The Weight Band and special guests Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams started off the pre-Thanksgiving festivities at the Bardavon Theater in Poughkeepsie on Saturday, November 19th. With many performing having roots in Woodstock, The Band, and Levon Helm’s Midnight Ramble the night was more than just another show.
Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams proved to be the perfect opening act. The duo employed their roots rock style to originals and covers. A few songs in, Larry and Teresa invited Brian Mitchell of The Weight Band to grab his accordion and join them on stage. Jim Weider (also of The Weight Band) would follow a few songs later. This was an indication of how the night would progress. Close friends joining in at various points celebrating their love of music.
The Weight Band
The Weight Band’s (Jim Weider (guitar, mandolin & vocals), Michael Bram (drums & vocals), Brian Mitchell (keyboards & vocals), Matt Zeiner (keyboard & vocals), Albert Rogers (bass & vocals)) set included numerous Band classics. Crowd favorites “Up on Cripple Creek”, “Life is a Carnival,” bellowed through the house. The band threw in a few covers including The Allman Brothers “Come and Go Blues,” and The Grateful Dead’s “New Speedway Boogie” to round out the setlist.
Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams
Between songs memories of Allen Toussaint, Levon Helm and Bob (yeah, that one) were shared. The intimacy of the evening gave you the feeling that you were sitting around with old friends reminiscing. Song selection directed the activity on stage. Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams joining in at various times. Players switching from electric to acoustic guitar, keyboard to accordion, and fiddle to mandolin and back as the night progressed. It was loose, it was fun.
The Weight Band with Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams
With the clock inching toward midnight, the evening came to an end. Everyone joined in on iconic song “The Weight,” sending off it off into the ethos of the Hudson Valley. From the smiles and glow affixed to those on stage, this proved to be more than just a show. This was a musical homecoming.
And take a load off Fanny Take a load for free Take a load off Fanny And (and, and) you put the load right on me (You put the load right on me)
Buddy Guy will return to UPAC in Kingston for the final time on his ‘Damn Right Farewell’ tour, on June 15, 2023, with special guest the Samantha Fish Band.
At age 86, Buddy Guy is a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, a major influence on rock titans like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, a pioneer of Chicago’s fabled West Side sound, and a living link to the city’s halcyon days of electric blues. Buddy Guy has received 8 GRAMMY Awards, a 2015 Lifetime Achievement GRAMMY Award, 38 Blues Music Awards (the most any artist has received), the Billboard Magazine Century Award for distinguished artistic achievement, a Kennedy Center Honor, and the Presidential National Medal of Arts. Rolling Stone Magazine ranked him #23 in its “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.”
In July of 2021, in honor of Buddy Guy’s 85th birthday, PBS American Masters released “Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase The Blues Away”, a new documentary following his rise from a childhood spent picking cotton in Louisiana to becoming one of the most influential guitar players of all time. The documentary features new interviews with Buddy Guy, Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton, John Mayer, Gary Clark Jr, and more. Watch the full documentary at PBS Online here.
Though Buddy Guy will forever be associated with Chicago, his story actually begins in Louisiana. One of five children, he was born in 1936 to a sharecropper’s family and raised on a plantation near the small town of Lettsworth, located some 140 miles northwest of New Orleans. Buddy was just seven years old when he fashioned his first makeshift “guitar”—a two-string contraption attached to a piece of wood and secured with his mother’s hairpins.
In 1957, he took his guitar to Chicago, where he would permanently alter the direction of the instrument, first on numerous sessions for Chess Records playing alongside Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and the rest of the label’s legendary roster, and then on recordings of his own. His incendiary style left its mark on guitarists from Jimmy Page to John Mayer. “He was for me what Elvis was probably like for other people,” said Eric Clapton at Guy’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2005. “My course was set, and he was my pilot.”
Seven years later, July 2012 proved to be one of Buddy Guy’s most remarkable years ever. He was awarded the 2012 Kennedy Center Honor for his lifetime contribution to American culture; earlier in the year, at a performance at the White House, he even persuaded President Obama to join him on a chorus of “Sweet Home Chicago.” Also in 2012, he published his long-awaited memoir, When I Left Home.
These many years later, Buddy Guy remains a genuine American treasure and one of the final surviving connections to an historic era in the country’s musical evolution.
Buddy Guy 2023 Damn Right Farewell Tour
Feb 17 – Rockford, IL – Coronado PAC Feb 18 – Joliet, IL – Rialto Square Theatre Feb 23 – Fort Wayne, IN – Embassy Theatre Feb 24 – New Buffalo, MI – Silver Creek Event Center Feb 25 – Anderson, IN – Paramount Theatre Feb 26 – Evansville, IN – Victory Theatre Mar 01 – Baton Rouge, LA – Baton Rouge River Center Theater Mar 03 – Austin, TX – Austin City Limits Live at The Moody Theater Mar 04 – Austin, TX – Austin City Limits Live at The Moody Theater Mar 05 – Houston, TX – 713 Music Hall Mar 08 – Dallas, TX – Majestic Theatre Mar 11 – Kansas City, MO – Uptown Theater Mar 13 – Chesterfield, MO – The Factory Mar 14 – Memphis, TN – The Orpheum Theatre Mar 16 – Knoxville, TN – Tennessee Theatre Mar 17 – Atlanta, GA – Atlanta Symphony Hall Mar 20 – Spartanburg, SC – Spartanburg Memorial Auditorium Mar 21 – Chattanooga, TN – Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Auditorium Mar 22 – Charlotte, NC – Ovens Auditorium Mar 23 – Greensboro, NC – Steven Tanger Center for the Perf. Arts Mar 30 – Toronto, ONT – Massey Hall Mar 31 – Toronto, ONT – Massey Hall Apr 08 – Tyagarah, Australia – Bluesfest Apr 10 – St Kilda, Australia – Palais Theatre Apr 12 – Sydney, Australia – Enmore Theatre June 15 – Kingston, NY – UPAC
Local to the Hudson Valley, Soul Blind released their newest alternative single “Feel It All Around” on November 11th. “Stuck In A Loop” leans into the band’s ‘90s alternative influences, flowing through rich guitar tones into an intoxicating breakdown.
As you listen through tracks like “Ain’t Hard To Tell” and “System (Failing),” it’s easy to see the juxtaposition of the environment the band grew up in bleeding into how they approach music. The songs serve as a pair centered around people sucking the life out of you, as “Ain’t Hard To Tell” takes the viewpoint of watching a person change into someone unlikable, “System (Failing)” finds one progressing past the relationship.
The band explains how inner struggles serve as a recurring theme throughout the album, this particular track feeds into the paranoia of the mind. “Imagine the visual of being stuck in a loop inside one’s thoughts due to a mental lapse onset by a drug induced night, and not knowing how to escape” vocalist Cen comments on the song’s lyrical content. “The ‘view’ is this other, brighter side that you can put yourself in, but the ‘glue’ has you stuck in a loop until you can get yourself out.”
Soul Blind is Cen (vocals/bass), Justin Sarica (guitar), Finn Lovell (guitar), and Steve Hurley (drums).
Much of Feel It All Around was written in Soul Blind’s hometown of Hudson Valley, NY, which the band describes as “a place of beauty within hopelessness of its people, where you find the richness between the despair.”
Alternative rock band Soul Blind pushes the boundaries of their genre with a rich collage of sounds and emotionally charged lyrics. Formed back in 2018, the band hit their stride in 2021 with the release of their critically acclaimed Third Chain EP. They have been praised for lush, distorted riffs and divine, whirling vocals, the band build on those elements on their upcoming full-length album, Feel It All Around.
To listen to Soul Blind releases and Feel It All Around, click the link here.
The punk cabaret duo The Dresden Dolls, created by Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione in 2001, held nothing back deep in the woods of Woodstock for a three night run at The Colony from November 10th to November 12th. The best way to experience this band is up close and personal, which made the Colony the perfect place for their first live performances since 2018 in the UK, as the venue held roughly 150 people from the floor to the balcony.
Palmer, now 46, still performs like she is 25 at the start of The Dresden Dolls’ birth. Her raw energy and flawed flawlessness that she puts into any one of her performances is something that cannot be explained through words, it’s something that needs to be experienced. Her vocals are unmatched with a mix of melodic sounds and scream-singing and her skills on the piano complement that so well. She is one of the most passionate artists out there and is a sight to behold. Her passion is so strong that it spills out from her voice into her piano and every single move she makes. She breathes a new breath into every single performance.
Viglione on the drums, back-up vocals, bass, electric and acoustic guitar complements that beautifully. He matches her energy and that brings every performance from a 10 to a 20. The things he can create, on the drums especially, is an artform all by itself. The two clad in cabaret styled clothes and mime-like face paint created an experience for the audience that is part rage, part beautiful storytelling, with a little bit of everything mixed in. Everything includes a cover of “Fight For Your Right” by The Beastie Boys where Amanda got up from her piano and took over the drums while Brian played guitar and guest bass player Manta joined in.
The performance overall was a mash up of high-energy rage-filled songs like “Girl Anachronism” and some lower-energy ballads. This included their song “Delilah” which was accompanied by a newer artist named Veronica Swift who’s vocals were out of this world. It was truly show-stopping.
The performance and the reaction of the audience breathed new air into The Dresden Dolls and if you’re lucky enough to score a ticket to any one of there other performances, GO. Long live the Punk Cabaret.
Setlist: Good Day, Sex Changes, Gravity, Bad Habit, Backstabber, Modern Moonlight, My Alcoholic Friends, Missed Me, Mrs. O, Astronaut, Delilah (with Veronica Swift), Gardener, Ultima, Fight For Your Right, Amsterdam, Mandy Goes To Med School, Coin Operated Boy, War Pigs, Half Jack, Girl Anachronism
Encore: Truce, Sing
Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione rocking out Colony. Photo by Samantha Rychlicki
While many found the sudden lockdown spurred by 2020’s COVID-19 pandemic depressing, isolating and fruitless, Marco Benevento found the time trapped in his Hudson Valley dilapidated home studio to be inspiring and invigorating. In that room, surrounded by outdated technology, malfunctioning drum kits and eclectic instruments, the Woodstock keyboardist found his latest album: Benevento. Benevento will be celebrating the album’s release with a tour across the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest in March 2023.
The production of Benevento took place over many solo jam sessions, rife with experimentation and improvisation, things Benevento is no stranger to. Within the keyboard, Benevento finds and exploding breadth of sound and texture, and he wanders into the realm of psychedelic funk in his latest album, taking with him notes of rock, jazz and especially dance.
Benevento is pulling a two night stand in his home town of Woodstock at Levon Helm Studios in January, 2023. Tickets go on sale November 18 at 10 a.m. for the March leg of Marco Benevento’s tour. He’ll have a couple shows in the New York area, including on March 10 at White Eagle Hall in Jersey City. See the complete list of tour dates below; tickets here.
MARCO BENEVENTO Complete Tour Schedule
November 17 – Brooklyn, NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg ^
November 18 – New Haven, CT – Space Ballroom ^
November 19 – Holyoke, MA – Race Street Live ^
December 29 – Denver, CO – Ogden Theatre *
January 13 – Woodstock, NY – Levon Helm Studios
January 14 – Woodstock, NY – Levon Helm Studios
March 10 – Jersey City, NJ – White Eagle Hall
March 11 – Philadelphia, PA – Underground Arts
March 12 – Baltimore, MD – 8×10
March 13 – Pittsburgh, PA – Thunderbird Cafe
March 14 – Cleveland, OH – Beachland Ballroom
March 15 – Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall
March 16 – Milwaukee, WI – The Back Room at Colectivo
Radio Woodstock 100.1 WDST has announced the next installment of the “Saturday Night Takeover” series on Saturday, Nov. 19, with Melissa Auf der Maur, who was the famed bassist of American bands Hole and The Smashing Pumpkins.
Radio Woodstock, tagged as the New York Times’ “favorite thing about driving around the Hudson Valley,” has been the recipient of numerous national, regional, and local awards for its innovative programming. Radio Woodstock is one of the most influential rock music stations in the world and is unique for being both listener and advertiser-supported. It has been locally run and operated for over 40 years.
The DJs and programmers present the best emerging artists alongside the largest rock n’ roll library in the world. Radio Woodstock’s live events division has put on experimental live events and is most known for creating Mountain Jam and Taste of Country, which grew to become the largest music and camping festivals in the Northeast, together drawing over 100,000 attendees each year. Recently, the department has produced CannaStock, the first cannabis festival in the Hudson Valley.
Featured on the “Saturday Night Takeover” segment is Melissa Auf der Maur. She is a musician, photographer, curator, multidisciplinary event producer, and film producer. In 2010 she co-founded the multidisciplinary art venue Basilica Hudson in the Hudson Valley Region. She released two solo albums between 2004-2010.
You can tune into Radio Woodstock on Nov. 19 at 10 p.m. to hear Melissa Auf der Maur on the air here or via the iHeartRADIO app.
The Church of the Messiah in Rhinebeck will host a performance by pianist Nielson Chen on December 4, as well as a quartet from the Bard Vocal Arts Program presenting vocal chamber music. Let it be Forgotten: Shades of American Identity, an anthology of works, will be presented at 4pm and touches on complicated identities and relationships in America.
The series of tracks will explore the different backgrounds of people living in the U.S., highlighting equally the good and the bad, as well as the joy and pain experienced by citizens of different cultural backgrounds. Included in the Let it be Forgotten: Shades of American Identity program will be Bard musicians, Zihao Liu, Montana Smith, Jonathan Lawlor, Neilson Chen, and Katherine Lerner Lee.
With this recital, we want to communicate how important it is for us to listen to one another. There is no amount of sharing one’s own experience that takes away space from someone else to do the same. On this program, everyone’s voices are given ample room to be heard, and my hope is that it encourages our audiences to be open and active listeners in their daily lives.
Montana Smith, soprano and co-curator for December’s vocal chamber performance
Bard Vocal Arts Program members
Zihao Liu is a Chinese tenor whose been featured in many solo appearances, including for several recitals, largely involving opera and orcherstrative concerts. His recent appearances include his tenor soloist performances in Beethoven 9th Symphony with the Bard Conservatory Orchestra and Handel’s Messiah with The Orchestra Now.
Tenor, Zihao Liu
Montana Smith is an emerging soprano musician and is currently continuing her education in graduate studies at the Bard College Conservatory of Music in the Vocal Arts Program. She has participated in a plethora of opera productions, holding a vision which emphasizes the importance for young people to be represented in world opera art, while attempting to express more effective and open communication with her audiences. Smith’s performances vary across the range of the classical genre, and she holds a focus in representing the musical expression of Black and American artists.
Soprano, Montana Smith
Baritone, Jonathan Lawlor, has built experience working with established Baroque musical groups, as well as being actively involved in the opera music scene, through collaboration with opera ensembles. Lawlor carries an interest in evolving the composition techniques utilized in classical music sound production, grounded in the intent of diversifying the musical background of the musician, hence also the performance.
Baritone, Jonathan Lawlor
Katherine Lerner Lee, a soprano living in Brooklyn, has a breadth of performing experience and a versatile repertoire. She received the 2021 Concerto Competition this past season while obtaining her Masters at Bard Conservatory, played the part of “Gold Spurs” in Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen, and debuted in concerts at the Fisher Center and with the Broad Street Orchestra in Kinderhook. She delivered a performance in December that included Luciano Berio’s Folk Songs and Pauline Oliveros’ Silences.
Soprano, Katherine Lee Lerner
Taiwanese-born Neilson Chen is a collaborative pianist assistant at the Bard College Conservatory of Music and a music PhD candidate at Arizona State University. He has given numerous performances not only in the United States but also in countries like Germany, Luxembourg, France, Ireland, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. The Saarburg International Music Festival in Germany, the Vianden Music Festival and School in Luxembourg, and the Rocky Ridge Music Center in Colorado are just a few of the music festivals that Neilson performs at it during the summer as a staff pianist.
Pianist, Neilson Chen
Featured in the afternoon’s performers are composers William Grant Still, Juhi Bansal, Chihchun Chi Sun Lee, Charles Ives, and Alex Weiser, delivering songs with texts included in English, Mandarin, and Yiddish. The church has provided service to the community area, being a host for an Afghan immigrant family in Spring of 2022. All proceeds from the recital event at the church will go into supporting the family.
On Saturday, December 10, Family of Woodstock (FOW), an upstate community service non-profit, will showcase “A Soul Train Christmas” at the Colony in Woodstock.
With doors opening at 7 and music beginning at 8, the event includes a holiday dance party and a winter clothing drive. It’s the non-profit’s third annual holiday collaboration with Eric Redd, a musical performer with over 40 years of international experience and a longtime Woodstock resident.
Eric Redd
Also on the bill are Hudson Valley rockabilly and roots band Lara Hope and the Ark-Tonesand the gospel-influenced dance artist and DJ Disciple collaborator Dawn Tallman.
This is far from the first community concert for FOW, with other annual events including the Bob Dylan Birthday Bash and the John Herald Fund concerts, both of which have featured Redd in the past.
Eric Redd has enjoyed an enduring and diverse career. The Inglewood, CA native got his start at 16 years old as a dancer on “Soul Train,” a TV musical variety program curated by host Don Cornelius, which ran from 1971 to 2006.
His ensuing career has included appearances as a dancer in musical productions such as “Starlight Express” and “Cats,” a stint as lead vocalist for California Transit Authority, a band stemming from Danny Seraphine, the drummer of Chicago, and his 2014 full-length solo album, Give It Away.
Information regarding tickets for “A Soul Train Christmas” can be found here.
Hudson Valley-based group The Jed Luckless Band released their newest album Second Lives, their first official release since 2013.
The Jed Luckless Band recorded the record live on their 2018 tour of virtual venues in Second Life and gives the listener the experience of one of their shows. The group is made up of Jed Luckless on guitar and vocals, Kenny Kaufman on bass and vocals, Mark Gutenplan on keys, guitar, and vocals, and Pete Marine on drums. The group usually live streams online or in the metaverse, but has done in-person performances as well.
JLB follows the jam band tradition, with extended improvisation and overall good vibes. The first track is quite lengthy, sitting at about 14 minutes. The title is “Give It Back > Valley Of The Saints” and prominently featured in the song are improvisation techniques, with extended guitar solos, and keyboard jam sesh. The song makes the listener want to get up and groove to the melodies.
The second track, “Road Trip > Sugar Pop” is also a lengthy track, sitting at just over 21 minutes. It is reminiscent of the Grateful Dead, with groovy guitars and stellar vocals. The group repeats the line “Going on a road trip” several times during the song, and it is a great song to listen to driving across the country as it elapses time in such a way that the listener gets so entrapped in the melodies.
Following that track comes “2,000 Pikes > Smile Forever,” featuring more vocals than the past tracks. It features pauses of silence and more of the classic improvisation style. This type of music would be great to have on in the background while you’re cleaning your house, or even studying. They are a group of very talented musicians, and they play together well, following each other’s instruments in a manner that flows very nicely.
The last track “FM Rock > By And Bye” starts out much softer than the other previous songs, with soft keyboard notes and guitar strums. The song speaks about the radio, then goes into a long jam sesh that keeps the listener on their toes.
The Jed Luckless Band’s new record Second Lives is overall a solid album featuring the classic jam band improvisation seshes, with electrifying guitar and keyboard solos, as well as drum beats that keep you swaying and dancing to the music for the whole record.
He’s the man you probably know best from his starring role alongside Keanu Reeves in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. But these days, Alex Winter is not only a talented actor but an impressive filmmaker, one entrusted by the family of Frank Zappa to create the ultimate documentary charting his iconoclastic life and career, 2020’s ZAPPA.
On Saturday, November 19 at 8 pm, Winter will be coming to Woodstock’s legendary Tinker Street Cinema to host a special screening of this watershed music documentary.
Winter began work on the film in 2015 by creating a Kickstarter campaign that raised over $1.1 million to restore much of the unseen archival footage in Zappa’s legendary “vault.” He was the first and only filmmaker to be granted unfettered access to this material as well as some of Zappa’s never-before-heard sound recordings. With it, Winter crafted a portrait that showed the artistic triumphs and challenges faced by this one-of-a-kind creative force, an icon whose influence on culture and politics was truly global. Winter’s documentary delves into Zappa’s upbringing, the many stages of his long career, his campaigns as an advocate for free speech and the newly freed Czech Republic, all the way to his final battle with cancer, which ended his insanely productive life at 52. Also featured are interviews with Frank’s widow, the late Gail Zappa, and many of his musical collaborators through the years including Ruth and Ian Underwood, Bunk Gardner, Steve Vai, Scott Thunes and Ray White.
Portrait of Alex Winter. CREDIT: Philip Cheung
Winter’s film received high praise from critics worldwide, including outlets like The Guardian UK, The New York Times, Sydney Morning Herald, The Wall Street Journal, Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. You can find NYSMusic.com’s own extensive rave review here.
“Our cinema is a celebration of the bold, experimental and surreal, so Alex’s fantastic film on Zappa makes perfect sense for us and our audience,” says Andy Braunstein. “The fact that Alex lived here for a time, right next to the cinema in fact, will make this event a true homecoming.”
The Zappa event is just one example of the Tinker Street Cinema’s dedication to the fusion of film and music.
Like its neighbor, Upstate Films’ Orpheum Theater in Saugerties, the Tinker Street Cinema has produced several notable events where live soundtracks are created to accompany screenings of classic films. In June 2021, genre-leaping Australian composer JG Thirlwell, best known for his work as Foetus, presented “Silver Mantis,” a live performance set to film by Sten Backman. In August 2021, the theater presented Fritz Lang’s silent era classic, Metropolis, with music by Reel Orchestrette. And on Halloween weekend, the Tinker Street Cinema screened the horror classic, Night of the Living Dead, with a live score by Morricone Youth.
In acknowledgment of Woodstock’s history as home to some of the greats of contemporary music, the theater serves up a hefty platter of music-centric films, ones often hosted by local music luminaries. Earlier this month, the cinema featured a screening of Amadeus (The Director’s Cut) hosted by The Dresden Dolls, the duo of Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione. Other films featured recently included AC/DC: Let There Be Rock, Woodstock and Poly Styrene: I am A Cliché. The theater will soon be screening Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road hosted by its producer and writer, Woodstock’s own Jason Fine.
On November 26, the Tinker Street Cinema will present a Jimi Hendrix Birthday tribute. This event will boast various films about the guitarist and live performances by artists including Chogyi Lama, a young Hendrix acolyte who just happens to be the grandson of Woodstock legend Richie Havens. On December 10, The Tinker Street Cinema will also have an evening dedicated to experimental music with a psychedelic lightshow. Brock Monroe of the Joshua Lightshow will create a backdrop for performances by edge-pushing musicians including Nepenthae and the trio of Lea Bertucci, Ric Royer and Ben Vida. The Tinker Street team is also finalizing plans that will bring The Black Lips to the theater, along with a screening of The Roar of Snowmobiles, a documentary dedicated to the racers and collectors of vintage ‘60s models.
Founded in 1961 in a pre-Civil War church, the Tinker Street Cinema has also been the site of a variety of musical performances through the years, public and private. The venue was reopened in the summer of 2021 by Ben Rollins and Lily Korolkoff, owners of the nearby Station Bar & Curio, and Andy “Animal” Braunstein, a film aficionado and Woodstock native known for his Meltasia music festivals.
Notably, the theater was also the site where Jimi Hendrix rehearsed and jammed in the days before his history-making performance at the Woodstock Festival in August 1969. The below video captures some of the sounds and pictures, including a proto version of his iconic take on “The Star Spangler Banner.”
“We’re a very musical town with a long and rich history, so it’s only natural that the marriage of film and music is a centerpiece of our creative mission,” concludes Braunstein. “We’re passionate, maybe obsessed is a better word, to do everything we can to keep the flame of rock-n-roll burning bright.”
