‘Beautiful Rain.’ I’ve always loved the spirit of punk rock.” He pauses, then deadpans: “I guess you could call those tracks ‘punk-rock epic ballads.’”

The title track, too, finds Mohr challenging himself, venturing into uncharted thematic waters. He diverges from the traditional love song with the tale of a woman who takes him by the hand and says, “Let me let you in on a secret/ You’ve already got all the love you’re needing/ In your heart, in your mind, in your imagination/ You’ve already got all the love you need.”

This rather revolutionary notion was inspired by Mexican writer Don Miguel Ángel Ruiz. Mohr explains: “In his book The Mastery of Love, he imagines a magic kitchen, where you have all the ingredients to make anything you want. It’s a metaphor for our inability to see what we have and have faith in it. There’s so much love in our hearts to give and receive but we just aren’t willing to believe it or act on it. That’s a really powerful idea.”

Mohr is particularly fond of Spanish art and literature. “It tends to be very dramatic and romantic,” he illuminates. “There’s a tremendous emphasis on death and tragedy and this classic macho outlook.” “Spanish Highway” is among the more personal outings on All the Love You Need. Written while he was mourning the death of his mother, the song returns to the image of an empty runway. “It’s about life’s departures,” he says. “The plane has flown off and you’re left standing there alone.” “Spanish highway, driving back to what belongs to you, longs for you,” Mohr sings of the aftermath of loss.

He informs that Bruce Springsteen, whose work with The E Street Band has surely influenced Big Head Todd and The Monsters, has himself been influenced by the richness of Spanish culture and storytelling. Coincidentally, the narrative of the standout All the Love You Need track “Fortune Teller” came to Mohr in a dream obliquely related to Springsteen. “It was the vibe of his early stuff, running around in Jersey, to bars and pool halls with this friend of his, this poet who was so in love with one of Bruce’s girlfriends that he took the rap for her after she killed her abusive husband. The dream was so vivid,” he relates. “I wrote the song from the poet character’s point of view.”

Mohr stresses the involvement of producer David Bianco (who, in another bit of serendipity, recorded Springsteen’s tour for Darkness on the Edge of Town) in the creation of “Fortune Teller.” “We really benefited from David’s musical vocabulary on this record,” he attests. “He has a great feel for the mechanics of songwriting and arrangements. One of the records he did that sold us on working with him was Tom Petty’s Wildflowers. It has that sound where you just hear a band playing but with this heightened sense – when you close your eyes you can see the musicians playing together live. He doesn’t pile on the sounds; he just brings out the essence of what’s there.”

The essence of Big Head Todd and The Monsters – a rootsy, emotionally direct variety of rock ’n’ roll that lends itself particularly well to a live setting – has been winning fans since Mohr, Rob Squires and Brian Nevin started playing together in high school (Jeremy Lawton joined in 2004). Needless to say, the three never expected to be in the same band at this late date, but, as Mohr points out, “It was a really fortunate combination of musical personalities, and we’re still partners in every sense of the word.”

The band spent seven years developing their chemistry and amassing a following, boosted significantly by the independent releases Another Mayberry (1989) and Midnight Radio (1990), before being “discovered” by the listening public at large with 1993’s Sister Sweetly. After a major-label stint (Sister Sweetly, 1994’s Stratagem, 1997’s Beautiful World), during which the trio increasingly found itself frustrated artistically, they reclaimed their independent status (2001’s Riviera, 2004’s Crimes of Passion). “If it were not for our ability to do things for ourselves, we would have disappeared a long time ago,” Mohr allows.

Among the chief perks of independence is, of course, the songwriter’s freedom to pursue his muse, but it also enables a uniquely committed relationship with BHTM’s fans. “We love playing music for people,” Mohr states matter-of-factly, “and we don’t need a record company standing between us and the fans. We got rid of the middleman and we’re still here and we’re doing great business.”

Much of that business involves touring. BHTM calibrates carefully the number of dates they perform each year (among them their annual throw-down at Denver’s Red Rocks and yearly New Year’s Eve blowout) to make sure everyone’s happy – not least of all themselves. “There was a period in my life where I was on tour nine months of the year,” Mohr reveals. “It felt endless; it just wore me down. I was a very unhappy person. Now, we play about 35 dates a year, plus a lot of festival shows, and we really enjoy it. I do like traveling. For 20 years I’ve watched the country go by. It’s a magnificent place, and I feel very lucky to know it as well as I do and to have made fans and friends all over. That’s the way it should be.”

The band is so devoted to its fans, in fact, that they’ve logged three fan excursions, two cruises to the Caribbean and a land-lovers jaunt to Hawaii. “We play a bunch of shows, and we never play the same song twice, which we all love,” Mohr says. “We don’t make any money off the trips, but we have a blast and there’s really no better way to get to know your fans.”

Still, for Big Head Todd and The Monsters, remaining connected to their audience means taking creative risks and inviting their longtime followers to grow alongside them while also welcoming new fans into the fold. “We’re never going to be one of those bands that relies on their hits,” Mohr says. “I think All the Love You Need is the best record we’ve ever done. I’m enjoying being a performer and a songwriter more than I ever have, and I think that’s the payoff for making new music, discovering something fresh and interesting and ultimately, worthy of our fans.”

(Biography) from www.bigheadtodd.com

Todd Park Mohr (Guitars, Vocals)
Rob Squires (Bass, Vocals)
Brian Nevin (Drums, Vocals)
Jeremy Lawton (Keyboards, Steel Guitars, Vocals)

An Evening with Burning Spear Vol-2

From Southwest Stages | Part of the Southwest Stages series | 58:26

Southwest Stages finishes off it's Evening of Music and Interviews Legendary Reggae Icons Burning Spear, recorded live at the Historic El Rey Theater in Albuquerque, NM.

Burning-spears-tt01_small This program features another hour of Music with Reggae Legend Burning Spear and Interviews with Spear's founder Winston Rodney by special guest host Ijah Umi. The show was recorded live in May of 2006, at the Historic El Rey Theater in Albuquerque, NM. The Historic El Rey Theater is on Old Route 66 downtown in the heart of Albuqueruqe, NM.  This program first aired on Southwest Stages 3rd year of programming in the Fall of 2006.

Once in a great while, an artist emerges that has a profound effect on popular culture. Burning Spear is such an artist. A certifiable musical legend, Spear’s career has already spanned over three decades and shows no sign of slowing down. His concerts regularly last over two hours, a live show that delivers more energy and vibrancy than many rock and roll bands that are half his age. Its no surprise that Spear was the only reggae artist included in the 2002 music issue of Vanity Fair. But it is not just the music that generates the excitement, it is also the message. Carrying the torch for the gospel of Marcus Garvey, Burning Spear is one of the single greatest proponents of self-determination and self-reliance for all African descendants; but his message is not exclusively based on the teachings of Garvey. Through his music, Burning Spear has consistently been able to educate, inform, and uplift people the world over with his positive message based on honesty, peace, and love.


Growing up in the parish of St Ann’s Jamaica, the same musical hotbed that produced Bob Marley and the Wailers, Burning Spear made his first recording of "Door Peep" in 1969 for the esteemed Studio One label. In fact, it was Bob Marley himself that referred Spear to Studio One.

As Spear recalls: "The way the whole thing came about is that I found myself moving along up in the hills of St. Ann’s and I ran into Bob (Marley) at the same time. And Bob was going to his farm. The man was moving with a donkey and some buckets and a fork, and cutlass and plants. We just reason man to man and I-man say wherein I would like to get involved in the music business. And Bob say, ‘All right, just check Studio One.’"

While at Studio One, Burning Spear recorded his first two classic albums, Burning Spear and Rocking Time.
Building on this solid foundation, Spear went on to record for Island Records in the 70’s, releasing three albums (Marcus Garvey, Man in the Hills, and Garvey’s Ghost) that not only reshaped the face of reggae music, but also saw the emergence of Burning Spear as an international artist whose artistic vision began to permeate popular culture around the world. He followed these up with the release of Hail H.I.M. for EMI and set the stage for a prolific string of releases through the 80’s and 90’s, including the Grammy winning Calling Rastafari, as well as Rasta Business, The World Should Know, Fittest of the Fittest, and more.
And now, Burning Spear is ready to embark on a new journey with the launch of Burning Spear Records and his first release, Live At Montreaux Jazz Festival 2001. A stellar collection of now classic Spear anthems, including "Slavery Days", "Columbus", "Rocking Time", and more, Live at Montreaux is just the first of several planned releases that will also include the re-issue of previously unavailable Spear recordings as well as a new studio album in 2003.

 

An Evening with Beausoliel

From Southwest Stages | 58:23

An Evening of music and Interviews with Cajun Music Icons Beausoliel, recorded live in 2004 at Mountain Village in Telluride, Colorado

Beausoleil-1jpg_small This program contains an Hour of Music with the Cajun Music Icons Beausoliel. This performance was recorded live in August of 2004, at the Conference Center in Telluride, Colorado's Mountain Village.
This show also has an interview with Beausoliel's founding member, Michael Doucet by Southwest Stages' host John Strader.
BEAUSOLEIL avec Michael Doucet "We Cajuns really are the gypsies of America,” says BeauSoleil’s Michael Doucet. The former university musicologist, National Heritage Award recipient and leader of the world’s best known Cajun outfit is referring to his band’s latest disc, Gitane Cajun (Cajun Gypsy). “The Acadiennes, or Cajuns, came to the New World from France in 1604,” says the fiddler.
“We settled the land of what is now called Nova Scotia—we called it L'Acadie—and built peaceful, friendly relationships with the native Micmac people. That's why the British Empire grabbed our rich farmlands after the French and Indian Wars and drove our ancestors out.
In 1755, fifteen thousand Acadians were expelled, and at least seven thousand died on the long journey that brought most of them to a new home in Louisiana. We got moved around a lot.
Because of that we Cajuns have a gypsy consciousness. The family stays together no matter what! And we also kept our music despite all our being shoved about and uprooted.
"About ninety-eight percent of BeauSoleil's music is sung in French, but it's not the music that you'd hear in France. The Cajuns mixed it up socially and musically with all sorts of folks along their journeys and after they dug in down in Louisiana.
There's a strong Spanish influence in there—Spain used to own Louisiana—and there are Irish and Scottish and German and very important African-American and Caribbean flavors and styles blended into our music. What I really believe about Cajun music is that is the most American music there is.
We play music that people feel like they've heard before, like it brings up memories they didn't know they had."
Such poetic explications are not unexpected from Doucet, who has been nicknamed "the Mystic Cajun" and whose Zen-like grasp of blues, jazzy swing, and old time music gives BeauSoleil its special appeal.
Doucet recounts how he started out as a disgruntled graduate student in Louisiana bent on refuting a professor's curt dismissal of Cajun music as "chanky-chanky and second-rate country and western." His academic research, eventually funded by foundation grants, led him to meet and learn from the great elders of Louisiana music—Dewey Balfa, Dennis McGee, Clifton Chenier and Canray Fontenot, among them.
Doucet put what he learned into practice. In 1973 he formed an "exotic" duo in France with his cousin, now known worldwide as Zachary Richard. ("He was Ralph Richard back then," sniffs Doucet, good-naturedly.)
Doucet returned to America and in 1976, with his guitarist brother, David Doucet, he formed BeauSoleil. The rest is history.
BeauSoleil has gone through personnel changes over the years, appeared in films and on soundtracks, and morphed from a calypso-flavor to a rock-edge. But the band has always kept its sound Cajun heartbeat, even when that heart pounds fast to a zydeco beat, as it often does.
"The line between zydeco and Cajun music is really pretty blurred these days," Doucet explains. "Really, people just want to have fun and they dance to what feels good."
Present-day BeauSoleil is a band of seasoned virtuosos firmly adhering to their Cajun folk roots, most often acoustically expressed, though this does not rule out experimentation and innovation.
After 30 years in the band, Doucet's songwriting has grown more complex and universal. "There really can't be any imposed parameters on this music.
You need to do what you want to do, and what we gain from our audiences is at least as much as whatever we give to them. It's all about touching people and being touched by people. My two favorite venues are festivals and somebody's kitchen."

Sept. 2005-Interview by Bill Nevins

The Best of Corey Harris

From Southwest Stages | Part of the Southwest Stages series | 58:27

This program contains an hour of the best of Corey Harris' music from four different performances. It features music recorded live at the 2000 and 2003 Thirsty Ear Festivals, the 2005 Festival International de Louisiane and The 2005 Telluride Blues and Brews Festival.

Harris_c_small This show features an hour of Blues music by Corey Harris, recorded live at four different locations between the years 2000 and 2005. This program shows off many different sides of Corey Harris, as he plays different styles at each show and performs in different configurations everytime we met up with him.
This program contains music from performances at the 2000 and 2003 Thirsty Ear Festivals, held at the Eaves Movie Ranch, just south of Santa Fe, NM. At the 2003 Thirsty Festival Corey performed as a duet with Blues Pianist Henrey Butler. The next time we ran into Corey was at the 2005 Festival International de Louisiane, in Lafayette Lousiana as we were were tagging along at this event with our broadcast partner KRVS who was broadcasting the event Live. We then caught up with Corey and his band again that same year at The 2005 Telluride Blues and Brews Festival in Town Park in Telluride, Colorado.

Corey Harris has earned substantial critical acclaim as one of the few contemporary bluesmen able to channel the raw, direct emotion of acoustic Delta blues without coming off as an authenticity-obsessed historian. Although he is well versed in the early history of blues guitar, he's no well-mannered preservationist, mixing a considerable variety of influences -- from New Orleans to the Caribbean to Africa -- into his richly expressive music. In doing so, he's managed to appeal to a wide spectrum of blues fans, from staunch traditionalists to more contemporary sensibilities.

Harris was born in Denver, CO, on February 21, 1969, and began playing guitar at age 12, when he fell in love with his mother's Lightnin' Hopkins records. He played in a rock & roll band in high school, as well as the marching band, and developed his singing abilities in church. Through Bates College in Maine (where he majored in anthropology), Harris traveled to Cameroon to study African linguistics and returned there on a post-graduate fellowship; during his time there, he soaked up as much African music as possible, entranced by its complex polyrhythms.

After returning to the U.S., Harris taught English and French in Napoleonville, LA, and during his spare time he played the clubs, coffeehouses, and street corners of nearby New Orleans. His local reputation eventually earned him a deal with Alligator, one of the pre-eminent blues labels in the South. In 1995, Alligator released Harris' debut album, Between Midnight and Day, a one-man, one-guitar affair that illustrated his mastery of numerous variations on the Delta blues style. The record won rave reviews and even some mainstream media attention, marking Harris as an exciting new presence on the blues scene; it also earned him an opening slot on tour with ex-10,000 Maniacs singer Natalie Merchant.

Harris followed it up with Fish Ain't Bitin' in 1997, a record that began to expand his style by adding a New Orleans-style brass section on several tracks, while emphasizing his own original compositions to a much greater degree. The next year, Harris was invited to participate in the Billy Bragg/Wilco collaboration Mermaid Avenue, which set a selection of unfinished Woody Guthrie songs to music; Harris played guitar and contributed bluesy backup vocals to several tunes. In 1999, Harris released what most critics called his strongest work to date, Greens from the Garden; hailed as a landmark in some quarters, the record delved deeper into New Orleans funk and R&B, while recasting its covers in surprising but effective new contexts (even reggae and hip-hop). The result was a kaleidoscope of black musical styles that earned Harris even more widespread attention than his debut. Veteran pianist Henry Butler appeared on the record, and for the follow-up, Harris recorded an entire album in tandem with Butler; issued in 2000, Vu-Du Menz updated several different strains of early jazz and blues.

Harris subsequently left Alligator for Rounder, and debuted for his new label in 2002 with Downhome Sophisticate, a typically eclectic outing that explored his African influences and added Latin music to his seemingly endless sonic palette. Two more albums followed on Rounder, the marvelous Mississippi to Mali in 2003 and Daily Bread in 2005. Ever the musical explorer, Harris turned to Jamaica and roots reggae for the template on his next album, Zion Crossroads, which was released in 2007 on Telarc Records.

Steve Huey, All Music Guide

An Evening with Los Lobos-Acoustic En Vivo

From Southwest Stages | Part of the Southwest Stages series | 58:26

This program features an evening of music and interviews with Los Lobos-Acoustic En Vivo. This performance was recorded live at the Historic Rialto Theater in Tucson, Arizona.

Los_lobos__small This program features an hour of music by Los Lobos, Acousic En Vivo. This performance was recorded live at the Historic Rialto Theater in Tucson, Arizona in February of 2007. This show also contains a phone interivew with Los Lobos' Steve Berlin by Southwest Stages' host John Strader.

For nearly three decades Los Lobos have been exploring the artistic and commercial possibilities of American biculturalism, moving back and forth between their Chicano roots and their love of American rock. Although the band first gained fame as part of the early-'80s roots-rock revival, they don't so much strip music down as mix it up, playing norteño, blues, country, Tex-Mex, ballads, folk, and rock.

Los Lobos have been guests on albums by Ry Cooder, Elvis Costello, Fabulous Thunderbirds, Roomful of Blues, and Paul Simon. Their music has been used in the films La Bamba, Eating Raoul, The Mambo Kings, Alamo Bay, and Chan Is Missing.

Cesar Rosas, Conrad Lozano, David Hidalgo, and Louie Perez have known one another since they were adolescents in East L.A. They formed Los Lobos (Spanish for “the Wolves”) to play weddings and bars in their neighborhood. Although they had previously played in rock and Top 40 bands, together they decided to experiment with acoustic folk instruments and explore their Mexican heritage, playing norteño and conjunto music on instruments including the guitarron and bajo sexto. Los Lobos got their first full-time gig in 1978, playing at a Mexican restaurant in Orange County. That year they also released their debut album, Just Another Band From East L.A..

Eventually, Los Lobos’ experimentation led them back to electric instruments. They played one of their last acoustic shows opening for Public Image Ltd. at the Olympic Auditorium in L.A. in 1980, where they were booed by the audience. Nonetheless inspired by punk’s energy, Hidalgo and Perez began writing songs and playing Hollywood clubs. The Blasters became fans and urged Slash to sign Los Lobos.

...And a Time to Dance was produced by T Bone Burnett and Blasters saxman Steve Berlin. Its divergent collection of dance songs included the 70-year-old Mexican Revolution song “Anselma,” which won a Grammy in 1983 for Best Mexican-American Performance. Berlin joined Los Lobos for Will the Wolf Survive? a much praised album whose title track later became a country hit for Waylon Jennings. On By the Light of the Moon, coproduced by Burnett, Los Lobos wrote political songs about life in the barrio.

In 1987 Los Lobos recorded several Ritchie Valens songs for the La Bamba soundtrack (#1, 1987). Though the success of the title track (#1, 1987) and “Come On, Let’s Go” (#21, 1987) suddenly lifted Los Lobos out of their bar-band, critics’ fave status, they took a noncommercial detour with La Pistola y el Corazón, featuring the traditional Mexican music they had played throughout the ’70s.

On The Neighborhood they returned to more rocking material, working with John Hiatt, the Band’s Levon Helm, and drummer Jim Keltner. The album’s title paid homage to the deep connections the band still feels to East L.A. In 1991 Hidalgo and Perez wrote songs with the Band for that group’s reunion album. The material inspired Kiko, an evocative, avant-Latin-pop album produced by Mitchell Froom. In 1993 Slash released a 20-year-anniversary retrospective of Los Lobos songs; Just Another Band From East L.A.: A Collection includes material from the band’s debut LP, rare B sides, and live tracks, as well as theband’s hits.

Latin Playboys (1994), a self-titled album by an ad hoc group consisting of Hidalgo, Perez, Froom, and Tchad Blake, was a cross between the music of Los Lobos and Captain Beefheart. The muscular funk rock of Los Lobos’ next album, Colossal Head (#81 pop, 1996), split the difference between Kiko and Latin Playboys.

In 1998 Rosas and Hidalgo released Los Super Seven as part of a loose-knit Latin supergroup of the same name that included Freddy Fender, Joe Ely, and accordionist ace Flaco Jiménez, among others. A followup was released in 2001, which included vocalists Raul Malo of the Mavericks and Caetano Veloso. In 1999 Rosas released Soul Disguise, a gritty, R&B-inflected solo record. For his part, Hidalgo teamed up with ex–Canned Heat guitarist Mike Halby as Houndog for a self-titled blues album. After this rash of side projects, Los Lobos returned to the studio to make This Time, the final installment in a trilogy of heady, groove-rich albums (including Kiko and Colossal Head) exploring Mexican folklore and mysticism. In 2001 Los Lobos was the recipient of the Billboard Century Award.

from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)

An Evening with Ozomatli Volume-2

From Southwest Stages | Part of the Southwest Stages series | 58:29

Another hour of high energy Latin and Hip-Hop music and interviews with Ozomatli, captured live in 2004 at the Paramount Nightclub in Santa Fe, NM

Ozo_small

This program features another hour of high energy Latin Hip-Hop music, captured live over two nights in spring of 2004 at the Paramount Nightclub in Santa Fe, NM. The program also features interviews with members of Ozomatli by Southwest Stages' Host John Strader.

OZOMATLI in 2009 - From L.A. to the World

In their fourteen years together as a band, celebrated Los Angeles culture-mashers Ozomatli have gone from being hometown heroes to being named U.S. State Department Cultural Ambassadors.
Ozomatli has always juggled two key identities. They are the voice of their city and they are citizens of the world.
Their music-- a notorious urban-Latino-and-beyond collision of hip hop and salsa, dancehall and cumbia, samba and funk, merengue and comparsa, East LA R&B and New Orleans second line, Jamaican ragga and Indian raga-- has long followed a key mantra: it will take you around the world by taking you around L.A.

This has never been truer for Ozo than it is in 2009. More than ever before, the band is both of the world and of L.A. Originally formed to play at an area labor protest over a decade ago, Ozomatli spent some of their early days participating in everything from earthquake prep "hip hop ghetto plays" at inner-city L.A. elementary schools to community activist events, protests, and city fundraisers. Ever since, they have been synonymous with their city: their music has been taken up by The Los Angeles Dodgers and The Los Angeles Clippers, they recorded the street-view travelogue "City of Angels" in 2007 as a new urban anthem, and most recently, they were featured as part of the prominent L.A. figures imaging campaign "We Are 4 L.A." on NBC.

"This band could not have happened anywhere else but L.A.," saxophonist and clarinetist Ulises Bella has said. "Man, the tension of it, the multiculturalism of it. L.A. is like, we're bonded by bridges."
Ozo is also a product of the city's grassroots political scene. Proudly born as a multi-racial crew in post-uprising 90s Los Angeles, the band has built a formidable reputation over four full-length studio albums and a relentless touring schedule for taking party rocking so seriously that it becomes new school musical activism.

"Just being who we are and just doing what we're doing with music at this time is very political," says bassist Wil-Dog Abers. "The youth see us up there and recognize themselves. So in a playful, party-type of way, I think it's real easy for this band to get dangerous. We are starting to realize just how big of a voice we actually have as a band and how important it is for us to use it."
In 2007, the reach and power of that voice went to new global heights. The band had long been a favorite of international audiences-playing everywhere from Japan to North Africa and Australia-and their music had always been internationalist in its scope, seamlessly blending and transforming traditions from Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East (what other band could record a song once described as "Arabic jarocho dancehall"?), but last year, they entered the global arena in a different way.

They were invited by the U.S. State Department to serve as official Cultural Ambassadors on a series of government-sponsored international tours to Asia, Africa, South America, and the Middle East, tours that linked Ozomatli to a tradition of cultural diplomacy that also includes the esteemed likes of Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Louis Armstrong.
For those who wondered how a band known for its vigilant anti-war stance could become a partner with the very Bush administration they have so vocally critiqued in the past, the band was clear about their position: it was all about responding to a global "cry for change" by using music to promote messages of peace and understanding.

As Bella told The Los Angeles Times during the band's visit to an orphanage in Cairo, "Our world standing has deteriorated. I'm totally willing and wanting to give a different image of America than America has given over the last five years."
In places like Tunisia, India, Jordan, and Nepal, Ozo didn't just play rousing free public concerts, but offered musical workshops and master classes and visited arts centers, summer camps, youth rehabilitation centers, and even a Palestinian refugee camp. They listened to performances by local musicians and often joined in for impromptu jam sessions with student bands and community musicians. Most shows ended up with kids dancing on stage and their new collaborators sitting in for a tabla solo or a run on the slide guitar.

In the case of Nepal, the band's trip was part of a celebration of the country's newly ratified peace accord and they arrived with a direct message: "different instruments but one rhythm, together we can make a prosperous Nepal." Their concert, which drew over 14,000 people, was a historic one-Ozo were the first Western band to do a concert in Nepal and the event was the country's first peaceful mass gathering that was not a protest or religious ceremony.   For the U.S Embassy in Nepal, Ozomatli were a model of how diversity promotes change. According to an official embassy release, "Ozomatli is living proof that diverse backgrounds make a stronger and more prosperous whole. Ozomatli's nine members are committed to addressing social issues of local, national and international importance and they use the power of their own diversity to achieve this."

Suddenly the lessons of L.A. had found their way into the world at large.
"I've always felt that music is the key to every culture, the beginning of an understanding," says vocalist and trumpet player Asdru Sierra. "It's a language far more universal than politics."

An Evening with Ozomatli Volume-1

From Southwest Stages | 58:28

An hour of high energy Latin and hip-hop music and interviews with Ozomatli, captured live in 2004 at the Paramount Nightclub in Santa Fe, NM

Ozomatli_desc_small This program features an hour of high energy Latin Hip-Hop music with LA's own Ozomatli, captured live over two incredible nights in the spring of 2004, at the old Paramount Nightclub in Santa Fe, NM. The program also features some fun interviews with members of Ozomatli by Southwest Stages' Host John Strader.

OZOMATLI in 2009 - From L.A. to the World

In their fourteen years together as a band, celebrated Los Angeles culture-mashers Ozomatli have gone from being hometown heroes to being named U.S. State Department Cultural Ambassadors.
Ozomatli has always juggled two key identities. They are the voice of their city and they are citizens of the world.
Their music-- a notorious urban-Latino-and-beyond collision of hip hop and salsa, dancehall and cumbia, samba and funk, merengue and comparsa, East LA R&B and New Orleans second line, Jamaican ragga and Indian raga-- has long followed a key mantra: it will take you around the world by taking you around L.A.

This has never been truer for Ozo than it is in 2009. More than ever before, the band is both of the world and of L.A. Originally formed to play at an area labor protest over a decade ago, Ozomatli spent some of their early days participating in everything from earthquake prep "hip hop ghetto plays" at inner-city L.A. elementary schools to community activist events, protests, and city fundraisers. Ever since, they have been synonymous with their city: their music has been taken up by The Los Angeles Dodgers and The Los Angeles Clippers, they recorded the street-view travelogue "City of Angels" in 2007 as a new urban anthem, and most recently, they were featured as part of the prominent L.A. figures imaging campaign "We Are 4 L.A." on NBC.

"This band could not have happened anywhere else but L.A.," saxophonist and clarinetist Ulises Bella has said. "Man, the tension of it, the multiculturalism of it. L.A. is like, we're bonded by bridges."
Ozo is also a product of the city's grassroots political scene. Proudly born as a multi-racial crew in post-uprising 90s Los Angeles, the band has built a formidable reputation over four full-length studio albums and a relentless touring schedule for taking party rocking so seriously that it becomes new school musical activism.

"Just being who we are and just doing what we're doing with music at this time is very political," says bassist Wil-Dog Abers. "The youth see us up there and recognize themselves. So in a playful, party-type of way, I think it's real easy for this band to get dangerous. We are starting to realize just how big of a voice we actually have as a band and how important it is for us to use it."
In 2007, the reach and power of that voice went to new global heights. The band had long been a favorite of international audiences-playing everywhere from Japan to North Africa and Australia-and their music had always been internationalist in its scope, seamlessly blending and transforming traditions from Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East (what other band could record a song once described as "Arabic jarocho dancehall"?), but last year, they entered the global arena in a different way.

They were invited by the U.S. State Department to serve as official Cultural Ambassadors on a series of government-sponsored international tours to Asia, Africa, South America, and the Middle East, tours that linked Ozomatli to a tradition of cultural diplomacy that also includes the esteemed likes of Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Louis Armstrong.
For those who wondered how a band known for its vigilant anti-war stance could become a partner with the very Bush administration they have so vocally critiqued in the past, the band was clear about their position: it was all about responding to a global "cry for change" by using music to promote messages of peace and understanding.

As Bella told The Los Angeles Times during the band's visit to an orphanage in Cairo, "Our world standing has deteriorated. I'm totally willing and wanting to give a different image of America than America has given over the last five years."
In places like Tunisia, India, Jordan, and Nepal, Ozo didn't just play rousing free public concerts, but offered musical workshops and master classes and visited arts centers, summer camps, youth rehabilitation centers, and even a Palestinian refugee camp. They listened to performances by local musicians and often joined in for impromptu jam sessions with student bands and community musicians. Most shows ended up with kids dancing on stage and their new collaborators sitting in for a tabla solo or a run on the slide guitar.

In the case of Nepal, the band's trip was part of a celebration of the country's newly ratified peace accord and they arrived with a direct message: "different instruments but one rhythm, together we can make a prosperous Nepal." Their concert, which drew over 14,000 people, was a historic one-Ozo were the first Western band to do a concert in Nepal and the event was the country's first peaceful mass gathering that was not a protest or religious ceremony.   For the U.S Embassy in Nepal, Ozomatli were a model of how diversity promotes change. According to an official embassy release, "Ozomatli is living proof that diverse backgrounds make a stronger and more prosperous whole. Ozomatli's nine members are committed to addressing social issues of local, national and international importance and they use the power of their own diversity to achieve this."

Suddenly the lessons of L.A. had found their way into the world at large.
"I've always felt that music is the key to every culture, the beginning of an understanding," says vocalist and trumpet player Asdru Sierra. "It's a language far more universal than politics."

An Evening with Steel Pulse

From Southwest Stages | Part of the Southwest Stages series | 58:26

An hour of music and interviews with Reggae Greats, Steel Pulse recorded live in October of 2004, at the Historic Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, NM.

Steel_pulse_small This program contains music and interviews with Brittish Reggae Icons, Steel Pulse recorded live in October of 2004, at the Historic Lensic Theater, just off the old plaza in Santa Fe, NM. The show contains and Interview with David Hinds and Selwin Brown by Southwest Stages guest host, Ijah Umi.

Steel Pulse was formed in 1975 in Birmingham, England, specifically the inner city area of Handsworth. The founding members were schoolmates David Hinds (the primary songwriter as well as the lead singer and guitarist), Basil Gabbidon (guitar), and Ronnie "Stepper" McQueen (bass). All of them came from working class West Indian immigrant families, and none had much musical experience. They took some time to improve their technical proficiency, often on Roots inspired material by the Wailers, Burning Spear and several other prominent Jamaican artists. McQueen suggested the group name, after a racehorse, and they soon fleshed out the lineup with drummer Steve "Grizzly" Nisbett, keyboardist/vocalist Selwyn "Bumbo" Brown, percussionist/vocalist Alphonso "Fonso" Martin, and vocalist Michael Riley.

Steel Pulse initially had difficulty finding live gigs, as club owners were reluctant to give them a platform for their "subversive" Rastafarian politics. Luckily, the punk movement was opening up new avenues for music all over Britain, and also finding a spiritual kinship with protest reggae. Thus, the group wound up as an opening act for punk and new wave bands like the Clash, the Stranglers, Generation X, the Police, and XTC, and built a broad-based audience in the process. In keeping with the spirit of the times, Steel Pulse developed a theatrical stage show that leavened their social commentary with satirical humor; many of the members dressed in costumes that mocked traditional British archetypes (Riley was a vicar, McQueen a bowler-wearing aristocrat, Martin a coach footman, etc.). The band issued two singles -- "Kibudu, Mansetta and Abuku" and "Nyah Love" -- on small independent labels, when they then came to the attention of Island Records after opening for Burning Spear.

Steel Pulse's first single for Island was the classic "Ku Klux Klan," which happened to lend itself well to the band's highly visual, costume-heavy concerts. It appeared on their 1978 debut album, Handsworth Revolution, which was soon hailed as a classic of British reggae by many fans and critics, thanks to songs like the title track, "Macka Splaff," "Prodigal Son," and "Soldiers." Riley departed before the follow-up, 1979's Tribute to the Martyrs, which featured other key early singles in "Sound System" and "Babylon Makes the Rules," and solidified the band's reputation for uncompromising political ferocity. That reputation went out the window on 1980's Caught You, a more pop-oriented set devoted to dance tracks and lovers rock. By that point, Steel Pulse was keen on trying to crack the American market, and went on tour over Island's objections. Caught You was issued in the States as Reggae Fever, but failed to break the group, and they soon parted ways with Island.

Steel Pulse moved on to Elektra/Asylum, which released an LP version of their headlining set at the 1981 Reggae Sunsplash Festival. Their studio debut was 1982's True Democracy, a generally acclaimed set that balanced bright, accessible production with a return to social consciousness. It became their first charting LP in America, making both the pop and R&B listings. The slicker follow-up, Earth Crisis, was released in 1984 and featured producer Jimmy "Senyah" Haynes subbing on guitar and bass for founding members Gabbidon and McQueen, both of whom left the group by the end of the recording sessions. They were replaced by guitarist Carlton Bryan and bassist Alvin Ewen for 1986's Babylon the Bandit, another Haynes-produced effort that ranked as the group's most polished, synth-centered record to date. It featured the powerful "Not King James Version" and won a Grammy for Best Reggae Album.

In 1988, Steel Pulse released State of Emergency, their most explicitly crossover-oriented album yet. They also contributed the track "Can't Stand It" to the soundtrack of Spike Lee's classic Do the Right Thing. In 1991, they released another heavily commercial album, the Grammy-nominated Victims, which featured the single "Taxi Driver." Backing up the song's views, Steel Pulse filed a class-action lawsuit against the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, charging that drivers discriminated against blacks and particularly Rastafarians. Founding member Fonso Martin left that year, reducing Steel Pulse to a core trio of Hinds, Nisbett, and Brown. Their backing band still featured Ewen and was elsewhere anchored by guitarist Clifford "Moonie" Pusey, keyboardist Sidney Mills, trumpeter Kevin Batchelor, Saxophonist Jerry Johnson and Trombonist Clark Gayton.

The 1992 live album Rastafari Centennial marked the beginning of a return to the group's musical roots, and earned another Grammy nomination. The following year, they performed at Bill Clinton's inaugural celebration, the first reggae band to appear at such an event. 1994's studio album Vex completed Steel Pulse's re-embrace of classic roots reggae, though it also nodded to contemporary dancehall with several guest toasters and a digital-flavored production. 1997's Rage and Fury continued in a similar vein, and was nominated for a Grammy. In 1999, the group released another collection of live performances, Living Legacy.

Fast forward a long seven years since their previous album, Rage and Fury, Steel Pulse would return yet again, this time with African Holocaust, and yet again have their ranks dwindled. Core members David Hinds (vocals, rhythm guitar) and Selwyn Brown (keyboards, backing vocals) are the only ones to remain from the band's original line-up, but they more than hold their own and they're joined by a deep roster of supporting musicians, a list too long to list. As always, the music is what's most important, and on that count, this Steel Pulse lineup indeed makes the mark. Granted, it did take them seven years to get the album out, but still it won a Grammy Awards Nomination for Best Reggae Album of the year. There's really not too much else to say about African Holocaust. Longtime fans will know what to expect. Newcomers should know a few things: above all, Steel Pulse are known for performing well-written, Afrocentric songs that are rebellious without being negative or inflammatory, and though the band membership has changed over the years, the type of songs hasn't, nor has the steady move away from dancehall that was apparent on the band's previous album. the message and music remain true to the band's principles and vision.

Steel Pulse is one of Britain's greatest reggae bands, in terms of creative and commercial success. Steel Pulse started out playing authentic roots reggae with touches of jazz and Latin music, and earned a substantial audience worldwide. Their 1978 debut, Handsworth Revolution, is still regarded by many critics as a landmark and a high point of British reggae. By the late '80s, Steel Pulse had won a Grammy and were working full-fledged