Projo Arts Blog

Shinedown, Puddle of Mudd and Skillet will play at the Dunkin' Donuts Center, 1 La Salle Sq., Providence, on Thursday, Jan. 21, 2010 at 7:30.

Shinedown have had 10 top-5 rock radio hits, including the latest single, "If You Only Knew" and the top-5 pop single "Second Chance." They're also a nominee at this month's American Music Awards.

Tickets go on sale Saturday, Nov. 21, at 10 a.m. They are $31.50 and can be had at the box office, all Ticketmaster locations, by calling (800) 745-3000 or by going to www.ticketmaster.com.

The Providence-based rock band Deer Tick already released the killer album "Born on Flag Day" this year, but they're not quite through yet.

The EP "More Fuel for the Fire" will come out Dec. 1 only on iTunes. It will feature three new studio tracks and a live version of "Straight Into A Storm," from "Born on Flag Day," which Rolling Stone called the "country breakthrough of the year."

By the way, Deer Tick also made a live version of "Baltimore Blues No. 1" as a Veteran's Day present to "all troops, active and non-active" (although anyone can download it), available at http://military-entertainment.military.com/2009/11/gift-from-deer-tick.html. It's worth downloading for the song itself and for the very funny, and very accurate, things the poster there has to say about some of the other bands who offer free downloads in "support of the troops."

Country music star Taylor Swift will be the first female solo act to headline Gillette Stadium, in Foxboro, when she plays at the Patriots' home June 5, 2010.

The 19-year-old will be touring in support of her double-platinum-selling album "Fearless." Kellie Pickler and Gloriana will open.

On Wednesday, Swift won all four Country Music Awards for which she was nominated, including best album, female vocalist, music video and Entertainer of the Year.

Tickets go on sale Saturday, Dec. 5, at 10 a.m.; prices will be announced soon. They're available at www.ticketmaster.com or by calling (800) 745-3000.

Before he was the Space Cowboy, hitting with "The Joker" in 1973, Steve Miller had already released seven albums worth of studio material, and Sunday night at the Providence Performing Arts Center, Miller showed off his roots along with the hits that sprang from them. After an introductory mini-set of hits, in fact, the nearly two-hour show was a loose approximation of Miller's musical journey.

After opening with the lush piano chords and busy bottom end of "Swingtown," then running through "Abracadabra" (whose live rendition rescued the song from its oh-so-'80s production) and "Serenade," Miller and his band veered into blues-rock territory with "The Stake," with Miller's reedy voice leading a celestial harmony over a gritty shuffle, then the one-chord James Brown-style "Shu Ba Da Du Ma Ma Ma Ma," from the "Joker" album.

That was a way station before the band went into straight blues - first a slow electric blues duet between Miller and singer Sonny Charles, in which Miller, who grew up in Milwaukee and Dallas, displayed guitar chops in the Texas style similar to Jimmie Vaughan. Then, after a run through Bo Diddley's "Pretty Thing" with guest percussionist Michael Carabello, formerly of Santana, Miller headed to Chicago - as he literally did in the mid-'60s - for Otis Rush's "All Your Love" and Slim Harpo's "Got Love If You Want It," all with help from Charles and extended solos from keyboardist Joseph Wooten.

This set up "Fly Like an Eagle," giving one of Miller's breakout '70s hits context, particularly when the band took off into an extended middle section with solos from Wooten and a nearly unaccompanied Miller, recalling the jamming influences of the San Francisco scene that Miller immersed himself in next.

After that, Miller strapped on an acoustic and did solo renditions of the old chestnut "Seasons," as well as the more familiar ground of "Wild Mountain Honey" and "The Joker" (a full-band version of which was the final encore). And "Dance Dance Dance" was dedicated to Miller's longtime harmonica player Norton Buffalo, who died earlier this month.

After one more stop into Muddy Waters territory, it was back to the hits - "Take the Money and Run," "Rock 'N Me," "Jungle Love" - you know the drill. By this time, however, the history lesson gave the dated '70s classics new dimension, which in turn helps explain their - and Miller's - evergreen endurance.

rmassimo@projo.com / 277-7206

Citing an unspecified "personal family matter" Rob Thomas has postponed a scheduled performance at the Mohegan Sun Arena on Saturday until Friday, December 18th. All tickets purchased for the original date will be honored for the later date, according to a Mohegan Sun press release.

The community singing session known as Unisong will be held Wednesday night at the Rhode Island Philmarmonic Music School, 667 Waterman Ave., East Providence, at 7 p.m. (The site was incorrectly reported in Wednesday's Journal.) Clarice LaVerne Thompson, a music educator, composer and Brown Unversity professor, will lead the warm-up session, and Trinity Rep actress Rachael Warren will lead all comers in song.

Admission is $5; for more informatino, go to www.unisong.net.

Bon Jovi may not be hitting Gillette Stadium, in Foxboro, Mass., until July 24, 2010, but tickets are already going on sale - in fact, if you play your cards right you can get them starting Thursday.

According to a statement from Gillette Stadium, fans who pre-order Bon Jovi's next record, "The Circle," through Ticketmaster between Thursday at 10 a.m. and Sunday at 10 p.m. can buy a download of the record for $10.84 and up to eight tickets. The disc goes on sale Nov. 10.

Tickets go on sale to American Express card holders Monday, Nov. 9, at 10 a.m. They'll be available to everyone else on Mon., Nov. 16, at 10 a.m.

Tickets range from $39.50 to $127.50 and will be available at the Gillette Stadium box office, all Ticketmaster locations, by calling (800) 745-3000, the Ticketmaster Express self-service line (866) 448-7849 or at Ticketmaster.com.

The Circle Tour will see Bon Jovi perform 130 shows in 35 countries over most of the next two years.

When Ray LaMontagne does a solo show, one of the side effects of not having a band onstage with him is, "I can't shut up."

That's what he said Tuesday night at the Providence Performing Arts Center, and the New Hampshire native sure did talk a lot. After a pretty uncommunicative opening segment, LaMontagne had a Samuel Beckett-like one-sided conversation with an offstage guitar tech, told us about troubles with women ("They said if you look like a pit bull and sing like a bird, women will sleep with you. That's [expletive]"), his experiences as a carpenter ("I mainly just carried stuff") and an unsuccessful stint as an apple picker. And those were just the bits I can repeat.

In between all that, though, he played some of the most beautiful and yet no-nonsense songs of the modern singer-songwriter era, full of American-roots influences and sharply observed lyrical details.

Like Jackson Browne before him, LaMontagne's songs are more about the emotional spaces that come in between the major events, rather than the events themselves. But LaMontagne has a plain-spoken, almost but not quite cliched, way with words that draws the listener in.

There were touches of Townes Van Zant and Neil Young in his work during the show, which encompassed material from his three albums, and the influence of the former was most obvious when (following a digression about LaMontagne's uncle, and seeing Van Zant with him) LaMontagne launched into a lovely version of Van Zant's gorgeous "Loretta," a song of romantic contentment, followed by LaMontagne's own "Winter Birds," an equally beautiful piece of New England-set pastoralism where natural and romantic imagery sat side-by-side in a tradtional yet seemingly new way.

As LaMontagne hid under a cowboy hat for most of the show, it was incongruous to hear his voice - call it an incredibly loud whisper, for lack of a better term - coming from such an impassive spectre. His ability to emote credibly gave such simple moments as the ending of "Jolene" a power that a lesser performer couldn't hack. And the visual simplicity was accented by a small screen behind him, where a series of images - a gloomy canal, some railroad tracks, some abstractions - were projected. And that was it.

Some of the songs missed Ethan Johns's excellent production touches from the recorded versions, and an hour-plus solo acoustic show is always going to feel a little long by the end. Still, LaMontagne finished strong, with the best-known stuff coming out at the end.

Highlights in the alte going included the country influences and detail of "Jolene"; the Memphis soul-influenced hit "Trouble," with LaMontagne showing his greatest vocal power of the night; a just-hanging-together wave at "Shelter"; the shouting blues of "Henry Nearly Killed Me" and the encore of "All the Wild Horses," dedicated to his apple-picking compatriot as a memoir of wild youthful times.

Opener David Gutter, the singer of the Maine-based Rustic Overtones, mixed solo and band material, including songs from the new band disc that comes out Saturday. His voice was strong - somehow simultaneously luminous and sandpaper-like. The songs worked best when they stuck to detail - the emotional wallow of "Oxygen" felt unearned. But the homesick-soldier blues of the band's "Dear Mr. President" was affecting; "The New Way Out," the title track from the new band disc, was a song of burgeoning possibility, and the solo song "Shorty" was an entertaining bit of cultural defamiliarization.

More reviews: Projo Reviews blog

Jazz singer Daryl Sherman, a Woonsocket native living in New York, will be included on the soundtrack to the film "Johnny Mercer: The Dream's On Me," a documentary tribute to the songwriter executive-produced by Clint Eastwood and produced and directed by Bruce Ricker.

The soundtrack includes Mercer songs performed by a variety of singers, including Ella Fitzgerald doing "Midnight Sun," Tony Bennett and Bono on a duet of "I Wanna Be Around," Queen Latifah on "Trav'lin Light" and Sherman singing "I Thought About You."

The film will premiere Nov. 4 on Turner Classic Movies. It will be re-aired Nov. 18, also on TCM, and will be available on DVD Dec. 8.

BY RICK MASSIMO
Journal Pop Music Writer

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Method Man and Redman, two of the most prolific artists from the Wu-Tang Clan hip-hop collective, came to Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel Friday night on the heels of last spring's "Blackout! 2," the sequel to their first duo collaboration, "Blackout!," from 1999. And if 10 years was a long time to wait, they made it seem like the time flew by in their set opening for Snoop Doog (who was in fine form early in his set when I had to leave).

Starting with three songs from the new disc - "Errbody Scream," "City Lights" and "A-Yo" - the Meth-&-Red chemistry was intact, with Method Man providing a gruff bark of a voice, Redman a more nasal staccato, various producers a lean-and-mean sound with sinister organ and sinuous beats, and a very pot-friendly ethos.

After that, the duo turned to their back catalog, both with Wu-Tang and as partners, as well as their solo records - reaching back to 1992 for "Time 4 Sum Aksion" and 1994 for "4:20." The new and old material worked together side-by-side, although - I can't believe I'm saying this - it could have been louder in the crowded club.

It was fairly straightforward, although the off-kilter beat of "Da Goodness" was a nice change of pace. And of course they paid tribute to their late Wu-mate Ol' Dirty Bastard, getting the crowd going on the hook of "Shimmy Shimmy Ya."

Before launching into "Part II," the two rappers mentioned the other sequel on everyone's mind, claiming to be working on the movie "How High 2." (Later, Redman explained that he didn't understand why Universal was "sitting on this," saying that the original film had come in under budget and claiming it brought in $25 million and adding that they might make their own movie if it comes to that.) They got the crowd into a chant of "Blackout 2" and "How High 2" before finishing up with "Da Rockwilder," from the original "Blackout" disc.

After the set, Redman also recounted his experiences in Providence, one of the first towns he played frequently as a solo artist, and said that the 10-year wait for "Blackout! 2" was because he and Method Man "don't need to drop an album; we live on the road," adding that record sales don't matter much in the Internet age anyway: "The game is going through changes."

Still, he says he enjoys working with Method Man enough that "Blackout! 3" is already in the works, and that after finishing the sequel (!) to his "Muddy Waters" disc, he doesn't plan on recording solo again: "We'll be Cheech and Chongin' it," he said of himself and his partner.

"We got a job to do; we gotta hold the balance" between underground hip-hop and commercial fluff, he said. "It's a big responsibility."

rmassimo@projo.com / 277-7206

More reviews: Projo Reviews blog

BY RICK MASSIMO
Journal Pop Music Writer

The musical formula is pretty simple: grand, power ballad-like chord progressions over a hard-charging punk-pop tempo and beat. But on record, Disney Channel TV star ("Sonny With a Chance") Demi Lovato's voice gets squashed into a harsh rattle. In performance at the Dunkin' Donuts Center Friday night, though, it was a different story.

>> Continue reading: Lovato brings the real thing to The Dunk

More reviews: Projo Reviews blog

CRANSTON, R.I. - Dave Brubeck, a giant and legend of jazz, will be performing in Rhode Island on Dec. 4, the Immaculate Conception Church in Cranston announced today.

Brubeck, 88, is performing as part of the dedication celebration of the new Immaculate Conception Regional Catholic School. He has received a Kennedy Center honor, a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement. He has been called a "Living Legend" by the Library of Congress, and a "Jazz Master" by the National Endowment for the Arts.

At the concert, the Dave Brubeck Quartet will play jazz selections and be joined by the Providence Singers and a live orchestra for a performance of his "Canticles" and "God's Love Made Visible."

Tickets for the show, which is at 8 p.m. on Dec. 4, are $45 to $80. And tickets go on sale today at ticketweb.com.

Multiplatinum-selling pop star Lionel Richie will sing at the MGM Grand at Foxwoods, in Ledyard, Conn., Saturday, Dec. 5, at 8 p.m. Tickets are on sale now; they're $75, $90 and $100.

And magician David Copperfield has added a fourth show to his "An Intimate Evening of Grand Illusion" engagement at the MGM Grand, Oct. 24 at noon, in addition to his previously scheduled performances on Oct. 23 at 8 p.m. and Oct. 24 at 4 and 8 p.m. Tickets are $30, $40, and $50 and are also on sale now.

The Low Anthem thought the Avon Cinema, on Thayer Street, in Providence, would be a great place to do a show, and on Thursday night they were right. The eerie lighting and raised stage in the darkened theater heightened the drama implicit in the Providence trio's delicate blend of folk and rock with gorgeous vocals.

Highlights included Jeff Prystowsky's upright bass solo on "Ticket Taker" and the combination of Ben Knox Miller's falsetto and Jocie Adams's ghostly bowed crotales on "Cage the Songbird." The band can toggle between a gorgeous stumble that barely, beautifully holds together, such as on "Senorita," and full-throated Tom Waits-style electric stomps such as "Cigarettes and Whiskey." As usual, the trio switched off among many different instruments (guitar, bass, drums, clarinet, crotales, pump organ, various horns, probably some others I've forgotten) to create a variety of effects.

And they closed with a site-specific performance of "Charlie Darwin" in which they gathered around one microphone with the lights off to sing the angelic harmonies while the recorded version played along with the premiere of the official video, directed by Simon Tast.

Low Anthem have been riding high since their signing to Nonesuch Records in the spring and the re-release of Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, and the homecoming show was sandwiched between a European tour and a West Coast swing.

On the way to a flight to Seattle on Friday afternoon, Prystowsky was still beaming from the show, particularly the unusual venue (which was Low Anthem's idea).

"I hope the Avon becomes a regular music venue." It took a lot of work to rig a sound and light system, he said, but, "it would be a great music venue for Providence. It's beautiful."

The band got the idea to do a show there when they frequented the Avon as Brown students. "It's gonna be a different experience seeing movies there now," Prystowsky said.

Providence-based Death Vessel (singer and guitarist Joel Thibodeau) preceded Low Anthem with a set of dreamy folk-based songs with a high keening voice and enough finger-picking skills to keep away from the mushy drear that the genre so frequently risks. (Brown Bird opened the show; apologies for missing them.)

Prystowsky added that the show was filmed for a possible DVD release.

More reviews: Projo Reviews blog

The dates for next year's Newport Folk Festival and CareFusion Newport Jazz Festival have been set, organizers said on Tuesday.

The folk festival will be held July 30-Aug. 1, the jazz festival Aug. 6-8. Each festival will begin with a nighttime concert at the International Tennis Hall of Fame on Friday night and two days of shows at Fort Adams State Park.

The organizers said Tuesday that they are in the preliminary stages of booking the acts for next year's festivals.