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CALEXICO

juliejerkoff ha!

www.myspace.com/foreversixteen
juliejerkoff ha! probably belongs on the Los Angeles or San Francisco links, but I'll probably never know. (Ooops! I do now. She's from Ohio, of all places.)

The elusive Internet star doesn't respond to my emails and there's a part of me that says good for her. Better that she stay mysterious. For those of you who don't know, juliejerkoff writes mean but catchy pop tunes, about girls who are too easy and don't clean their pores, and she performs these catchy ditties against a drum machine rhythm track and some minimalist synth beds. She is sort of a guilty pleasure. I had posted some deep insights into what juliejerkoff must mean in a media mad society, and what her music says about 21st century international citizens, but somehow it all got deleted when I fixed the broken link to her site, and I'm not as clever this time around. Go to her site and hear her tunes. She will titillate, fascinate, possibly infuriate, but I like her. She's smart and clever and vicious in a high school "Tina Fey" sort of way. She says she's only seventeen, which makes her a schoolgirl, but on the strength of her bile she may be an acid poll dancer. Or is the joke on us for even noticing? Judge for yourself, I've fixed the link, and I would encourage you to check out juliejerkoff ha!

RAR NOTE: julie jerkoff ha! - and I want a name just like that - doesn't make MP3s available from her myspace site but you can listen there. I would suggest "I Don't Give A" as the definitive track.

JULIANA HATFIELD

www.julianahatfield.com
Remember that line "you had me at hello?" I think it was dialogue from Jerry MacGuire that morphed into a Kenny Chesney country hit. Well, Juliana Hatfield had me at "My Sister," which I found to be a welcome palliative to the morose grunge of the rock of the early '90s. Then, upon further examination, I learned that the song about a sister she never had only touched the surface of what Juliana Hatfield is about.

The girl-voice could fool you - or convince you to love her - but there is a lot going on with Juliana. Now in her mid-30s, having survived the teen worship that attended her around the time her tune "Spin the Bottle" showed up in the movie Reality Bites, she is a powerful blend of intelligence and experience. By turns insightful, brittle, sarcastic and pained, she writes songs that are ripped from an inner experience. Candid, revealing, to me she is the very voice of girl alt-rock, but she is also far more than. She is a real musician who explores the instruments she plays (guitar, bass, keyboards) and uses unconventional means (odd tunings, innovative playing techniques) to get her layered sound, which is typically coming from a relatively small unit. And she is a skilled harmonist, which is obvious in most every one of her tunes. She beds her soft, sweet voice in clearly conceived harmonies that build to powerful swells.

Juliana came into national prominence along with a wave of girl acts, including Liz Phair and P.J. Harvey. She shows up here on the Links through the work she did at Mark Hallman's Congress House studio.

ABOVE: Exile in the Church of Juliana

Photo: Danny Clinch

Photo: Dylan Long

Photo: Tom Dubé

Juliana Hatfield MP3s:  

THE FLAMING LIPS

www.flaminglips.com

THE Flaming Lips formed in 1983, coming together rather quickly. Bandleader Wayne Coyne recalls the early efforts. After leaving his $60 a week fish-frying job at Long John Silver's, bandleader Wayne Coyne bought a Les Paul and formed a band. "I learned to play fairly well within a couple of weeks, and everyone thought I was going to be the next Hendrix or something. I never really got much better than I was after those first two weeks..." The Okies started gigging, inexplicably, in a black R&B bar and playing what they thought of as "death rock" before moving on to a transvestite club in Oklahoma City, called the Blue Note. They started veering more toward punk and opening for Husker Du, Black Flag and the Minutemen and began developing an entertaining and energetic stage show that involved a lot of jumping around, lying down to play, and generally knocking things over, then eventually morphed into a costumed act. They remain one of the most outlandish acts in rock.

jaggedy ann

www.myspace.com/jaggedyann

jaggedy ann is an all girl rock band from Las Vegas who scored an L.A. Rock City News nomination in the girl band category. They are a hard rock band of the kind you hear on the west coast - loud, full, tight, pro. They sound a little like Heart to me.

All four of the Anns come from hard rock backgrounds, and their debut LP was produced by AC/DC drummer Phil Rudd and recorded in New Zealand. They have toured the Asia Pacific rather extensively, playing throughout New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and the Philippines. 

From their website - "The band consist of Gayla Dawn, with her sensual hard rockin' voice, Leona Sharpe on guitar, with her ripping leads and riffs, Miss Claudia on bass guitar with her characteristic yet unique in the pocket style, and Holly on the drums with her solid timing and versatile charisma."

I bet that "versatile charisma" is a sight to see.

Jaggedy Ann MP3s can be heard from their myspace site.

Jaggedy Ann released Boiling Point in 2006, produced by AC/DC drummer Phil Rudd. The tracks sound alternatively like Heart and a Scooby-Doo soundtrack, neither a bad place to be.

SWIG

www.myspace.com/swigrecordings

SWIG received a nomination in the 2006 Rock City News Awards in L.A. in the Outstanding New Band category, and for good reason. These guys, really just vocalist Dave Bierman and Glenn Scanlan, who plays guitar, bass and drums, write and perform some catchy rock that has growl, bite and a current punk rock sound. They sound a little like the Clash, I think, as well. I like these guys a lot, don't know much about them. Go to their myspace and listen to their MP3s, which are really cool.

SWIG has MP3s available for download from its myspace site.

Jim Mason

www.jimmasonproductions.com/home.htm
Jim Mason was signed to Columbia Records by the legendary John Hammond¹ in 1965. He was an Iowa boy who went to high school and college in Michigan, moved to Chicago to pursue music, and has been pulsing away at its vibratory center ever since.

Though he emerged A.B. -- "After Beatles" -- Jim came out of the folk tradition. He holds wordsmiths and story tellers in high regard, and he favors stories of common people. I have heard him talk about his reverence for The Band in that light. Jim winded his way through New York City on his way to San Francisco and then Los Angeles, where he experienced a near-star experience. In 1967 he was in a folk-rock unit, founded in NYC and based in L.A., called Wings -- no, I'm not kidding -- that seemed on the verge of breaking big. The Spanky and Our Gang site at http://www.spankyandourgang.com/ozbach/wings.html has a section devoted to Wings and is worth checking out. According to Jim, Wings was playing a club in L.A. one night when Paul McCartney and John Lennon arrived for a listen. Somehow Jim's band didn't quite reach their apparent potential, but "Wings" took flight anyway, pardon the pun. Not to be denied, Jim co-authored with Paul Stookey and somebody Dixon "I Dig Rock'n Roll Music," a Top 10 hit for Peter, Paul & Mary that enrolled him in the annals of folk-rock. That song was on PP&M's Album 1700 LP, produced by Albert B. Grossman and Milton Okum, and I've always thought it was nicely done. Listening to that track -- which, oddly to my mind, some reviewers characterized as a satire on The Mamas and the Papas -- I feel like if you freeze-dried Jim Mason, spooned him into piping hot water, and poured the mixture into the radio you would get "I Dig Rock'n Roll Music." He is in that rhythmic acoustic guitar sound, that is really folk, and you hear it in the MP3s below, as varying in style as they are.

Jim's work with harmonizing folkies drew the attention of the country-rockers of the '70s, and in 1972 Jim came to Boulder to produce Poco. He stayed to produce  Firefall, Chris Hillman and a range of other acts as diverse as Michael Woody and the Too High Band and jazz vocal group Rare Silk. Jim's choral arrangement experience seems to have been good training ground for writing horn arrangements, which is among his many strengths as a producer. He has written smoking horn arrangements for Chris Daniels and Dusty Drapes and the Dusters, among others.

¹ You can read a good bio of Hammond at the American Masters site at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/hammond_j.html . Hammond discovered all sorts of legendary artists, from Robert Johnson to Bob Dylan. It's a ridiculous resume that makes me wonder what it means to "discover" a talent. How hard were Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith,  Aretha Franklin, Pete Seeger, and Bruce Springsteen to find?

ABOVE: Gary Swan, pictured on the right behind the keyboard, and being worn by a suit from the Mad Hatter collection, provided this photograph (from around 1981?) of Jim Mason and the Exceptions playing the Boulder Theatre. As Gary identifies them, that's Jim "Let Me Play You A Tape" Mason on the left - he of the Gerry Marsden School of I've Got My Guitar Too Damned High - and Michael "Never E-Mailed Me Back" Reese, who had apparently just thrown a rock at a member of the audience. (It was a rock show.) It is impossible to imagine what had gone wrong with Gary's hair at this point in his career.

ABOVE: I have always loved this photograph of young producer Jim Mason conferring with Eagle Timothy B. Schmidt while working on a Cate Brothers album at Davlen Studio, in Los Angeles, in 1977. Looks like a still from a movie, doesn't it? They both seem so serious and earnest, like there is real drama in the works.

LEFT: Wings, including a properly "tuded" Jim Mason (far right on the album cover) had a song titled "General Bringdown" that cracked the Top 100 on radio play charts.

There again, vintage Jim.

JIM MASON MP3s:  

All American High - political "bushwacking"

Stealin' Horses - great country-rock

Sorry, Scott - Jim sings this song beautifully, always has. Great example of a singer connecting with a song.

Copyright © 2007 Jim Mason, All Rights Reserved 

The MP3s provided here are from Jim Mason's A Face In The Crowd CD. 

CALEXICO

www.casadecalexico.com

Tucson, Arizona-based CALEXICO has been together since 1996. The band is influenced by sources as diverse as Portugese fado, 50's jazz, gypsy or romani music and its offshoots, 60's surf and twang from Link Wray to country's Duane Eddy, the spaghetti western epics of Ennio Morricone and dark indie rock singer songwriters like Smog, Richard Buckner, Will Oldham and Vic Chesnutt. I had to include Calexico because they have a fresh version out of one of my all-time favorite songs, Love's "Alone Again."

www.joelala.com
joe lala was a name I used to hear all the time from the Boulder guys I knew, because they all liked and admired him. He was always involved in something interesting, a music, television, movie or theater project. There was always a lot of energy swirling around him, and had been from early in the evolution of rock.

Joe helped put together Blues Image in his native Tampa, Florida before moving on out west where among his compatriots was Buddy Zoloth, who managed the band for a time. Blues Image had a big hit in 1970 with "Ride, Captain, Ride." Joe was the percussionist and lead singer on their song “Leaving My Troubles Behind.” 

Around 1972, when Stephen Stills brought Manassas into existence in the Boulder area, Joe Lala moved to Colorado for a time to be a part of that project. Following the two-album career of Manassas, Joe worked with a string of top bands, including The Eagles, The Bee Gees, Jackson Browne, Diana Ross, Dionne Warwick, Barbara Streisand, John Couger Mellenkamp, Eric Clapton, Dr John, and Herbie Hancock, among others.

"Joe accumulated 32 Gold records, and 28 Platinum records during his music career. He played on the movie soundtracks of “Saturday Night Fever”, “Staying Alive”, “D.C. Cab”, “Streets of Fire”. “All The Right Moves”, “Breathless”, “Defiance”, “The Lonely Guy”, and “Airplane”.

"A severe case of carpal tunnel syndrome ended Joe’s career as a percussionist, but it opened the door to another way of life, acting. I know you have seen him in may projects. His films include "Active Stealth", “Sugar Hill”, “On Deadly Ground”, “Deep Sleep”, “Havana” with Robert Redford, “Out For Justice”, “Marked For Death” “Eyewitness To Murder” and “Born In East L. A.” plus many more.

"Joe has made many appearances on TV shows like “Miami Vice”, “General Hospital”, “Melrose Place”, “Seinfeld”, ”Hunter”, “Who’s The Boss?”, and starred in a summer replacement show named “Knight & Daye”. He portrayed another famous Ybor Citizen Dr. Ferdie Pacheco in “Ali”, and co-starred with Andy Garcia in “For Love Or Country” The Arturo Sandoval Story.

"Joe can be seen and heard doing movies and commercials all over the country, and on cartoons where he voices many characters. He still keeps his barbers license active, “just in case”." - from his website

________________

Joe has recently completed recording of an album, which includes session work by Stephen Stills and Richie Furay, who were once together in the legendary band Buffalo Springfield.

MUSICIAN:
Recording with Crosby, Stills and Nash. 

ACTOR:

ABOVE:  In  Miami Vice (right).

FROM LEFT: City of Angels, Joe Lala and Gil Machin, 

on stage with Karen Fineman, Joe Lala

http://phillipraulsphotolog.blogspot.com/

Former Atlantic A&R guy Phillip Rauls has a trunk load of photographs from his days in the record business. The now-Washington State resident has launched a site where he reminisces about his experiences with some of the most well-known talent of the 20th Century and he makes use of his ample photo album. The site is well worth checking out.

FROM RAULS' COLLECTION: Chris Hillman, Joe Lala, Stephen Stills during the 1972 Manassas tour

www.davidmuse.com

Back when Firefall was in its glory in the 1970s, the band had two powerhouse players who gave the sound of the band a quality that set it apart from the crowded country-rock field: flash guitarist Jock Bartley, who remains the band’s leader to this day, and multi-instrumentalist David Muse. Georgia-native David was a high school-aged band mate of Rick Roberts, who a decade later would become the songwriting force behind Boulder-based Firefall. It was Roberts who brought David Muse into the band and David’s contributions of depth and texture elevated the unit to an elite musical level that put them on a par with Kenny Loggins and other of their more sophisticated contemporaries.

When the original Firefall disbanded in 1981, David left Colorado for California and became an early contributor to the New Age revolution as defined by such independent labels as Windham Hill, Hearts of Space, and Narada, which were then kitchen table operations. David recorded Tonal Alchemy - “space music” as David calls it. It was a logical extension of the musical therapy he had perceived in early influences of the competitive 19^th century modernist French composers Achille-Claude Debussy and Erik Satie. These two were fathers to the New Age sound, though for different reasons. Debussy was a structural designer, working in the Phrygian mode and using whole-tone scales to create lighter than air ambient backgrounds. Satie, who wasn’t even comfortable calling himself a musician, though he was a cabaret pianist, was initially a deconstructionist radical, inclined toward the documentation of “sounds,” though in his later works he became a structured contrapuntalist while remaining decidedly a-formal. All of this seemed to speak to the horizon-gazing David Muse, who saw in New Age

What David has over both of his New Age mentors is great ranging musicianship, and in 1983 he started touring heavily with the decidedly earthy Marshall Tucker Band (MTB), which he has continued to work with off and on ever since, even counting a brief return to Firefall around the turn of the millennium. He still speaks highly of Firefall and considers it his first home, MTB his second. As if not already busy enough, David runs his own unit, The David Muse Band, a five-piece Firefall tribute band that performs the Firefall songbook in clubs throughout the southeastern U.S. He is also headed into the studio in the next few months to record his first smooth jazz CD.

David Muse has performed with the Marshall Tucker Band since 1983

http://littlejoeblues.com/index.htm
This is a wonderful website. Rob McLerran was a prominent bassist on the Boulder scene, and all the musicians in Boulder knew his kids Joey and Jesse. Joey was a music, and particular a blues, prodigy and as kids he and Jesse were a popular Pearl Street Mall act. Jesse played the washboard, which he picked up from his brother's Godfather Washboard Chaz Leary. 

The McLerran family left Boulder for Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1998 and after that there transpired a series of events, mournful and tragic and victorious. I would encourage everyone to go to this website and read the beautifully written and touching biography there. This is a great family and Little Joe is the real deal as a roots blues player. His dad is the real deal, too. Always has been.

Writes Robbie Mack: "We are planning a brief tour of the Boulder area in late October.  We hope to see you then.  Speaking of the Audience Magazine, one of my favorite pieces of memorabilia is an Audience cover with Rob, Paula Rangell and Washboard Chaz walking up Spruce Street by the Boulderado. Those were the days.  There are a million stories to tell of those days.  I am still in touch with Chaz, Paula, Spencer Bohren, Rich Fifield and many others."

Little Joe has several CDs available and if you are a fan of Piedmont blues you should have these wonderful releases.

In January, Little Joe and Robby Mack played the 2006 International Blues Challenge in Memphis, Tennessee

From "Little Joe, Son Piedmont - The Hard Way,": Featuring Little Joe "Son Piedmont" McLerran, guitar and vocals; Ray Bonneville, harmonica; Lloyd Price, dobro and guitar; Robbie Mack, bass and background vocals; David McKnight, drums. Recorded 2005 at Cat House Studios, Fayetteville, Arkansas by David McKnight

No Matter How She Done It

Sailor Blues

From "Son Piedmont and the Blues Krewe": Featuring Little Joe "Son Piedmont" McLerran, guitar and vocals; Washboard Jesse McLerran, percussion and vocals; Robbie Mack, bass and background vocals; Dexter Payne, sax, clarinet & harmonica; Big Mike T. Travelletti, harmonica. Recorded 2003 at World Wind Studios Manfred, Oklahoma by Arron Poulson.

Eagle Ridin' Papa

Suburban Housewife

Terraplane Blues

Copyright © Little Joe Blues/Son Piedmont. All Rights Reserved.

Robbie Mack, Little Joe's bass-playing father, who was prominent on the Colorado music scene when I was around in the late '70s and early '80s, noted recently that he and I had been leading parallel lives, at least up to a point. Writes Robbie - "One is that my father was stationed at Scott AFB just about the time you were born." I was born on Scott Air Force Base, right outside of East St. Louis in Belleville, Illinois in 1952.  "I (Robbie) spent the 2nd grade in Belleville, IL just across the river from St. Louis. My dad was in the Air National Guard and was called up during the Korean War for stateside service and a Staff Sgt also." My dad was a Staff Sergeant in Air Force, stationed at Scott AFB, and was a radio instructor. "He (Rob's Dad) too was doing something with radio or radar. Two, I married a gal 26 years ago who was from Traer, Kansas about 5 miles from Atwood." I graduated from high school in Atwood, Kansas.  "She is the mother of my children including Little Joe." Little Joe and Robbie Mack were in Memphis earlier this month making a repeat appearance in the International Blues Challenge.  We won the regional competition held in Tulsa this year.  Last year we went to Memphis representing the Oklahoma Blues Society out of Oklahoma City." Voting for the Awards continues on through February, but I'll listen for and announce the results. I'm sure Son Piedmont did well. There is a great website for the Blues Foundation and that event at http://www.blues.org/ibc/. This festival hosts top headlining acts, as well as the competition that takes place among artists sponsored by Blues Foundation affiliates. San Francisco's Tommy Castro has been among the big time acts featured at the festival.

Joey DeLauro (aka Joe Nelly)

www.smokingsectionband.com/about.html

Joey DeLauro is a great performer/drummer/singer whose band The Smoking Section is established in Tucson, Arizona. He has toured with Michael Martin Murphey ("Wildfire"), Jerry Jeff Walker ("Mr. Bojangles"), David Bromberg (renowned guitarist and session player for Bob Dylan), Chris Daniels and The Kings with Al Kooper (founder of Blood, Sweat & Tears), among others. 

CATSEYE: Joey DeLauro was among the original members of the Boulder, Colorado-based band Catseye. The Catseye story is common in a lot of respects - a band comes close to getting a record deal but gets disappointed - but is made different by the situation of the music community in which the band came together. It's an interesting story and you can read Joey's remarks at Catseye on the Archives page.

Elizabeth Kay

www.pytheaproductions.com
The daughter of two writers (one a long-time professor of literature at the University of South Florida), Elizabeth Kay was raised in an intellectual environment that promoted discernment and a "distanced" perspective on things. (I can say this with authority because I knew her parents and have known Liz since she was a kid.) It shows in her work, which has ranged from paint to lithography to pencil drawings. She seems focused on the inner lives of her subjects, their yearnings and desires, actual motivations. You don't think this way without some early exposure to Socratic dialogue that pushes back and demands strategic views. Most people's songs, for instance, are about their own feelings. Liz, in her art, is more inclined to explore "the other," and she typically does it with humor and whimsy.

Elizabeth wrote a book a few years back that explored the folk traditions of Native American and Spanish Colonial settlers of the Chimayo, New Mexco area. Her paintings, which she does on commission and as part of a folk art series, turn those traditions in on themselves to humorous effect as she mirrors the humanity of her subjects, who in some cases are her clients. Her work is by turns subtle and ornery and funny. It has been showcased at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of
American History and cards of her paintings have been distributed throughout the U.S.

Liz's other passion in life is music. There she tends toward ancient folk and languorous ballads, again the vista being space. That said, she and I used to do a mean version of Delaney and Bonnie's "Never Ending Love For You," so she's not beyond rowdy drinking songs. She plays guitar and piano and writes songs, but she's not typically confessional, more inclined toward arcane folk of another time. She, by the way, is a trained martial artist who has kicked my ass on numerous occasions. 

The Very Good Book Fairy

Our Lady of the Not So Barren Tree

Elizabeth Kay (captured on film by John Boland) at the Andrew Smith Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico

East Virginia - Accompanied on bass and guitar by RAR

The Poplars - Consider it a literary mashup of tragic poet William Cowper (1731-1800) and '60s icon Donovan 

Copyright © Elizabeth Kay. All Rights Reserved.

Santo Pinhole

Santa Rita Casita

Our Lady of

SON VOLT

www.sonvolt.net

After solo efforts and some experimentation with tape loops and odd time signatures, former Uncle Tupelo founder Jay Farrar has reformed his popular group Son Volt and returned to some electric guitar basics.

NPR is offering an MP3 download of a live performance of Son Volt, which is worth getting. Go to http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4961968

GUSTER

www.guster.com

These old Tufts University frat boys are Boston-based, but popular in the Bay Area where people appreciate their experimentations. They change the instrumentation on their songs from set to set, use odd tunings including standard six string guitars tuned down to approximate a bass, and the drummer plays even the cymbals with his hands. GUSTER is nutty as a fruitcake, often likened material-wise to Jack Black's Tenacious "D" and they are bright fun. They are politically engaged this election season, driving around this spring on their Campus Consciousness tour in bio-diesel fueled caravans. They are environmental advocates. 

Guster bandmember Adam Gardner has teamed with Dave Scneider of the Zambonis to form a decidedly Hebrew rock band called The LeeVees. They have a CD out titled Hanukkah Rocks.

sarah kelly

http://sarahkelly.com

Christian blues rocker sarah kelly was recently nominated for a Grammy in the Best Rock Or Rap Gospel Album category for her LP Where the Past Meets Today. She was also nominated for a Rocky in the recent Rock City News Awards in L.A. She is sort of undeniable as a pro songwriter, and she is a strong singer, something of a belter. (Christianity Today says she has a "Joplin-meets-Alanis Morissette growl," which strike me as revealing references. Aren't those guys going to get in trouble for listening to those girls?)

Sarah Kelly arrived on the Christian music scene with a Grammy nomination for her first LP Take Me Away, so she has gone right to the top of a niche market. Make no mistake, though, she's a rocker. As is often the case, her blend of faith and gravel has been achieved through some pretty grizzly experience, beyond even those typical of a traveling musician. Again from Christianity Today - "... behind her smile and 
platform of hope in Christ was an abusive past, including a rape, that she hadn't yet dealt with—until recently."

You can read  an interview with Sarah by going to http://www.christianitytoday.com/music/artists/sarahkelly.html. 

Sarah Kelly MP3s can be heard at her myspace site at http://myspace.com/sarahkelly

Kenny WeisSberg

http://members.aol.com/mwb98/MWB/Kennybio.htm
Kenny WeisSberg got in touch recently to report that he is no longer with Humphrey’s Concerts by the Bay, a San Diego, California outdoor amphitheater that he played a big part in building into a desirable SoCal performance venue. He had been Producer/Talent Buyer at Humphrey's for 23 years, during which time he presented over 2,000 acts, including such big names as Miles Davis, Ringo Starr, Aretha Franklin, Alison Krauss & Union Station, George Carlin, Roy Orbison, Leonard Cohen, Norah Jones, Fats Domino, Dana Carvey, Vince Gill, Lyle Lovett, James Brown and The Buena Vista Social Club.  Kenny has said that he "left the building" in October to pursue other creative projects. Here are links for additional information on Kenny's San Diego experience:  

http://www.sandiegotroubadour.com/content/features/fullcircle
/index.aspx?bi=aug_2006

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/features/20060621-9999-
1c21humph.html

http://www.sandiegomag.com/issues/october06/profile1006.asp

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060702/news_1a02
artslets.html

Among his current passions are his weekly radio show "Music Without Boundaries" (Saturdays 7-9 a.m. PST on San Diego's 100,000 watt powerhouse 91X which streams at www.91x.com) and a return to his Boulder roots as writer/musician.  A book of his humorous ramblings will be published in the summer of 2007. 

Kenny and his wife of 34 years, artist Helen Redman  (www.birthingthecrone.com), whose name I apologize for misspelling in an earlier gaffe, lived in Boulder, Colorado from 1971 to 1983. He was a multi-media guy, working in radio (KRNW, KBCO, and co-founding the public station KGNU) and print journalism (Boulder Daily Camera, Rocky Mountain Magazine, Denver Post, Creem, etc).

Kenny Weissberg, in a picture from his Music Without Boundaries website

Kenny was a knowledgeable music reporter who had rubbed shoulders with a lot of big names in music, and in 1980 he took the stage himself, fronting Kenny & The Kritix. I was there for his first show, which was highly entertaining and got off to a theatrical start with Kenny appearing on stage in a wheel chair because, you know, he was at an advanced age (early 30s?) to be launching a rock career, and not particularly well. Well, I think what was intended as a one-off lark as an ersatz rocker was so much fun that he just kept doing it. You can see the sidebar below of all the "local" players who worked with him. Everybody liked Kenny and the community supported him well. He had, after all, done a lot for the community.

Kenny wrote recently - "I still love Boulder, visit at least once a year and we're looking to live there for a good part of the year now that I have moved on from my full time work at Humphrey's."  "I've been in San Diego for 23 years, but I still consider myself a Boulderite at heart." 

Interesting Sidenote: Kenny, on his return trips to the Rockies, takes guitar lessons from Jock Bartley, Chip McCarthy and Richie Furay.

I had wondered aloud, in some earlier edition, about whom all had participated in Kenny's band The Kritix. Our friend Otis contacted me with the information requested, to wit: "He fronted Kenny & The Kritix which featured a revolving cast of characters...including Mark Andes, Sam Broussard, Chip McCarthy, David Muse, Michael Reese, Brian Brown, the late Jamie Kibben, Greg Overton, Jeffrey Wood, Hawk Hawkins, Peter Roos, Dr. Roc, Jamie Polisher, Milt Muth, Jim Waddell, Craig Skinner and Tim Duffy.  The Kritix packed The Blue Note and The Boulder Theatre from '80-'83." (Surely Otis over-reported that last part; there weren't that many musicians in the band, plus they had to have gone home at some point.) Those names that are highlighted are links to profiles of former "Kritix" offered on the current edition. Other of those names pop up time and again on this site.

Vandaveer

www.vandaveer.net
VANDAVEER is the alter-ego of singer/songwriter Mark Charles Heidinger, who is a RARWRITER.com "Featured Artist" this edition.

For Vandaveer, who seems stylistically in debt to actor Jonathan Pryce's stylized persona of Mr. Dark in the 1983 movie adaptation of Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, Mark puts aside his alt-rock in favor of a more acoustic-oriented folk sound. Vandaveer has some things in common with '70s-era minimalist Leon Redbone. Where Redbone, however, was all camp with character renditions of early 20th Century Americana, Vandaveer spins grim carnival tales of murdered women and random, suicidal violence, mixed with early Dylan sounding acoustic ruminations.

Vandaveer MP3s can be heard from his MySpace site at www.myspace.com/vandaveer  

Vandaveer's debut album Grace & Speed was released in March (2007) on Washington, DC’s new imprint, Gypsy Eyes Records.

©Rick Alan Rice (RAR), April, 2008