The Musical Box

eric meyers and joe harbison of the ford theatre reunion with model katie stillwell of the lexington collaborative fashion group will be part of saturday's boomslang lineup. staff photo by mark cornelison.

Sitting on the patio of a Knoxville restaurant last winter, Saraya Brewer took notice of what was unfolding around her. The streets were alive with something called Big Ears, a festival that championed concerts by new and veteran underground acts, performance works and interactive exhibits.

Then the idea clicked. Something like this could happen in Lexington. As a WRFL disc jockey for over five years, Brewer was already tuned into the music she wanted to bring in, not to mention a source of funding. Big Ears, in turn, triggered ideas for using multiple performance venues and offering bills that mixed prominent (though decidedly non-mainstream) artists with local performers.

And, to top it all off, there would room for a carnival.

Thus Boomslang was born. The inaugural three-day local festival gets into full swing today. By the time it concludes Sunday evening with the regional debut of the groundbreaking Brazilian tropicalia ensemble Os Mutantes, Boomslang will have played host to over 50 acts and performers at five venues.

“We started by putting together a list of bands we would love to bring to Lexington,” Brewer said. “Since RFL had the funding in the place to put on shows, we found it was actually possible to bring in bands like Os Mutantes. From there, more and more bands began contacting us. So it mushroomed into a much bigger baby than we first thought.”

Already interested in playing Lexington before Boomslang was solidified was Faust, the immensely influential “krautrock” ensemble known for mixing psychedelic and prog rock styles.

“I think a lot of people aren’t that familiar with these bands,” Brewer said. “But it is possible to be legendary and still be underground. Faust actually contacted us. Their agent really liked Lexington and wanted them to play here as opposed to any other cities that are close by. So that was the first big band that we secured.

“But we wanted to also include bands that were more up-and-coming and more popular with the younger indie scene. We wanted to introduce a lot of the younger crowds to the bands that are the predecessors but, at the same time, introduce crowds more familiar with Faust and Os Mutantes to some of the newer bands that are doing stuff that could be seen as being very similar.”

Peruse the full Boomslang lineup and you will quickly come to an event that perhaps defines the festival’s sense of artistic adventure, not mention its temperament. It’s called, quiet aptly, the Boomslang Carnival. It’s part music, part fashion show and part side show. Playing in the Buster’s parking lot on Saturday, the carnival stems from a project that teamed the Lexington band The Ford Theatre Reunion - a sort of vaudevillian punk ensemble that dabbles in, among other genres, gypsy jazz and brutish, brittle folk - with the Lexington Collaborative Fashion Group.

“We’ve been working for awhile with Sarah Jane Estes  from the Lexington Collaborative Fashion Group,” said Ford Theatre Reunion guitarist Eric Myers. “We started planning in the late spring to put on some kind of carnival in Triangle Park. Then Boomslang wanted to bring us on board, so all of this kind of grew from there.”

The carnival will unfold with music performances mingled with models donning displays of circus-style attire. But the real fun comes after dark. That’s when the sideshow cranks up with displays of fire eating, snake charming and blockheading.

The latter is the correct carnival term for the act of hammering nails into one’s nasal cavities. And what lucky soul has been assigned that task?

“Oh, that’s me,” Myers replied. “I love the aesthetic of all these performances - specifically the ones that are not illusion - like eating fire and swallowing swords. The reality is what fascinates me.”

“They haven’t needed much direction from me,” Brewer said of the carnival crew. “We just showed them the space they could use and they took off with it.”

Most everything else lands in Brewer’s lap. She said a mammoth volunteer crew helps. But logistics, schedules, last minute cancellations and, in a few joyful cases, last minute sponsors (like the Alltech Fortnight Festival, which signed on to co-present Faust) and band announcements (like the addition of the Boston post-punk band Mission of Burma to tonight’s bill at Buster’s), falls to her.

“I’ve been multi-tasking like I never have been in my life. On any given day, I’m dealing with 16 different aspects of the festival. But I think it will be so neat if Lexington can pull something off like this.”

Boomslang will be presented at various venues through Sunday. Single days tickets are $20; weekend passes are $50. For a complete schedule go to http://boomslangfest.com.

os mutantes will close out the inaugural boomslang festival on sunday.

Notions of a lasting reunion were fleeting when Os Mutantes reconvened in 2006. Dormant for 28 years, the fabled Brazilian tropicalia ensemble began a second life with a sort of re-awakening performance at London’s Barbican Arts Centre.

For Sergio Dias, resurrecting the band meant bring able enlist a brigade of younger collaborators. His brother, bassist/keyboardist Arnaldo Baptista, was equally eager but would eventually leave the realigned unit in 2007. Singer Rita Lee, the third of the band’s original members, opted not to participate in the reunion at all.

So it fell to Dias to keep alive Os Mutantes’ brand of tropicalia - a mix of animated pop, indigenous stylistic inspiration, politically streaked storylines and improvisation that surfaced as an artistic movement in Brazil during the late ‘60s.

“When we first agreed to play for the Barbican, we thought it was going to be for one concert,” Dias said. “Then a small but very solid tour lined up. In America, we were getting booked at all of these important places, like opening for The Flaming Lips at the Hollywood Bowl, playing the Pitchfork Festival in Seattle and eventually playing at the Fillmore, which was a dream for me. And this was all before we had played one note. We weren’t even a band again yet, but all these people were eager to hear us. I couldn’t understand it.”

Even at the height of the tropicalia movement, Os Mutantes were sailing well under the artistic radar mostly because its records never received wide distribution in the United States. It nonetheless garnered a modest but devout following on these shores. Among Os Mutantes’ American fans were Kurt Cobain (who tried, unsuccessfully, to initiate a reunion concert in 1993) and David Byrne (who oversaw the band’s 1999 compilation album, Everything is Possible).

Curiously, veteran fans aren’t making the biggest fuss over the new Os Mutantes lineup Dias has assembled or Haih…Ou Amortecedor…, the first full album of new studio material under the band’s name in three decades. Instead, far younger audiences - like the one expected for Sunday night’s Boomslang finale performance at Buster’s - are tuning in to the band’s often playful experimentation.

“It’s a beautiful thing to put out a record sung entirely in Portuguese and have these kids accepting it and enjoying it. To have the freedom to do whatever we wanted, that’s the beauty of these times. I don’t think we could have done something like this in the ‘80s or ‘90s.”

But that’s fine with Dias. Freedom, in his book, does not translate into nostalgia. Despite his band’s extensive history, he views Os Mutantes very much as artistic voice of the here and now.

“Even at the first date back together at the Barbican, the first thing I said was, ‘Let’s do a new album.’ We didn’t want to conceive a band that lives on through some music we did 30 or 40 years ago.

“Music is not about thinking. It’s about feeling. We understand music as a free concept, an open canvas. You’re allowed to do whatever you want.”

Os Mutantes performs at 9:30 p.m. Sunday at Buster’s Billiards and Backroom as part of the Boomslang festival. Tickets are $20. For more information, go to http://boomslangfest.com.

the decemberists. photo by autumn dewilde.

Almost by definition, pop music is viewed as an easily digestible commodity. It commands that you stick to a familiar and accessible theme, conjure an appealing melody and, for crying out loud, it’s got to move along briskly. A pop tune isn’t an epic, you know.

Or is it?

The newest album by The Decemberists, The Hazards of Love, harkens back to an artistically haughty enterprise known as the “concept album.” That means that even though it is technically divided into 17 songs, the recording is essentially one piece - and a fairly fanciful one at that. Its storyline involves fabled but forbidden love, forest witches and the promise of some very nasty deeds from a fellow known as The Rake.

So what could be more out of step with the pop mainstream than to release an album that is, in essence, a single extended work? How about going on tour and performing the entire thing from start to finish.

Did Capitol Records, which signed the one-time indie sensation in 2005, think such moves conflicted with conventional pop strategies? Hard to say. But Decemberists drummer John Moen had an initial word for releasing and performing a concept work like The Hazards of Love - “inadvisable.”

“I thought, ‘OK, now that everyone is back to ordering just one song at a time on the internet, we’re going to make an entire album that is one big, long song.’” Moen said. “But you know, sometimes it can be really interesting to do something that even you are telling yourself is a bad idea.”

A connection was made, however. While The Hazards of Love didn’t sell in Michael Jackson-like numbers upon its release last spring, it did become the highest charting album of The Decemberists’ career, making it to No. 14 on the Billboard Top 100. More arresting than that, though, was the sheer expression and invention of the record.

Inspired by a 1966 EP disc of the same name from British folk songstress Anne Briggs, The Hazards of Love moves from delicate passages of dark acoustics to thundering bits of keyboard-charged rock ‘n’ roll. It’s part Brit-folk fairy tale (which is fascinating given that the band is from Portland, Oregon) and part rock ‘n’ roll theatre.

“I love The Decemberists,” said fellow Portland musician Scott McCaughey, who recruited all of The Decemberists for cameos on his new Killingsworth album with indie rockers The Minus 5. “Great lyrics, absolutely killer musicians… they’re incredible. They go from doing really stripped down English folk to bombastic prog rock, but also sound great on everything in between. I really love that about them.”

The Hazards of Love, like all Decemberists records, is the invention of Colin Meloy. As the band’s vocalist, frontman, co-founder and chief songwriter, he mapped out the album’s epic pop design. But this wasn’t the first time Meloy had devised a concept recording for The Decemberists (which currently include multi-instrumentalist Chris Funk, keyboardist Jenny Conlee, bassist Nate Query and Moen). In 2004, he wrote the Irish-inspired (though decidedly un-Irish sounding) The Tain. But the EP’s five songs clocked in at a mere 18 minutes. The Hazards of Love runs nearly an hour.

“It was daunting, firstly,” Moen said. “I wasn’t in the band when The Tain was recorded. So I was kind of nervous about how all of this was going to come together. But Colin made a pretty detailed map, a demo, for us. Once you listened to everything you realized how there are songs in there that hold up on their own just as much as the other material he writes.

“So once we heard the tunes, the ideas just started popping in our brains about how to make this sound unique. It became a kind of creative puzzle.”

The Hazards of Love will make up the first half of The Decemberists’ Lexington debut performance tonight at the Singletary Center for the Arts. The band will be augmented for the new material by vocalists Shara Worden (of My Brightest Diamond) and Becky Stark (of Lavender Diamond). A second set will feature earlier Decemberists songs.

“I think we have proved that a show like this really isn’t such a silly thing to do,” Moen said. “I mean, I wasn’t sure at first this was such a good plan, but it’s been great to pull off playing the whole record, to get the whole thing done. I wouldn’t have predicted something like this at all. But I’m really proud to be part of it.”

The Decemberists perform at 7:30 tonight at the Singletary Center for the Arts. Laura Viers and the Hall of Flames will open. Tickets ate $30, $35, $40. Call: (859) 257-4929.

mark o'connor. photo by erica horn.

Some artistic visions can take years, decades even, to formulate. And that can often be meager compared to the time it takes for those ideas to find an accepting audience.

For Mark O’Connor, the journey continues this fall with the further realization of what he terms new American classical music. Over the course of an October residency in Lexington, he will perform with the latest version of the ensemble that helped introduce his new string music to the world, team for two concerts in two cities with the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra and introduce instruction of a violin method that is as Americana friendly as O’Connor’s concertos, string quartets and symphonies.

“About 25 years ago I started this idea of combining classical music - the styles, techniques and even instrumentation - with American fiddling,” O’Connor said last weekend from his New York home. “I’ve been able to explore that in the solo music I’ve done, in chamber music and now with orchestras. So this idea of cross pollination of music is something that continues to this day.”

“As a player, Mark is at the very top of the field,” said UK Symphony director and conductor John Nardolillo, who has collaborated with O’Connor on numerous performances over the past five years. “He is the best and best known living fiddler. His facility with the instrument is just extraordinary. It may even be unequalled in the classical field, as well. But what draws in the audience is his incredible expressiveness on the stage, even if it’s with the simplest old time tune.”

A Seattle native, O’Connor’s early career involved work with such disparate ensembles as The David Grisman Quintet (a leading new generation string music group that combined elements of bluegrass and jazz) and The Dregs (an early ‘80s version of the Southern fusion band Dixie Dregs). But studies with such visionaries as French swing-jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli, along with an active ‘80s career as a Nashville studio musician, expanded an already versed stylistic vocabulary.

In the mid ‘90s came two recordings that set O’Connor’s classically inclined string music into motion. 1995’s The Fiddle Concerto offered two extended pieces - a concerto and a string quartet - heavily accented by American fiddle playing. The following year brought Appalachia Waltz with fellow string journeymen Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer. The third and newest Appalachian Waltz Trio, with violist Gillian Gallagher and cellist Mike Block, brings O’Connor back to Kentucky tonight for a performance at the WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour that will be augmented by four string players from the UK orchestra.

“The trio plays some of my most accessible music,” O’Connor said. “But it also really helps me describe the idea of this new American string music.”

Such music, in essence, begins with Americana inspirations. That means echoes of folk, jazz, bluegrass and country register within O’Connor’s compositions. For instance, within O’Connor’s String Quartet No. 2: Bluegrass (released on an album in May on O’Connor’s Omac label), a plaintive melody circulates that sounds for all the world like a vintage Hank Williams record.

“I was listening to one of his violin caprices the other night,” Nardolillo said. “It’s sort of written in the style of a Paganini caprice. So on the one hand, it’s incredibly virtuosic. But on the other hand it sounds like fiddle music. It’s an extraordinary combination.”

“A long time ago, perhaps when I really started focusing on my solo career, I realized people my age and older we going to be sort of slow to come to the musical changes and philosophical differences I was bringing to the table,” O’Connor said. “That’s when I thought my best success, so to speak, would be with the next generation of string players.”

That brought O’Connor to the idea of developing his own violin method, one that stressed the same Americana inspirations as his compositions. The first two books of what will be a 10-volume series on the method will be published in November. Part of O’Connor’s October residency, which culminates with performances with the UK Symphony here and in Ashland, will focus on instruction of the method for area music teachers.

“With the method, I realized I had an endgame,” O’Connor said. “And that endgame would be the string player of the 21^st century. That would involve a player with working knowledge of jazz and folk as well as classical music.”

But how will an educational system that didn’t widely accept jazz as part of a music curriculum until the past few decades feel about an entirely new method of violin instruction?

“The establishment of academia is exactly that - it’s an establishment. To change these things overnight is difficult just as changing government overnight is difficult. Over time, people come to change and establishments eventually adapt. The violin has been around for a long time with established ways of teaching. So there is bound to be resistance to the method because of the change.

“That doesn’t mean people won’t come around, though.”

Mark O’ Connor performs at:

+ 3 p.m. Oct. 4 at the Kentucky Center for the Arts Bomhard Theater in Louisville with the Appalachian Waltz Trio. $25, $32. (800) 775-7777.

+ 7 p.m. Oct. 5 at the Kentucky Theatre for the WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour with the Appalachian Waltz Trio. $10. (859) 252-8888.

+ 7 p.m. Oct. 27 at the Paramount Arts Center with the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra. $20, $25, $35. (606) 324-3175.

+ 7:30 p.m. Oct. 30 at the Singletary Center for the Arts with the UK Symphony Orchestra and Chorale. $10 (student) and $20 (public). (859) 257-4929. 

mary chapin carpenter

It took a concert last spring in the Deep South to underscore for Mary Chapin Carpenter the love, vitality, and perhaps even restorative power that can come from a live performance.

The occasion was a songwriter summit staged as part of the Eudora Welty Centennial celebration at the Pulitzer Prize winning author’s hometown of Jackson, Mississippi. The show teamed Carpenter with a trio of new generation folk voices from the South - Kate Campbell, Caroline Herring and Claire Holley. In essence, Carpenter was honoring a lifelong inspiration but picked up three new friends in the process.

“We played a lot of songs that were directly and sometimes indirectly connected to Eudora,” Carpenter said. “It was put together and performed by the seat of our pants. But we had a wonderful time.”

The concert’s importance went beyond being a tribute, though. It was Carpenter’s first stage appearance in two years. Why such a break for a singer who toured incessantly for the previous two decades? And why a similar silence from a recording career that had yielded Americana albums full of stark emotive detail (1992’s quadruple platinum Come On Come On and 1995’s Stones in the Road being among the best of a strong lot) as well as a string of early ‘90s singles (I Feel Lucky, Shut Up and Kiss Me and the jubilant Cajun collaboration with BeauSoleil Down at the Twist and Shout) that earned her a solid fanbase at country radio as well as five Grammy Awards.

“It’s not the first time,” Carpenter said of the break. “When I got married in 2002 I took a few years off just to, well, enjoy married life.”

But this time was different. Following work on her 2007 album The Calling, Carpenter was diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism - a blood clot in the lung that often forms with few symptoms as warning signs. Severe and undiagnosed cases can cause sudden death, although Carpenter’s PE was discovered when chest pain and breathing difficulties sent her to an emergency room.

“You go through all sorts of questions about your identity and what you’re able to do when you get a health scare like that. It’s certainly not something I ever imagined would happen to me.

“When you sit down with your business manager and talk about the nuts and bolts of having careers like mine, they say, ‘Well, you’ve got to have insurance.’ And I’m like, ‘Why?’ ‘Well, what if you get sick and can’t play again?’ And I was like, ‘That’ll never happen.’ You just never think that will happen to you.

“You keep asking these questions about identity and purpose and things like that - things you just don’t think about on an everyday level. Maybe you shouldn’t spend a lot of time thinking about those things. Then all of a sudden, you’ve got the time on your hands to think about them because you’re not able to do anything else. There’s not a manual for this. You just have to bumble your way through it.”

With recovery and reflection, there was writing - lots of it. Carpenter has completed a new set of songs that she will begin recording shortly after her first Central Kentucky concert in nearly 17 years. She performs Friday at Equus Run Vineyards in Midway for the Alltech Fortnight Festival.

“As time goes on, writing sometimes feels harder. But maybe that’s because you become harder to please. Then every once in awhile, a song will kind of write itself, clichéd though that may be, and you will feel in full possession of your tools. It’s not predictable. But I still love to write songs. It doesn’t feel like anything other than a complete labor of love.”

Carpenter’s writing also went to print about a year ago. She was invited by The Washington News to write a bi-weekly arts-related column, which she continued until work resumed in earnest on her songwriting last spring.

Among her column topics: a tribute to Piedmont bluesman John Cephas, the beauty of a Hem song used in a TV commercial and the snubbing of Bruce Springsteen at last winter’s Grammy Awards (for not being nominated for The Wrestler).

“There were times when I had to be reminded that this was for the Arts page as opposed to something where I would be flapping my political wings,” Carpenter said. “I also have been taught how much respect to have for people who write on deadlines.”

But perhaps the most eloquent and moving writing Carpenter has penned since her recovery was a short essay for National Public Radio’s “This I Believe” series titled “The Learning Curve of Gratitude.” There, she recounts her illness, the consuming guilt resulting from the canceled tour and the difficulties of her recovery. But it also speaks of a renewed appreciation of love of life.

“I will think about how uncomplicated it all is,” Carpenter writes at the essay’s end. “I will wonder at how it took me my entire life to appreciate just one day.”

“It’s your joy,” she added in our interview. “You get your joy back. I mean, I’m just so grateful to be here.”

Mary Chapin Carpenter and Mother Jane performs at 6 tonight at Equus Run Vineyards, 1280 Moores Mill Road in Midway for the Alltech Fortnight Festival. Tickets are $55. Call (859) 846-9463 or visit www.alltechfortnightfestival.

manchester orchestra with singer and lyricist andy hull in foreground. photo by james minchin iii.

The goal was simple. When Manchester Orchestra hit the studio to cut its sophomore album, Mean Everything to Nothing, the idea was to make “a rock record.” As the band’s keyboardist Chris Freeman put it, “We were ready to make some louder noises.”

But what happens as Manchester Orchestra cranks things up is a bit unexpected. When the volume is raised, so are some especially restless spirits. Within the earthy, unsettling and often spiritual songs that make up Mean Everything, Manchester Orchestra offers more of an ear-crunching séance than a conventional rock ‘n roll party.

Take the leadoff tune The Only One, where singer Andy Hull howls about life as the lone son of a Southern pastor and the ultimately “passive power of the truth” over buzzsaw guitars and synths and a mutated ‘60 pop groove. It’s a song both exhilarating and squeamish.

“Lyrically and thematically, this is a very personal record for Andy,” Freeman said. “I mean he really is the son of a pastor. He grew up in the South. So there are definitely religious aspects to the lyrics and the music. These were things that became a big part of growing up in the South and remain part of what we think about on a day-to-day basis.”

In a review of a spring performance that celebrated the release of Mean Everything, The New York Times’ Jon Caramanica pegged the band’s music as “a comfortably depressing blend of emo and Southern rock, shaggy and desperate.” It went on to mention how the band “played with the vigor, thrust and density of a heavy metal band… there was barely any room to breathe.”

Such a temperament may point to the middle ground that will be occupied when Manchester Orchestra comes to Manchester St. in Lexington to play Buster’s as part of a triple indie rock bill that also features the power punk charge of Bowling Green’s Cage the Elephant and the far sleeker yet elemental melodies of the Los Angeles pop brigade Silverspun Pickups.

But there is also a tug of war within Manchester music where repression often battles discovery. On Mean Everything songs such as My Friend Marcus, the conflict turns very dark. Real life, though, has been less foreboding.

For much of his Georgia upbringing, Freeman was forbidden to listen to contemporary pop, rock or rap by his parents. Older rock records by The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and the like were allowed. But the only permissible sounds of the era had to come from Christian radio stations.

Eventually - and, perhaps inevitably - the outside world came knocking. For Freeman, it came in the form of a Radiohead record.

“I remember the first time I heard (the band’s second album) The Bends,” he recalled. “I was in the back of my friend’s sister’s white 1996 Mustang driving down to the beach during spring break of ‘01 or ‘02. When the record ended, I felt like a hammer had hit me over the head.”

Today, Manchester Orchestra’s music gets to do the hammering. But the band’s often agitated indie tunes have also been afforded some very commercial outlets. For example, I Can Feel a Hot One, which was released on a 2008 EP titled Let My Pride Be What’s Left Behind before finding a place on Mean Everything, was featured on an episode of Gossip Girl. And if you think a pack of spiritually inclined Southern hothead rockers don’t think that’s cool, guess again.

“Hey, I’ve watched Gossip Girl pretty regularly since I lost The O.C. as my guilty pleasure show. So when we got the offer to have our song on Gossip Girl, we freaked out. The night that episode was on, we all ordered some dinner and sat in front of the TV like little school children and watched for our song to come on.”

The steady rise in popularity of Manchester Orchestra has also earned Freeman two new fans: his parents.

“It’s funny, for Mother’s Day, I bought my mom an iPod and filled it with all of my favorite records as well as records I thought she would enjoy. Of course, I left off all the ones with massive amounts of swearing and drug references. And now she’s totally into all the music that I tried to get her to let me listen to back in the day. She loves Kings of Leon. All of her friends are blown away by the music she listens to now.

“But then getting to perform like we have on David Letterman and Conan O’Brien has kind of vindicated our careers with our parents. Now we can be like, “Hey, mom, we’re gonna be on TV. This is a real job where we’re kind of making some money.’ So that’s always fun.”

Silverspun Pickups, Manchester Orchestra and Cage the Elephant perform at 8 tonight at Buster’s Billiards and Backroom, 899 Manchester St.  Tickets are $25.

bettye lavette.

The performance that perhaps best defines the remarkable career renaissance of Bettye LaVette arrived last December at the Kennedy Center Honors.

As part of a tribute to The Who, the veteran soul singer transformed the Quadrophenia anthem Love Reign O’er Me into a simmering torch song. Reserved, elegant and thoroughly majestic, LaVette delivered the song to an audience that included then-President George W. Bush, honorees Barbra Streisand and George Jones, presenter/attendees Aretha Franklin and Beyonce and perhaps most significantly the two surviving members of  The Who: guitarist Pete Townshend (who wrote the song) and singer Roger Daltrey (the vocalist on the tune’s original 1973 recording).

To the call the performance transcendent when it was presented on network television just after Christmas is not at all an overstatement. In LaVette’s hands, the song’s theme of longing and healing were conveyed with a voice that seemed to rise like steam, cracking with deep, unforced and very real drama. Townshend wrote later on his website, “My favorite moment was when Bettye LaVette sang a very fine version of Love Reign O’er Me at the gala and Barbra Streisand turned to ask me if I really wrote it.”

Not a bad gig and not a bad review for an artist that has been singing all her life but never enjoyed anything close to mainstream success and acceptance until 2005.

Did performing before such a court of celebrities and the very creators of the song she was singing rattle the nerves?

“Not at all, baby,” said LaVette, 63. “I’ve been waiting almost 50 years for an audience like that. If someone has asked me, ‘Who would you want in your audience?’ I would have said the people who became successful the whole time I was struggling. But Aretha Franklin, Beyonce, The Who and the President of the United States? That worked for me.

“Pete came over afterward and said, ‘You made me weep.’ I turned around and Roger was on his knee telling me I was marvelous. They were genuine, gracious and forthcoming. They were saying the things I always wanted to hear.”

When LaVette said she had been waiting for a half century for such praise, she wasn’t exaggerating. Her first recordings date back to the early ‘60s. She earned her first Top 10 R&B hit (My Man, He’s a Lovin’ Man) at the age of 16 and has shared studios and stages with scores of soul legends, including James Brown, Otis Redding and Ben E. King. There were occasional hits, but often severe disappointments - cancelled tours, shelved recordings and, in general, missed career opportunities beyond her control.

LaVette never stopped singing though. There were club gigs full of soul and jazz standards, several of which are revisited on a new download-only EP titled Change is Gonna Come Sessions, as well as extensive touring in the musical Bubbling Brown Sugar. Then Lavette’s singing came to the attention of Andy Kaulkin, the president of Anti- Records, a label whose roster includes such multi-generational greats as Tom Waits, Neko Case, Mavis Staples and Daniel Lanois.

Kaulkin signed LaVette to a three album deal that began with a stunning collection of songs penned entirely by women. The composers included Dolly Parton, Lucinda Williams, Aimee Mann and Joan Armatrading. But it was a verse from the Fiona Apple affirmation Sleep to Dream that gave what would become LaVette’s breakthrough album its name: I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise.

“Sweetie, I’m the oldest person who isn’t a big star in the world who has an active record contract,” LaVette said. “When I came to Anti-, I was already over 55 years old.

“I mean, I knew I could always sing because that’s what I do. I knew I could always get a gig because I can sing. But to have a young, hip record company come and fall in love with my singing and help me? I never thought that would happen. Why would I think that? It hadn’t happened to me in 40-something years.”

But perhaps the crowning honor to LaVette’s career comeback took place just over a month after the Kennedy Center Honors. At Kennedy Center, she sang for a president. In late January she sang at the inauguration of another. With a somewhat unlikely duet partner, Jon Bon Jovi, she sang the Sam Cooke civil rights meditation A Change is Gonna Come on the day Barack Obama was sworn into office.

“This is exactly what I’ve cried all night for, gotten drunk all night for, begged all nght for. People keep telling me to say how exciting all of this is. But it’s more satisfying than anything. I feel so worthwhile. Success feels different for me than it does than it does for, say, Kanye West. It feels completely different.”

Bettye LaVette performs at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Singletary Center for the Arts as part of the Alltech Fortnight Festival. Tickets are $20, $25 and $28. Call (859) 257-4929.

jason aldean.

Jason Aldean is the first to admit that the rural-rooted, retro-fitting single She’s Country shook up his career up but good last spring.

It shot the Georgia singer to No. 1, parked him there for a few weeks and then took a career that had steadily but solemnly gathered steam over the last four years and placed it squarely on the fast track. But She’s Country turned out to be the warm-up act. The followup single, an infectious G-rated romantic yarn called Big Green Tractor is currently finishing up its fourth week atop the Billboard Country Songs chart.

A whole month at No. 1 - now that’s the way to make a return to Lexington as Friday’s opener of the Alltech Fortnight Festival at Applebee’s Park.

“It’s amazing to have just one single come out and change your career,” Aldean said by phone last week. “I’ve heard people say that before but I never really understood it until She’s Country hit. And it did, too. That song changed everything for us. Now we’ve had back-to-back multi-week No. 1 hits. Who could ask for anything more? This has laid the groundwork for the rest of this year and will set us up for the future. We are now at a very good place.”

Aldean’s last Lexington performances - an opening act gig for Rascal Flatts and a headlining New Year’s Eve show at Heritage Hall, both in 2007 - captured a career already on the rise. In fact, the singer already had an initial No. 1 under his belt at the time, the 2005 power ballad Why. But initial inspirations for the then-blooming career came from a childhood spent in the Southern music metropolis of Macon. Ga.

“Being from there definitely helps,” Aldean said. “You already have some pretty big names to draw from - Otis Redding, The Allman Brothers, guys like that. I don’t think you can help but be influenced by all that when it’s right there with you. On the same hand, though, getting out and playing my own shows helped me find my own music.”

Citing ‘80s country hitmakers Alabama and ‘90s cosmopolitan country king Garth Brooks as subsequent influences, a teenaged Aldean used a Macon VFW hall as his first performance venue. By his own estimation he was a hit - meaning, he didn’t want to relinquish the stage once he discovered its allure.

“I got up and did, like, three songs,” Aldean remembered. “Seminole Wind (a 1992 hit for John Anderson) was one of them. Silver Wings by Merle Haggard was another. And I think an Alabama song was in there, too. When I was through, I was like, ‘I could stay up here all night. This is fun.’ And of course the band at the VFW hall is trying to get me off the stage so they can finish their own set. I mean, that was just me being green. But it did give me my first stage experience.”

In the midst of his 2007 concerts here, Aldean’s career was already facing up to the commercial promise suggested by Why and a platinum selling, self-titled debut album. The second album, Relentless, came out in May of that year, scored several Top 10 hits (although no chart-toppers) and matched Jason Aldean’s platinum status. But there was a key ingredient missing for Aldean from the album - at least, from the process of making it: fun. A massively intensified touring schedule left little time to write, locate and cut material for Relentless - thus zapping much of the thrill of making a record in the first place. It was a situation Aldean was determined not to repeat when work began last year on his third and newest album, Wide Open.

“After the success of the first album, we were playing so many shows that it was really hard to find the time to get into the studio and really settle into that groove of making another record. And also there was just a lot of pressure I was putting on myself at that point. There were certainly parts of the second album that I liked. But the overall process of making that record just wasn’t fun.

“I was a lot more comfortable making the third album. I didn’t worry so much about the songs we had. I didn’t sweat over every detail. We just went in, did what we did on the first album and it worked. For whatever reason, that made a huge difference. Luckily, I started to realize that soon enough while making the second record to know I wanted to do things differently for the third one.

“Back then, it was like, ‘OK, I should be having fun right now making music, but I’m really not. So what’s the deal?’ But we sure have a grasp on that now.”

Jason Aldean and Miranda Lambert perform at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Applebee’s Park as part of the Alltech Fortnight Festival. The concert is sold out.

the minus 5? the baseball project? the steve wynn IV? why, it's all three. from left: peter buck, steve wynn, linda pitmon and scott mccaughey.

The late night lineup tonight at the annual Christ the King Oktoberfest suggests something of a triple play.

Leading off will be The Minus 5, the revolving door pop collective fronted by guitarist, songsmith and part time R.E.M.-er Scott McCaughey. Then we have The Baseball Project, a unique rock enterprise that designs original songs about the Great American Pastime. Rounding out the roster will be The Steve Wynn IV, a band that brings Dream Syndicate maestro and longtime solo artist Wynn to Lexington for the first time.

That’s a quite a team for 10 o’clock at night - at a church.

Ah, but there is an appealing catch that should streamline the bill. All three bands are the same band. McCaughey’s Minus 5 - still with R.E.M. mainstay Peter Buck on guitar and bass - will double as The Steve Wynn IV and triple as The Baseball Project, a band spearheaded equally by McCaughey and Wynn. Longtime Wynn percussionist and drummer Linda Pitmon rounds out all three units.

“As a musician and also as a music fan, I like being in a situation where things change constantly, where it’s not just a whole lot of one thing and then the curtain drops,” Wynn said. “I like surprise. I like the random element. And there will be plenty of both in this show.”

All four players in the three bands have collaborated and crossed musical paths numerous times. McCaughey (an auxiliary member of R.E.M. since the mid ‘90s) and Buck (one of R.E.M.’s founders) have been pals for years. In addition to R.E.M. and The Minus 5, they perform with British pop stylist Robyn Hitchcock while McCaughey is also a co-founder of the 28 year old Seattle-bred pop band The Young Fresh Fellows. McCaughey and Buck also played Oktoberfest as a duo in 2007 during a weekend break from recording sessions for R.E.M.’s Accelerate album

Wynn’s career has revolved around a series of critically lauded pop, rock and psychedelic folk flavored solo albums and band projects, many of which included Pitmon. But his music took root in the early ‘80s with The Dream Syndicate, a band at the forefront of the West Coast’s so-called “Paisley Underground” pop movement. That was roughly the same time that Buck and R.E.M. broke through to international acclaim.

“The Dream Syndicate actually toured with R.E.M. in 1984,” McCaughey said. “That was the first time I ever saw R.E.M. Even then, Peter was known to get out onstage and play songs with Steve. They’ve even played a few of those songs on this trip.”

McCaughey and Wynn both have new albums to showcase during tonight’s “three bands-in-one” performance. McCaughey’s newest Minus 5 record, Killingsworth, downplays the electric pop accents of past recordings in favor of heavily acoustic Americana tunes with undercurrents of pedal steel guitar that color the alert though somewhat overcast storylines of his songs.

As with most Minus 5 records, McCaughey enlists his friends for Killingsworth. Along with Buck, the guest list features local musicians from McCaughey’s newly adopted hometown of Portland, Oregon, including the entire lineup of The Decemberists.

“I wanted the record to be really stripped down and fairly acoustic,” McCaughey said. “There’s barely an electric guitar on the record - just lots of acoustic guitar, fiddle, banjo, accordion and, of course, the ubiquitous pedal steel guitar.”

While McCaughey was whittling his sound down, Wynn was building his up. His 2008 album Crossing Dragon Bridge departs from the double guitar/bass/drums sound of the Paisley Underground days and embraces orchestral pop with strings underscoring spacious and surprisingly personal narratives.

“These songs have room for variety,” Wynn said. “But the sound we gave them… that’s something I’ve wanted to do, really, for my whole career - just that big Technicolor, wide screen, evocative type sound.”

But the band that levels the playing field for Wynn and McCaughey is The Baseball Project. Its debut album, Vol. 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails (cut as a quartet record with Buck and Pitmon) blends yarns about such baseball icons as Ted Williams, Satchel Paige and Willie Mays with immensely infectious pop and rock melodies.

Among the highlights is Wynn’s Jackie’s Lament, a spiritual, bittersweet and quite moving meditation on the great Jackie Robinson. On the flip side of such ball park faith is McCaughey’s The Yankee Flipper, the story of the music-loving New York Yankee pitcher Black Jack McDowell and the infamous hand gesture he awarded a home crowd after being booed off the field in 1995.

“It’s not a gratuitous type of record,” Wynn said. “We’re fans. You can hear that in the songs. Hopefully we found that fine line between knowing what we’re talking about and being absolute baseball geeks.”

One Baseball Project tune that should earn a vocal Lexington reception tonight is Wynn’s Harvey Haddix. Its verses include a check list of players who pitched perfect games (which Haddix fell just short of after losing in a 13 inning bout in 1959). Among the champs mentioned is Jim Bunning. Wynn and McCaughey know all about Bunning’s current tenure as a two term United States senator from Kentucky and the turbulence within the Republican Party that recently caused Bunning to bow out of campaigning for a third Senatorial stay.

“Man, he was a great pitcher,” McCaughey said. “But I have to admit I got a sort of perverse joy out of watching him be a bit of a pain to his fellow Republicans.”

“I admired what Jim Bunning did on the field,” Wynn added. “Let’s just leave it at that.”

The Minus 5/The Baseball Project/The Steve Wynn IV perform at 10 p.m Friday as part of the Christ the King Oktoberfest, 299 Colony Blvd. Admission is free. Call: (859) 268-2861 or go to www.ctkoktoberfest.com.

The Derek Trucks Band: Count M'Butu (percussion), Todd Smallie (bass), Mike Mattison (vocals), Derek Trucks (guitar), Yonrico Scott (drums) and Kofi Burbridge (keyboards and flute). photo by michael schmelling.

This is the second of a two-part feature on guitarist Derek Trucks, who performs with The Derek Trucks Band on Saturday at Buster’s Billiards and Ballroom.

To infer the late Duane Allman’s playing dominates the styles promoted by Derek Trucks, as many critics and fans have, is misleading. Trucks is also immensely versed in jazz and world music. Aside from recording and gigging with players like McCoy Tyner, he also is versed in the music pioneered by the pianist’s one time employer, the iconic saxophonist John Coltrane. In fact, a stunning new concert EP disc by The Derek Trucks Band released last spring as a companion piece to Already Free (titled Already Live) features a 17 minute variation of Coltrane’s arrangement of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s My Favorite Things.

“We love playing those tunes and stretching out,” Trucks said. “But it’s hard to make something like that fit thematically on a studio record. Our last three or four albums have been introductions to the band for a lot of people. Putting a 20 minute instrumental on there isn’t really the way to gain new fans. So it’s great to be able to have a live EP and throw any crazy stuff you want on there. Songs like My Favorite Things make for some of my favorite moments in a live setting.”

Today the sense of family that has long pervaded Trucks’ music with the Allmans spills over into his own work. He is married to Susan Tedeschi, the popular guitarist/vocalist with a similar affection for blues and soul tradition. They maintain separate recording careers but frequently pool their band resources to tour together as the Soul Stew Revival.

Trucks and Tedeschi also have two children, which make juggling their respective careers, not to mention the former’s commitment to performances with his band, the Allmans and one-off projects like the Clapton tour, a continually difficult challenge. While Trucks appreciates the opportunities that have come his way, he is already making his work life more complimentary to his home life. The first step was building a full recording studio in the couple’s Jacksonville residence. But more changes may be in the offing.

“The last three or four years have been… well, not overwhelming, but whatever the step below that is,” Trucks said. “We’ve had a really insane schedule. Everybody is on the same page and working toward the same thing - whether it’s family, band or management. And I’m very fortunate to be married to somebody who absolutely understands the world I run in because she’s running in it herself.

“But in saying that, part of the reason in building the studio was the realization that I don’t want to be on tour 300 days a year with 10 different bands for the rest of my life. I love touring and performing live. But I really think within this next year or so, it will seriously be time to shift gears, go home, write and start a band with my wife - you know, really, in a way, clean the slate and just kind of start from scratch. You need to just hit the reset button every once in awhile.”

The Derek Trucks Band perform at 8 p.m. Saturday at Buster’s Billiards and Backroom, 899 Manchester St. Van Ghost will open. Tickets are $25. For info, go to www.bustersbb.com.