Peter and Graham's Picks at The Barns

Prior to each season, Peter Zimmerman, Wolf Trap's Director of Program and Production is recruited to share his list of top picks for the Filene Center and The Barns as exclusive content for our member's only website, My Wolf Trap, and ultimately for our social media followers, fans and readers. This year, I was lucky enough to be asked to contribute! We came up with a pretty strong list, and I've posted it below for your consideration. If you end up going to one of these shows, post a review on Twitter including the hashtag #WTReview and you'll automatically be entered to win tickets to an upcoming show of your choosing. I'll pick the winner at random on a monthly basis. The more shows you review, the better your chance of winning! Also, after you see the show, let us know if you agree with our picks by commenting on this entry.

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Peter recommends Forever Plaid on
Wednesday, October 13
Enjoy a rare treat at The Barns with this off-Broadway musical celebrating its 20th anniversary. This tale of a 1950s singing group will entertain you with classic songs of the era, including "Rags to Riches" and "Three Coins in the Fountain."

Peter recommends Jeff Daniels on
Thursday and Friday, October 14 and 15
This contemporary acoustic bluesman and accomplished guitarist is sure to entertain you as he shares his hilarious songs and stories of important life moments. Known best for his roles on the big screen, Jeff Daniels has been writing songs for more than thirty years. He started writing songs as a way to mark important moments in his life, and never thought that he would share them with an audience until he took to the stage during a fundraiser for the Purple Rose Theatre in Michighan, which he founded to showcase American theater in the Midwest. His truthful storytelling style intertwines melodic guitar and vocals that prove he's a true musician and not just another actor-turned-singer.

Peter recommends Nikki Yanofsky on
Tuesday, October 26
Canadian musical prodigy Nikki Yanofsky brings her unique musical style, best described as Ella Fitzgerald meets Norah Jones, to The Barns this October. You may have already seen this 16-year old singing sensation during the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, and now you can see why such a young musician would be trusted with such a big honor. Her vocals can be heard in everything from the Ella Fitzgerald tribute album, We All Love Ella, featuring Etta James, Linda Ronstadt and Diana Krall, to the soundtrack of High School Musical 2, and even a collaborative recording of the swing-era classic "Stompin' at the Savoy" with Herbie Hancock and Will.i.am.

Graham recommends Paul Barrere & Fred Tackett on
Wednesday, November 3
This is one of those amazing, rare opportunities at Wolf Trap where you can see a Filene Center artist capable of selling 5-7,000 tickets perform in front of a crowd 1/15th the size, and for a lower ticket price. Paul Barrere & Fred Tackett of the iconic free-wheeling band Little Feat make their Barns debut as an acoustic duo, with a stripped down approach to their band’s extensive catalogue. You can expect all the Little Feat goodies, “Two Trains,” “Dixie Chicken,” maybe even “Willin,” served up with a healthy dose of slide guitar, mandolin and instrumental improv.

Graham recommends Battlefield Band on
Thursday, November 4
They’re a Barns regular, no doubt, but this year is a little different. Their November 4, 2010 performance marks the final tour with co-founder Alan Reid, and debut of the band’s newest member, multi-instrumentalist, Ewen Henderson. It will be a shame to see Reid go, as he is the driving force behind the band’s hysterically dry on-stage banter and also the primary vocalist, but all the more reason not to miss this bittersweet evening, celebrating the versatile group’s 40 years of traditional Celtic song.

Peter recommends Dala on
Wednesday, November 10
This Canadian folk duo combines chilling vocal harmonies with guitar and piano to create a unique acoustic pop sound full of enthusiasm and heart. Their song "Horses," which addresses the heartbreak and hope of a young man dealing with disability, was nominated by NPR as one of the Top folk songs of 2009.

Peter recommends Chaise Lounge on
Saturday, November 20
This local jazz quintet, hailed by The Washington Post as "first class jazz musicians," is sure to be a hit, no matter which vain of jazz you prefer. The talented group applies a classic jazz sound to an eclectic mix of everything including iconic pop songs, classic standards, and original songs. Vocalist Marilyn Older will serenade you with her luminous vocals as they present the evening's "music to dress up by."

Graham recommends Paul Thorn on
Thursday, February 17
Thorn is for the PG-13 crowd, but if you let your guard down, this promises to be a live show that will stick with you forever. Thorn is a hilarious, Mississippi born and bred singer/songwriter whose latest album is titled Pimps and Preachers. It's filled with tunes about his childhood experiences influenced by his father (the preacher) and his uncle (the pimp). His storytelling and musicianship is first-rate, and I can't recommend him enough. If you're looking for something a bit edgier at The Barns, this is the show.

Graham recommends Leon Redbone on
Thursday, March 3
Redbone definitely has a voice and style like no one else, and he's absolutely perfect for a setting like The Barns with his stripped down acoustic sound, perfectly-pitched whistling, and dead pan wit. He's also a great interpreter of jazz and blues standards and Tin Pan Alley classics.

Are you All Attending the 2010 Virgin Mobile FreeFest?

Well it was free...sorry to say that's not the case anymore, but the good news is that you can still acquire tickets from someone other than that sketchy scalper on Craigslist. 9:30 Club just blasted out an email announcing a block of last minute $30 "Karma tickets", with all proceeds benefitting Youth Homelessness. I assume funds will be directed towards a specific D.C. charity, but you'll have to ask the philanthropists with I.M.P. for more detail.

If you don't already have your ticket, $30 is WELL worth the price of admission to see this eclectic lineup at Merriweather Post Pavilion featuring LCD Soundsystem, Pavement (!!), Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, D.C.'s own Thievery Corporation, emo-rock survivors Jimmy Eat World, Ludacris, M.I.A, and Yeasayer, to name a select few.

Performances begin on the pavilion stage at 12:00 and conclude at 11pm with a 90 minute set from LCD Soundsystem. There will be no shortage of music, with acts spread across three stages for a concentrated period of 11 hours. I myself, cannot wait.

New Washington Post Blog - "Arts Post"

I was emailing a bit today with Richard Leiby, Style & Arts Editor for the Washington Post, and he clued me into the recent soft launch of Arts Post, Washingtonpost.com's newest culture blog, which I view as a more comprehensive supplement to Chris Richards and David Malitz's, Click Track, and Anne Midgette's, The Classical Beat.

Or as the Post descriptor states - "Arts Post is a blog by the arts writers of the Washington Post dedicated to both up to the minute news and a deeper exploration of the city's cultural scene. Here's the place for the latest news on theater, museums, dance, art -- all the things that make the Washington area such a vibrant cultural destination."

You can expect multiple daily posts from a variety of the Post's top writers and critics, including Jacquie Trescott covering art news, Sarah Kaufman on dance, Peter Marks on theater, Phil Kennicott on culture, Chris Richards on pop music and Anne Midgette on classical music. The most recent post is from Jacquie Trescott on Meryl Streep's pledge of $1 million towards the construction of a Women's History Museum.

I look forward to keeping up with this blog, and think it's a strong competitive move with the recent advent of TBD.com and its wholly comprehensive entertainment section featuring content aggregation from some of the city’s most well-respected and well read publications.

Jackson Browne with David Lindley at Wolf Trap As Reported by Lee Mergner, Editor-in-Chief of JazzTimes Magazine

Exclusive Guest Post by Lee Mergner, Editor-in-Chief of JazzTimes Magazine

Biography:

Lee Mergner is currently the Editor-in-Chief of JazzTimes magazine. JazzTimes, which has won numerous ASCAP-Deems Taylor awards for music journalism, was founded in 1970 and has been described by the All Music Guide, “arguably the finest jazz magazine in the world.” It has been chosen as the Best Print Jazz Publication by the Jazz Journalists Association for 11 straight years.

Mergner also contributes reviews, columns, news features and profiles to the magazine and oversees the magazine’s web site jazztimes.com. He is a self-avowed magazine junkie who still gets nearly 50 magazines per month.

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There's a good chance that a large part of the audience coming to see Sunday's show at Wolf Trap billed as "Jackson Browne with David Lindley" expected to see a stripped down acoustic duo, in a format similar to their new recording Love Is Strange (taken from their joint 2006 European tour) or similar to the numerous solo shows Browne has been doing over the last few years and from which two of his more successful recent albums were drawn. In that format, Browne sits surrounded by what appears to be a hundred guitars and mines his own extensive songbook with a few covers thrown in, while he actually encourages the audience to throw requests at him (more on that later). In fact, the audience would have been nearly half-right, because strolling out to open the show were Lindley and Browne, dressed in complementary yet nicely unmatched paisley polyester shirts, taking seats across from each other surrounded by acoustic guitars, as if it were 1972 all over again: the ageless wonder Browne looking almost exactly like he did 20 years ago and the chunkier Lindley, with his bald pate rimmed by frizzed out hair, now looking more like the eccentric musicologist that he's always been. Certainly the audience is fully aware that Lindley knows Browne's songs and a few hundred more.

Indeed, the two have about as long a professional relationship as possible for two 70s rockers. Browne once said that back in the early 70s, he had been following Lindley's LA cosmic rock band The Kaleidoscope and pestering the guitarist to work with him, but it took a recording session in England where the two did take after take of "Song for Adam" while waiting for the producer who never showed up. Eventually they went to an Irish bar next door, where a bunch of Jamaicans were drinking green beer and the two young LA musicians "got pissed as newts." Browne said at that point that he told Lindley, "I'll be in your band, if you'll be in my band," and the rest is rock history. During the early years of Browne's career, the two worked as a duo, eventually expanding the band as his popularity grew, but always keeping Lindley's distinctive lap steel guitar as a sonic complement to Browne's own guitar, piano and voice all the way through the end of the '70s. Eventually Lindley left Browne to work on his own solo projects, including El Rayo X, but would occasionally collaborate here or there as a guest in concert or on record. At Wolf Trap, Browne explained that he had to pursue Lindley to do this tour, so the dynamics of their relationship remain the same, nearly forty years later.

They opened the show with a Warren Zevon/Carl Hiassen tune, "Seminole Bingo," whose references to the SEC and junk bond kings on the run seem even more timely now than they did back in 1995 when the late singer-songwriter recorded it on his Mutineer album. Browne and Lindley were both very close to Zevon, Browne having championed and produced him first and Lindley having accompanied him intermittently over the years (including on that particular album). Lindley handled the vocals on the offhand sardonic opener and although his nasal voice is certainly an acquired taste, you have to remember that a good part of the audience has a history with the quirky guitarist and have no problem indulging Browne’s trusted sidekick. So there was barely a rustle in the audience. In fact, there was barely a rustle the whole night. The audience was about as quiet during the quiet passages as you'll hear outside of a classical performance. I had expected the crazy and grating call-out of songs favorite and obscure (Browne's old friend J.D. Souther, in a solo performance earlier this year at The Barns, said that he told recently Browne, "You know, you don't have to do that.").

But the audience simply accepted what they were given, which included acoustic and impassioned versions of Springsteen's "Brothers Under the Bridge," "For Everyman" and "Looking East" with Browne and Lindley harmonizing beautifully, then followed by a mini-set of a lone Lindley doing Blind Willie Johnson's "Soul of a Man" (made famous by another great guitarist Bruce Cockburn) and Danny O'Keefe's bitterly ironic "(He Would Have Loved You) More Than Eva Braun." Lindley played a Middle Eastern oud ("made in Anaheim," Browne explained) as well as his trademark lap guitar with his usual facility. When Lindley walked offstage, ending the first set, a different audience might have wondered if they were eventually going to get the headliner they paid to see or the way-too-gracious colleague (anyone see Adam Duritz and the Counting Crows recently?). But Browne has engendered a trust from his audience that is palpable. No screaming out for the star and his hits. Just take a break to hit the bar and the bathroom. Perhaps it helped that they saw the equipment of a full band or maybe they just googled previous shows, in between checking on the Redskins-Cowboys score.

The second set was perhaps remarkable for being conventional, yet no less satisfying. Browne, backed by his longtime band, worked through his catalogue fluidly, doing the songs very much like they had been originally recorded, with an occasional flourish. His dusky voice has deepened over the years, but it remains a strongly emotive instrument, so that when he sings mournfully or nostalgically of romantic dischord, it rings true. He really does sound like he's nearly crying, a stylistic nuance that Coner Oberst has consciously or unconsciously absorbed. Much of the set came from his halcyon days with Elektra/Asylum for whom he recorded his first four albums, each of which successively pushed him to larger and larger audiences, as he refined his own confessional and literate songwriting style. Among the songs performed from that period were "For A Dancer" and "Late for the Sky" from Late for the Sky, "Bright Baby Blues" and "The Pretender" from The Pretender. He also did a few songs from his brilliant and underrated I'm Alive album ("My Problem Is You" and "Too Many Angels") and a few of his more accessible tunes ("Off of Wonderland," "Giving that Heaven Away" and "Just Say Yeah") from 2008's Time the Conqueror. Given that his audience is likely not much older than him, yet looks at least a decade older, you have to wonder who conquered who, but it's a lot better to look at the way we'd like to see ourselves rather than at some bitter reminder of the years gone past.

In any case, Browne knows that his audience has come to hear his "hits" and in addition to his FM classics, he gave them two of his earliest AM hit singles from his debut album - "Doctor My Eyes" and "Rock Me On the Water," dedicating the latter to the coalition of organizations fighting the use of plastic containers, which are indirectly but surely polluting our oceans. It wouldn't be a Browne show without a touch of activism. That's expected and accepted as well. Though a fan might quibble with his omitting "These Days," there are certainly enough cover versions of that tune to satisfy any Browne-ophile. Even Fountains of Wayne have covered that one. And it was a tune made more popular by countless other people. Same with "Take It Easy."

In the end, by the time the band had heated up to do "Running on Empty" and Chuck Berry's "Mercury Blues," and closed with a gospel-like version of Steve Van Zandt's "I Am A Patriot," the audience left hearing nearly every notable tune in Browne's long oeuvre. And feeling that they heard them done right and done well. If he coasted during that second set, it's because they wanted him too. And the way Browne looks and sounds, he should be good for another 10-20 years, no problem. Time hasn't seemed to conquer him in the least and how many singers and bands from that era can say that?

Suggestions on how to Prevent the Collapse of the Record Industry, Laced in Sarcasm

Not sure if you've heard by now, but the Recording Industry Association of America and National Association of Broadcaster's latest ploy to strong arm radio broadcasters into paying performance royalties is to mandate the installation of FM radio receivers into mobile digital devices. Think of it as some sort of bizarre, backwards concession from labels to radio broadcasters which screams something along the lines of "we'll vastly expand your market share by exposing you to the masses if you just agree to pay performance royalties."

From a consumer perspective, it's hard to deduce what kind of impact these receivers might have on our precious phones, and portable music players, but it does seem a little silly for the RIAA and NAB to try to bribe broadcasters and attach this transmitter language to the existing performance royalties bill.

Some industry bloggers, including Hypebot jumped at the opportunity to expose the abusrdity of the RIAA and NAB's proposition. See below for Hypebot's highly satirical list of additional government mandates to help pull the recording industry's head above water, or as the writer puts it, "anti-consumer countermeasures that would ensure the profitability of the major labels and the industry and greatly inconvenience anyone at the other end of their government-lobbied mandates." These gave me a good chuckle.

1) All Videogames Come Bundled With Top 40 Albums: The RIAA would like you to believe the number one threat to the profitability of the record and music industries is file-sharing, but I think there’s another industry that deserves a little attention. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 sold ten million copies in the US alone. That money could’ve been spent on albums. Let’s lobby and make it so every videogame sold is bundled with Rihanna & Lady Gaga's latest album. Hey gamers, it’s only fair.

2) iTunes & Amazon Can Only Sell Physical Albums: Think about it, digital singles are cannibalizing the sales of full and physical albums. If we could only get a bill passed that forces iTunes to sell only physical albums. Fans should be forced to enjoy music the way that artists intended it to be consumed and this whole idea of them having their personalized music experience needs to go away. I’m sick of fans thinking they can just cherry-pick the songs they want and never hear the other ten songs on the album. This bill needs to get passed now.

3) MTV Must Play Music Videos During Mandated Hours: I am sick of all this reality TV junk and I bet you are too. Ever since they stopped playing our videos sales have fallen through the floor. Once we get The Hills off the air and Ke$ha’s new video back in solid rotation, fans will have no choice but to get back to watching our expensive productions. I bet we can even get Carson Daly back. Without him, no one wants to buy music anymore. To make sure our music is playing during prime hours the record industry must have jurisdiction over their programming.

4) Music Downloaders Must Be Downgraded To Dial-Up: Screw this three strikes business, let’s just throw those evil pirates back to the stone-age and throttle every suspected pirate, as determined by our monitoring systems that we got installed on all 5 billion of net enabled devices, back to dial-up internet speeds. If they think they can steal our content then they can also wait 10 minutes for the email and Facebook to load. Who’s file-sharing my music now Mr. 28k connection? BAM!

5) Big Towns Must Have Record Stores: Wide-spread file-sharing has decimated the profits of our record stores and forced them to close their doors. All those pirates on dial-up are going to need to buy music somewhere. I say we make it so there’s a government mandate that forces record stores to be placed across the street from Starbucks Coffee Shops in every town that has a population of over 250,000. In the event that there is already another Starbucks across the street from the other Starbucks, our record store will be placed to the left of the shop in question.

6) Guitar Hero, One Real Guitar For Each Fake Controller: Seriously, who do these punk college students and videogame developers think they are? Interacting with music using plastic pieces of junk; these kids need to get a life and learn how to play real music, with real instruments. I’m convinced that the only way we can ensure profitability of GuitarCenter and make sure that these varmints don’t destroy our cultural history with their little white flippers and colored buttons is if we make it so every fake Guitar Hero controller comes with a real guitar too.

7) The Music Blog Network & Pay Wall: All music blogs must be forced to join a subscriber network and be put behind a pay wall. If users want to read to their amateur content and get DRM encrypted, virus laden MP3 files, then, they must pay money to have access to that content. It’s only fair. They work hard to write about music and they are entitled to money if you want to read their blog. Also, with every single subscription to the music blog network users must also opt into a year’s worth of either Rolling Stone or Spin; it’s time they learn what real music journalism is and stop getting advice from talentless strangers, failed musicians, and their college dorm buddy who thinks he’s a hipster, but really isn’t.

8) Resale Is Prohibited, No More Used CDs: Fans should not, I repeat, fans should not be able to buy music for half price at some local store run by a hippie. We need to put a stop to this and make it so the resale of albums is prohibited. To ensure that fans are receiving the optimum experience that we intended them to have we need mandate them to buy new CDs every time. For years, fans have been buying music from these places that smell like pot and incense sticks. They buy an album and they go home and all it does is skip because of how scratched it is. No more used CDs. Period. New music sounds better anyways.

9) Ticket Sales Combined With Albums Sales: Fans already pay 20 different fees when they purchase a ticket to see live music so why not add a surcharge on there that they understand. The album fee. For every single show that a fan attends they will now be mandated to buy the album too. The artists work really hard on their records and live music should not be considered a substitute for professionally produced music.

10) Home Recording & Music Production Is Outlawed: Those amateurs and indie musicians thought they were clever when they started producing music in their homes and not getting it mastered at a recording studio. With all those fly-by-night music schools that graduate sound engineers by the hundred we need to guarantee that those students, who paid good money, have jobs when they get out of college. This will also have the effect of making artists dependant of the major label system to fund the recording of their music and drastically increase the quality of all music in general. All that stuff on YouTube sounds terrible, let's fix that.