Found Sounds and Such...

Caught the Two Man Gentleman Band last Friday at Gypsy Joynt, which just relocated from mini-strip-mall-land to downtown in Great Barrington. This review ran in today’s Berkshire Eagle. BTW, the band responded to the review by tweet and noted that Andy Beane has indeed purchased a house in Great Barrington.

“It’s easy to assume the two are working their way through forgotten chestnuts of a earlier era, what with endorsements of “reefer” and songs about William Howard Taft and feasting on rabbit—a harder-edged history of Roaring 20’s swing in which plans to pop amphetamines and drink chocolate milk all night are eagerly detailed. But then you notice a reference to Ritalin, and begin to realize these are all original tunes.

I ranged a little far in this review of The Travelin’ McCourys’ show at Pittsfield’s Colonial Theatre last Saturday, reflecting on the differing emotional palettes that various streams of American popular music are best suited to employ, and how the McCourys’ performance relates to the expectations of their genre. (I should note, also, the version on my website is a little different from the version that ran in print, as an earlier version was mistakenly printed. I do stand by the printed version as my work; the revised version just has some improved language.)

“Instrumental jazz may be the most personal of American musical forms, with its players sublimating emotional drive into the cry of a horn or the maniacally precise rap of a high-hat. Ken Burns can argue that jazz is a metaphor for democracy, but I hear (in the frenzied rush of bebop, particularly) a sort of existential desperation, each player jousting to get his own statement in while he still can.

Is it a coincidence that blues and bluegrass, two forms of folk music born from rural poverty and political impotence, are each preoccupied with, well, feeling bad?

The sharply dressed, amiable group put on a display of top-notch traditional bluegrass, hewing expertly to the genre’s conventions but never seeking to subvert them.”

Check out my review of the McCoy Tyner Trio’s show at the Mahaiwe Theatre in Great Barrington Sunday night, published in today’s Berkshire Eagle.

“This was a very dangerous trio operating at what seems to be the height of its powers. The band romped through its set with such cool ferocity, the time seemed to race past…”

Photo by Jeremy D. Goodwin

Check out my advance feature on legendary pianist McCoy Tyner’s upcoming performance at the Mahaiwe Theatre in Great Barrington, Mass., published in today’s Berkshire Eagle.

“There’s always something new that can be learned no matter how many times you’ve played a song. Guys like John Scofield and Béla Fleck are so creative that even just one improvised note or phrase can take the music in a different direction. That new direction might change subsequent solos, and might change the way you play the head out,” Tyner writes of the composed portion of a song that frames the improvised solos. “All of a sudden you’ve got something new and fresh, and you learn from that.”

Great footage of John Coltane’s classic quartet—pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison, and drummer Elvin Jones—playing “Afro Blue” on television in 1961. Tyner plays Great Barrington’s Mahaiwe Theatre (sorry and with all due respect, but I don’t get how something can be a “performing arts center” with only one stage/event space) on Sunday. Catch my advance feature in Friday’s Berkshire Eagle.

A quote that’s not in the story:

“I have seen the business change over the years—obviously the recording business is not what it once was—but you adapt to what’s happening around you. For example, I now have my own label, McCoy Tyner Music, so that I’m more in control of what music is made and what’s done with it. In my opinion, as long as young people continue to study and play this music, and as long as there are places for them to play, the music will continue to grow.” —McCoy Tyner