Got a tip? Send it our way
Share your music news — big or small — with the Austin360.com team by sending us an e-mail.
Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2008 > April
April 2008
Video: Happy 75th, Willie
Willie’s fans, famous and not, share their birthday wishes for the Red-Headed Stranger. Share your own birthday greetings for Willie in the comments below.
Permalink | Comments (31) | Post your comment Categories: Willie Nelson
After the Glow: Kanye West afterparty
Don’t want to shell out for tickets to the ‘Glow in the Dark Tour’ tomorrow night? Think you’ll still need a little more ‘Ye in your life after the Erwin Center closes? Catch Kanye’s tour DJ, DJ Kraze at the After The Glow party tomorrow night at the Beauty Bar. Tickets are $15, $10 with the flier above. (We assume a printed copy will probably suffice.)
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Bobby Bones signs deal to stay at KISS FM
![Bobby pic[2].jpg](http://alt.coxnewsweb.com/shared-blogs/austin/music/upload/2008/04/bobby_bones_signs_deal_to_stay/Bobby%20pic%5B2%5D.jpg)
Bobby Bones blew his listeners a big ol’ KISS Tuesday in the form of a long-term contract extension that’ll keep him on Austin’s airwaves.
The popular morning host and radio station 96.7 KISS FM announced the multi-year deal in a news release.
“The Bobby Bones Show,” which airs weekdays from 6 to 10 a.m., is the city’s No. 1 morning show among listeners ages 12 and up and 18-34, according to statistics provided by Clear Channel Radio. The show also airs on a Clear Channel station in Wichita, Kan.
In addition to his radio gig alongside sidekicks Alayna, Amy, Carlos and Lunchbox, Bones is also a regular presence on Austin’s ME Television.
“There is no substitute for the level of passion and excitement that Bobby brings to the airwaves,” Pam McKay, market manager for Clear Channel’s Austin stations, said in the release. “It’s amazing to see how the audience gravitates to Bobby.”
“Bobby has been and will continue to be a vital part of KISS FM’s success,” added program director Jay Shannon. “I want to thank Bobby and the entire show for their commitment to KISS and Clear Channel.”
Click here to see photos from the Bobby Bones Show’s Second Chance Prom, held Friday night at Vicci.
Permalink | Comments (28) | Post your comment
CD reviews: Portishead, Santogold
Portishead
‘Third’
(Island)
Few bands exited the 1990s with as much good will as Portishead. Along with Tricky’s equally seismic “Maxinquaye,” the band’s 1994 debut “Dummy” virtually defined the “trip-hop” genre. Muted, cinematic break-beats, a stalker atmosphere of sexually charged anxiety, distant vocals, alternately cold and alluring - “Dummy” had it all. The band made a decent follow-up in ‘97, an orchestral live album, then vanished. Brilliant!
So not only is it bizarre that Portishead has reappeared, seemingly out of nowhere, it’s even stranger that “Third” is excellent, a return to form without being a rehash - trip-hop is dead, long live … something else. Something even more naked and unsettled.
Beth Gibbons’ laconic voice still marks the music as nothing but Portishead, but the music itself is Portishead 2.0. The opener “Silence” is pure film score chug and rumble — Gibbons sounds as if she had no idea the guy with the knife is in the kitchen. “Hunter” sounds like a recurring theme for that third season of “Twin Peaks” that never happened, the sound of the supper club attached to the White Lodge. “Deep Water” is acoustic (!). “Machine Gun” features a minimal, industrial-synth riff that sounds both vintage and shockingly modern, given the current underground rock passion for cheap keyboards and primitive drum machine drama. Jolly good show, guys. Well, maybe not so jolly.
Recommended: “Silence,” “Machine Gun”
Santogold
‘Santogold’
(Downtown)
Santogold, aka Santi White, did time in the Philadelphia ska band Stiffed, but don’t hold that against her. Nobody else is: The buzz on this gal is deafening. She’s drawn comparisons to M.I.A., and while the song “Creator” seems an M.I.A. sound-alike, the generalization is inaccurate.
Think of her as the Gwen Stefani for Web 2.0, a New Wave princess in indie rock drag, drawing from the bits of dub reggae, the electronic ’80s, punk mix tapes and whatever musical language Björk made up. Before even the Stiffed years, she also wrote and produced a debut album for the R&B singer Res that seems equally important to her development. “You’ll Find A Way” harkens back to the ska days, opener “L.E.S. Artistes” is a dead ringer for Sleater-Kinney’s guitar rock, “Lights Out” is the sort of flawless, sprightly indie pop that would have sounded utterly at home on college radio during the first half of Clinton administration. Not as original as some would have you believe, but a striking debut nonetheless. Her next album will probably flatten us all.
Recommended: “L.E.S. Artistes,” “Lights Out”
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Reviews
Review: Madonna - ‘Hard Candy’ CD
Madonna
“Hard Candy”
(Warner Bros.)
Justin Timberlake gets the best line on Madonna’s “Four Minutes:” “We only got four minutes to save the world!”
Is there a better definition of pop as the music of possibility? Give us four minutes, we’ll give you the inspiration to do anything. The punchline, of course, is that without Timbaland’s indulgent introductory yammering, the world could have been saved in three minutes, which is closer to the classic pop-song goal.
But this is Madonna we’re talking about, and Madonna has never done anything in half measures, all but embodying pop music several times in the past 20+ years. But she’s approaching AARP status (OK, OK, she’s only 50 - and in much, much better shape than I am). She’s returned to her first love: The dancefloor. She may flirt with limpid rock (“American Pie,” anyone?). She may sing like Eva Peron (“I kept my promiiiiiise!”). She may keep acting in movies where there’s little evidence that she can, you know, act (not that that’s ever stopped anyone). But Madonna returns to clubs the way the homing pigeon come back to the coop - she will always have a home there and when an image shift doesn’t work, that’s where she goes.
So it’s fitting that she end up back there for this, her final album for Warner Brothers Records, her home roughly forever. She celebrates the transition by embracing hip-hop, or rather, the bits of hip-hop beat science that she can translate to the au-courant disco that she specializes in.
To that end, she bypasses the Eurotrash techno-fluff of “Music” and “Confessions on the Dancefloor” for the Tims (Timberlake and Timbaland), Timbaland protege Nate “Danja” Hills and Pharrell Williams for their way with a sequencer. Williams seems the most sympathetic collaborator. The opener “Candy Shop” stacks up the entendres on a subtly rolling thump - her spoken “sticky and sweet” mumble is so ghost-in-the-machine perfect that you wonder why she doesn’t do the spoken thing more often. (Man, “Justify My Love” was just the best, huh? Good times.) Kanye West barely makes a ripple on “Beat Goes On.” “Spanish Lesson” is a mess, but the funky-throbbing“She’s Not Me” is about the second best she’s-gotta-be-talking-about-Britney song ever. (“Cry Me A River” will own that category forever.)
But it’s Timbaland who seems in the driver’s seat, for good and dull. “4 Minutes” can’t match earlier triumphs, but it can equal, say, “Secret” or “Frozen.” “Miles Away,” the she’s-gotta-be-talking-about-Guy-Richie song, mixes acoustic strum with a restrained Timbaland thud. In fact, there’s something altogether restrained here. There are highs on even the most unmentionable Madonna collections. She can’t quite save the world, but she gets as close as any 50-year-old pop lifer has any right to.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Review: Joe Jackson at the Paramount
A surprisingly boisterous middle-aged crowd filled the Paramount at Joe Jackson’s Monday show, welcoming a pop craftsman who may have scaled back his return to rock (his new disc “Rain” is a trio record, not the ‘80s-reunion quartet he assembled for the previous album) but still shows no sign of relapsing into the quasi-classical mode that occupied him in the ‘90s.
Jackson played more than half of his new disc, tunes that ranged from the optimistic “Rush Across the Road” to “Solo (So Low),” a piano-and-voice composition so lushly despondent it drew a loud, spontaneous sigh from one female listener. But he also performed more than half of 1982’s “Night and Day” — from “Real Men,” on which he conserved his voice by turning the refrain’s pained wail into something more quiet and introspective, to the perfect show-closer “Slow Song,” on which he held nothing back.
In between were other old favorites. Some (the driving “On Your Radio,” for instance) arrived with the energy of the original recordings, while others benefitted from the kind of creative tweaking familiar to fans who’ve heard the three very different versions of “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” on his double-disc “Live 1980-1986”: “You Can’t Get What You Want (Till You Know What You Want)” turned into a piano-free drum-and-bass remix; the jazz standard “Caravan” wound its way into “Chinatown”; and the singer played around so much with the melody and phrasing of “It’s Different for Girls” that it seemed a deliberate provocation to those in the room who insisted on singing along. Jackson may have been flattered — he seemed a bit surprised at the end-of-show ovations — but he wasn’t going to make things too easy for them.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Happy Birthday Willie! (day one)
The Houston Chronicle and Fort Worth Star-Telegram are celebrating Willie Nelson’s 75th birthday today, but we’re marking the occasion tomorrow, April 30. What gives?
Willie’s birth certificate puts the DOB at April 30, which is what Doc Simms, who delivered Willie in Abbott, wrote down. But according to Joe Nick Patoski’s book “Willie Nelson: An Epic Life,” a cousin who was there at the birth and named Willie Hugh Nelson, claimed the singer was actually born a few minutes before midnight. Ask Willie Nelson when his birthday is and he’ll say it’s today. Can’t help but wonder if 4/29/33 is a better numerological fit for the zen cowboy. After all, four plus 29 is 33.
We’re sticking with the public record over Cousin Mildred’s recollection. April 30 is also the birthdate given on Willie Nelson’s plaque in the Country Music Hall of Fame. But celebrate today if you want to. If anyone deserves two birthdays….
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: Willie Nelson
Review: My Chemical Romance at Stubb’s
Gerard Way, lead singer for My Chemical Romance, looked a little tired Monday night at Stubb’s.
You can’t really blame the man. He and his band of Gothy-looking rockers have been on and off tour (mostly on) since their 2006 breakout album “The Black Parade.” This most recent jaunt, the fifth and final leg of “The Black Parade World Tour” is three months long. Way as much said this was the last show they would be playing in Austin for a good long time. I think everyone got their money’s worth.
So it wasn’t all that surprising that in order to keep the energy high (which it was) and to make the 10:30 p.m. hard-deck curfew (which they did), songs felt shortened, limited to a verse or two and a chorus, the better to rip through a high octane set that reached back to the band’s 2002 debut, “I Brought Me My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love.” Gone were the elaborate sets and theatrical cast of their tour’s early legs.
This was a rock band playing to a sold out crowd that absolutely adored them. Way — looking less like a rock strar and more like the comic book writer he established himself last year in the excellent series “The Umbrella Academy” — started cool and sweated himself into a frenzy as the band stripped back its material’s proggier, Queenier (as in Freddie Mercury) elements for articulate, dynamic rock that held the crowd in the palm of his hand.
From MTV hits such as “Welcome to the Black Parade” to mopers such as “Cancer” to the anthemic “Teenagers,” the crowd was easily the equal of Way’s slightly fried voice. When the black-clad masses are with you, they’re with you to the end.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment
Commentary: Team Cyrus has itself to blame
Although being photographed wrapped in a satin bedsheet with a bare back showing in Vanity Fair magazine isn’t the same as exposing a breast during halftime of the Super Bowl, the Miley Cyrus/ Annie Leibovitz controversy has something in common with Janet Jackson’s famous “wardrobe malfunction.” In both cases, pop singers tried too hard to be provocative, and messed up, big time.
The hoped-for rejuvenation of Jackson’s sagging career by way of scintillation didn’t happen. And now Miley Cyrus, the 15-year-old “Hannah Montana” star on her way to becoming a billionaire by her 18th birthday, has gone from heavy rotation to spin cycle. The folks at Disney, which makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year off Miley’s wholesomeness, didn’t even know about the photo until they saw it on “Entertainment Tonight.”
“I took part in a photo shoot that was supposed to be ‘artistic’ and now, seeing the photographs and reading the story, I feel so embarrassed,” Miley Cyrus said in a statement. “I never intended for any of this to happen and I apologize to my fans who I care so deeply about.”
As soon as the migraines eased, Disney execs issued a statement blaming Vanity Fair for creating a situation “to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines.”
If Vanity Fair played anyone it was Miley’s parents, who the magazine said were on the set for the shoot. You don’t think that dad Billy Ray Cyrus, the most controversial singer in Nashville when he broke on the scene 17 years ago with “Achy Breaky Heart,” knows how the media operates? You go to Krispy Kreme for doughnuts and you go to Vanity Fair to create a stir.
Entertainment Tonight has reported that Billy Ray Cyrus was not present when the “racy” photos were shot; he had to leave for a prior commitment. No excuse, if it’s true. You don’t leave your 15-year-old with a photog known for edginess and provocation.
Team Cyrus intentionally set out to show that Miley was not just for little girls. She can’t be “Hannah M.” forever, so I think the article, in which Miley admits her favorite show is “Sex and the City,” and the PG photos, were orchestrated to transition Miley from tween to teen/ young adult. Pretty soon Miss Goody Jimmy Choo Shoes will be competing with the Rihannas of the world, just as Lindsay Lohan soon found herself going up against Scarlett Johansson and Kate Hudson for roles. Li-Lo was unprepared, but Miley wouldn’t be. But by looking ahead, the plot backfired. And now there’s backpedaling.
The Cyrus family made a big miscalculation, well, two really. First, they’re not bigger than Disney, no matter how many consecutive soldout concerts Miley and Billy do. But probably the biggest mistake was that it’s the parents, not the 10-year-old girls, who buy the tickets and the T-shirts and the DVDs. And many are outraged.
This will blow over and “Hannah Montana” will continue to be an enormous money machine. But I think someone whose name rhymes with virus learned a lesson about gooses and golden eggs.
Permalink | Comments (16) | Post your comment
Late night musical guests this week
Monday 4/28
Leno - Duffy
Letterman- The Roots with Chrisette Michele
Craig Ferguson- Morrissey
Jimmy Kimmel- Back Door Slam
Conan- Santogold
Tuesday 4/29
Leno- Natasha Bedingfield
Letterman- Alicia Keys
Craig Ferguson- Morrissey
Conan O’Brien- the Kills
Wednesday 4/30
Leno- Augustana
Letterman- Josh Groban
Conan- Feist
Kimmel- Def Leppard
Thursday 5/1
Leno- Avril Lavigne
Letterman- Robyn
Conan O’Brien-Was (Not Was)
Kimmel- Stone Temple Pilots
Ferguson- She & Him
Friday 5/
Letterman- Nick Lowe
Kimmel- Estelle
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment
Grupo horns back Prince at Coachella
Grupo Fantasma has played on TV without Prince
Yes, that was Grupo Fantasma’s horn section- Leo Gauna, Josh Levy and Gilbert Elorreaga - backing Prince on “The Tonight Show” Friday night. They also did the honors the next night, at Prince’s headlining slot at Coachella.
The trio returns to Austin to rejoin the band Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Old Pecan Street Festival on Sixth Street.
Grupo is gearing up for a big 2008, with their best LP to date- “Sonidos Gold” - coming out June 17 on Aire Sol. The LP, recorded at Wire on South Lamar Bloulevard, features a guest appearance by Prince’s bandleader Maceo Parker.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Waterloo Top 10 for the week ending April 27
Nelo, ‘s/t’ (Justice)
James McMurtry, ‘Just Us Kids’ (Lightning Rod)
Flight of the Conchords, ‘s/t’ (Sub Pop)
Vampire Weekend, ‘s/t’ (XL)
The Black Keys, ‘Attack and Release’ (Nonesuch)
The Raconteurs, ‘Consolers Of The Lonely’ (Warner Bros.)
Atmosphere, ‘When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That (Expletive) Gold’ (Rhymesayers)
Hayes Carll, ‘Trouble in Mind’(Lost Highway)
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, ‘Raising Sand’ (Rounder)
Marcia Ball, ‘Peace, Love & BBQ’ (Alligator)
The Nelo album moved 576 copies. Check out their SoundCheck360 Live video here.
The McMurtry album moved 132. The Conchords album sold 78.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Patty Griffin added to KGSR’s Willie lovefest
PG on “Ellen”
We’re still two days away from the KGSR (FM 107.1) tribute to Willie Nelson, which which air live from the KGSR studio Wednesday from 8- 11 p.m., but I’m ready to call a highlight: Patty Griffin singing “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground.” The Red-Headed Singer has just been added to the lineup, which will also include Bob Schneider, Alejandro Escovedo, Ruthie Foster, Jimmy LaFave, Carolyn Wonderland, Charlie Sexton and just about every other local musician you’d think should be there.
If you want to see and hear Willie Nelson himself and can’t make it to Denmark tomorrow, ME TV (Ch. 15 Time Warner) is airing a 75th birthday special filmed with Willie and friends during this recent SXSW. The hourlong program airs Wednesday at 9 a.m., 1 p.m., 7 p.m. and 11 p.m.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Willie Nelson
Young Mariah’s got talent…
…but we already knew that.
Thirteen-year-old R&B singer Mariah Roberson, who we profiled at this year’s Urban Music Festival a couple weeks back, took top honors in the Beat 104.9’s “Austin’s Got Talent” competition this weekend. The competition called upon Austinites of all ages to showcase their talents in exchange for an opportunity to win tickets to Kanye West’s “Glow In The Dark Tour.” The Beat employed a loose definition of the word “talent,” which encompassed everything from singing your heart out like our girl surely did to dancing, comedy or, uh, Fear Factor-like stunts.
Nine individuals were named competition finalists, including three rappers and six singers, and, shockingly, no sword swallowers or cockroach wranglers. Each finalist won tickets to Kanye’s show on Wednesday at the Erwin Center. But with her killer pipes (which you can check out yourself in the video above), The Beat crowned Mariah Austin’s top talent. As grand prize winner, Mariah will travel to the East Coast on May 10 to catch the “Glow In The Dark Tour” in Washington, D.C. on the Beat’s dime. Congratulations, Mariah!
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment
Backyard memories
Widespread Panic at the Backyard
After Tim O’Connor announced Thursday that this season would be the last one for Bed, Backyard & Beyond, that 5,000-capacity venue in the middle of a shopping mall, I had a couple of thoughts. First, who would put such a gorgeous, rustic, intimate concert venue in the middle of a gaudy mall? Every time I’d go to a show at the Backyard in the past couple years, I’d wonder why O’Connor didn’t build it in the middle of nowhere, leaving the natural beauty of Texas to make it unique?
Apparently that’s what he plans to do with the new Backyard, which is expected to be built across highway 71 and west a couple blocks, on 37 acres protected from infringing developments.
Of course I’m joking about the Backyard being built as part of the mall, but newcomers must think that’s how it was. After all, it’s almost unconceivable that a township would allow such an asset to be ruined. What up, Bee Cave?
Gather ‘round kids and let me tell you about an outdoor concert hall, where you’d park in a pasture and drink beer under a full moon- for some reason the moon was always full - and gaze up at huge trees while the p.a. played Willie. And then someone like the Gipsy Kings or Widespread Panic would come out and tell you how cool it was to play a stage that wasn’t like all the others.
I was just trying to think of all the great shows I saw at the Backyard and was surprised that I couldn’t think of too many. I saw a great Patti Smith show there, plus Elvis Costello, Carole King, Paul Simon, Steve Earle and John Fogerty were really good. But none of them, except Patti, were the kind of shows you’d be yammering about in the car on the long drive home.
I think that was the problem- the long drive home. You want to practically crumble, so spent with affinity for the music, when you go to a magical concert. But with that long, snaking, 30-minute drive through West Lake Hills still on the things-to-do list, you couldn’t really let yourself go. Plus, security there was kind of a pain.
There was one show that stands out as the most memorable I’ve been to at the Backyard. I went out there in Aug. ‘96 to review Lyle Lovett for, like, the 10th time, and I wasn’t looking forward to it. Lovett’s first two albums are classics, but then he started moving things toward that big band sound, which was great at first, but after awhile it started to feel like shtick to me. And I just hated that song with the spoken intro about looking over your shoulder while you’re reading the paper. “Here I Am” would always set me off and I have to admit that on a couple of occasions I went overboard with negativity.
To make matters worse at the Backyard show, the sky had opened up and drenched everything and everybody for almost an hour. By 8 p.m., they still had not announced whether or not the show would go on. But Lovett came out, casually dressed, and said that with all the water onstage, it was just too dangerous to put on his full band electric show and that it would be rescheduled for three days later. Then, he reached down and got his guitar and started singing “If I Had a Boat.” Lyle played at least 40 minutes, solo acoustic, as a way of thanking everyone for coming all the way out there, only to be rained out. It was probably the best I’d seen Lovett since the first time, when he blew me (and headliner John Prine) away at the Paramount Theatre in 1985. It was loose and heartfelt and especially enchanting in that gorgeous, but wet, setting.
So, that’s my favorite Backyard moment; what’s yours?
Permalink | Comments (10) | Post your comment
Vaughan headlines Buddy Guy tribute
Jimmie Vaughan and Lou Ann Barton will play a special tribute concert on July 20 in Chicago honoring blues legend Buddy Guy, who recently played Stubb’s. At the show, Guy will receive the first Great Performer of Illinois award.
The free concert will take place in downtown Chicago’s Millennium Park. Other artists will be announced soon.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Review: Seth Walker
Most acts are lucky if they can do one thing very well; Seth Walker is a double threat, as he proved Thursday night at a Shady Grove show that was anything but “Unplugged.” Walker is a master of the stinging, T-Bone Walker-like blues guitar and he’s also a cabaret singer with a lot of character in his voice. We’ve all heard “You Don’t Know Me,” the Cindy Walker ballad made famous (again) by Ray Charles plenty of times, but not quite like Walker did it Thursday night, with the phrasing of a bluesman’s regret.
The North Carolina native, who’s been in Austin for a dozen years, played a few songs from an album he’s been making in Nashville with Delbert McClinton cohort Gary Nicholson. Especially wonderful wer e the solo acoustic putdown “At Least I Got a Song” and the Sam Cooke flavored “Love In Rewind,” which show Walker’s moving in the right direction. If there’s room on the record, Walker needs to record “You Don’t Know Me,” the most stunning highlight in a night of many.
But in a 90-minute set you’re gonna have a few clunkers and, for me, Walker and his supertight band played about three too many standard blues numbers. I usually don’t advocate side projects - the Rolling Stones didn’t need to start a reggae offshoot to do stuff like “Cherry Oh Cherry”- but I think Walker should find a dynamite female blues singer and do an Ike and Tina thing with a differently-named project and keep the “Seth Walker” stuff to the well-crafted , mood-inducing tunes like “Lay Down” (dedicated to recently departed young blues lion Sean Costello) and Tom Waits’ “Picture In a Frame.”
Sure, the audience was up dancing to the Chicago blues tunes, but it gave the set an unfocused feel. Musicially, there are two Seth Walkers and, I guess, it’s a matter of opinion on whether or not they should take turns.
By the way, KGSR’s “Unplugged at the Grove” series has a lot more energy- not to mention volume - this year. And the crowds are into it more than ever before. Remember the guy who called the cops every Thursday to complain about the noise? Doesn’t live there anymore.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Springsteen’s eulogy for Danny Federici
An amazing remembrance, delivered by Bruce Springsteen at Danny Federici’s funeral on April 21 in Red Bank, New Jersey:
FAREWELL TO DANNY
Let me start with the stories.
Back in the days of miracles, the frontier days when “Mad Dog” Lopez and his temper struck fear into the band, small club owners, innocent civilians and all women, children and small animals.
Back in the days when you could still sign your life away on the hood of a parked car in New York City.
Back shortly after a young red-headed accordionist struck gold on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour and he and his mama were sent to Switzerland to show them how it’s really done.
Back before beach bums were featured on the cover of Time magazine.
I’m talking about back when the E Street Band was a communist organization! My pal, quiet, shy Dan Federici, was a one-man creator of some of the hairiest circumstances of our 40 year career… And that wasn’t easy to do. He had “Mad Dog” Lopez to compete with…. Danny just outlasted him.
Maybe it was the “police riot” in Middletown, New Jersey. A show we were doing to raise bail money for “Mad Log” Lopez who was in jail in Richmond, Virginia, for having an altercation with police officers who we’d aggravated by playing too long. Danny allegedly knocked over our huge Marshall stacks on some of Middletown’s finest who had rushed the stage because we broke the law by…playing too long.
As I stood there watching, several police officers crawled out from underneath the speaker cabinets and rushed away to seek medical attention. Another nice young officer stood in front of me onstage waving his nightstick, poking and calling me nasty names. I looked over to see Danny with a beefy police officer pulling on one arm while Flo Federici, his first wife, pulled on the other, assisting her man in resisting arrest.
A kid leapt from the audience onto the stage, momentarily distracting the beefy officer with the insults of the day. Forever thereafter, “Phantom” Dan Federici slipped into the crowd and disappeared.
A warrant out for his arrest and one month on the lam later, he still hadn’t been brought to justice. We hid him in various places but now we had a problem. We had a show coming at Monmouth College. We needed the money and we had to do the gig. We tried a replacement but it didn’t work out. So Danny, to all of our admiration, stepped up and said he’d risk his freedom, take the chance and play.
Show night. 2,000 screaming fans in the Monmouth College gym. We had it worked out so Danny would not appear onstage until the moment we started playing. We figured the police who were there to arrest him wouldn’t do so onstage during the show and risk starting another riot.
Let me set the scene for you. Danny is hiding, hunkered down in the backseat of a car in the parking lot. At five minutes to eight, our scheduled start time, I go out to whisk him in. I tap on the window.
“Danny, come on, it’s time.”
I hear back, “I’m not going.”
Me: “What do you mean you’re not going?”
Danny: “The cops are on the roof of the gym. I’ve seen them and they’re going to nail me the minute I step out of this car.”
As I open the door, I realize that Danny has been smoking a little something and had grown rather paranoid. I said, “Dan, there are no cops on the roof.”
He says, “Yes, I saw them, I tell you. I’m not coming in.”
So I used a procedure I’d call on often over the next forty years in dealing with my old pal’s concerns. I threatened him…and cajoled. Finally, out he came. Across the parking lot and into the gym we swept for a rapturous concert during which we laughed like thieves at our excellent dodge of the local cops.
At the end of the evening, during the last song, I pulled the entire crowd up onto the stage and Danny slipped into the audience and out the front door. Once again, “Phantom” Dan had made his exit. (I still get the occasional card from the old Chief of Police of Middletown wishing us well. Our histories are forever intertwined.) And that, my friends, was only the beginning.
There was the time Danny quit the band during a rough period at Max’s Kansas City, explaining to me that he was leaving to fix televisions. I asked him to think about that and come back later.
Or Danny, in the band rental car, bouncing off several parked cars after a night of entertainment, smashing out the windshield with his head but saved from severe injury by the huge hard cowboy hat he bought in Texas on our last Western swing.
Or Danny, leaving a large marijuana plant on the front seat of his car in a tow away zone. The car was promptly towed. He said, “Bruce, I’m going to go down and report that it was stolen.” I said, “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
Down he went and straight into the slammer without passing go.
Or Danny, the only member of the E Street Band to be physically thrown out of the Stone Pony. Considering all the money we made them, that wasn’t easy to do.
Or Danny receiving and surviving a “cautionary assault” from an enraged but restrained “Big Man” Clarence Clemons while they were living together and Danny finally drove the “Big Man” over the big top.
Or Danny assisting me in removing my foot from his stereo speaker after being the only band member ever to drive me into a violent rage.
And through it all, Danny played his beautiful, soulful B3 organ for me and our love grew. And continued to grow. Life is funny like that. He was my homeboy, and great, and for that you make considerations… And he was much more tolerant of my failures than I was of his.
When Danny wasn’t causing chaos, he was a sweet, talented, unassuming, unpretentious good-hearted guy who simply had an unchecked ability to make good fortune and things in general go fabulously wrong.
But beyond all of that, he also had a mountain of the right stuff. He had the heart and soul of an engineer. He learned to fly. He was always up on the latest technology and would explain it to you patiently and in enormous detail. He was always “souping” something up, his car, his stereo, his B3. When Patti joined the band, he was the most welcoming, thoughtful, kindest friend to the first woman entering our “boys club.”
He loved his kids, always bragging about Jason, Harley, and Madison, and he loved his wife Maya for the new things she brought into his life.
And then there was his artistry. He was the most intuitive player I’ve ever seen. His style was slippery and fluid, drawn to the spaces the other musicians in the E Street Band left. He wasn’t an assertive player, he was a complementary player. A true accompanist. He naturally supplied the glue that bound the band’s sound together. In doing so, he created for himself a very specific style. When you hear Dan Federici, you don’t hear a blanket of sound, you hear a riff, packed with energy, flying above everything else for a few moments and then gone back in the track. “Phantom” Dan Federici. Now you hear him, now you don’t.
Offstage, Danny couldn’t recite a lyric or a chord progression for one of my songs. Onstage, his ears opened up. He listened, he felt, he played, finding the perfect hole and placement for a chord or a flurry of notes. This style created a tremendous feeling of spontaneity in our ensemble playing.
In the studio, if I wanted to loosen up the track we were recording, I’d put Danny on it and not tell him what to play. I’d just set him loose. He brought with him the sound of the carnival, the amusements, the boardwalk, the beach, the geography of our youth and the heart and soul of the birthplace of the E Street Band.
Then we grew up. Very slowly. We stood together through a lot of trials and tribulations. Danny’s response to a mistake onstage, hard times, catastrophic events was usually a shrug and a smile. Sort of an “I am but one man in a raging sea, but I’m still afloat. And we’re all still here.”
I watched Danny fight and conquer some tough addictions. I watched him struggle to put his life together and in the last decade when the band reunited, thrive on sitting in his seat behind that big B3, filled with life and, yes, a new maturity, passion for his job, his family and his home in the brother and sisterhood of our band.
Finally, I watched him fight his cancer without complaint and with great courage and spirit. When I asked him how things looked, he just said, “what are you going to do? I’m looking forward to tomorrow.” Danny, the sunny side up fatalist. He never gave up right to the end.
A few weeks back we ended up onstage in Indianapolis for what would be the last time. Before we went on I asked him what he wanted to play and he said, “Sandy.” He wanted to strap on the accordion and revisit the boardwalk of our youth during the summer nights when we’d walk along the boards with all the time in the world.
So what if we just smashed into three parked cars, it’s a beautiful night! So what if we’re on the lam from the entire Middletown police department, let’s go take a swim! He wanted to play once more the song that is of course about the end of something wonderful and the beginning of something unknown and new.
Let’s go back to the days of miracles. Pete Townshend said, “a rock and roll band is a crazy thing. You meet some people when you’re a kid and unlike any other occupation in the whole world, you’re stuck with them your whole life no matter who they are or what crazy things they do.”
If we didn’t play together, the E Street Band at this point would probably not know one another. We wouldn’t be in this room together. But we do… We do play together. And every night at 8 p.m., we walk out on stage together and that, my friends, is a place where miracles occur…old and new miracles. And those you are with, in the presence of miracles, you never forget. Life does not separate you. Death does not separate you. Those you are with who create miracles for you, like Danny did for me every night, you are honored to be amongst.
Of course we all grow up and we know “it’s only rock and roll”…but it’s not. After a lifetime of watching a man perform his miracle for you, night after night, it feels an awful lot like love.
So today, making another one of his mysterious exits, we say farewell to Danny, “Phantom” Dan, Federici. Father, husband, my brother, my friend, my mystery, my thorn, my rose, my keyboard player, my miracle man and lifelong member in good standing of the house rockin’, pants droppin’, earth shockin’, hard rockin’, booty shakin’, love makin’, heart breakin’, soul cryin’… and, yes, death defyin’ legendary E Street Band.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment
2008 will be the final season for the Backyard at its current location
The Backyard will close this fall after its 16th season, which kicked off March 14 and 15 with Willie Nelson’s usual two-nights-during-SXSW stand, owner Tim O’Connor announced today.
“I built the Backyard to produce events in an atmosphere that signifies Austin,” O’Connor said in a statement. “When the venue opened we were in the middle of the Hill Country and it was a true experience. The Shops at The Galleria development that now surrounds the Backyard has taken away from some of the venue’s magic over the last few years.”
The development has taken away a lot of parking, which has been a sore spot with Backyard patrons since it opened next door in 2006.
The 5,000-capacity Backyard, at Texas 71 West and RM 620, opened it doors in 1993. A second venue on the same property, the 2,200-capacity Glenn, was opened in 2005.
O’Connor said in January that he was looking for a new location for the Backyard, likely in a more rural spot within the City of Bee Cave.
Upcoming shows include ZZ Top May 15, the Steve Miller Band June 1, and 311 with Snoop Dog Aug. 2 and 3.
Photos: The Backyard’s final season
Photos: The Backyard through the years
Permalink | Comments (58) | Post your comment
Weekend Picks: Hip-hop battles, outlaw country and funky grooves
Friday-Sunday: B-BoyCity15 at the Parish. 2008 is the 10th anniversary of this fest, which features rhyme battles, art and dance. Friday is the DJ competition. Saturday and Sunday is given over to the breakdancers. An Austin tradition. Check out bboycity.com for more information. —- Joe Gross
Friday: David Allan Coe at Stubb’s. Known to most folks younger than, say, 30, as a name in Kid Rock’s ‘American Bad Ass’ (‘I like AC/DC and ZZ Top … Seger, Limp, Korn, the Stones, David Allan Coe and no show Jones’). Coe remains the most outlaw of the outlaw country generation, what with the hanging out with Pantera dudes and all. 7 p.m. $20. — J.G.
Saturday: Flyjack at the Elephant Room. Retro soul and funk enthusiasts play Austin’s storied groove cellar. —-Deborah Sengupta Stith
Saturday: Peter Brotzmann / Han Bennink Duo at the Victory Grill. Brotzmann is a genuine, no kidding avant garde jazz legend, Bennink is an exceptionally sympathetic drummer and the venue is one of the best in town for this sort of thing. 8 p.m. $15. — J.G.
Saturday: DJ Mel at the Beauty Bar. Party rocker Mel will throw down the jams at Austin’s hipster haven. —-D.S.S.
Saturday: Grimy Styles at Flamingo Cantina. After watching them smoke (pun intended) a show at the Austin Reggae Fest last weekend, I believe the hype. These dub experimentalists throw down a killer live set. —-D.S.S.
Sunday: Steve Earle, Allison Moorer at the Paramount Theatre. Earle has transformed from an alt-country junkie career failure into one of the most acclaimed (and leftist) singer-songwriters of his generation. Also, he was pretty good on ‘The Wire.’ Allison Moorer, aka the sixth Mrs. Earle, plays with him. 6:30 p.m. $27.50 to $40. — J.G.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment
Willie to Snoop; back at ya, Dogg
Willie Nelson knows how to return a favor. Monday night, he was joined onstage in Amsterdam (below) by Snoop Dogg, with whom he’d made a video on 4/20. Well, Tuesday night, Willie sat in with Snoop (above) on a song they recorded together called “My Medicine.” Of course, the bass drowns out the vocals, but it looks pretty cool to see our Willie, wearing a Snoop t-shirt trade rap lyrics with Snoop.
The screen’s black for 30 seconds, but hang with it. Snoop calling out “play it, Mickey” is priceless. “Superman” is believed to be the duet they recorded the previous day.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: Willie Nelson
Review: Rush rocks the Erwin Center
