Greetings from just off the coast of Cuba, my friends. We’ve awoke to another gorgeous day of weather on the high seas as we motor back to Fort Lauderdale. Everyone seems surprisingly alert for Day Five of this marathon adventure and we’ve got an intense day and night ahead that leads into the dreaded disembarkation calls over the PA at 7AM tomorrow morning.

I think we’re at the point in the trip, where I can officially declare Jam Cruise 9 better than last year’s event on a musical level. While the “mindblown” factor of my first trip can never be duplicated, the artists on JC9 have all put together amazing sit-ins and action packed sets. No one wants to be “that band” or “that guy” who plays a bad show. Trust me, word spreads fast on this boat.

When I first looked at the schedule, I thought yesterday might be my least favorite of the five days. Yet, Friday turned out to crush. We were docked in Costa Maya, Mexico from 8AM to 3PM and I’d love to tell you all about it, but I took that opportunity to sleep. Zs are at a premium with “once-in-a-lifetime” collaborations likely to bust out at any time. I heard great stories of those who either went to the beach, took part in the Positive Legacy excursion, visited the Mayan Ruins or made their own adventure.

Jam Cruise is all about making your own adventure. Each attendee has a completely different experience and trading tales the next day is part of the fun. My day started with Rock Star Karoake featuring ALO. This California band is near the top of the list of acts who left a big impression on me. Not only are their originals funky and boogie-fueled without being trite, but they can also handle cover tunes with the best of ‘em.

READ ON on for more of Part 1 of Day 4 of Jam Cruise.

While the first day of Jam Cruise was fun and featured some terrific music, Day Two took things to a whole new level. No matter where you looked, artists were jamming with each other in configurations that you’d never expect. The day was relentless as the MSC Poesia was motoring down to Roatan, Honduras.

Chicago’s Cornmeal kicked things off on the Pool Deck just before noon to a surprisingly large crowd. Joel Cummins of Umphrey’s McGee provided the first sit-in of the day by joining Cornmeal for a segment that included a cover of Elton John’s Bennie and the Jets that the ensemble nailed on every level. There was even a tease of Terrapin thrown in for good measure.

[Photo by Dave Vann]

If anyone read my Jam Cruise Journals from last year, you’ll probably recall how much I enjoyed Brock Butler’s performances. Brock was all over the place yesterday starting with a solo set on the smaller Solar Stage which featured a dream setlist that started with a cover of LCD Soundsystem’s All My Friends followed by the PGroove classic It Starts Where It Ends and Tom Petty’s Wildflowers. Under sunny skies and in 80 degree weather, Butler also treated cruisers to a Phosphorescent cover and his own The Weather and the Wait as well as Paul Simon’s Diamonds on the Soles of Shoes. The PGroove front man even showed off his freestyle skills during DMX’s Crime Stories.

READ ON for much more from day two of Jam Cruise

People like to discount Wikipedia for being a source of misinformation, but I’ll tell ‘ya, a quick read of the page for Ain’t No Sunshine nets you some pretty damn good factoids on this 1971 Bill Withers classic. 1) Produced by Booker T. 2) Donald “Duck” Dunn plays the bass 3) Withers was working at a factory making toilet seats when he wrote the song. Okay, #3 they claim to have a source for from Rolling Stone but the link is broken, but I *want* to believe them. I’m sure it’s true. Anyway, literally hundreds of people have covered Ain’t No Sunshine, a search of allmusic.com brings you 1,456 results. What we’ve got below is 10 renditions we think are worth a listen.

The Contestants:

This same Buddy Guy album (Bring ‘Em In) appeared two weeks ago in the I Put A Spell On You Cover Wars. Carlos Santana joined Guy on that cover while Tracy Chapman joins him on this one. This cover features an early key change, multiple vocalists, horns – the whole nine yards.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

READ ON for the audio and video of nine more Ain’t No Sunshine covers…

Forget Snooki, J-Woww & The Situation, all music fans need to know about the Jersey Shore is the name Chico. Jazz drummer Chico Rouse recently opened an intimate venue in Asbury Park that brings the feel of an NYC Jazz Club to the beach as a way to honor the legacy of his father, Jazz great Charlie Rouse. Chico’s House of Jazz has been winning raves and with a trifecta of upcoming shows featuring some of our favorite artists, we wanted to give our readers a chance to experience the venue for themselves.

[Photo by George Wirt]

On September 14, the Jennifer Hartswick Band will visit Chico’s with a lineup that features the TAB vocalist/trumpet wiz, AGP/Matisyahu keyboardist Rob Marscher and guitarist Nick Cassarino among others (tickets).  On September 24, Americana rocker Anders Osborne plays Chico’s backed by the Stanton Moore Trio (tickets). Completing the trifecta, Jersey boy Marco Benevento offers a rare solo piano show at the club on October 26 (tickets).

As part of our long-standing Everybody Wins When We Plug Something And In Return They Offer Us Free Shit To Give Away program, we’ve got a pair of tickets to bestow on a lucky reader for their choice of shows from what we’ve listed above. To enter, simply leave a comment below listing your name and hometown and telling us which artist you’d like to see (Jennifer, Anders/Stanton or Marco). You can only enter once and the contest ends on Friday night, September 10 at 11:59PM EDT. We’ll pick one winner at random over the weekend. Good luck!

As I always say, I’m at the mercy of what tapes are available when I put this piece together, and I had a great selection to choose from this time around especially when tapes popped up of rarely recorded acts like Iron & Wine & Local Natives. But don’t you worry, Hidden Track isn’t forgetting where we came from – we’ve got the likes of Tim Palmieri, Todd Stoops & Jennifer Hartswick to contribute a jammed out cover of Billy Cobham’s Red Baron.

[Thanks to GDfan for this week's photo]

And we continue to take all the selected tracks, normalize them, create some simple fades and put it into one easy to download MP3 for you.

Click here to download the Last Week’s Sauce Podcast

Artist & Title: 30db – The Good Times Are Killing Me, Liar
Date & Venue: 2010-05-07 Barrymore Theater – Madison, WI
Taper & Show Download: soling

Well it only took about four years, but Brendan Bayliss & Jeff Austin have finally released their studio album. The selected audio features a Modest Mouse cover and one of Brendan’s contributions to the album. I cut out some banter in between the tracks, there was some nonsense in there about maple syrup, download the show if you want to hear it. 30db next plays May 19th at the Fox Theatre in Boulder.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

And here they are playing Used To Love Her by Guns ‘N Roses, did these guys go through messy divorces or something?

READ ON for tracks from the likes of Dr. Dog and Wyllys w/Kung Fu…

While this weekly feature is normally a good way to recap what touring bands were up to by way of choosing audio and video to embed for our readers, this week we’re also going to give you a recap of last week’s shenanigans involving the Disco Biscuits and this publication, Hidden Track.

At around 2PM last Thursday afternoon, Disco Biscuits bassist Marc Brownstein simply tweeted the URL www.planetanthem.com. With no real fanfare, tDB had launched a fun, and somewhat hilarious, pre-order site for their first studio release in eight years, Planet Anthem. While some of the items available for purchase were pretty standard (i.e. signed CD’s, a copy of the CD plus entry to the record release shows at the TLA in Philly), some were much more interesting (i.e. for $500 you and four friends get to sing the “Oooooooo” part of tDB epic Basis For A Day at Camp Bisco or $250 to get the Disco Biscuits to remix a song for you).

At 2:40pm EST, I sent ScottyB an email to ask a) if he had seen the Pre-Order page and b) if this situation was ripe for satire. With a little help from tDB guru Matt Quinn we went live with a B List at 5pm titled 10 Rejected Planet Anthem Pre-Order Items.

The post was well received with a few of our readers joining in on the comment section to offer up their own entries of funny would-be pre-order items. I also got a couple of emails from friends saying they enjoyed the piece and we were all happy with the way it went. Fast forward to 8:06am the following morning when I got a text message informing me that a number of the jokes listed in our B List had magically appeared on the actual pre-order page! While some of the Hidden-Track inspired items have been purchased, fans still haven’t been able to pool together the $1 million to get tDB to make their triumphant return to the Pacific Northwest.

READ ON for more on this highlight in Hidden Track history and for LWS selections from tDB, Trey, Wilco, George Clinton & P-Funk and MMW…

This afternoon, former 70 Volt Parade vocalist Trey Anastasio announced a solo tour that puts together the members of his Classic TAB ensemble with a three-piece horn section for three weeks worth of shows. For this run of shows Anastasio will be backed by Classic TAB members Tony Markellis on bass, Russ Lawton on drums and Ray Paczkowski on keyboards as well as a three-piece horn section featuring Jennifer Hartswick, Russ Remington and Natalie Cressman.

The tour which features 16 shows in 21 days opens in the city that Coran Capshaw built, Charlottesville Virginia at the Jefferson Theatre. Trey is bringing his band to a few states that Phish hasn’t been able to hit in their first year back, most notably Georgia as well as Kansas and the District Of Columbia. The venues are exclusively clubs and theaters and for some reason their New York City stop is at one of the cities most hated venues, Terminal 5.

Let’s take a look at the players:

Tony Markellis [bass]: The “Meatman” first performed with Trey in 1998 as part of his Eight Foot Florescent Tubes project that opened the original Higher Ground in Winooski. Trey enjoyed the experience so much that he asked Markellis and drummer Russ Lawton to join him on his first solo tour back in 1999. Tony was a member of TAB through the 2003 Spring Tour and returned for the Classic TAB shows in 2008.

READ ON for profiles on the rest of the members of Trey’s band and the full list of tour dates…

U-Melt ran away with last week’s edition when we looked at eight covers of The Boy In The Bubble. U-Melt proves that clever setlist construction goes a long way, as the performance that was selected was in the middle of MMW’s Bubblehouse (Boy in the Bubblehouse?). Congrats to U-Melt on their first CW trophy, well it’s an imaginary trophy, put it on the mantle.

Moving on to this week, we will be taking a look at a tune Robbie Robertson wrote for The Band that was originally released on the their 1975 release Nothern Lights – Southern Cross.

Remember to register/login to IMEEM before starting the playlist below.

RSS Readers: Click Here To Launch The Plalist

READ ON for the tale of the tape on this week’s competitors…

It hardly seems like six months have passed since the beginning of the year, but here we are on June 26. While I’ve failed miserably at fulfilling all of my resolutions I did see a ton of incredible shows. Now I get to rate them, as this week’s B List looks at my ten favorite concerts of the first half of ’08.

What’s the criteria for this list? Well, obviously I had to be there to catch the show, so I can’t give MMJ @ Bonnaroo “show of the year” honors even though the tapes seem to indicate they deserve it. All I can go by is my gut and how wide of a smile each of these performances induced. Here’s what I’ve got…

10. Jennifer Hartswick – The Blue Note – May 24

[Photo by Adam Kaufman]

I’ve had the pleasure of catching J-Ha at the Blue Note on three separate occasions, but the performance she gave at the legendary jazz club in May was the cat’s pajamas. I brought my cousin to the show, and it was incredible to see how in awe she was of Jen’s voice, trumpet playing and the way Jen took control of the audience. Let’s hope there are more Jennifer Hartswick gigs in store for us New Yorkers. READ ON for Scotty’s top nine shows of the first half of ’08…

Jennifer Hartswick is best known for playing with a variety of jambands, but that isn’t necessarily the style of music that’s always been true to her heart.

On True, her second album, Hartswick explores more traditional jazz music that more defines who she is as an artist. Jen’s voice combines power with polish, a formula that draws you in and makes you want to hear more. The new album features a mix of both familiar and a bit more obscure standards, plus a beautiful original love song entitled You Own Me.

Photo by Regan Teti

True is the first release on Rubber Jungle Records, a label founded by her old bandmate Trey Anastasio. The album is available now on Jen’s website, and soon it’ll be up for download on iTunes. We caught up with the Vermont native as she prepared for her first record release party to discuss the making of True…

Scott Bernstein: Why did you call the album ‘True’?

Jennifer Hartswick: Jazz is what I grew up listening to. This album features music that is true to who I am. The way that everything occured was real. There were no overdubs; everything is live. We never did more than two takes. I made sure to choose musicians who feel the same way about this music that I do.

Read on after the jump for more from Jen and Scotty’s conversation…

Jennifer Hartswick will be releasing her second album, True, on October 2nd. Hartswick and her new band will celebrate the release of True with two special shows: September 30th at the Higher Ground in Vermont and October 20th at the legendary Blue Note in New York City. Look for our interview with Jennifer about the making of True on Hidden Track some time next week.

• Who’s nuttier? Prince celebrated the conclusion of his 21 night residency in London by singing a duet with Amy Winehouse
• Gene Stout of the Seattle Post Intelligencer spoke with Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry about the Neon Bible video
• The Flaming Lips demonstrated how extreme their stage show has become in Seattle on Thursday night
• The Sex Pistols have added to its supposedly one-off comeback after the initial show sold out in 10 minutes
• Both Modest Mouse and The Lemonheads announced fall tour dates
• The biggest names in rock have come together to support Fats Domino
• Everyone’s growing marijuana these days…even Prince Charles
• Stylus examines the history of band logos
• Metallica’s two acoustic performances at the Bridge School Benefit will be released on livemetallica.com to raise additional money for the school
• The Last Waltz is number one on Rolling Stone’s list of The Top 25 Music DVD’s of All Time — as if anything could beat it
• Our main man Neddy shares some images and words from the ACL Festival, in addition to providing a list of shows of the week
• Highlights from Queen’s 1981 run at the Montreal Forum will be released on DVD on October 30th
• Hilly Kristal of CBGB’s fame was a closet millionaire

And as always on Mondays, read on after the jump for a full slate of weekend setlists including Arcade Fire, Bob Dylan, Genesis and Phil & Friends’ tour opener…