The Musical Box

klang: jason adasiewicz, tim daisy, james falzone and jason roebke. photo by david sampson.

Who would you expect from a band called Klang?

A percussion ensemble? A bell ringers’ society? Personally, if faced with a blindfold test, the first image that would pop in my mind would be of Brian Johnson swinging from an enormous chime whenever AC/DC plays Hell’s Bells onstage. Now, that’s a klang for you.

No, the Klang heading to Lexington this week offers a cheerier though more challenging sound than any of those choices. The latest in a string of indie Chicago jazz ensembles to flow through town courtesy of the Outside the Spotlight Series, Klang is traditional in its makeup (a quartet built around the swing-savvy blend of clarinet and vibraphone) as well as in its repertoire (music inspired by Jimmy Giuffre and Benny Goodman). But expectations pretty well end there.

“A lot of my work tends to be outside of jazz,” said clarinetist James Falzone, who formed Klang in 2006. “It is influenced by jazz, but my music is also inspired by different world genres. Klang was a chance to go with a straight up jazz group. I mean, vibes and clarinet are one of the classic combinations in swing music and post bop jazz.”

Among the initial inspirations behind Klang was saxophonist/clarinetist Giuffre, a ‘40s and ‘50s era arranger for Woody Herman. Giuffre’s trio ensembles of the ‘50s and ‘60s made pioneering use of percussion when it made it use of it all. Many of his percussion-less groups also explored areas of free improvisation with an emphasis on quieter compositional colors that many critics have compared to chamber music.

“I was writing a lot of tunes for this group that explored what I call Giuffre-isms,” Falzone said. “I didn’t want Klang to be a tribute band. But the tunes took on things I associate with Giuffre’s work while at the same time serving as my own statements.

“One of the things Giuffre captured was this sense of space in his music by changing the role of the drummer in the ensemble. He wrote a lot of tunes where the drummer would not be the timekeeper, but a member of the counterpoint. There is a piece on our record (the independently issued Tea Music) called No Milk where drums never actually play with the rest of the ensemble. They just sort of play within the cracks.

“Of course, you need to have a sympathetic drummer for that.”

Luckily, Klang has one of the best. Playing drums and percussion in Klang is Tim Daisy, who has performed with numerous ensembles in Outside the Spotlight concerts here over the past seven years, the most prominent being The Vandermark 5. Bassist Jason Roebke (another OTS regular) and vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz complete the Klang lineup.

But the Giuffre inspiration represents only one area of influence for the band. The music of swing king Goodman - not coincidentally, a Chicago native - is also a guiding but somewhat unexpected force. Since the completion of Tea Music, Falzone has arranged - and, in some instances, written original works based on - Goodman’s small group compositions, especially 1939-41 sextet pieces featuring guitarist Charlie Christian.

“What I love about that music is the concentration on improvisation,” Falzone said. “That was really exciting stuff. You hear it Goodman’s trios, quartets and all of his larger small groups. We will probably be recording some of the Goodman material that I put together soon.

“It’s funny, though. A lot of clarinetists never touch Goodman because of how sacred that music is considered to be.”

While Goodman’s presence might not be obvious on Tea Music, some especially playful views of swing are. On Daisy’s Fickle, a brisk and decidedly cool groove struts before stopping dead in its tracks with punctuated, blues-like jabs. The groove then resumes before deflating entirely into improvisatory flourishes.

Later, on Falzone’s China Black, a loping clarinet melody has the aloofness of a Thelonious Monk tune. But it soon fades into squeals, percussive skirmishes and open-ended improvisation.

“Klang is still a slightly more accessible project than other improvisational groups here in Chicago,” Falzone said. “In a way, that’s largely because of the clarinet, which is a softer, somewhat more un-affronting instrument. Certainly, it can peel the paint off the walls when I’m screeching. But by and large, it’s a mellower instrument.

“Also, even when we’re exploring in our improvisations, I think people really respond to the energy and sense of community between the musicians. When we’re improvising in a freer or more open space, there is such a simpatico between the members of the ensemble. We’re listening to each other, we’re responding to each other and we’re, quite literally, engaged in a conversation.

“And I think that is when musicians are really at their best.”   

Klang performs at 8:30 tonight at Al’s Bar, 6^th and Limestome. Admission is $5. Call  (859) 309-2901.

matisyahu performs tonight at buster's.

On the cover of his third and newest studio album Light, we see a sunwashed photo of Matisyahu looking nothing short of tranquil.

Gone is the black suit and wide-brimmed hat - traditional garb of the Hasidic Jewish faith he long ago adopted but still very much embraces. But a full five years have passed since Matisyahu was introduced as an almost impossible pop creation - a Hasid who rapped about life and faith over dancehall reggae and dub grooves. Back then, it was difficult to view the young artist as anything other than a novelty. But in 2009, the look and the sound of Matisyahu have become more, well, enlightened.

“What I do is the result of a process, an organic process, which is reflective of what, I think, most musicians and artists go through when they are creating any type of work,” Matisyahu said in a recent phone interview.

“For me, Light is really a reflection of life experience, of life process and all that comes along with that - artistically, musically, spiritually. It’s about all of these different aspects. It’s a full on expression, an immersion of self.”

The album is also something of a sonic and stylistic expansion. Fans that simply go for the groove in Matisyahu’s music will find a deeper pool to wade through on Light. The dub-style accents become more rugged and expansive on For You while Darkness Into Light shifts percolating rhymes that race by with the speed of a Manhattan cab ride into a groove saturated with guitar crunch.

The biggest departure, perhaps, is the album closing Silence, an affirming but sobering meditation surrounded not by dancehall beats but by the acoustic guitar ambience of Trevor Hall, who will share the concert bill when Matisyahu makes his Lexington debut tonight at Buster’s.

“These styles, these sounds, come from the musical inspiration leading up to the record,” Matisyahu said. “The inspiration is what you feed off of, it’s what I was influenced by as a teenager who was developing and wanting to be a singer, a rapper, whatever you want to call it. More importantly, that inspiration was about finding my place in it all, about finding different ways to express yourself and not limiting yourself to just one thing.”

Early inspirations for the West Pennsylvania youth born Matthew Miller were the forefathers of two jam generations - Bob Marley and Phish.

“Early on, the first Phish concert I went to when I was 16 years old had a major effect on me. It was the first time I ate LSD. It was a completely immersive experience - just the typical stuff you hear of in terms of experiencing life on a whole new plain of existence.

“But Bob Marley was really a leader for me. His music directed me to the path of wanting to discover my own spiritual tradition, my own heritage and the need to draw upon that.”

Reconciliation and eventually acceptance of a traditional Jewish upbringing went almost hand in hand with a Deadhead like existence spent following Phish on the road. Interests in reggae and rap began to flourish just before joining the Carlebach Shul, a Manhattan synagogue where music was encouraged. When studies led to him to the Lubavitch Hasidic sect, Matthew Miller became Matisyahu.

“So I began performing my music in the Jewish world,” he said. “For example, I would get up at a table, do a rap and a rabbi would hear it and invite to play at his Hanukkah party within the community. So there was definitely a certain amount of support I received that served to sort of springboard my career.

“I’m sure there were probably lots of people… well, I’m certain there were lots of people… that were not supportive. But I never paid much attention to that.”

A debut Matisyahu album, Shake Off the Dust… Arise was released in 1994. But it was the subsequent concert recording Live at Stubb’s that introduced the world to the serious dancehall energy of tunes like King Without a Crown and Chop ‘Em Down.

The songs and performances were still fueled by faith. But the album’s recording locale underscored just how far reaching Matisyahu’s appeal had become. After all, Stubb’s wasn’t a synagogue, but a famed Austin, Tx. barbeque and beer joint.

“It felt great,” Matisyahu said of the acceptance brought on by Live at Stubb’s. “This was my dream. So, obviously, it was an amazing feeling. I had personally gone through this process of becoming religious prior to that and gave up a lot. I was taking a chance by jumping into a new lifestyle by kind of divorcing myself from mainstream culture. And I was doing it all with the belief that if I would make these sacrifices and if I would, in a sense, dedicate myself to God, then God would help me make my dreams come true.

“So it was sort of full circle for me. I felt very blessed. And I still feel very blessed to be able to make music.”

Matisyahu and Trevor Hall perform at 9 tonight at Buster’s Billiards and Backroom, 899 Manchester St. Tickets are $25. Call (859) 368-8871.

velvet elvis: scott stoess, dan trisko, sherri mcgee and jeff yurkowski. photo by herald-leader staff photographer mark cornelison.

It was, in short, Dan Trisko’s turn. Each time Velvet Elvis reunited, it was for a benefit to be determined by one of its four principal members.

“When we had our first reunion in 1998, we said, ‘Everybody gets one turn at this,’” Trisko said. “And I had never taken a turn.”

So the latest reassembly of the storied Lexington rock band that briefly flirted with national prominence in the late ‘80s was organized as a family affair. The beneficiary will be Trisko’s sister-in-law, West Coast visual artist Sue Trisko, who has been undergoing radiation and chemotherapy treatments after being diagnosed with lung cancer last May.

“When I heard about her I thought this is the most obvious thing to do,” Trisko said. “She is married to my hippie renegade brother who quit high school, went out to California and got a record deal. He caused such an uproar in the family over the choices he made that I thought, ‘Boy, I better not do that.’”

But the younger Trisko did do that, although he signed a record contract 20 years later without leaving home. After establishing a solid regional fan base with a pair of independent recordings, Velvet Elvis - guitarist Trisko, drummer Sherri McGee, keyboardist Jeff Yurkowski and bassist Scott Stoess - teamed with producer Mitch Easter (of the band Let’s  Active and co-producer of, among other projects, R.E.M.’s Murmur and Reckoning albums) and signed with Enigma Records.

In 1988 came a self-titled album and concert bills with national acts big (UB40) and small (The Bears). Though critically well-received, the national buzz was brief. McGee left in the summer of 1989. The band folded officially in late 1990.

“When people ask me, ‘Why didn’t Velvet Elvis succeed?’ I say, ‘We didn’t catch the wave.’”

Velvet Elvis’ Saturday reunion/benefit at Cosmic Charlie’s, its first in over six years, will also mark the one-night-only re-teaming of four other Lexington bands - Two Small Bodies, Rebel Without a Cause, VelJetta and No Excuse. Their members make up the majority of the local music community as it existed two decades ago.

 ”I was embarrassed to even ask these other bands,” Trisko said. “Seriously. ‘Hey would you do this for free as a favor for me and my sister-in-law who you don’t even know?’ And everyone just instantly said yes. It was great. There wasn’t even hesitation.

“I think it’s incredibly generous for everyone to help out on this.”

Velvet Elvis performs at 9:30 tonight at Cosmic Charlie’s, 388 Woodland Ave. Admission is $10. Call (859) 309-9499.

jean-luc ponty.

It would seem almost demeaning to refer to the career of perhaps the most influential jazz violinist of his generation as accidental. But the word the landmark French instrumentalist continually uses to describe the musical paths he has followed for over 45 years is “unplanned.”

His switch from a classically reared youth to an adulthood of jazz? That wasn’t in the cards. The adventures in amplifying music for rock-like settings on a string of top selling albums for Atlantic Records in the ‘70s and ‘80s? Ponty didn’t see that coming, either. A collaborative project with East African musicians and an eventual return to acoustic jazz once his electric popularity was established? Who would have thought?

Such avenues, it turns out, have simply been part of a creative drive that has long fueled the recording and performance careers of Ponty, who performs his first-ever Lexington concert on Saturday at the Singletary Center for the Arts.

“That’s the excitement of being able to create,” Ponty, 67, said in an early morning phone interview recently from Paris.  “From the time I got a recording contract with Atlantic in 1975 and was really able to put my composing skills to work, I have considered myself first a bandleader/composer using myself and my violin abilities as simply voices in the band. It was never about putting me in front of the band. Being a voice in that sound was always more important.”

+ + + + + +

The classical youth: Born in Avranches, France, Ponty graduated at age 17 from the esteemed Conservatorie National Superieur de Musique de Paris with its highest honors before joining the equally championed Parisian symphony, Orchestre des Concerts Lamoureux.

“My dream was to become a classical conductor. But I discovered jazz - bebop, specifically - in the early ‘60s in Paris. People there showed such a passion for this music that I eventually left classical music to become a jazz musician. So, already, one of the first steps in my career was unplanned.”

Initially, though, Ponty didn’t approach jazz through the violin, but by playing clarinet. He was taught to play the instrument by his father while Ponty’s mother instructed him on piano.

“There was a band of non professional musicians at a university in Paris that played in a swing style like Benny Goodman. It played at parties there at the university and began looking for a clarinetist. I knew nothing about jazz at that point. I had heard of Louis Armstrong and New Orleans music, but that was all. But they hired me because I could improvise immediately at the audition.

“They said, ‘OK. You know nothing about jazz, but you have a good ear. So we will hire you.’ And they taught me all of the jazz standards of the time. They taught me to shut up when the other guy was soloing and wait for my turn. That’s when I started buying records and discovering how jazz has evolved since Benny Goodman. I discovered Miles Davis and John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk

“That’s how everything started.”

+ + + + + +

In Grappelli’s footsteps: France already had claim to the previous generation’s greatest jazz violinist, Stephane Grappelli. But by the mid ‘60s, Grappelli’s career had quieted. Realizing that a more defining musical voice awaited him on violin than clarinet, Ponty switched to strings.

“It came to his Stephane’s ears that there was the crazy young violinist jamming in clubs and playing what was then modern jazz. So he was intrigued.”

Ponty and Grappelli played and recorded together sporadically in the ‘60s and early ‘70s. But as Ponty’s own jazz voice evolved, so did the need for amplification. Once electricity for his music was discovered, attention came pouring in from outside of jazz circles.

In quick succession came an alliance with composer/guitarist Frank Zappa, a guest role on one of Elton John’s finest albums (1972’s Honky Chateau), a violin chair in John McLaughlin’s second Mahavishnu Orchestra and a move from Paris to Los Angeles.

Lexington violinist Zach Brock, who now lives and works in New York, performs with, among other ensembles, a Mahavishnu tribute band aptly titled the Mahavishnu Project. The group has several times performed, in its entirety, the 1975 Mahavishnu/Ponty album Visions of the Emerald Beyond.

“That gave me a chance to play Jean-Luc’s awesome, unbelievable baritone intro on violin with wah-wah pedal for the first tune (Eternity’s Breath),” Brock said. “It’s one of the scariest things ever played.

“Jean-Luc is simply the living legend, the pioneer king of jazz violin. Period. So many things on the violin would have just never happened if it wasn’t for the path he was forging.”

+ + + + + +

Atlantic, Africa and beyond: With the release of 1975’s Upon the Wings of Music, Ponty began a string of albums for the Atlantic label that would come to define his journeys into amplified fusion music. Some efforts were densely layered, rock-ish recordings (1978’s Cosmic Messenger). Others were largely one man band works with computerized synthesizer arrangements serving as backdrops for the still organic sound of Ponty’s violin melodies (1983’s Open Mind). And, in one sublime case, an album (1976’s Imaginary Voyage) yielded a hoedown-like hit called New Country. In recent decades, new generation string stylists Mark O’ Connor and Bowling Green native/Kentucky Music Hall of Fame inductee Sam Bush have cut their own versions of New Country. Bush’s 2006 recording even featured Ponty as a guest instrumentalist.

“I just think Jean-Luc is the most influential jazz-rock violin player ever,” Bush said following a taping of the WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour earlier this week where he performed New Country. “He’s a generous guy, a wonderful musician. His timing is beautiful. His intonation is great. I have only good things to say about Jean-Luc.”

“Even though I had more musical adventures after the Atlantic albums, they still form the base of who I am as a composer” Ponty said. “I had gone though all these experiences of classical music, jazz and progressive rock. So I wanted to create my own music where I could incorporate all these elements. On these albums, I felt like someone who travels musically.

“Then I moved on to that project with the East African musicians (1992’s Tchokola, cut after Ponty jumped labels from Atlantic to Epic) and the Rite of Strings (an acoustic trio featuring fellow fusion stars Stanley Clarke and Al DiMeola which released a self-titled album in 1995). These projects kept me alert as a musician.”

Ponty’s most recent recording, The Acatama Experience, finds him playing largely acoustically. But his current touring band - a streamlined ensemble featuring keyboardist William Lecomte,  drummer Damien Schmitt (both from France) and bassist Baron Browne (a Georgia native) - is versed in Ponty compositions dating back to his 1977 album Enigmatic Ocean.

“I can only be thankful for this musical life I’ve had,” Ponty said. “It went beyond what I could have hoped for.

“You know, I really didn’t expect to have this much fun.”

Jean-Luc Ponty and His Band perform at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Singletary Center for the Arts. Tickets are $25, $28 and $32. Call (859) 257-4929.

dierks bentley.

It’s officially home stretch time for Dierks Bentley.

The country star’s Saturday show at Rupp Arena will be among his last handful of concert dates this year. Then comes three months off the road to record a new album. Three months. For an artist like Bentley, that’s an eternity. But considering he has spent nearly all of 2009 touring - whether it was in lands as far abroad as Australia or in arenas all across the United States as an opening act for Brad Paisley - any kind of break would seem luxurious.

Bentley, however, isn’t complaining. In fact, the prospect of a year’s worth of live performances coming to a close for the singer seems almost bittersweet.

“As soon as this tour ends, we’re going to be off the road for awhile,” Bentley said. “So we’re milking as much as we can out of these last few dates as far as hanging out with each other, checking out the cities we’re playing in and, of course, rocking the shows hard. We’re going to miss it when it’s all over. But we still have a few shows left, thank goodness.”

Doesn’t exactly sound like a road weary warrior, does it? But then Bentley has plenty of reasons to be enjoying his working life these days. Feel That Fire, his fourth album (excluding a 2008 greatest hits collection titled Every Mile a Memory) has already chalked up two No. 1 country hits - the leisurely electric title tune and the bluegrass-soaked roadhouse rocker Sideways. A third, a traditionally flavored ballad titled I Wanna Make You Close Your Eyes, is poised to reach the Top 10.

“I’m biased,” Bentley said when asked for an estimation of how well Feel That Fire stands up for him after a solid year of roadwork. “I would say it’s one my top 4 favorites of the albums I’ve made.”

Of course, much of Bentley’s year has been spent alongside an artist who reaped even greater fortunes. But he said the dynamics of a performance didn’t change greatly when he played opening sets on Paisley’s American Saturday Night Tour.

“It’s not our show at all when we’re out with Brad,” Bentley said. “It’s our show for the hour we’re onstage. After that - and before, really, too - it’s all belongs to Brad. And we’re respectful and appreciative of that. We go out for the hour we get and pretend we’re playing on our stage. We go at those shows as hard as we can with our greatest hits and make sure people are pumped up for Brad.

“It’s little bit different than what we do on our own. With Brad there are maybe less dynamics and more of a punch, whereas our headlining shows are a little more rounded. Of course, keeping the energy level high is always a primary goal. But we also try to look for cool, more spontaneous moments, too.”

As an opening act and as a headliner, Bentley is no stranger to Lexington. Since his self-titled Capitol Nashville debut album was released in the summer of 2003, the Phoenix-raised singer has opened dates at Rupp for Kenny Chesney (twice, in fact) and Montgomery Gentry before headlining his own concert there in 2006. But a more curious Bentley show took place in 2004 just down the road from Rupp. That was when he became one of the only country celebs to play the now demolished West Main location of The Dame.

“I like the variety,” he said. “I’m not afraid to go anywhere. I think I’m one of the few guys in Nashville to play The Dame. I remember that show well. I know Kenny played there too on his tour, but that’s about it.

“I mean, I love playing different types of venues. I don’t want to get locked into playing just one type of place. You’ve got to change things up. Playing different types of venues and different size rooms is cool.”

To make good on those words, Bentley said is he considering a short tour of small halls after his winter performing hiatus ends, much in the same way Chesney annually prefaces his arena and stadium tours with a short run of club shows (like the one that brought him to The Dame in March 2008).

“We’ve got plans to go out and play bars for a month - you know, you go out there, lose money and have fun.

“I love playing the big rooms. I love the feel of 7,000 people all singing together. A kind of magic is created in that. But at heart, I’m one of the last few honky tonkers in Nashville. I moved there with just a guitar and practically grew up playing all those barrooms. I still like playing those places, too

“I’m talking about when people are spilling tequila right there on your boots when you’re onstage. That’s a good thing.”

Dierks Bentley and Gloriana will perform at 8 p.m. Nov. 14 at Rupp Arena. Tickets are  $28.50. Call: (859) 233-3535, (800) 745-3000.

the dirty dozen brass band: gregory davis, roger lewis, julius mckee, kevin harris, revert andrews, efrem towns.

Over the last two decades, which encompasses just over half of its lifespan, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band has played nearly every music club and corner in Lexington.

In the early ‘90s, when word on the ensemble’s mix of traditional New Orleans brass band music and jazz accents began to spread thanks to such extraordinary Columbia recordings as The New Orleans Album and Open Up: Whatcha Gonna Do For the Rest of You Life, the Dirty Dozen made concert stops at the long-since-demolished Breeding’s and the University of Kentucky’s Memorial Hall.

As the decade drew to a close with more progressive minded Mammoth albums like Ears to the Wall and the John Medeski-produced Buck Jump, the band could be counted for an annual visit (at least ) at the defunct Lynagh’s Music Club.

With the opening of The Dame in 2003 came the first of two brilliant records - the indie live album We Got Robbed and the back-to-basics Funeral for a Friend. That’s when it seemed like six months didn’t go by without a Dirty Dozen Dame date.

Then in 2006 came a night at the big house - a Rupp Arena performance with jam band fave Widespread Panic a mere six weeks after the release of What’s Going On, a Dirty Dozen take on the classic Marvin Gaye album that served as a requiem for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Retrace those funky footsteps and you get a sense of just how chummy the Dirty Dozen and Lexington have become over the years.

“Lexington is one of my favorite cities on the planet,” said Dirty Dozen baritone saxophonist and co-founding member Roger Lewis. “I mean that. I love playing there.”

On Wednesday, the band returns to town to play yet another venue. Actually, it’s a new version of a room it has performed in many times - Cosmic Charlie’s, which now occupies the old Lynagh’s Music Club. And a celebration is being planned. The concert will be part of a tour commemorating the 25^th anniversary of the Dirty Dozen’s debut album, My Feet Can’t Fail Me Now.

Lewis doesn’t make much fuss over the milestone. When the Dirty Dozen formed in 1976, a point when working gigs for brass bands in New Orleans grew scarce, he knew that with some serious hard work, both on the road and in the studio, there was no reason the then-young group couldn’t roar into the next century.

“When we put this band together, I knew that if we practiced and kept practicing, we would have a successful project on our hands. So we did. Then we started trying out these different types of music like bebop and mixing it in with the traditional brass band sound. And that made for a different sounding band. Nobody was doing anything like that at the time.

“A lot of people were saying, ‘Man, that’s not going to work. You’ll never get that band off the ground.’ But in my mind, I always knew it would work.”

In sticking to its stylistic guns, the Dirty Dozen possessed a fearsome compositional giant in trumpeter Gregory Davis along with a huge ensemble sound that never lost sight of its roots.

Among Davis’ greatest works is a 15 minute suite for the 1991 Open Up album titled The Lost Souls of Southern Louisiana. From the funereal beginnings to its funky finale of percussion and sousaphone to the brilliant shades of jazz and blues that fill the spaces in between, The Lost Souls remains a benchmark work for the band.

“Yeah, that’s a beautiful piece,” Lewis said. “Gregory Davis wrote a suite that was totally different from anything we had recorded.”

As far as interpretive works go, 2004’s Funeral for a Friend, remains a triumph. Designed as a suite of spirituals for the actual street funeral of one of the band’s own - brass man Anthony “Tuba Fats” Lacen - the album wound its way luxuriously from the solemnity of Just a Closer Walk With Thee to the serious testifying of Jesus on the Mainline to what might just be the funkiest blues reading of John the Revelator ever heard by human ears.

“That’s a beautiful album,” Lewis remarked. “What I really like about Funeral for a Friend is that it captures the feel of a real New Orleans funeral even though we cut it in a studio.”

The Dirty Dozen also knows how to compile a guest list. Among the disparate greats to appear on its recordings are Dizzy Gillespie, Elvis Costello, Norah Jones, Branford Marsalis, Dr. John, Chuck D. and Bettye LaVette.

But the band also sounds commanding in the sparest of settings. After an especially exhausting set at The Dame several years back, Lewis and trumpeter Efrem Towns ended the evening with a hushed but profoundly soulful duet of St. James Infirmary that quickly silenced a room full of revelers.

“When you’re playing with musicians that are open minded, you can play almost anything,” Lewis said. “At the same time, if we weren’t such a tight band, these people wouldn’t want to play on our records and wouldn’t be asking us to play on their records.

“When you’ve got a tight horn section… man, people just want a piece of that.”

The Dirty Dozen Brass Band performs at 9 p.m. Nov. 11 at Cosmic Charlie’s, 388 Woodland Ave. Tickets are $15 in advance, $20 at the door. Call: (859) 309-9499.

robert earl keen.

Sitting among the tunes on Robert Earl Keen’s new album The Rose Hotel is a slackers’ yarn titled Something I Do. It’s far from the deepest dish on the disc with its lazy boy chorus, pseudo-tropical groove and everyman’s lyrical demeanor.

“I kind of like just doin’ nothing,” sings Keen in a sleepy Texas drawl. “It’s something that I do.”

If you have followed Keen’s masterful Lone Star songwriting over the years, you know he is capable of drilling pretty far into misfit psyches for a song. Sometimes the results are positively harrowing (as on Dreadful Selfish Crime). In other instances they turn violently comedic (The Road Goes on Forever) or brutally family friendly (Merry Christmas from the Family). And then there are songs like Something I Do that suggest the recording sessions for his newest album was merry affairs indeed.

“Just like tacos,” Keen said about the songs constructed for The Rose Hotel. “They’re fun to make and fun to eat.”

Keen’s music is deceptively learned too. His songs sport sturdy Texas country roots that, in some cases, extend to honky tonk turf with a giddy Lone Star fiddle leading the charge. For The Rose Hotel’s Village Inn, though, echoes of pedal steel guitar are so vivid that you can easily picture the purple twilight skies that hang over the road stop. Granted, the song is actually set in Idaho. But when you hear Keen croon over the amenities… “free wi-fi, HBO, oh,” you know you’re dealing with the cosmopolitan campfire soul of a Texan.

“I really try to find a different level of thinking when I write,” Keen said. “If I can get to that level, I seem to be able to come up with some really cool ideas. And I can stay on that level for a long time as long as I’m not interrupted.

“I mean, you do a lot of writing in your job, don’t you? Doesn’t it take a certain amount of concentration and focus? But it’s so easy to find yourself sharpening pencils. Or maybe you go out and get yourself a hot dog. But then you’ve lost your focus. With songwriting, ideas don’t just run up to you while you’re driving to the store or something. To have something really significant to write about, you really need to spend time just cogitating a bit.”

The seeds of such cogitation for Keen were planted in the mid ‘70s when he befriended an unknown songwriting neighbor while attending Texas A&M. His name was Lyle Lovett. Their years of playing and writing songs together on Keen’s porch were chronicled on the mutually composed This Old Porch (The Front Porch Song). It has remained a vital part of Keen’s concert repertoire (and, frequently, Lovett’s) ever since.

“It’s a completely different perspective when I wrote with Robert because we were friends first,” Lovett said. “I just remember hanging out with him, playing songs and guitar together. It’s great to watch the world get that same feeling I used to get from sitting in that chair next to him and listening to him play.

“He is such an engaging and personable performer. It’s just nice to see that finally translate to the rest of the world.”

All of which begs the question, how did the world outside of Texas hear about Keen? His songs have hardly been radio staples, although The Road Goes on Forever gained a new life in the early ‘90s when fellow Texan Joe Ely recorded it. And Merry Christmas from the Family has been covered by numerous country acts (including Central Kentucky’s Montgomery Gentry), although Keen’s blueprint version is the one that tends to pop up most around holiday time.

The answer isn’t complicated. Keen simply fortified a reputation sparked by the popularity of a few renegade songs with relentless touring. Eventually, audiences discovered a larger artistic profile.

“By and large these days I have tons of fans that have either just found out about me recently or have known about me for years but never got to see a show until now. This is where the function of consistently being on the road comes in.

“When I first got out of college and moved to Austin for awhile, the word on the street was, ‘Man, you’ve got to hear (the veteran pop, soul and jazz inclined rock band) NRBQ.’ And the reason you had to see them was because they played all the time. And if you went to see them again, you weren’t seeing the same show you saw last time. You saw something different by guys who were fabulous musicians and sang really cool songs. But you found out about them because they toured all the time.”

The formula, at least in Lexington has paid off. Having established his performance reputation locally with late ‘90s shows at the long defunct Lynagh’s Music Club, Keen has gone on to bigger performance pastures. On Thursday, he will headline his third Opera House concert in as many years.”

“Sure, I think a lot of the stuff that’s going on for me now is filtered around certain songs like the Christmas song or The Road Goes On Forever. They’ve really found their way out to the counter culture. We see a lot of people like that at the shows. They go, ‘I heard you were playing here and that you wrote those songs.

“Luckily, I still have a burning desire to write more, and to write really good songs. It’s a task I haven’t completed at all.”

Robert Earl Keen, Todd Snider and Bruce Robison perform at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Lexington Opera House. Tickets are $22.50, $27.50, $32.50. Call (859) 233-3535, (800) 745-3000.

lyle lovett. photo by michael wilson.

It is record release day for Lyle Lovett - a Tuesday where his 14^th album, Natural Forces, is being unleashed unto the world.

Typically, such an occasion becomes the apex of a promotional push, a day loaded with TV appearances, performances and any number of exercises to capitalize on what is, in essence, “opening day” for a recording.

For Lovett, multiple Grammy Award winning songsmith, stylistically innovative bandleader and all around Texan, the day is something of breather. A fall duo tour with fellow songwriting pal John Hiatt concluded two days earlier. In less than a week, he will be back on the road for a month’s worth of shows with his Large Band, the brassy Americana army that has been his most visible performance vehicle of the past two decades.

That means while Natural Forces introduces the next edition of Lyle Lovett music, Lovett himself is back, briefly, in the only place he has ever called home - Texas.

“It’s exactly where I’ve lived all my life, on the same piece of ground I grew up on outside of Houston.”

To many, Lovett is modern embodiment of Texas music - its celebratory swing, its vigorous country soul and, most of all, its extraordinarily literate sense of storytelling. His songs are outlined with thieving hearts, family yarns and an unfailing pride in anything that hails from Lone Star territory.

In short, Lovett isn’t merely a Texas artist. He is the state’s unofficial cultural ambassador to the universe.

“All of that is high praise,” Lovett said by phone. “But I just feel that my music is a reflection of the music I’m drawn to. My intention with the songs I write is to say, ‘Hey, this is where I’m from.’”

On Natural Forces, the Texas inspirations are considerable. There are four new compositions (one of which, Pantry, is reprised with a bluegrass arrangement), six tunes penned by fellow Texas songwriters that have long been friends and mentoring influences and a song (It’s Rock and Roll) he co-wrote nearly three decades ago with fellow Lone Star scribe Robert Earl Keen.

“My father once told me that if I went through life with at least two best friends, I was set,” Keen said. “I went, ‘What are you talking about? I’ve got lots of friends.’ But sure enough, he was right. And to say I have had Lyle as a best friend all these years has been wonderful.”

For Lovett, the initial songwriting pull came from the masters - Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Vince Bell and the like. But not even Texas could contain Lovett’s expanding celebrity status as the ‘90s progressed. He toured internationally and took regular turns as an actor in television and film, including roles in five Robert Altman movies. But as the chorus of Natural Forces‘ title tune states, “home is where my horse is.” As such, Lovett devoted his sublime 1998 double-disc album Step Inside This House entirely to the music of his Texas inspirations. He does the same on the better half of Natural Forces.

“With Natural Forces, I knew going in that I didn’t have 10 new songs of my own that I was thrilled about recording,” Lovett said. “But those I did have I didn’t want to get any older. I was very excited about recording them. The other songs were first considered for Step Inside This House. They have long been part of my musical life. I didn’t learn anything new for this record. These were songs I’ve played and known for years.”

Listen to Natural Forces as a whole and it is good bet that, unless you already know the outside material, you won’t be able to distinguish Lovett the songwriter from Lovett the Texas interpreter. The songs share similar tones, temperaments and human detail. At its best, as on Lovett’s Empty Blue Shoes, the mood is stark to the point of being impressionistic.

“I met Lyle in Dallas at a club that’s now gone,” said guitarist Leo Kottke who shared numerous concert bills with Lovett following the release of the Texan’s self-titled debut album in 1986.

“I was in the dressing room and I could hear Lyle walk onstage. He hadn’t sung a note yet. He just walked onstage and the room instantly became quiet. Some people can just immediately fill a stage. Lyle is one of them.”

Of course, the ensemble Lovett has favored in filling performance rooms over the years has been his Large Band. It has accompanied Lovett at various Lexington venues over the past 22 years, from his local debut at the long-defunct Rhinestone’s on Athens-Boonesboro Rd. in 1988 to a headlining performance at Rupp Arena in 2001.

“That’s the beauty of that band - so many of us have played together for so many years. But that’s also the part that doesn’t seem real because I remember that first Lexington gig in 1988. It does not seem like it was over 20 years ago.

“You know, I was asked early on in interviews about my goals. People would ask, ‘What would success mean for you?’ The answer I always used to give was, ‘Success would be the ability to continue doing something I love to do.’ All these years later, that’s still my definition. To do something I love without feeling guilty because I have to also devote time to another job. To be able to legitimately engage in this music all the time…I mean, there is just not a better feeling. That’s the blessing of it all.”

Lyle Lovett and his Large Band performs at 8:30 p.m. Friday at the Norton Center for the Arts at Centre College in Danville. Tickets are $60-125. Call (877) 448-7469.

leo kottke.

In a recording and performance career that spans four full decades, Leo Kottke remains an original.

Onstage, he seemingly brings little with him outside of a pair of acoustic guitars - usually 6 and 12 string models. But within his playing is an assimilation of harmonic, stylistic and improvisational capabilities that merge into music that is as unparalleled as it is indefinable.

But he matches such virtuosity with devilishly constructed but wonderfully askew between-song stories. So one moment you’re taken in by the earthy folkish warmth he lends to longtime concert favorites like Tom T. Hall’s Pamela Brown or his own masterful instrumental suite Bigger Situation. The next you’re doubling over laughing as Kottke reminisces about smuggling baggettes onto submarines while serving in the Navy so they could be used as filters for torpedo fuel.

“They still let me play,” Kottke said last week by phone from Seattle. “That’s the amazing thing. I had no idea I would still be doing this. I thought my career would be all over, at the most, in about 10 years.

When it was suggested that the key to career longevity might be his distinctive blend of instrumental daring and wildly off-center storytelling, Kottke hesitantly agrees.

“That may be part of it. There aren’t many brands like me available to the consumer.”

“Even with all his virtuosity, the first thing I noticed about Leo was how intent he was in pushing ahead with his playing,” said Lyle Lovett, who regularly opened concerts for Kottke in the mid ‘80s. “Guitarists everywhere were going out and buying 12 strings to try and play like him. But Leo was always looking for the next thing.”

To say that chance played a role in bringing Kottke to the guitar and, more important, to the stylistic innovators that helped him forge a commanding voice on the instrument, is not an understatement. He took up violin at age five and then moved on to trombone. He settled on guitar, primarily because “it made me happy.”

“It really hit me hard,” Kottke said. “By the time I was 11, everything took a back seat to the guitar. There was never a real effort to turn all of it into a job. I knew that playing music was something I needed. And when I found the guitar, I finally discovered the instrument I needed. That was enough. It was more than enough. But to make a living playing it? Well, that’s something I still can’t quite get around.”

This year marks the 40^th anniversary of 6 and 12 String Guitar, the recording that largely introduced the world to Kottke. Two independent recordings preceded it, but 6 and 12 String Guitar was released on the Tacoma label, an enterprise run by the guitarist who served as a mentoring force for Kottke - John Fahey.

“I had heard a lot of the great Delta players like (Mississippi) John  Hurt and people like (Appalachian banjoists) Frank Proffitt and Obray Ramsey, and even some jazzers like (guitarist) Kenny Burrell. But they were all kind of discreet to me. John put them all together. And he did it at a pancreatic level. It was so organic that there was no self-consciousness whatsoever.

“But the other thing about John was that his whole effect was metaphysical. It was as if music was a metaphor. Usually music is just itself. It kind of overrides and subsumes metaphor. Not with John. He discovered this whole attitude, this whole realm that was out there. He was like Marco Polo.”

Such stylistic innovation fuels Kottke’s music, as well. There have been all kinds of exemplary recordings since 6 and 12 String guitar, including the orchestral shadings of 1976’s Leo Kottke, the compositional calm of 1986’s A Shout Toward Noon, the playful pop experimentation of 1994’s Rickie Lee Jones-produced Peculiaroso and the collaborative fire struck with Phish bassist Mike Gordon on 2005’s Sixty Six Steps. When asked if he has a favorite recording, Kottke politely balked.

“The minute I think I have one, it turns out I actually hate it. Or the opposite happens. I used to be deeply ashamed of a record called Burnt Lips (an extraordinary 1978 album of unaccompanied vocal and instrumental tunes). The last time I heard it, I thought, ‘You know, this isn’t so bad.’”

The constant for Kottke, though, remains concert performance. He considers stage work, after 40 years, a privilege. That assertion was instilled long ago when the guitarist received a glimpse of an artist that had lost such a privilege.

“This was a long time ago. I played this old theatre in Miami, a really nice, kind of miniature concert hall. From the time of the soundcheck until I was leaving the building that night there was this one guy sitting in a folding chair. As far as I could tell, he was in his 80s. He never said anything. He never stood up. But he was there for the whole night. So I asked, ‘What the hell is that guy doing there?’ I was told he was the first act to ever play that theatre. He was a tap dancer, but now he comes to every show and just sits there for the whole thing.

“So, yes, it is a privilege to still play. There is something very humbling in that for me.”

Leo Kottke perform at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Kentucky Theatre, 214 E. Main. Tickets are $24.50. Call (859) 231-7924.

judy collins

In some ways, the career of folk empress Judy Collins has come full circle.

Take the performance residency she entered into last year. For six weeks in the spring, she performed at the Café Carlyle in New York. Sure the venue was vastly more upscale than the Greenwich Village clubs Collins performed in during the formative years of her extensive career. But the sense of immediacy and intimacy the Carlyle afforded was a welcome throwback for the singer.

“Oh, the Carlyle is very intimate,” said Collins, who turned 70 during the café engagement. “It only seats about 100. So it is a very similar experience to old New York folk clubs like The Bitter End. That kind of intimacy, really, was what built the folk movement in the first place. The only thing different now is the way people are dressed.”

Well, that and the cover charge. Since her recording career began in 1961, Collins has become one of folk music’s most familiar, welcoming and distinctive voices. Her singing - high, clear and jubilantly expressive - has aged remarkably little over the years.

For proof, compare two performance clips readily available for viewing on YouTube. Both feature Collins singing the wistful Ian Tyson renegade love song Someday Soon. One comes from an appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman in July. The other originates from the Smother Brothers Comedy Hour 40 years earlier. Her voice today may reveal more sage-like contentment. But the art of singing for Collins, in both approach and execution, remains as resolute as ever.

In a New York Times review of Collins’ opening night performance at the Carlyle, Stephen Holden wrote, “The higher she sings, most of the time with perfect intonation, the more she projects the ethereality of a flute played by the wind.”

Collins’ impact on today’s folk and pop generation is equally commanding. A 2008 tribute album titled Born to the Breed featured 14 Collins songs as interpreted by Chrissie Hynde, Rufus Wainwright, Dolly Parton, Dar Williams and others. The record is an unexpected celebration, in a way, as Collins is viewed by many fans as primarily an interpretive singer.

Such a paradox is explored at the end of Born to the Breed when veteran folk troubadour Leonard Cohen offers one of the album’s two versions of Since You’ve Asked (Joan Baez sings the other). Again, a career comes full circle as one of Collins’ most beloved interpretations remains her 1966 version of Cohen’s poetic and plaintive Suzanne. She has also dedicated an entire album to Cohen’s music - 2004’s Judy Collins Sings Leonard Cohen: Democracy.

“I was the first person to put Leonard Cohen on a stage in 1966,” Collins said. “He had read his poetry in tiny little places in Montreal and Toronto. But he had never really been onstage to perform. So when I was doing a benefit show in New York, I told him, ‘Come on up.’ It was a big concert. I think Jimi Hendrix was on the bill, as well.

“So Leonard came to the show and got out onstage. He started to sing Suzanne and then stopped right in the middle and walked off. I always thought it was because he was terrified. He said later it was because he broke a guitar string, but I don’t believe that for a minute. He, of course, went on to become a phenomenally good performer. I always thought he was wonderful.”

Curiously enough, it was the initially stage-shy Cohen who prodded Collins into putting aside other artists’ work and focus on her own compositions.

“After I started recording Leonard’s music, he said, ‘How come you’re not writing any of your own songs?’ All I could say was, ‘I don’t know.’ That’s when I started writing, and Since You’ve Asked became the first song I ever wrote. So to have him sing it on the tribute album was thrilling.”

Collins celebrated the release of Born to the Breed with a performance at another grand New York locale, the Public Theater. The concert brought together several artists that have followed her folk path, including Shawn Colvin and Mary Gauthier, along with a sterling songwriting contemporary, Jimmy Webb. While the concert also served as a benefit for the famed New York music venue Joe’s Pub as well as a celebration of the 10^th anniversary of Collins’ Wildflower record label, it was similarly a testament to a love of performing that, much like her singing voice, remains ageless.

“Performing is very much what I love,” Collins said. “It’s the way I make a living. It’s how I find a way to get through to an audience. And it’s all wonderful.”

Judy Collins performs at 7 tonight at the Kentucky Theatre, 214 E. Main, for the WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour. The performance is sold out.