Music

An often overlooked ravage of age is the diminished capacity to attend late night musical events, especially those beginning past midnight. I can still pull it off, but usually pay for it with an episode of the yips the following morning, along with an inexplicable craving for Pepperidge Farm Goldfish and orange blossom tea. It's weird, frankly, and tends to creep out friends and family. I was delighted, therefore, to learn that the John Turck Trio was playing a happy hour show at Woodlands Tavern Thursday night. A chance to see one of Columbus' best bands play for free in a venue that takes sound quality seriously is too good to pass up, especially with $2 drafts available. I headed over directly after work. In a town of musical copycatting, the JT3 is singular -- they don't sound like anybody. An attempt to describe their music with adjectives invites disaster. The best I could come up with is “cosmic piano ballads,” which sounds like Billy Joel lurking in the back of a planetarium, waiting to spring “Uptown Girl” on a class of unsuspecting fifth graders. I retreat, therefore, to a more functional description.

As we come to the close of Black History Month, may we add a special one-time Lifetime Cosmic Eternity award for Greatest Electric Psychedelic Black Man with Cherokee Blood, namely Mr. Sir Jimi Hendrix? Inarguably Jimi's blackest album in the traditional Afro-American music stylings would be Band of Gypsies, with Jimi's super-soul power drummer Buddy Miles and Jimi's old army buddy on bass, the very supple and dependable Billy Cox. It was Jimi's psychedelic blues-funk-soul with the particularly tremendous song, “Message of Love,” carrying a gospel-like under-groove as well as message of positivity. What his recent collection, Valleys of Neptune, made clear was Hendrix was indisputably the greatest funk guitarist who ever lived. The compilation of late period-Hendrix--mostly funk-meets-soul with his outer limits blues playing--is entirely of studio material and sound great. Band of Gypsies is Jimi playing similar material live and on fire, it was a special New Year's Eve/New Year's Day quartet of performances and the dvd of it is utterly, unbelievably, unfathomably amazing.

Finding the perfect gift for your daughter’s 15th birthday can be astress-inducing experience for some, but for Scott Waugh the decisionwas a no-brainer. He bought studio time for his musically inclined daughter, Heather, so that he could listen to her songs in the car. Ten years and three albums later the adage, father knows best, has never seemed more appropriate The result of Heather’s inaugural studio sessions was an independent Album release called “Impatient Heart.” Two songs from the album were licensed by MTV’s Laguna Beach and Noggin's South of Nowhere and before long Heather’s dad wasn’t the only one listening to her music in the car. Since then, Heather Evans has performed throughout the Mid-west, appeared alongside national artists such as Jennifer Knapp, Sixpence None the Richer, Andrew Belle and more and has written more than 150 songs.

73 percent of Columbus bands are now self-describing their music as “€œAmericana,”€ a term meaning something which is not Death Metal and not Rap, and which probably (but not certainly) involves an amplified acoustic instrument. Itâ€'s vaguely countryish or folkish, or something. The dominant emergence of an entirely fictional genre is a threat both to the credibility of local musicians and to the already miserly interest in live music of the public. At some point, we as musicians have a duty to give our listeners a heads up as to what they are getting themselves into when they give us an evening of their life.

One of the saddest sights I have ever seen I saw last Friday night at the Newport. My first-ever guitar hero (after Hendrix), Johnny Winter--my beloved, electrifying, hard blues-rocking, beautiful white flaxen-haired, legally blind Texas albino--took the stage stooped over like a hunchback without his hump, 70 years old but looking 90. I almost cried. I had no idea, none. Johnny! How could you? How could you let the vagaries, vicissitudes and viciousness of life age you into infirmary? You were supposed to be forever young. You rocked on your hugely successful Live Johnny Winter And tour, blowing my psychedelicized teen-aged mind at Public Hall in Cleveland, taking the blues and putting the balls of rock 'n' roll to 'em like only the Stones have ever done--and vice versa, putting the oily blue notes of his piercing metal slide into his rock 'n' roll. Johnny's shit smoked. Plus I was 16 and on my first acid trip. How cool is that? Not only was I there but I can remember. Johnny's super-long dazzling white hair was the center of the universe as he and the ridiculously hot Rick Derringer almost matched him one note for Johnny's several (he played fast).

Renee Dion and Jon Rogers are celebrating the release of their Fender Rhodes laden, textured and beautiful down-tempo R & B album “Moonlight” on Saturday February 22nd at Brother's Drake Meadery. “Moonlight” is destined to be one of the better Columbus releases of the year, so I was delighted to speak to Renee Dion last weekend. The release party for “Moonlight” is a milestone in Dion's artistic life which started off with her singing on her organist grandmother's lap at church when she was a little girl. However, the Brotherâ's Drake show will not be as nerve-wracking as Dion's May 5th, 2012 performance of the National Anthem for President Barack Obama at a Columbus rally. Dion recalled the historical performance, “I've been thrown in so many situations vocally, where I just had to rise to the occasion. That was the most crazy thing I probably have ever done. There is no music.

You have probably seen her. Jazzmary has opened every mall in the central Ohio area in the last thirty-five years, and has performed her unique piano jazz and vocals in countless venues and festivals. You have probably heard her. Jazzmary has been on Youtube, Facebook and Twitter for over two decades, and you have probably checked her website: www.jazzmary.com. Jazzmary has performed at every type of event from intimate house parties on grand pianos, to opening of famous restaurants and fund-raisers, such as Romancing the Grape for Easter Seals. Jazzmary plays fresh and lively entertainment music with a touch of jazz. After graduating from Wittenberg University, Jazzmary has run the choral and music programs at Columbus Public Schools, at Mifflin High School -- which produced a hit record the "M.E. Experience", and at Fort Hayes School of the Performing Arts. She taught world famous bassists from Columbus: Foley, who toured with Miles Davis, and Jay Demarcus of Rascal Flatts. Also, she founded and led a band of nine women in the 1990's called MOXIE, which toured and played extensively in the central Ohio market.

Take Five with Jazzmary Daniels I saw 63 year-old Tommy Smith play at Dick’s Den a couple weeks ago. His drumming matched what he told me on the phone Sunday: “I’m a Bebop drummer. That’s where I come from.”  Tommy Smith comes from the South side of Columbus originally and has been a lot of places. In the 1950’s, he started playing with his grandfather in the Elk’s Lodge Marching Band, and fell in love with jazz after going to shows with an uncle at the Palace Theatre downtown.    During the 60’s, the teen Tommy was living on the West side, attending Central High School and becoming part of small city-wide jazz community.    “In high school, in Columbus, there were a bunch of us,” Smith said. “Not a bunch…I would say we were the young lions. And we were all into Jazz.”    Tommy and his friends would go to Columbus jazz spaces such as The Regal on Long Street, The Copa on Mt. Vernon, The Cadillac Club, the Starline and the 502 on St. Clair.    At the 502 they would watch greats such as Miles Davis and Horace Silver during Sunday matinee shows.    Tommy recalled the dream.    “I walked all the way from the West side.

There is a book in the Grandview Heights Public Library I check out once a year and struggle with. It's about 70 years old. Its cover is unlike any I've seen, except those of some Bibles: very softly worn and gently creased burgundy leather, suggesting age, wisdom, timelessness, strangeness.   It's a collection of poetry and plays by the late great Spaniard, Federico Garcia Lorca, a member of the Genereration of '27, a group of writers between 1923 and 1927 who explored the Spanish avant-garde of letters. I struggle with it because it is entirely in Spanish and is often abstract, as only they can be.   Picasso is easier. But the book is precious.   As I struggled to understand the magnificent mysteries of the Pixies and their main man, Black Francis, Friday night at the LC, I couldn't relate their impenetrable sound to any other way of expression from which they tellingly may have sprang. Looking at his bald-domed inscrutable aura, listening to his utterly weird lyrics, his guitarist's overlay of noisy psychedelia, only one thing made sense of it all: the Spanish key to his mental highway--that beautiful, ancient book.