Tampa Calling

Grab the Creative Loafing that hits newsstands this afternoon (or tomorrow, depending on where you live) and check out my Ani DiFranco cover story (or just click here). A women’s studies majoring girlfriend of mine in college played me DiFranco’s Little Plastic Castle and I was hooked. Seeing the dynamic folk-punk singer perform live left me awed on all three occasions. One of the finest songwriters of her generation and an artist I have total respect for as an activist and fiercely independent businesswoman, DiFranco had been on my must-interview list ever since I started as a music critic. On the phone, she was quite adorable talking about her boyfriend, their 13-month-old daughter Petah and finding happiness.

Here’s an excerpt from the Q&A portion of my DiFranco piece:

Me: A recent concert review noted that you said from stage something along the lines of “My new thing is ‘happy.’” Is this a direct result of having a daughter?

DiFranco: My daughter has contributed, but her father before that is really what it’s about. He changed my life. When we first hooked up three years ago, I was much more melancholy. I got to a place in life where it was the rock-star syndrome: Everyone wants you when you’re on stage and then you walk off to a lonely life of catastrophic isolation. I went into the typical spiral. Immediately when we hooked up, Mike noticed. [DiFranco then mimics the voice of a man.] “You’re listening to too much bummer music, dude.”

Ani DiFranco w/Over the Rhine
7:30 p.m., Tues., March 11, Tampa Theatre, Tampa, $35.

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Musician, promoter, local music supporter, real estate entrepreneur and overall kind soul Ted Freed passed away last night after losing his third bout with lymphoma. He was 51. 

Ted was always looking for the next new band – new local bands to manage, new national bands to bring to town – and he provided great managerial and promotional support to the bands he already represented. In fact, I met Ted back in May of ’05 when I was writing a story about his Clearwater-based music promotions company, Rising Jupiter, and Uphonia, the festival he was pretty much funding all on his own. We became fast friends after that, finding common ground in our mutual love of music and the desire to spread it ‘round.  

He conquered cancer twice and was good-humored throughout, confident that his positive attitude would help his health as much as the chemo treatments he was receiving at Moffit Cancer Center. Last November, Ted discovered that the cancer had returned in full force. In order to prepare for a stem cell transplant, Ted underwent an aggressive series of chemo treatments. Unfortunately, the tumors that riddled his body didn’t shrink enough and he was too weak to endure a transplant, anyway. He was brought home and spent the majority of his last few weeks visiting with family and friends.

I’m sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye, but I keep telling myself that he would’ve wanted me to remember him as I last saw him, smiling and happy and enjoying good vibrations at Skipper’s Smokehouse. 

He is survived by his wife Laura and his sons, Jared and Alec. 

The funeral will be held graveside this Friday, March 7, at Chapel Hill Memorial Park, 12905 Wild Acres Road, Largo. A benefit for Freed’s family to help them pay for his outstanding medical expenses will take place at Skipper’s Friday, March 21. Uncle John’s Band, COPE, Rob Pieniak (formerly of Buffalo Strange), and Christee Lennee perform; admission is $10.

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Featuring layered, highly danceable funk courtesy of Danger Mouse with a killer vocal and dark lyrics by Cee-Lo Green, Gnarls Barkley’s soultastic new groove “Run” easily ranks as the best single to drop in ‘08. Now, if only they’d do something about the video, which made me feel woozy and might make you have an epileptic seizure, according to Billboard. And the lame cameo by Justin Timberlake, who’s usually money when it comes to stuff like this, doesn’t help. Am I just a wuss or are the strobe effects a bit intense?

OK, just watched it again. Not only does the video kinda suck but it’s a health hazard. At least for me. Regardless, the song itself is more pop excellence from music’s most lethal duo.
Gnarls Barkley’s album The Odd Couple, the follow-up to their masterful 2006 debut St. Elsewhere, comes out April 8 and I couldn’t be more stoked. Been a Cee-Lo fan since back in high school when we used to drive around blasting Goodie Mob, digged his highly underrated solo discs and this Gnarls Barkley brilliance with Danger Mouse might go down as the most important music of the decade. For real.

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My Morning Jacket at Langerado ‘07
Photo by Phil Bardi

Tomorrow morning, my story about Langerado 2008 – the multi-day, multi-genre outdoor (camping optional) music festival – hits newsstands. Tomorrow night, my husband and I hit the road to South Florida with our friends, Matt and Orel, for the sixth annual fest, which has been moved 60 miles inland from its metropolitan Sunrise setting to the gorgeous natural landscape of Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation. We pick up the RV and supplies in Ft. Lauderdale Thursday morning, and make our way to the reservation later that evening. 

What makes me sad: Vampire Weekend, my new obsession, has just pulled out of their Saturday Langerado slot to play Saturday Night Live instead. 

What makes me happy: I still have more than 80 bands to choose from and can look forward to a extra performance by funky UK foursome, The New Mastersounds, who’ve taken over the set that VW vacated. Plus, it’s my first experience camping in luxury and I’m quite looking forward to it. 

Stayed tuned for my story and follow up blog post. 

Langerado Music Festival, March 6-9, Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation.

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During her concert last night before an ecstatic near-capacity audience at Ruth Eckerd Hall, k.d. lang sang “The Valley” by Jane Siberry, complimenting her fellow Canadian singer/ songwriter for her combination of “passion and equanimity.” That’s a rare combination, but it’s one that lang can claim, too. As she demonstrated in number after number, including “The Valley,” she can go from soaring to intimate to down-home friendly all in the space of an evening – or sometimes even within one song.
Her voice is better than ever. It’s richer and darker now, yet she can still hit and sustain high notes as pure and lovely as a mountain stream. Barefoot, dressed in a velvet-and-satin vest and baggy trousers, she seemed supremely relaxed. She flirted with the audience on the pop standard “Smoke Rings”(“puff, puff, puff”), and plumbed the anguish in Leonard Cohen’s all-too-familiar “Hallelujah Song.” She found new colors in her mega-hit, “Constant Craving,” breaking up that familiar fluid refrain and smiling wryly on the line “It’s always been,” as if to acknowledge that we’re all victims of love, gay or straight or whatever. And on one of her two encores she broke out a banjo; she started playing it this year, she explained, “because I realized it is a chick magnet.”
The songs from her latest album, Watershed, made a strong impression. There’s a grounded ruefulness to the lyrics — “It’s sad to me how quickly we define what’s wrong with yours is right with mine/ You think that we could learn to let things slide?” But the melodies, and the musicianship of her fine five-man band, kept everything percolating.
“I promised myself I wasn’t going to get political on this tour,” she said at one point. But that didn’t stop her from dedicating a rollicking bluegrassy rendition of “Pay Dirt” to “the boys from Halliburton,” complete with a knee-slapping, butt-kicking jig.
The Halliburton crack (and a few others) was what probably provoked a disgruntled concertgoer I overheard after the concert.
“Shut up and sing!” he fumed. “I didn’t pay to hear your politics!”
He was in the minority, I suspect, when it came to the politics. And, really, lang sang a lot more than she talked. Yet even after 90 minutes and 15 songs, she still left you longing for more of that addictive voice.

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Here in the states we’re largely stuck with brain-dead pop by prefabricated starlets (turned-mental-cases) like Britney Spears. Sweden has Robyn, a singer/songwriter who turns out gems such as “Be Mine!” A disco dance number that’s also smart and strikingly emotive, it was the first single off her 2005 self-titled album. The song finds Robyn evocatively recalling a failed relationship over staccato synth beats and icy strings. A video for the single came out in ’05 and then a second one, posted here, was issued late last year. Robyn’s album is finally being readied for a U.S. release in the near future, reports Pitchfork.

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On Tuesday, four primary elections could squelch Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s wish of returning to the White House as our country’s first woman president. The former Democratic front-runner and world’s most famous female cuckold appeared poised for victory in the early rounds of this brutal bout but if Clinton gets knocked down in Texas and Ohio she’ll likely throw in the towel — her own hubby has indicated as much.

I’m not counting Hillary out, though. Senator Barack Obama’s 11-state roll finds him riding high but his opponent is famously scrappy and has maintained a relatively classy campaign in the face of recent failures — a factor that might swing voters to her corner.

I’ve gunned for Obama all along but suddenly feel sympathetic towards Hillary, who has gotten scrutinized by the press while her upstart rival largely enjoys a free pass. Plus, there would be nothing more riveting than seeing the contest come down to a convention floor battle goosed by superdelegate shenanigans and looming lawsuits. Here’s to hoping Hillary pulls through tomorrow and keeps this spectacle alive.

Top 10: Songs for Hillary Clinton

1. “Respect,” Aretha Franklin

2. “It’s a Woman’s World,” Irma Thomas

3. “Under Pressure,” Queen and David Bowie

4. “Fight Fire with Fire,” Metallica

5. “Crossroads,” Robert Johnson

6. “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” Velvet Underground

7. “Pressing On,” Bob Dylan

8. “She’s About a Mover,” Sir Douglas Quintet

9. “The Underdog,” Spoon

10. “The Winner Takes All,” ABBA

WHAT DID I MISS? 

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Here’s what piqued my interest while sitting outside, soaking up this warmest of winter days and scanning the ‘Net:

• Eccentric R&B diva Erykah Badu on her freshly minted album New AmErykah, Part One (4th World War) (New York Times).

• More good news for everybody’s favorite singer/tabloid star and recent Grammy winner: “Amy Winehouse will not face charges” (Reuters).” On a related note, New Yorker pop music critic Sasha Frere-Jones weighs in with a rather pedestrian Winehouse “think piece” — did you know “the lens recording her movements is wider than anything a ’60s celebrity would have encountered”? It’s titled “Amy’s circus: The strange power of junkie retro soul.”

• Progressive-blues duo the Black Keys team with Gnarls Barkley-producer Danger Mouse on new album (Rolling Stone).

• Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy talks to Billboard about his upcoming solo tour — sorry, no Florida dates — and live album due out April 8.

• Arcade Fire “Rock Ohio for Obama” (Pitchfork); explain that they’re really not Canadians.

• Hipster alert: Ever heard of Neutral Milk Hotel (Slate)?

• Mardi Gras Indian Chiefs keep it funky in New Orleans (Village Voice).

• The soundtrack to the hit TV series Heroes drops March 18. Album features previously-released tracks by Dylan, Wilco, Bowie, My Morning Jacket and others; plus a new number by Jesus and Mary Chain dubbed “All Things Must Pass” (CMJ). The band recently performed the song on Letterman (here’s the YouTube clip).

• Hair metal has-beens like L.A. Guns battle over ownership of the groups’ names (Los Angeles Times).

• “Episode 23 of SMAsh Radio features an exclusive interview with local-boys-done-good, Tres Bien! They discuss touring, their love of Britney Spears, the Tampa Bay scene and also give us the scoop about their recent run on Fox TV’s Next Great American Band.” Click here to read my interview with Tres Bien! and check out the comment posted by “Alissa 69,” who questions whether the band “sold out.”

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