Patti LaBelle performs at the Kravis Center. (Howie Grapek / GPO)

There is no mistaking the vocal stylings of the R&B diva Patti LaBelle. Equally at home with jazz, blues or soul, LaBelle’s voice at its very best is dynamic, direct and imbued with that wonderful “purr” that sets her apart from other great singers. After all we’re talking about the Lady Marmalade here, who had repeatedly held the the number one slot on the R&B, Dance and Pop charts simultaneously.

While typing this review, “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi (ce soir)?” was repeatedly playing in my mind as it has since my adolescent days. I’ve seen LaBelle perform several times over the years, but this past Saturday evening, not only was the 67-year-old diva’s voice incredibly strong, but I witnessed her greatest asset came alive like I’ve never seen before. Of course, I’m talking about her flair for performance, which shone brightly at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach.

Photos: Patti LaBelle at the Kravis Center | Visit Howie Grapek’s website

Patti LaBelle’s music has always seemed effortless to me, but she simply glided through this performance like a vocal force of nature. The show opened with a storming rendition of “New Attitude”, then went into “If You Asked Me” and “Stir It Up”.
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The Avett Brothers perform at Sunfest in 2011. (Mark Edelson / Post file photo)

UPDATE: Fixed date for Avett Brothers’ show to Friday, not Saturday.

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.

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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 Friday.

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.
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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.

Photos: Willie Nelson at the Broward Center | Visit Veda Jo Jenkins’ website

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.
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Derek Miller and Alexis Krauss of Sleigh Bells.

Derek Miller hasn’t forgotten where he came from.

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.”

Directions, nearby dining, invite a friend | Miami show information

“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.”
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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.

Photos: Blue Öyster Cult at the Seminole Casino Coconut Creek | Visit Andrew Nathanson’s website

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.
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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.”

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.

Yeah, it was that good.

Best bets: Broadway/opera star Paolo Szot, more | Directions, invite a friend

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Billy Davis Jr. and Marilyn McCoo perform at the Kravis Center. (Howie Grapek / GPO)

February has long been a month of romance. How fitting is it that in this month of St. Valentine, as part of 2011-2012 “Adults at Leisure Series”, The Kravis Center brought a real-life love story to stage with a concert by the ever-vibrant and solid-voiced husband-and-wife pop superstar team Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis, Jr.

Both as a duo and lead vocalists of the smash ’60s group The 5th Dimension, McCoo and Davis have performed to sold-out houses around the world. Along the way they’ve earned seven Grammy Awards and numerous gold and platinum records.

I had an opportunity to chat with them briefly and see them perform at their first show of the day at 11 a.m. As is normal for the “At Leisure Series” to attract, the average age of the patrons Sunday morning was well into their senior years. Much of the audience was present to hear the polished lounge music that made grown-ups feel comfortably groovy 40 years ago.

Photos: McCoo, Davis perform at Kravis | Visit Howie Grapek’s website

Although the act did bring quite a bit of nostalgia to the stage with familiar compositions, wisely, the couple (who just recently celebrated their 42nd wedding anniversary) showcased more of their musical personalities. McCoo shared that she spent time on Broadway in “Show Boat” and Davis shared his passion for soul, R&B, gospel, and the blues — all to excellent effect. Each performed a solo demonstrating that they are much more than pop stars from yesteryear.
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Joy Williams and John Paul White of the Civil Wars. (Christina Mendenhall / rhythmscene.com)

Saturday night, fans waited in line for more than an hour to get into Culture Room. The eager line continued around the block and began to form as early at 6:30 that night. The Civil Wars brought all kinds of fans to their show. Their eerie, yet hypnotic melodies earned them two Grammy nominations this year. The duo seemed overly surprised that they sold out Fort Lauderdale’s Culture Room.

“There’s so many of you here!” vocalist Joy Williams exclaimed.

Throughout the night the duo thanked their fans over and over. “We can’t say thank you enough!” Williams said at one point.

The grateful cheers and applause led singer/guitarist John Paul White to say Fort Lauderdale was the best show of their tour.

Photos: The Civil Wars @ Culture Room

The Civil Wars played multiple songs off of their first full-length album, Barton Hollow, which was released just last year. Williams and White have an unexplainable connection on stage as well as with their fans. The crowd sang along to “Falling,” “Poison and Wine,” and their most popular hit “Barton Hollow.”
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I watched the Super Bowl halftime show mostly to see what Madonna was going to do to shock her way back into the public consciousness via the biggest game of the year. The answer: Not much to shock, other than still look so frigging awesome in her 50s. The thing that I noticed the most was that when Madge was on stage, even in her obvious nervousness, that I couldn’t take my eyes off of her, no matter which of her special co-stars – from Nicki Minaj to M.I.A. to even high priest of funky crazy Cee Lo Green – showed up.

So it wasn’t until after the Super Bowl was over and I was fighting with my DVR over what it did with my recording of ”The Voice” (curses!)  that I found out that rapper M.I.A. had flipped the bird, presumably to corporate America, traditional ideals, traditional American, corporate ideals and your sweet grandmother. And while NBC and the NFL point fingers trying to blame the foul-up on each other, I say that she who bore the finger bears the blame.

And to her I say: Oh, stop. Really. You’re embarrassing yourself.

I know that it helps one’s cred to be the person that tells the Man what they can do with their corporate acceptance and what not, and that appearing on one of the most American of Americana events hasn’t changed you. I mean, Clint Eastwood did a commercial during it about the American spirit. That’s some traditional stuff right there. And I can see that if you were an artist who built their reputation on being raw, rude and outspoken, then you might want to stand up in front of the largest audience you’re probably ever gonna have and say “I bow to no one, suckers! I am my own voice, and I will use your big corporate American dealie-do to spread that to the masses!”
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Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Now that I am a resident of South Florida, it is not uncommon for me to drive my classic sports car down the coastal roads – with the top down, salty wind blowing through my hair and Keb’ Mo’ playing as loud as possible on my sound system. This method for me to relax is not new. Neither is my love for Keb’ Mo’s music. Having spent the last 25 years in Colorado, it was not unusual for me to similarly drive and listen to the same music while traversing through the winding mountain passes of the Rocky Mountains – literally unwinding.

Thursday, I had the privilege to listen to and watch the 61-year-old Grammy-winning blues man Keb’ Mo’ jam during his second set at the whisper-perfect historic Lyric Theatre in Stuart. Mo’s music clearly demonstrates that he is a master at blending jazz, blues, soul and r&b through resonance and rhythm. Mo’ played pieces from his newest album, The Reflection, which is an amazing collection of music but also served up an exciting and multifarious set including many songs from the span of his 40-year career (see set list below).

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I was present for the second set of the evening, where I met several who were at his first — a 75-minute show. Several patrons told me that they rushed to the box office to see if there were tickets available to see him a second time. Starting promptly at 8:30, Mo’ and band played for almost two full hours – including three long encores, during which everyone in the sold-out house was singing and dancing in their seats.

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