John Sebastian has always been a storyteller, particularly in his live solo shows, which he’s been performing now for about 40 years. Sebastian’s charming and engaging style of entertaining creates an immediate connection with his audience as he mixes interesting anecdotes from his career with a type of humor that is so easy to relate … Continue reading John Sebastian’s good time music
Bonnie Bramlett came back to singing in earnest in the early 2000’s after years of pursuing an acting career. She started as the first white Ikette with Ike and Tina Turner in the mid-1960s, then played a big role in the highly influencial Delaney & Bonnie and Friends with her husband at the time Delaney Bramlett. The … Continue reading Track of the week: Bonnie Bramlett
More than a decade before the singer-songwriter era of the early 1970s, Jackie DeShannon was interpreting other writers’ songs and writing hit records of her own. She came clearly into the public conscience after her recording of Jack Nitzsche and Sonny Bono’s Needles and Pins in 1963 and followed it with her own When You … Continue reading A Jackie DeShannon quartet
In the spring of 1968 I was studying at Berklee School of Music in Boston and going back to Connecticut on weekends to rehearse and play out on the club circuit with Pulse. I lived on upper Commonwealth Avenue, not far from the dorm I had lived in when I was at Boston University, with two … Continue reading Concerts Vol. 8: The Doors
In 1969 and 1970 I saw Jethro Tull in concert three times. Looking back on the first show, the venue seems so unlikely given their later worldwide success. It was in a small club under a Pegnataro’s Supermarket just off the highway in downtown New Haven, Connecticut. The place was called The Stone Balloon and was fashioned … Continue reading Concerts Vol. 7: Jethro Tull
To recap part 2: At the end of the summer of 1967, two popular New Haven-based bands broke up at the prodding of manager/producer Doc Cavalier, who owned Syncron Studios (later Trod Nossel) in Wallingford. Three members from the Shags and three from the Bram Rigg Set joined to form The Pulse (the actual original … Continue reading CT Rock ‘n Roll: Pulse, Part 3