Following its Tony-nominated hit Broadway run seen by tens of thousands, Tony Award winner John Leguizamo’s one-man play Latin History for Morons will return to New York for one night only at Kings Theatre in Brooklyn, NY on Saturday, November 9.
Latin History for Morons is inspired by the near total absence of Latinos from Leguizamo’s son’s American History books. Leguizamo embarks on an outrageously funny, frenzied search to find a Latin hero for his son’s school history project. From a mad recap of the Aztec empire to stories of unknown Latin patriots of the Revolutionary War and beyond, Leguizamo breaks down the 3,000 years between the Mayans and Pitbull into 110 irreverent and uncensored minutes above and beyond his unique style.
Ben Brantley of The New York Times called the show a “surprisingly poignant one-man play that slyly poses sharp and timely questions of what culturally defines American identity and who, in the nationalistic age of Trump, has ‘the right’ to be here.”
Latin History for Morons concluded its successful run on Broadway on February 25, 2018. The original 16-week engagement was extended an additional three weeks on opening night, November 15, 2017. The production was the first play of the 2017-2018 season to recoup its entire capitalization.
This marks theatre’s most prolific modern Latino playwright, John Leguizamo’s sixth one-man venture onto the stage, following success on Broadway with Ghetto Klown (Outer Critics Circle Award, Drama Desk Award), Freak (Drama Desk Award), Sexaholix…A Love Story (Tony nomination) and Off-Broadway with Mambo Mouth (Obie Award) and Spic-O-Rama (Drama Desk Award).
Directed by Tony Taccone (Wishful Drinking, Bridge & Tunnel), the Tony-nominated production of Latin History for Morons is written and performed by Leguizamo, featuring scenic design by Rachel Hauck, lighting design by Alexander V. Nichols, and original music and sound design by Bray Poor. Latin History for Morons is produced by THE WOW Agency, Berkeley Repertory Theatre and The Public Theater.
The Kitchen, one of New York City’s most forward-looking nonprofit spaces, will kick off a new benefit concert series on September 25 with DJ sets from James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem/DFA) and friends. The first floor theater will host Murphy, with doors opening at 8:30pm and the DJ sets running from 9pm-12am. More information on the upcoming concerts for the 2019-20 season will be announced soon.
The Kitchen shows innovative work by emerging and established artists across disciplines, with programs ranging from dance, music, performance, and theater to video, film, and art, in addition to literary events, artists’ talks, and lecture series. Since its inception in 1971, The Kitchen has been a powerful force in shaping the cultural landscape of this country, and has helped launch the careers of many artists who have gone on to worldwide prominence.
Folkfaces will hold their second annual music fest this October 3-6 at Cherry Hill Campground in Darien Center, NY. The four-day event boasts 42 local and touring acts from a plethora of different genres, with an emphasis on original American roots music. The festival will also include vendors, food, art, workshops, games, raffles, bonfires, late-night jams, camping, yoga, and more.
The festival kicks off on Thursday, Oct. 3 with early set-up and a pre-party featuring Pennsylvania bluegrassers, the Jakobs Ferry Stragglers. Friday through Sunday, music will start at noon and run until midnight or later. Headlined by Spoon Lady and the Tater Boys, these American roots musicians are a YouTube sensation and busking extraordinaires from Asheville, NC. Abby (Spoon Lady) met up with Folkfaces on their 2018 spring tour and became fast friends. She’ll bring her spoons and some friends (The Tater Boys) to play with, and also giving a Spoons workshop.
Other notable acts on the festival bill include folk multi-instrumentalist Aaron Jonah Lewis, two sets by Adirondack freight train stringers The Blind Owl Band, NOLA buskers Yes Ma’am, delta blues-inspired slide guitarist Cristina Vane, down-home folk swingers Woody Pines, roots/Americana/old-time multi-instrumentalists Aaron Lipp & Bobby Henrie, and Finger Lakes-based bluegrassers Dirty Blanket. Not to mention, two sets from Folkfaces.
For more information on Folkfaces Fest in Darien Center, visit the event’s website or Facebook event.
Hot Chip brought their electronic-infused indie rock to Brooklyn Steel on September 4 in support of their new album, A Bath Full of Ecstasy. This was the middle of a three-night sold out run. Holy Fuck opened the night which featured a guest vocal/sample appearance from Alexis Taylor. [Update: Holy Fuck have released this single featuring Alexis Taylor, “Luxe.” Listen here].
The night began with the opening track from their last full length album Why Make Sense? “Huarache Lights,” followed by the title track from 2010’s One Life Stand. The band then played two sequential tracks from In Our Heads, “Night & Day” and “Flutes.” It was not until the halfway point of the set where we heard the first new song, “Hungry Child.”
The stage was built to resemble classic bandshell stages, with projection towers in a crescent shape behind the band projecting various color palettes throughout the show. A dramatic laser show came and went throughout the night, an effect well received by the fans in the room.
The second half of the set saw a very frenetic rendition of the Beastie Boys’ classic “Sabotage” before two more tracks from A Bath Full of Ecstasy, “Melody of Love” and “Positive.”
The tour is just getting underway. The band tours North America throughout the fall, followed by shows in Japan, Europe and South America into December.
On Saturday, Sept. 28, Riverboat Bar will host the first annual ‘Alex Bay Summer Send-Off,’ a full day of live music, with doors opening at 2:00 p.m., to close out the summer season. The headlining performance will be funky reggae-jam fusion band, Annie in the Water. Other scheduled acts throughout the day include Root Shock, Eggy, The Old Main, Big Sexy and the Scrambled Eggs, and Trampoline Jetstream. In between sets, there will be DJ sets provided by D.C. area’s Schwa and Proper Philth.
The night is capped off with an All-Star Super Jam featuring musicians from throughout the day. On top of all that, Ben Carrey of Pigeons Playing Ping Pong will be the artist-at-large for the day.
Annie in the Water has played a significant role in shaping the original music scene in Upstate New York and their shows are always high energy and filled with positive vibes. A couple of bands will be making their Riverboat debut on Sept. 28 including Root Shock, a Syracuse-based soulful roots-reggae based act, and Eggy, a 4-piece improvisational rock band from New Haven, CT. Utica’s The Old Main returns to Riverboat with its original Americana folk jams. Commemorating the amazing summer season, Trampoline Jetstream and Big Sexy and the Scrambled Eggs will both return to the Riverboat after making their debuts earlier in the summer.
The music starts at 3:00 p.m. and continues all day long. Click here for more ticketing and event information.
Chris Thile, as a member of Punch Brothers and Nickel Creek, has won multiple Grammy Awards and sold millions of albums. As the host of Live From Here, he has spanned genres and brought a wide range of musicians together for weekly performances at Manhattan’s Town Hall, where the latest season kicked off earlier this month.
Thile looks at art as a conduit to conversation, and towards collaboration with the audience as creating art together. It is in this way that he fits as a natural host of a two-hour weekly show broadcast on public radio, one that will see very special guests appearing each week this season – Grace Potter, Dawes, Trey Anastasio, and Wynton Marsalis, to name just a few.
Chris performs this Saturday, September 21 at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts as part of Vibrations Series which celebrates the power and possibility of the ’60s and what that decade means to us today. Launched in 2019, “the series has brought together change-makers, artists, and influencers to open conversations, inspire thinking and awaken purpose.” With an emphasis on the arts and civic engagement, Vibrations brings the legacy of the past into conversation with the movements of today, something that Thile can relate to. Chris spoke with NYS Music about the role of artists in bringing about change, music that has engaged audiences, and what gave him an early glimpse at what hosting a show like Live From Here might be like.
Pete Mason: With the upcoming Vibrations Series at Bethel Woods this weekend, when growing up, how did you come to discover the era of the 1960s – the change, the conflict, the music – and in what way did that seep into your songwriting and understanding of American culture?
Chris Thile: That’s a spectacular question. The Beatles were the first non-rootsy thing I was intentionally exposed to by my folks. Up to that point, I was listening almost exclusively to folk music in various forms and a very specific swath of folk music at that. For example, bluegrass music and fiddle tune music and almost no popular music of any kind, and just a little bit of classical music on the radio and jazz via my dad’s record collection. All of a sudden, my parents were raising a child with no real sense of popular music, particularly the popular music of their childhoods. So they checked out Rubber Soul from the library for me and it blew my mind. People writing songs about things other than having a little home on a hill and “Mule Skinner Blues” and “John Henry.” These were songs about people’s lives and they were contemporary songs, not that “John Henry” wasn’t in their day, but just updated by 100 years or so. I think it was becoming socially difficult to write about a vast amount more than it had been up until that point. It would still be many years before I heard Dylan at that point and, generally, cover songs by artists from the roots community, such as Tim O’Brien who made a beautiful album of Dylan songs called Red on Blonde.
So it has seeped in there. Particularly, the biggest lesson is that its ok to write a song about anything, provided that you do it well – that’s the big rule. I think above all, that’s a lesson to learn from the ’60s.
PM: How do you see your role, and the role of artists, in capturing pivotal moments in American history, especially from the past 20 years or so?
CT: I think that art exists for a variety of reasons. It turns on a camera in the documentary film of our life, our experience in the world, and we gain some perspective. I think that is one of art’s most noblest responsibilities – to help us gain perspective on the world and what’s going on and what it means to be alive, not just in our moment but in the moments previous and be able to better serve our respective moments if we’re aware of other people’s moments. And it also serves as respite, what we’re collectively experiencing. There are so many different things that it can do that I would hesitate to look at one thing and point that out and say that’s the one thing that art’s supposed to do in times of turmoil and in times of peace. It’s just so good at doing a variety of things.
PM: What can aspiring artists do to bring about civic engagement through their music and performances? What is there that they can do beyond inspiring an audience to step away doing something more?
CT: I think that the very best thing an artist can do is to make their art well. I think there’s a lot of reasons you make what you can make. Sometimes I think that art made with the specific intent to elicit a particular reaction can actually be fairly compromised, by dictating the feeling your audience should have. For instance, Dylan is at his best as a lyricist (and at his best very often). I think that any one of us could have a unique reaction to a Dylan lyric, that he leaves a great deal of room in every lyric for you to cultivate your own sense of meaning. And so when you talk about things like ‘what an artist can do to bring about civic engagement,’ I would be wary of art that makes that its directive and explicit aim, because I feel like the way to engage a person… I think the best art is collaborative with the audience, with the person who is sitting in front of it, listening to it, looking at it, reacting to it. And that if you as an artist attempt to dictate what your listener is to think or experience, then they’ll switch off, they’re not going to engage, they’ll feel manipulated, bullied into feeling a certain way. I don’t think art is good at proving points or answering questions, it’s good at asking questions and good at getting people talking to one another about things. So I would go back to the way an artist can engage his or her audience is engaging them as artists, and asking them to enter into a collaboration as to the meaning of the art that they are working on.
PM: Can you think of any songs that stand out to you that fit this mold, where they don’t go in with a specific intent, but it just naturally comes out and the audience is engaged rather than pressured?
CT: I would say that Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring did a pretty spectacular job engaging its audience. Along with Diaghilev’s ballet, his choreography, it engaged people to the point that they rioted over it. That seems like it was pretty powerful, it really came out of the clear blue sky, not that there weren’t hints to the possibility of this beforehand, but I think a lot of musicians interacted with that piece. And it’s called Rite of Spring, it depicted a certain kind of reality and the art was so good that people got talking about it. “Is this OK? Can we do this?” Meaning not “Is ritualistic sacrifice OK?” but rather, “Can we make art about it?” I think that piece did an extraordinary job engaging its audience and I sincerely doubt that riots were the intended result, but that’s what happens when you pose a specifically well-worded question.
I feel like Radiohead has been excellent in writing art that gets people thinking about climate change and just the environment in general. It often is in the abstract lyrically. I think that someone like Gillian Welch has done an extraordinary job in the ways in which lives led, say, 60-100 years ago and the study of those lives might be relevant to the living of theirs. I think she operates in this beautiful, undefined aesthetic that has a foot in American folk music of the early part of the 20th century but also right now. There’s so much, I don’t even know where to begin.
Think of someone like Ornette Coleman with a record like The Shape of Jazz to Come. Kind of making people think about music that is made up on the spot, and in what ways is that music to you and in what ways is it not. I think a lot of people talked and debated about that and we ultimately felt that Ornette’s take on that was ultimately brilliant, but it created a lot of controversy in its day. I love that. I do think that art is better at asking questions than answering them. I’ve noticed that in young writers and in my young writing. It always seems like I’m answering a question and I see young writers now… it starts to sound like we think we know what’s going on. Looking back on particularly younger lyrics, I think, “My god, you really thought you knew what you were talking about and you really did not. You thought you had an answer to something. At least from where I’m standing, at 38, I do not think there’s an answer to that question, my 23-year old self. Nice try.”
PM: With two weeks of Live from Here in the books, how has the transition from Minnesota to NYC been, and how has curating and preparing shows at Town Hall been?
CT: I love Town Hall, I adore making music there, it feels like home at this point. Last year we did more shows at Town Hall than at any other place, so the transition has been happening, just gradually, and this year was sort of completing something that was already happening pretty naturally. I live in New York, and there are so many people, so many artists coming in and out of the city. Regardless of where they live here, everyone comes through here – this is one of America’s biggest windows to the world and the world’s biggest window to America. It’s nice to be here for that reason. We have this two-hour canvas that we get to paint every week and there is a lot of space for things to happen and it feels good being in a place like this where on any given night there are hundreds of wonderful things happening and it seems maybe like it’s a little easier to coax a few of those things onto the show week in, week out. And that’s nice, it takes some of the edge off.
PM: With all the years of Nickel Creek and Punch Brothers, was there ever a point where you expected to be the host of Live from Here, or any similar roles? Looking back, did you ever think ‘oh yeah, I always wanted this job.’?
CT: Certainly not this specifically. There have been times when I wondered whether doing something of this sort would be interesting. Punch Brothers had a residency at The Living Room on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and we called it P-Bingo night. It was a one-band musical variety show, with one guest per show who would do a couple things with us. And we’d try to make funny things happen, some covers, an original of sorts each show, and stylistically try and get all over the place, in service of our general mutually held belief that genre is really a discussion of the cover of the book and not the book. Which is fine, it can be interesting, the aesthetics of the thing can be really, really interesting, but it is a question of aesthetics largely. And that’s one of the thesis statements of Live From Here, but I had a great time doing that, particularly because it was thrilling and hair raising to come up with a show that was entirely different on a weekly basis.
With Punch Brothers it was a shorter show but also it was all us, so it was a lot of material and we ended up stressing ourselves out so we did it less and less. But we did at a certain point wonder if we could make the thing it into a show, a radio show or television show, and even pitched it to a couple people, although we never got any interest. So when this came along, it wasn’t thinking about whether I wanted to do it, but this legendary time slot was being offered to me with a chance to commune with the public radio listening faithful on a weekly basis. It was too tempting to resist and it put me back in the mind of doing P-Bingo night with Punch Brothers and how much fun and how thrilling and dangerous it felt making all that new content. The energy that comes with thinking about the transition from doing that at a 100-person club on the Lower East Side and doing it for a couple million people on the radio live, it got a little too exciting to resist and I’m really happy and having a great time.
On Friday, September 20th, Phantasy Tour will celebrate 20 years with a performance by Star Kitchen at The 8×10. As a Baltimore-based, grassroots organization that has long supported The Disco Biscuits, Star Kitchen at the legendary 8×10 venue is the perfect way to celebrate twenty years of set-list obsession.
Star Kitchen is a star-studded side project by members of many of Phantasy Tour’s long time favorite bands. Featuring bassist Marc Brownstein (The Disco Biscuits), guitarist Danny Mayer (Eric Krasno Band), keyboardist Rob Marscher (Addison Groove Project, Matisyahu) and drummer Marlon Lewis (Lauryn Hill, John Legend), the band is known for their exploratory jazz improvisations that stray from what listeners may expect from this cast. Surprising as it may be, everyone leaves a Star Kitchen show revived. Their two sets at The 8×10 will begin at 9:30pm.
Phantasy Tour is an online community of live music fans largely driven by set list prediction games for jam bands. Inspired by Phish and their 1999 Fall Tour, Phantasy Tour has now expanded to include the majority of touring bands one would consider to be in the jam/Americana/funk live rotation. PTers use the platform not only to play set list prediction games with their friends, but also to connect with other fans of their favorite bands and collect their live music experiences. To date, Phantasy Tour has over 170,000 registered members.
Tickets are available now. This show is sponsored in part by Remedy Columbia.
Meet Witty Tarbox. The funky surf-rock jam band hailing from Buffalo, NY that just packed the Town Ballroom to celebrate the release of their debut album, Origins of Schmitty. Comprised of Cody Tarbox (bass), Bryan Williams (guitar/vocals), Alex Khoury (guitar/vocals), Seth Bykowski (saxophone) and Colin Gray (drums), this band has quickly made a name for themselves in the WNY music scene. This year they made their debut at Night Lights Music Festival, and have opened for notable bands such as Consider the Source and Litz.
Origins of Schmitty release party at the Town Ballroom – 9/6/2019 – Photo: Zachary Todtenhagen
How this band came to be is a perfect representation of Witty Tarbox – spontaneous and weird. One night, Bryan and Alex were at Nietzsche’s bar in Buffalo and after a drink or two, Bryan asked Alex if he wanted to start a band, and Alex said “Yeah!” After that Bryan got up for a few minutes and came back to say “Awesome, just booked us a show here, it’s in three weeks, we need a band.” They called up their friends from college, Cody and Colin and they opened up for a sold-out Delicate Steve show with a setlist composed of about 90% covers, including the Arthur theme song, and the first original song they played together, “Trevor.”
As Witty Tarbox started to gain momentum, they met Seth, who was playing with another local Buffalo band at the time. They asked Seth to sit-in with them and after that Seth found himself sitting-in on almost every show for about a year, until he was asked to officially join the band.
From there, the band has become a staple in the WNY music scene. Their shows are always high-energy, fun and most importantly, weird. One thing you will hear walking through the crowd at any Witty Tarbox show is “Wow these guys are really good, but they’re weird!” As a band, they pride themselves in that. For their album release party they asked everyone to wear costumes and go all out weird, and all out weird it was. Their performances bring a fun new take to the jam band scene. See for yourself in this video of ‘Prepare To Launch’ from this past weekend at Riverboat Bar in Alexandria Bay, NY.
Witty Tarbox released their debut album, Origins of Schmitty, just over a week ago. Schmitty is a character that has been in the Witty-verse for some time now, as the band uses characters to tell stories with their music. The album tells a story of heartbreak, debauchery, and healing; the story of Schmitty. It starts off with a deep acoustic song, “Group Therapy,” which was never actually recorded in the studio. When they went to record it, the band felt that they couldn’t capture the same feeling they had when they recorded the video of Alex and his guitar one late-night in Cody’s living room. So, the audio on the album is actually ripped from that original iPhone video.
“Prepare to Launch is probably one of my favorites [to perform] because the monologue that Alex does and watching like the front row of people, who probably have mostly never seen us before, and just watching their faces and tapping their buddies like ‘What the … what is going on?’ ”
Cody Tarbox
If you have seen Witty Tarbox live before, you might recognize a few of the songs, such as “Fa Napoli” and “Goodbye, Jackie.” Both songs, which were debuted under different names, evolved as the band experimented with new jams and finding new elements to try in the songs. Cody makes his debut on vocals in “A Universal Feeling or Two,” which has also been in rotation for about a year and a half under a different name, without lyrics. When the lyrics were introduced, Colin hated them, but once he heard Cody record it (in one take no less), it quickly became one of his favorite songs off the album. Well, either that or “Norman,” which is a favorite among the Witty team. The album ends with “Kokiri,” named after Colin’s favorite place in his favorite video game, and features Mike Gantzer of Aqueous. You can give the whole album a listen below.
He’s a cool guy, cool attitude … and I think [Aqueous] likes to support Buffalo and the music scene here, and just in general, everyone is kind of really supportive of each other. I like how everyone works together in Buffalo, because it’s so small and there is this sense of comradery here that’s really nice and it helps everybody grow.
Alex Khoury, on working with Mike Gantzer and the Buffalo music scene.
Witty Tarbox had an extremely successful summer, and they owe a lot of it to their team. They are incredibly grateful to their management, Tim Merrill and Jes Tarbox, for keeping them on their toes and keeping them focused. Another big part of the Witty team is Brandon Kempisty, who collaborates on a lot of their costumes and props for shows that help keep it weird. Together they’ve created this wonderful Witty-verse that fans have fallen in love with.
We wouldn’t be where we are now without everyone else. It takes a village as they say.
Cody Tarbox
Witty Tarbox – Origins of Schmitty release party – 9/6/2019 – Photo: Zachary Todtenhagen
Check out their upcoming shows below, and visit their website or Facebook page for more information and even more exciting announcements for this fall/winter.
Upcoming Shows
October 6 – Folkface’s Fest – Darien Center, NY
October 26 – Brick Bar – Oswego, NY
November 2 – King’s Rook club – Erie, PA
November 15 – Unofficial moe. After Party – Nietzsche’s – Buffalo, NY
MT Ed’s production of the musical American Idiot (director Tina Crandall-Gommel, vocal director Heather Lonardo, music director David Curry) was performed at the Multi-use Community Cultural Center on September 14 as part of Rochester’s Fringe Festival. Inside of a house-turned-community-center, the local teenagers cast in the production sang their hearts out to the familiar tune of Green Day’s politically charged discography.
For a musical named after a song released over 15 years ago now and featuring the messages of a band formed in 1986, the content expressed in American Idiot seems to have ever-increasing political relevance. The show gave the spotlight to sensitive, nuanced, and often overlooked and taboo subjects such as patriotism, sex, drug use, teenage pregnancy, and loss. In a generation where existence is inherently political, the subversive messages in American Idiot presented themselves as a sense of relief from modern society to both the audience and the young performers.
It’s difficult to express one continual, overarching plot line using bits and pieces of a scattered discography. However, the direction of this musical managed to create substance in a challenging adaptation. Each scene felt like a moving, breathing snapshot of a story; each story stitched together like a quilt. The choreography was visually captivating and often reflected the compositions seen in Renaissance paintings. The music was well executed by a 5-piece band seated high atop a balcony that almost reached the ceiling. The stripped down production featured a set and props which accomplished much despite their minimalism. The lighting was also simple. Using mostly just a red, white, or blue wash, it sarcastically referenced the musical’s titular themes of American patriotism. Throughout the show, American Idiot consistently proved itself to be a worthwhile and entertaining experience for Green Day fans.
For more information about MT Ed and upcoming performances of American Idiot and other shows visit their website.
“Shooting Star,” the guitar and vocal-laden song, off of 19-year-old alternative-pop artist Kyle Stockman’s debut-project, Hearts, is more than worth a listen. Produced, mixed, and mastered by Stockman himself, the record, incidentally, did not start off as one his favorites, going through a metamorphosis before taking its present form. “It started out as a very different song than it ended,” Stockman reveals. “It sounded a lot different and I went back at the end of the album and rewrote the chorus and re-wrote one of the verses. At that point, I realized I really liked what it had become.”
The song serves as a transition in the album. In context with the rest of the project, its purpose is to be a relaxed and melodic break from some of the edgier produced songs. “It took on a more relaxed vibe and its content matter shows a transition from what I was talking about in the beginning,” says Stockman.
On its own though, the single possesses high replay value. With distinctive guitar riffs that are bound to be embedded in the listener’s brain and effortless vocals from Stockman, the record remains melodic while not being overzealous in its attempts at being catchy. It is a song that begs to be repeated throughout the day.
While the album was released on June 29, the Harlem native is still keeping up with the promotion, releasing a three-part music video on Sept. 9, that features three of the songs from the album, including “Shooting Star.”
Listen to “Shooting Star” below and check out the newly-released video for “Hearts” here.
