Next weekend, hard-hitting funk band The New Mastersounds will headline a pair of shows at the House of Blues New Orleans. The Leeds-based act has revealed the roster of guests that will join them and an intriguing theme for the two late-night performances on May 3rd and May 4th.
TNM will be joined by Alecia Chakour and the West Coast Horns on May 3rd as they celebrate “The Funk Creations of 1973.” Then, on May 4th, Jans Ingber, Jennifer Hartswick and the West Coast Horns will help The New Mastersounds pay tribute to “The Boogie Creations of 1983.” Both performances are 2AM shows. Tickets are available through LiveNation.com.
Following up the announcement of a super group Fiyawerx Productions put together called Fiya Powa! for a May 2nd gig at One Eyed Jack’s in New Orleans comes a lineup that tops even that one. Check out this over-the-top list of artists that will play Fiya Fest on May 3rd at The Old Ironworks: GABE (George Porter Jr., Billy Iuso, Eric Bolivar and Anders Osborne), Dragon Smoke (Ivan Neville, Stanton Moore, Robert Mercurio and Eric Lindell), Dr. Klaw (Eric Krasno, Nigel Hall, Ian Neville, Adam Deitch and Nick Daniels), Karl Denson with The Dirty Dozen Horns (Nikki Glaspie, Jennifer Hartswick, Natalie Cressman, Robert Walter and Eddie Roberts), The New Orleans Suspects and the Bonerama Horns, Funky But Better (Terrence Higgins, Nigel Hall, Big Sam, Roosevelt Collier, Khris Royal, Doug Wimbish and Eric McFadden), The Revivalists and Artists-At-Large Mike Dillon, Corey Glover and Skerik.
FIYA FEST 2013 is a crawfish boil/benefit for the Roots of Music Marching Crusaders that is expected to run from noon to 10 PM on May 3rd at The Old Ironworks in New Orleans.
While the organizers of Camp Barefoot, a mid-size festival that will take place at a campground in Bartow, West Virginia on Aug. 22 – 24, will announce its full initial lineup on February 12th, today they gave a taste of what attendees can expect by releasing the names of a handful of bands on the bill as well as three “Artists-At-Large” that will sit in with other acts throughout the weekend.
Tea Leaf Green, Zoogma, the Jennifer Hartswick Band, Break Science, Brothers Past, The Motet, Toubab Krewe, Consider The Source and American Babies are set to perform at Camp Barefoot along with That 1 Guy, James Justin and Co., Ras Puma with Antero Reggae Band, Mekong Express, Danger Muffin, Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band, DJ Williams Projekt, The Broadcast, Cris Jacobs Band, Tiny Boxes and Friends (featuring Hartswick, Nigel Hall, members of The Motet and Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band) and many more regional and local acts. Hartswick, Hall and Ras Puma will serve as Artists-At-Large. Tickets for the seventh installment of the fest are currently available for $105.
Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe brought a disco-themed show to Denver’s Ogden Theatre on Halloween backed by the massive “Funkytown Orchestra.” Among the three backing, and at times lead, vocalists was Jennifer Hartswick. YouTuber RoscoGirl caught much of the show on video. Let’s take a look at covers of Funky Town, Heart of Glass, I’m Your Boogie Man, Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Ring My Bell, Boogie Fever, Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel, Shake Your Groove Thing and Boogie Nights…
Set: Love’s Theme, If I Can’t Have You(*), Le Freak(*)(^)($), A Fifth of Beehtoven , Rapture(*), Love To Love You Baby($), Disco Inferno, Funkytown(*), Heart of Glass(^), I’m Your Boogie Man, Can’t Get Enough of Your Love Baby, Do The Hustle, Ring My Bell(*), Boogie Fever, Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel, Shake Your Groove Thing(^)($), Boogie Nights
For the past week or so, two HT faves have teamed up as Van Ghost opened for Bruce Hornsby and the Noisemakers on a brief tour that concludes tomorrow in Apple Valley, Minn. This past Thursday night, at Rochester, New York’s Party In The Park, the two acts co-mingled when Van Ghost’s Jennifer Hartswick guested on a song during the legendary keyboardist’s set.
Hartswick emerged towards the start of the show to help out the Noisemakers on Hornsby’s 1993 classic Rainbow’s Cadillac. Jennifer played trumpet and also sang on the Harbor Lights tune, while Bruce rocked the accordion. In other Bruuuuuce news, Hornsby’s upcoming June 22nd show has been moved from the Mishawaka Amphitheatre to the Boulder Theater, and to June 21st, due to the High Park fire.
It’s hard to believe it’s been 13 years since Neal and Alan Evans invited Eric Krasno to their Woodstock studio for a session that would essentially give birth to a band called Soulive and yield the band’s seminal debut album Get Down! For many live music fans in New York City who are more prone to get their music news from JamBase, Relix or Hidden Track than Rolling Stone or Pitchfork, our history with the trio goes back towards those early days when Soulive was blowing minds at small clubs such as Baby Jupiter or the Wetlands Preserve. Thirteen years later the group continues to impress as they’ve been putting their chameleon-like tendency to change their sound from song to song and guest to guest on display at Brooklyn Bowl for a ten-night residency dubbed Bowlive III.
Saturday night’s show marked the halfway point for the run and was arguably the best night yet. Following an afternoon Kidsrockersbowl set which featured guest spots from Karl Denson and Nigel Hall as well as a Q&A session, the Bowl was emptied and then packed all over again for an evening filled to the brim with sensational music. Hall’s solo band opened, setting the bar high for the rest of the night.
The first weekend show of Soulive’s Bowlive III residency at Brooklyn Bowl saw special guests Jennifer Hartswick, Karl Denson, James Casey and Tash Neal of opening act The London Souls and run regular Nigel Hall shuffle on and of stage with the trio in front of a capacity crowd.
Following London Souls’ brief opening set, the trio opened up with a pair of classics – El Ron and Dig – before the cavalcade of guests began on Spark (featuring Karl Denson) and Provo (featuring Denson and Hartswick), two tunes from Soulive’s Melvin Sparks tribute EP, Sparks. Jennifer and Karl stuck around for a cover of Yusef Lateef’s Nubian Lady. Shady Horns member James Casey got in on the act for a Hartswick-sung take on Rock Steady by Aretha Franklin. The covers and the guests continued into the end of the set as Nigel Hall made his fourth straight Bowlive III appearance to sing Tears For Fears’ Everybody Wants To Rule The World, complete with a tease of Open Your Eyes by Bobby Caldwell.
Soulive came out by themselves to start set two with One in Seven and then brought out Tash Neal for a cover of Ohio, which featured Denson on tambourine. From there, the trio offered their take on the instrumental Lenny by Stevie Ray Vaughan. Denson came out once again for Turn It Out and then all of the evening’s guests lent a hand on For Granted. Hall sang Stevie Wonder’s Jesus Children of America to put a stamp on the show. HT contributor Wyllys spun post-show making for a power-packed evening at the Bowl.
Karen Dugan has a full recap of Night Four over at Royal Family Records’ blog. IClips.net webcast last night’s show and will webcast all 10 Bowlive III performances. Marco Benevento and Jennifer Hartswick are the guests scheduled to sit-in tonight at Brooklyn Bowl.
Between working with Trey Anastasio, Wyllys and the New York Hustler Ensemble and Van Ghost, our friend and longtime HT supporter Jennifer Hartswick has spent the majority of the past few years playing other peoples’ music. Somewhere along the line she found some time to pour into her own work and the result is her long-in-the-making third album Ocean Floor, which is currently available through iTunes, CD Baby, Amazon.com and a variety of other outlets. We recently spoke with Hartswick about the making of what she calls a “a true JHB [Jennifer Hartswick Band] record” in a wide-ranging series of conversations.
For Ocean Floor, which combines some of the funk sensibilities of 2003′s Fuse with the more jazz-oriented approach of 2007′s True, Jennifer was joined by longtime collaborators Nick Cassarino (guitar), Dezron Douglas (bass), Joe Davidian (keys) and Cory Healey (drums) as well as Russ Lawton, Bruce Sklar and Tony Barba. Hartswick’s relationships with Cassarino and Douglas go back over a decade. “I met Nick 11 years ago, I’ve known and been playing with him since he was 14. He was a brilliant student of Dave Grippo. I was judging a battle of the bands when he was a freshman in high school and obviously he won – all the girls were screaming his name,” Jennifer told us. “I went to college with Dezron and I’ve known him for 11 years. We’ve been playing together constantly throughout that time. Great spirit, great player, we just sort of understand each other. I was really psyched that he was available,” she concluded.
This album was a year and a half in the making, though Hartswick had other intentions when she first started to record. “We started in Chicago in April of 2010. At first I was just going to do an EP, so I recorded half of it in Chicago and then I got really busy and started writing a bunch more and thought why not just make it a full album? We recorded the other half of it in Vermont with a couple of different musicians,” Jennifer said. Even though a year and a half went by between the first recording session and the release of Ocean Floor, it wasn’t as if Hartswick spent all that time in the studio. “In total we spent four days in the studio making this record, the recording was actually done really quickly because that’s the way I like to do things. I can’t see spending weeks and weeks and weeks in a studio on eight songs or ten songs, I got distracted as I often do,” she finished.
HT faves Umphrey’s McGee returned to New York City this weekend for two sold-out shows at the Best Buy Theater. Last night the Chicago-based sextet celebrated the 14th anniversary of their first performance. For the first song of a two-song encore that closed the run, Umphrey’s welcomed longtime collaborator Jennifer Hartswick out to sing At Last in tribute to Etta James, who passed away on Friday. The second song of the encore, JaJunk, was dedicated to tour manager Don Richards, who is leaving the group’s employ after Mayan Holidaze.
We’ll have a full review and plenty of photos from Umphrey’s fantastic two-show run in a few days, but for now here’s the only video (ie. not the best quality) of At Last to surface thus far on YouTube…
After years of coming through many of the same venues, Connecticut-bred guitarists Tim Palmieri of Kung Fu and Jeff Gitleman of The Stepkids collaborated for the first time on Friday night at Toad’s Place in New Haven, where their two bands shared a bill with fellow Nutmeg State products Rizzo’s Dilemma and Wyllys. For the show’s encore, Gittleman and band mate Dan Edinberg joined Kung Fu and their guest for the evening, Jennifer Hartswick, on a cover of Donny Hathaway’s This Christmas…
Later this month our friend Jennifer Hartswick’s third album, titled Ocean Floor, hits stores or your favorite online retailer. Those attending Bear Creek next weekend will have a have a chance to pick up the album on site ahead of the rest of us, who have to wait until its official November 15th release date. For this album, which combines some of the funk sensibilities of 2003′s Fuse with the more jazz-oriented approach of 2007′s True, Jennifer is joined by longtime collaborators Nick Cassarino (guitar), Dezron Douglas (bass), Joe Davidian (keys) and Cory Healey (drums).
For a taste of Ocean Floor, head over to JenHartswick.com to stream If You Don’t Wanna Wait or check out this “Making Of” clip put together by HT contributor Regan Teti-Marscher:
We’ll have much more on Ocean Floor in the coming days. The Jennifer Hartswick Band will hit the stage at 2AM on Saturday night, November 12, at the Bear Creek Music Festival, where she’s also set to perform with Van Ghost and the Trey Anastasio Band.
We’d like to wish a very happy birthday to vocalist/trumpeter Jennifer Hartswick this morning. Come celebrate tonight at NYC’s Sullivan Hall, where Hartswick will perform as part of HT contributor Wade “Wyllys” Wilby’s New York Hustler Ensemble. Special guests include Pete Pidgeon and RAQ’s Todd Stoops along with guitarist Rob Salzer in what will be a bit of a U-Melt reunion with Hustlers keyboardist Zac Lasher. Former Blips artist Newton Crosby and Coltrane are set to open.
Here’s a look at Hartswick in action with her own ensemble…
The Trey Anastasio Band’s tour hits Chicago this evening, where horn players Jennifer Hartswick and Natalie Cressman will be doing double duty. JHa and Chainsaw will join Future Rock’s Mickey Kellerman and Hidden Track contributor Wade “Wyllys” Wilby at the Kinetic Playground after the TAB show for a special Wyllys and the New York Hustler Ensemble performance. Check out Wade’s article on the group for a taste of what you can expect.
Now that’s it’s been just about a month since Jam Cruise 9 returned to land, I’ve had plenty of time to reflect on all the music I witnessed. While I was familiar with most of the bands aboard the MSC Poesia, there were a number of acts who were new to me. For this week’s B List, I made a list of the 10 bands I hadn’t seen live before the trip who impressed me the most.
Yes, it’s ridiculous that I hadn’t seen a few of these bands, but now that I have, I won’t miss them again the next time they come around.
Colorado’s Big Gigantic features drummer Jeremy Salken and producer/saxophonist Dominic Lalli coming together to forge an inventive sound that’s equal parts electronic and rock. You can’t help but dance to the ridiculously high-energy beats and grooves the pair provides. BG’s Zebra Bar set was otherworldly, not only for the work of Salken and Lalli, but also for sit-ins by the likes of Brock Butler, Eric Krasno and Joel Cummins.
Thanks to our pal JRapp, we can premiere a number of fantastic clips from throughout Jam Cruise 9, which finished yesterday upon the MSC Poesia’s return to Fort Lauderdale. We start with Living Colour front man Corey Glover, who was on the boat with Galactic, singing Glamour Boys with ALO…
Next, we’ve got a short clip of a George Porter Jr.-led version of Sneakin’ Sally from the Jam Room which featured Pete Levin, Ian Neville, Raymond Weber and Tony Hall on bass…
READ ON for more videos from Jam Cruise 9 including Bobby w/ GSW, Brock’s LCD Soundsystem cover, Lotus on the Pool Deck, JHa joined by Butler and Berg on Dawes’ When My Time Comes and much more…
