Tampa Calling

This post comes from Vinyl Feverite Gabe Echazabal, a first-time blogger to Tampa Calling.

These are strange times we’re living in. We’re having to battle swine flu, an atrocious economy, and teachers playing naughty with our kids. However, the thing I CAN’T seem to fathom is the weird and bizarre ways that folks are behaving at rock concerts.

Sure, you always had your concertgoers who were too high, too drunk or too out of key when they crowed along with the singer on stage. Those types of disruptions I’ve learned to tolerate. As a matter of fact, I’d welcome them if they were all I had to deal with at a rock show these days. However, what goes on now is not only obnoxious, it’s just plain inane.

Read the rest of this entry »

He’s been called introverted, intensely private, interview-shy, even reclusive, yet here is singer/songwriter Ray LaMontagne talking to me by phone from a Cleveland hotel room. I’m asking questions, he’s answering. With pauses. He speaks just above a whisper, a sort of gentle murmur that belies the raspy bite in his singing voice.

LaMontagne, who plays Tampa Theatre on Wed., April 29,  attributes much of his social awkwardness to a childhood that was transient and impoverished. His mother, he says, “had a really, really, really, really difficult childhood — horrific, really. She was completely unprepared for life.”

She regularly moved Ray and his sisters to new towns, to Tennessee, Utah, Minnesota, New York, Nebraska, New Hampshire and elsewhere. His father, a musician with a tendency toward violence, left the picture when Ray was very young.

As a result, he was the perpetual new kid, bashful and reluctant. “It was hard,” he says. “I think you just become an observer, always stay on the outside of things. It’s funny how that stuff sticks with you. I don’t like to go to shows ’cause I don’t like crowds. I don’t like festivals. They bring something up. I don’t know exactly what it is, maybe the fact that I’m not the one dancing in the sprinklers with my shirt off. Funny how that stuff stays with you.”

The solitary child did not seek solace and meaning in music. “I was more of a reader,” he says. “I don’t want to be overly dramatic, but we moved so much that we didn’t have a stereo. We didn’t have anything as far as those kinds of possessions go. I was sort of in my own world.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Jacksonville’s Derek Trucks, 29, has established himself as the greatest guitarist of his generation: He’s a genre-hopping band leader/solo artist, key Allman Brother and while on tour with Eric Clapton a couple years back the kid named after Derek and the Dominos helped Slow Hand wonderfully recreate classics from Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. Yeah, Trucks is the shit.

And so is his wife, Susan Tedeschi. She’s a feisty blues guitarist, an accomplished songwriter and excellent soul singer. Her new album, Back to the River, features her crushing on emotive originals – several cowritten with Trucks, who also lends his slide guitar fineness to the disc – steeped in the sounds of the Deep South. Tedeschi’s also a master interpreter of classic rock gems. One of the many highlights of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival 2008 was during the final moments when Tedeschi joined Derek Truck’s group for a tent-raising rendition of The Band’s “The Weight.” I get chills and a smile comes to my face just thinking about that very special performance.

Read the rest of this entry »

This may be old news amongst her more rabid devotees, but I just got an alert from Ticketmaster that Ani DiFranco is coming to the Tampa Theatre on March 20, 2009.

For those of you that haven’t experienced Ms. DiFranco live, you must!

She’s a cultural phenomenon and a brilliant lyricist and musician to boot (check out Tatangelo’s interview with DiFranco.) I wonder if she needs an opener…

Here’s a You Tube clip of Ani performing “Hypnotized,” one of my all time favorites:

Read the rest of this entry »

It probably wasn’t intentional, but Phoebe Snow’s opening song at Tampa Theatre on Wednesday night, “Standing On Shaky Ground,” was acutely autobiographical. She turned in a spirited, funky rendition of the tune, but the subtext was that Snow, in fact, is standing on shaky ground, and she’s not doing anything to conceal it.

photo: Jayson Matteucci

This coming Saturday, her daughter Valerie would’ve turned 33. But Valerie died of a sudden brain hemorrhage last March. This was Snow’s only child, who was born severely brain-injured and never was able to speak. Two people were never more in love, and Snow has not hidden her pain and desperation.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve done hundreds and hundreds of interviews during my career in music journalism, and I can say without equivocation that my recent conversation with Phoebe Snow was about as intimate and confessional as I’ve ever experienced.

Snow, a singer/songwriter whose first single, the transcendent ballad “Poetry Man” peaked at No. 5 in 1975, had a shot at major stardom. But in December of that year, she gave birth to a daughter, Valerie, who was severely brain-damaged. Snow effectively shelved her career to care for her daughter, refusing to have her institutionalized.

Valerie died suddenly in March of ‘07 at age 31. This has left Snow emotionally ravaged. During our hour-long conversation, she made no effort to conceal her grief and dire emotional turmoil. Yet she was also funny and charming and good with an anecdote.

Snow, 56, has returned to performing more or less full-time, and she’s conflicted about it. Her voice is still a marvel, a full, expressive contralto that oozes soul and sensitivity, but can also blow down walls. Her current album, Live (Verve), recorded in performance at a studio in Woodstock, N.Y., shows her full range of brilliance, from the bluster of “Standing on Shaky Ground” to the sublime introspection of “Poetry Man.”

Snow will perform with her band on Wed., Dec. 10 at Tampa Theatre, 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $35.50 and $30.50.

What follows is an edited version of our conversation:

You’re back on a regular tour after so long. What’s the response been like?

We’ve been getting some lovely feedback. People tend to be surprised when they hear me in person. I was talking to someone about this just before I called you. There’s this strong perception out there that I am a folk singer, kind of quiet, understated and jazzy. They think that’s what they’re going to get in the live show and they can be very surprised.

What adjustments have you had to make now that you’re back on the road?

Funny you should ask. The travel, you know what — never been a big fan of the travel. It’s exhausting and strenuous. The minute you get on stage you get that shot of epinephren, but the down time, getting to the hotel, the airport, it’s bloody murder. I think country artists are the best at this, with their super-deluxe buses.

They just do the long runs in the bus, and have all the comforts of home. I love to sing, and I’m just getting into a conversation now: How do we refine, streamline make it more efficient. I really love singing, getting out there on stage. You’ll see.

Did you have to do any work to get your voice back in tip-top form, or is it indestructible?

Read the rest of this entry »