Tag Archives: classic rock

The elusive Buzz Feiten

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In the past year, Buzz Feiten has been the subject of several posts here, along with ones on his collaborations with keyboardist Neil Larsen.

We have to some extent documented his work in The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, the original Full Moon, The Larsen-Feiten Band, a reunion of sorts with Butterfield and his more recent projects, including The New Full Moon of the early 2000s.

But his work is at best elusive, somewhat rare and definitely difficult to track down with so many albums going in and out of print. Mostly out.

Coming across the video below was a happy find. It features Feiten with The New Full Moon band that released an album around 2002 (although this clip is acutally dated Jan. 11, 2007) and included original Full Moon bass player Fred Beckmeier, reed man Brandon Fields, drummer Gary Mallaber and keyboard player Jai Winding playing the opening cut from that self-titled album, Hey, Dinwiddie, a dedication to the great tenor sax man Gene Dinwiddie of the Butterfield Band and the original Full Moon.

If you haven’t actually heard or seen Feiten yet, then this clip is for you. The tune is a soulful, funky, blues-drenched track, right in Feiten’s main groove.


The 10 best for ’09

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Last year I picked five albums I considered the best of the year. This time I’m upping it to 10 with a few bubbling under and some added tidbits.

Derek Trucks Band Already Free1. Already Free, The Derek Trucks Band: Traditional blues with modern sensibilities and influences from jazz, roots and world music, all played by an array of accomplished musicians and one of the best slide players of our time.

2. The Deep End, Christine Ohlman and Rebel Montez: Stellar songwriting, impassioned vocals and infectious grooves highlight Ohlman’s fifth album, which also features an impressive roster of guests. Her best yet.

3. Electric Dirt, Levon Helm: On this electrified followup to his comeback album Dirt Farmer, Helm blends traditional roots music with elements of folk, blues, soul and gospel. The mix of new original material and classic covers works perfectly. The arrangements are clean and to the point and musicianship impeccable.

 4. Middle Cyclone, Neko Case: A wonderful concoction of folk, rock, country and pop interlaced with enigmatic lyrics and penetrating melodies. All topped with Case’s crystal clear voice.

bebel-gilberto-all-in-one5. All In One, Bebel Gilberto: Her best since Tanta Tempo in 2000, this work is alive with beautiful songwriting and Gilberto’s gorgeous, hushed, cool vocals. Aided by her pals Carlhinos Brown and Didi Gutman among others.

6. Soul On Ten, Robben Ford: A ripping, rocking live set with two live-in-the-studio cuts, filled with Ford’s interesting blues-based originals, some classic covers and his unique take on blues, rock and jazz playing.

7. The List, Rosanne Cash: A love letter to her father Johnny and her audience, giving back songs from his list of 100 that he gave to his teen-age daughter. Arrangements and execution by Cash and husband John Levanthal are enthralling. Continue reading The 10 best for ’09 →

Jackie and Ry at The Ash Grove

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As I’ve mentioned a few times in the past year I’m an avid fan of Wolfgang’s Vault.

jackie-deshannon-early-with-guitar-smallThe site never ceases to surprise me by unearthing rare, interesting and previously unavailable concerts from its vast treasure hold.

This one is truly an unexpected delight, Jackie DeShannon and Ry Cooder playing as an acoustic duo at the legendary Ash Grove in Los Angeles on September 3, 1963, long before either had achieved any type of widespread notoriety. DeShannon was 19 at the time and although she had released a string of singles, it was before her opening stint on the first Beatles tour of the U.S. in 1964 and her first hits, Needles & Pins and When You Walk In The Room.

ry-cooder-youngI’ve come to really love her earthy, soulful and gospel-inspired vocals from this era of her career. As for Cooder, he’s 16, yet still shows an amazing virtuosity on acoustic guitar. One of the great players of our time.

Despite being a fan of both artists, I never knew this show existed on tape or that these two made any type of collaboration during this period, which is what makes the Vault such a valuable resource and an unending source of enjoyment. Below is a track from the show. The concert can be accessed here.

To listen to the entire show, you’ll need to register at the site, which is an easy process and free.

Jeff Beck gives Tal a hand

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Back in April, I wrote about a remarkable concert given by Jeff Beck and his group at the MGM Grand at Foxwoods in Connecticut.

One of the sequences of the show that was absolutely startling was a solo taken by Tal Wilkenfeld, a 23-year-old bassist from Australia who looks no more than about 17, during which Beck takes off his guitar, walks over to the bass player and proceeds to accompany her by playing on just the E and A strings of her bass.

This video, produced by an astute videographer at the Fillmore at Irving Plaza in New York gig the night before I saw Beck at Foxwoods, shows the duet. They play it fast and loose, having a lot of fun with it as they did at the Grand. Her virtuosity is overwhelming for someone so young. Just a treat to watch.

Can you pick out the melody and changes Tal plays at the end of the solo?

Derek Trucks at the Garde

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It’s rare that I get a chance to see an artist more than once in a calendar year. It happened last night. I drove down to New London to see The Derek Trucks Band at the Garde Arts Center, a theater built in the ’20s, saved by the townspeople in the ’80s from becoming an open lot, and that is today completely restored and thriving.

derek-trucks-durhamI last saw the band at the start of their tour to promote the latest dTb album,  Already Free, back in February at the Waterbury Palace. That was an impressive show. I was familar with the group’s recordings in the studio at the time but hadn’t seen them live and it certainly was an eye opener. Simply put, dTb is one of the best bands out on the road today, Trucks is quickly becoming acknowledged as one of our finest guitarists, and along with Doyle Bramhall III probably the best practitioner of slide.

Seeing them again allowed me a closer look, not only because I was physically closer, about ninth row center, than in Waterbury, but also having seen them once I could focus in on various parts of the band while not being overwhelmed by the first experience of it.

For instance, I had a much bigger appreciation of bassist Todd Smallie this time. He was obscured in Waterbury from where I was and his sound not particularly distinct. I could see and hear him much better in New London and he showed himself to be a monster player at times, particularly on his solo spot that was a swinging, funky extended piece that played off the rhythm of Kofi Burbridge’s organ and took off into proficient flights in the higher register of the instrument.

I also noticed Mike Mattison has to be one of the most underutilized lead singers in rock and blues. It appears he’s not on stage for nearly half the set. Of course, that’s because dTb has always been an instrumental band first. It’s not a knock but he seemed absent more than at the first show. Continue reading Derek Trucks at the Garde →

Track of the week: Bonnie Bramlett

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Bonnie Bramlett came back to singing in earnest in the early 2000’s after years of pursuing an acting career.

bonnie-bramlett-roots-blues-jazzShe 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 group featured some prominent members over the years, including Eric Clapton, Dave Mason and even George Harrison. Members of the band went on to play with many other groups, including The Stones, and three — Bobby Whitlock, Jim Gordon and Carl Radle —wound up with Clapton in Derek and The Dominos.

This track is a cover of the Stephen Stills classic Love The One You’re With from his first solo album. It was also a sizable hit for Stills as a single. Bramlett brings a funky, groove-oriented reading to it with jazz substitution chords in place of the heavily suspended sound of the original.

It’s amazing that Bonnie didn’t sing on the original with Stills because the sound of that chorus with Rita Coolidge, Priscilla Jones, Graham Nash, John Sebastian and David Crosby had Delaney & Bonnie written all over it. This track is from Bramlett’s 2006 album Roots, Blues & Jazz, which shows off Bramlett as a proficient jazz singer as well as a queen of blue-eyed soul and R&B.

From The Vaults: Hidden Treasure No. 5

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I saw guitarist Robben Ford play with Joni Mitchell during the Miles Of Aisles Tour at Woolsey Hall in New Haven in the mid-1970s. I’ve followed his career since, but not until the late ’80s did I start to take a closer look.

robben-ford-blues-band-coverEven then, I wasn’t familiar with everything he released. In the past few years I’ve become more acquainted with his various projects and finally had a chance to see him live at the Infinity Music Hall in Norfolk, Connecticut, in August.

Still, it wasn’t until relatively recently I found that along with his major label releases he also put out a couple of tributes to one of my favorite musicians, Paul Butterfield, on an independent label in the early 2000s with the Ford Blues Band, which includes two of his brothers, Patrick and Mark.

Ford like many other young players who started playing in the mid-1960s was influenced greatly by seeing the Butterfield Band when they played on the West Coast, including at the Fillmore West. It was the same here in the East with musicians I knew and worked with. Butterfield was one of the major influences on my band Pulse in the late ’60s.

Tributes are sometimes a hit-and-miss proposition. When I finally had a chance to listen to A Tribute To Paul Butterfield (2001), though, I was pleased that Robben and The Ford Blues Band had stayed faithful to the material they had chosen but also brought something new to it that makes it as fresh, vital and relevant as it was in the mid-to-late 1960s. It’s our fifth Hidden Treasure.

One of the things that makes this tribute work so well is the choice of material, which hits all of the various phases and the evolution of the Butterfield Band, with tracks from Butter’s six best albums. Continue reading From The Vaults: Hidden Treasure No. 5 →

Pieces of Stephen Stills

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One of the most talented musicians and songwriters of the late 1960s and early ’70s, Stephen Stills is also a confounding one.

manassas-piecesIt’s hard to think of an artist who had a better streak of songwriting from 1966-73 while playing with Buffalo Springfield, Crosby Stills & Nash and CSN & Young, followed by a stunning first solo album, an almost-as-good second and a year-and-a-half with the eclectic rock-country-Latin mix of Manassas.

Then decades of ups and downs, a few hints to rival past triumphs but mostly downs. Unfulfilled promise? Perhaps that’s a little harsh. Stills did give us a wealth of creativity during that roughly seven-year span.

Since 2007, Stills has released three albums from his vault, most recordings about 40 years old. And all three are better than anything he’s produced since. First Just Roll Tape, an extraordinary demo of songs he dashed off following a Judy Collins session in New York, several to appear on the first CS&N album.

Then Demos, in a similar vein, from CS&N, with his contributions undoubtedly the highlights. And now Pieces, early Manassas tapes, with some solo work and early jams with members of The Flying Burrito Brothers mixed in, a collection so good it makes one wonder why it’s taken so long for this material to see the light of day.

The group Manassas grew out of Stills’ frustration with CSN&Y and his contacting ultimate rock ‘n roll sidekick Chris Hillman (Byrds, Burritos) to get together and jam in Miami with members of the Burritos post-Gram Parsons.

The tracks from these sessions are mostly at the tail end of Pieces, Panhandle Rag, which shows off Byron Berline on fiddle and Hillman’s blazing mandolin, Uncle Pen — a Bill Monro tune on which Berline takes the vocals — Do You Remember The Americans and Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (And Loud, Loud Music), a Burritos live staple. Continue reading Pieces of Stephen Stills →

Beatles remastered: Revolver & Sgt. Pepper’s

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In the summer of 1967, when Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released, fans of The Beatles didn’t get together with friends and listen to the mono version of this landmark album.

beatles-sgt-peppersI don’t recall anyone buying the mono version. Perhaps  if you couldn’t afford the $1 extra for stereo, because that’s all it was. But that’s not the point. The way to listen to Sgt. Pepper’s back then, as it is now, was in stereo.

I can remember at rehearsals and jams at the Aiardo Brothers house during the summer between the demise of the Bram Rigg Set and before I went off to school in Boston, we would take a break and listen to the entire album’s left channel.

Later the same afternoon we would listen to the whole album but just the right channel. Yeah, it was entertaining, listening to what George Martin and The Beatles were up to, but we were also trying to figure out what the hell they were doing as far as the recording process.

It wasn’t until several weeks later that I found out this album was recorded on a four-track machine. A four-track! Most studios in the States had long before installed eight-track recorders, including Syncron, later Trod Nossel, all the way out in Wallingford, CT, where my bands Bram Rigg Set and later Pulse worked out of.

Yet, The Beatles and Martin had produced an album on a four-track, albeit bouncing to a second four-track for many songs, and the album sounded extraordinary.

In a previous post on the recently released remastered versions of Help! and Rubber Soul, The Beatles albums that preceded these two, I wrote that bottom line the mono versions of those albums, even though I had grown up with the stereo, were my preference. OK, maybe not for Drive My Car and a few other tunes, but mono is the way to go for those: balanced, clear, direct and in-your-face punchy. Continue reading Beatles remastered: Revolver & Sgt. Pepper’s →

Concerts Vol. 9: Taj Mahal

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Earlier this summer, I saw Taj Mahal in concert with Bonnie Raitt on the impressive Bon Taj Roulet tour, the third time I’ve seen Taj.

Taj Mahal 68474-5The second time was in the spring of 1969 at the improbable club in New Haven, the Stone Balloon, fashioned after Greenwich’s Village’s Cafe Au Go Go.

As mentioned in a post on Jethro Tull, who had played the club in February, ’69, the Balloon wasn’t open long, less than a year, but booked a plethora of rising stars from Tull to Taj to Neil Young. Quite a venue situated under a Pegnataro’s Supermarket with a back entrance from the super’s parking lot.

Taj had released two albums by this time, his self-titled debut and the classic Natch’l Blues, which was released the previous summer. He was touring with his original band that included the incomparable Jesse Ed Davis on lead guitar, Chuck Blackwell on drums and bassist Gary Gilmore.

The Stone Balloon was tiny. We went to see them on a Saturday night, some weeks after the Tull show, and Taj and his band were in fine form playing a mix of tunes from the first two albums. They were not as loud as Tull (not that I didn’t like Ian Anderson & Co.), instead perfectly suited to the room size and Davis was mesmerizing.

Of course, Taj wasn’t too shabby either. He had a beautiful take on modern country blues with his unique and refreshing originals mixed with classics like Good Morning Little Schoolgirl, Corrina and You Don’t Miss Your Water (‘Til Your Well Runs Dry). Continue reading Concerts Vol. 9: Taj Mahal →