The Avett Brothers perform at Sunfest in 2011. (Mark Edelson / Post file photo)
It wasn’t that long ago that you could see the country/folk/rock trio The Avett Brothers in Lake Worth’s intimate Bamboo Room, performing their stomping brand of music. (I did in 2007.)
Four years later and the following things have happened:
• Appeared on the Grammy Awards with Bob Dylan and Mumford and Sons
• Recorded I and Love and You LP with Rick Rubin
• Appeared on the late-night shows of David Letterman, Craig Ferguson and Jimmy Fallon
• Performed as a headliner on the first night of SunFest in 2011
• Recorded a show at the Bojangles Coliseum in Charlotte, N.C., and released a DVD/CD of the show, Live, Vol. 3.
So it’s not that surprising that the Avetts aren’t playing the same venue this time around – although I’m sure they’d love to if the opportunity presented itself. Instead, they’ll play the much roomier Sunset Cove Amphitheater, west of Boca Raton, on Saturday.
Currently they’re working on the follow-up to I and Love and You, again with Rubin. Will we hear new stuff that might end up on the LP? Well, they have made a point of playing “The Once and Future Carpenter”, which is likely to be on the new record. Read the full story
Willie Nelson performs at the Broward Center. (Veda Jo Jenkins / sflimages.com)
How far would you travel to see your favorite musician?
Traveling more than 3,000 miles from Calgary, Alberta, the Whelans, Valerie and Hank, sat dead center, second row for Willie Nelson. Nelson played at the Broward Center in Fort Lauderdale to a sold out crowd and for the Whelans it was a fulfillment of a dream.
“It was on our bucket list,” Valerie told me. “When we saw he was playing at the Broward Center we just had to go.” Now that’s no ordinary snowbird.
In fact the lady next to me, Kitty, flew all the way from Auburn, Wash. (that’s Washington state) – the Seattle area-to-South Florida is about the farthest distance you can travel in the continental United States.
“When I saw he was coming I kept trying to buy my mom a ticket,” her son Chuck explained. “It was the last one available.” For Kitty another dream became reality. Read the full story
The guitarist/songwriter for the duo Sleigh Bells was taking time off during the holidays at his mom’s home in Jupiter, when he and singer Alexis Krauss decided that they had the perfect location for a new music video: the old neighborhood.
“There’s a scene where Alexis is jumping on a bed, that’s in my mom’s room, and she’s holding my rifle,” Miller said about the video for “Comeback Kid”. “We tried to film at the Publix, but it would’ve been really expensive, so we went up to this place called Peggy’s (Natural Food Market) in Stuart.”
“Comeback Kid”, the second song released off the group’s second album, Reign of Terror, is not only a great introduction to the group’s pop-vocals-meet-heavy-guitar-and-quick-beats style, it’s also a very different look at South Florida. Krauss and Miller sing and play in the Egret Cove neighborhood, while during the chorus, Krauss sings on the beach during sunset.
“It sounds kind of ridiculous, but they do call that the ‘golden hour’,” Miller said. “That part of the song is all like it is at the beach – it’s airy and moody at that point, and the beach shots worked really well.” Read the full story
Blue Oyster Cult's Donald 'Buck Dharma' Roeser and Rudy Sarzo perform at the Pavilion at Seminole Casino at Coconut Creek. (Andrew Nathanson / Gatorproduction.com)
More Cowbell!
For those listening closely, the cue-in to Blue Öyster Cult’s show at the Pavilion at the Seminole Casino at Coconut Creek was refrains of the famous catchphrase from the Saturday Night Live sketch about the group. It spoke to a quality band who appreciates a good joke and isn’t afraid of a little self-deprecation. BOC itself is no joke, however — it’s a seminal hard rock group influencing loads of others.
Opening with the vintage album track “The Red and the Black” from back in ’73, Blue Oyster Cult helped break in the new venue in Coconut Creek.
The group next went with “The Golden Age of Leather” with appropriate toasting lyrics: “Raise your can of beer on high, and seal your fate forever, our best years have passed us by, the golden age of leather.”
While some in the audience appeared to fit the toast, BOC still brings the spiked punch to the party. To make sure the crowd knew it was a hot soiree, they kicked out “Burning for You.” Though Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser played a guitar looking liked Swiss cheese, the music was not cheesy. Read the full story
The State Labor Department says the company that built the stage ahead of last summer’s deadly Indiana State Fair collapse showed “plain indifference” to safety standards.
Commissioner Lori Torres said Wednesday that Mid-America Sound Corp. has been cited with three major safety violations in connection with the collapse of outdoor stage rigging in high winds that killed seven people Aug. 13. A crowd has gathered at the stage to see the country duo Sugarland perform.
The department issued a $63,000 fine against the company.
It is also citing the Indiana State Fair Commission and a stagehands union for safety regulation violations.
Officials say the commission failed to conduct proper safety evaluations of its concert venues. Smaller fines were issued against the fair and the union.
Some of the best songs in the world are about love, and since Broadway songs are sometimes better than others, Broadway’s love songs tend to have even more of the stuff that makes a tune memorable – an emotional back story, usually about regret and loss and star-crossed happenings which may or may not be resolved by the time the curtain falls. Tony winner Paulo Szot did two of the greatest, “Camelot” heartbreaker ”If Ever I Would Leave You” and “This Nearly Was Mine,” the show-stopper he sang in “South Pacific.”
Those rich, classic songs, interpreted with Szot’s perfectly effortless baritone, sounded on Tuesday night at the Royal Room as if they were being sung for the first time, as if Szot was a knight pledging his hopeful, doomed commitment to someone he shouldn’t love, or a devastated lover recounting the romantic dream he’d realized and lost. Szot, a dashing figure with classic matinee idol looks and a reserved yet warm smile, sang as if the objects of that unrealized devotion had just slipped through the doors of the Royal Room and silently into the ether on Worth Avenue, as all the exquisite pain lingered. Devastating and cathartic for the singer, deliciously transcendent for the audience.
PALM BEACH
BROADWAY, OPERA SUPERSTAR
Paolo Szot performs through Saturday and Feb. 14-18 at The Colony Hotel, 155 Hammon Ave. Szot’s starring role in the Broadway revival of South Pacific at Lincoln Center Theatre secured him a place in the record books. $130 for dinner and show, $70 show only Tuesday through Thursday and $140 dinner and show, $80 show only Friday and Saturday. Reservations. Info: (561) 659-8100. | Directions, invite a friend
PALM BEACH GARDENS
AND BOCA RATON
LOVE LOUIS?
Bob Lappin and the Palm Beach Pops pay tribute to the great man in Wonderful World: A Salute to Louis Armstrong at FAU’s Kaye Performing Arts Auditorium at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, and at the PBSC Eissey Campus Theatre, 3160 PGA Blvd., at 8 p.m. Sunday. Tickets $29-$89. Info/tickets: (561) 832-7677; www.palmbeachpops.org/armstrong | Find a performance near you
Grammy show producer Ken Ehrlich had considered putting dancing/electronica music into the ceremony in the past, but could never quite figure out how to incorporate the high-energy club feel in front of a sometimes staid audience.
He thinks he’s figured it out this year. For the first time, the Grammy show will put the spotlight on the genre with a segment featuring Grammy nominees Deadmau5, the Foo Fighters, Chris Brown, David Guetta and Lil Wayne, all performing in a tent space amid 1,000 fans.
“We decided to go all out this year,” Ehrlich said of the performance taking place outside the Staples Center in Los Angeles, where Sunday’s ceremony will be held. “All we’re going to try and do next week is to try and put the home audience in the middle of it. … It is more than just sitting there and watching it.”
Dance music did not receive its own category until 2003 with the best dance recording/dance field, and the music had not been featured with its own segment in the show.
“I don’t know that I figured out a way to do it that felt right until now,” Ehrlich said in an interview Monday. “My feeling about dance is it’s such an immersive experience for the participant, that to put it on stage … where the audience is not a part of it … I don’t know, honestly, until we came up with the idea of doing it this way, I don’t know if it ever would have worked.” Read the full story
Like Elvis or Hank Williams, Cash retains a certain cachet in current popular culture even in death. More proof of his enduring legend is on the way as plans to celebrate what would have been the American icon’s 80th birthday unfold later this month and year.
There will be a groundbreaking on the project to preserve Cash’s childhood home in Dyess, Ark., on Feb. 26, his birthday. A new Cash museum will open in Nashville later this year and several music releases are expected to commemorate the anniversary of his birth. There are three documentaries in the works as well.
Interest remains as high as ever more than eight years after his death in 2003 at 71 of complications from diabetes.
“He appealed to people and still appeals to people who have a small CD collection and live in middle America just as much as the punk on the streets of Germany,” Cash’s son, John Carter Cash, said. “And that’s sort of magical the way he’s been able to do that still, that his image still draws people from all walks of life.”
The Cash family is most excited about the project in Dyess. Many of Cash’s children and grandchildren will attend the groundbreaking ceremony for the Johnny Cash Boyhood Home Project, an undertaking led by Arkansas State University.
Chris Brown will perform at this year’s Grammy Awards, the event where his career almost ended three years ago.
Brown assaulted then-girlfriend Rihanna at a pre-Grammy party in 2009 and is serving five years of probation for the felony attack. A source told The Associated Press on Monday that Brown will hit the stage at Sunday’s show. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because Brown’s performance has not been officially announced.
After his attack on Rihanna, Brown’s reputation plummeted. But he has since bounced back, releasing multiple mixtapes and the multi-hit album, “F.A.M.E. (Forgiving All My Enemies).” It’s nominated for three Grammys.
Rihanna will also perform at the show. She’s up for four awards.
Brown and Rihanna were supposed to perform at the 2009 Grammys.
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Some of the best songs in the world are about love, and since Broadway songs are sometimes better than others, Broadway’s love songs tend to have even more of the stuff that makes a tune memorable – an emotional back story, usually about regret and loss and star-crossed happenings which may or may not be resolved by the time the curtain falls. Tony winner Paulo Szot did two of the greatest, “Camelot” heartbreaker ”If Ever I Would Leave You” and “This Nearly Was Mine,” the show-stopper he sang in “South Pacific.”
PALM BEACH
