Gotham City Soul

Gotta write fast because I’m traveling to Savannah tomorrow, just enough time to tell you about the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Okay, so the name could be a bit minstrel-showish if you go there, but I ain’t goin’ there. The CCDs are reviving the black string band from back in the day, fiddles, banjos an all, and just listening to a couple of tunes has got me excited. If you like old timey type music, hit their site at myspace to listen to some samples ("Viper Mad" is already something I’m loving). For the full story, including how the banjo came from Africa, and how black people used to play stuff that sounds like something from the soundtrack to Deliverance, or O Brother Where Art Thou? read "Banjos, Kazoos, and Spoons, Oh My” at MSNBC.com. You can also get deeper African banjo history here . And there’s always video For Gothamites and surrounding tri-state denizens, the Chocolate Drops will be in New York, New York at Symphony Space on November 7. ...

This is a reposting from several years ago, hence the myspace references. Since then I have seen her in concert at the Bowery Ballroom, with Naomi Shelton & the Gospel Queens opening—they were both pure dynamite I promised you art last week, a big promise to make, and delivered three out of five days. So I have two to make up, and I will. But I had to take a break to talk about a soul sister. I first heard of Sharon Jones when I was listening to my eagerly-awaited Oxford American ’s annual music cd, which comes with their annual Southern music issue. The song on the cd was "How Long Do I Have to Wait for You?" and it was far and away the best cut on the cd. This was in 2006. I can’t remember why the editor-in-chief Marc Smirnoff and his colleagues included her, except that she was born in Augusta, Georgia, which technically make her a southerner. She moved to New York City, I’m presuming with her family, at an early age, so that makes her a New Yorker. At any rate, ...

Last Saturday I got to catch my friend Jon E. Edwards perform at Joe's Pub. It was pretty sublime. He is a consummate entertainer, his baritone voice in great form, not a move out of place or unnecessary, his energy that of a man who has lived in this world for a while and picked up all of its hidden rhythms. He's been performing since the early Eighties, first with the Uptown Atomics, then with his own bicoastal band, the Internationals—and knows how to dole out in just the right dose his particular brand of music—music created in the fulcrum of punk rock and soul There's a documentary about him called "Jon E. Edwards Is In Love." And he truly must be in love, with making music, and in many ways, life in general, even as challenging and unyielding as life can be. I don't think I'd ever be able to create anything while taking care of an ailing mother, while at the same time working my tail off to pay the bills. Yet he does create. More importantly he belie...