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.

You’d think that with the way that concert ticket prices have escalated in the last decade that it would weed out the casual, “I’m just here to make the scene” moron. You know the type: has no idea who the band is … just wants to get drunk (or act like it) … scams on babes, etc. I seriously thought the Police reunion show last year would have eliminated such boneheads. I mean, let’s face it, the price of admission in the prime seats (where I must admit I sat) was equivalent to most people’s monthly car payment.

But nope, that didn’t matter … five songs into the show, here comes Mr. Frat Boy and his Sorority Goddess, double-fisted with overpriced mega beers, hooping and hollering as soon as they arrive to their floor seats … all the while with their backs to the stage!!

WHY DID YOU COME HERE?!!?! They were seeking out their cronies in the stands and calling them on their cell phones so they could wave at them. WTF?!

Stranger than that were the miniature hipsters at the Bright Eyes show at Tampa Theatre a few years back who were seemingly oh-so-bored … sighing, texting, yawning, more texting, briefly napping (really?) while the band played. This is how you show your appreciation, kids? Wow.

And I’m not just gonna single out the young’uns. Stranger than all were the mid-50s yuppie and yuppette who sat behind me and whined that Elton John was playing “TOO LONG” several years ago at the (then) Ice Palace. Elton was whipping out some deep cuts from the the canon: “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters”, “Take Me to the Pilot” … you get the idea.

Anyway, the lame-brains behind me grew increasingly annoyed as Elton plowed through his three-hour-plus set. When he started to play “Burn Down the Mission“(!) they whined “Another one?” and I couldn’t help it — I finally turned around and said (sarcastically) “Yeah, you guys should probably leave!” And guess what?  They took me seriously and bolted for the exit! Really.

I think as selective as we have to be about who we go see in concert because of the outrageous ticket prices, we shouldn’t have to deal with these types of blowhards. How about setting up a special area of the arena, similar to the “Gold Circle” or the “Luxury Suites” that is simply labeled “Obnoxious Asshole” section?! I’d pay extra to have those types of buzzkillers herded into their own special pen.

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.”

For all the pain and alienation that coursed through his younger life, LaMontagne’s three studio albums consist mostly of conventional songs about love, its bliss, vicissitudes, complications. No primal screamish “Mother” from this artist. He’s a throwback, really, cut from a mold that produced the likes of Jackson Browne, The Band (he’s a big fan), James Taylor, Stephen Stills. (It’s a style that never goes out of style. LaMontagne’s most recent album, last year’s Gossip in the Grain, ascended to No. 3 on the Billboard album chart.)

In fact, or so the story goes, it was when LaMontagne heard Stills’ “Treetop Flyer” on the alarm clock that woke him for the early shift in a shoe factory that he was moved to make a career in music.

I tell him that Stills grew up in Tampa. “Think you might find time for a pilgrimage?” I ask, and here LaMontagne, 35, lets out the briefest of chuckles. “No, I don’t want to meet the people that inspired me,” he answers, quickly serious again. “It would be like asking a magician how he did the trick. You don’t want to know.”

So OK, this Ray LaMontagne is truly a different dude. But what makes him so unique is not his complexity but the simple tenets he lives by. Essentially, he just wants to make music and more or less be left alone, free to live in quietly with his wife and kids in a farmhouse in Maine.

For instance, the ardor he stirs in his most devoted fans is of little concern to him. He’s not interested in meet-and-greets and in-stores, stuff that managers and publicists encourage artists to do in order to stoke the career fire. “I don’t feel any responsibility other than to myself, to just kind of keep doing it,” he says. “I just want to get better, and if at any time it’s not fulfilling anymore, I’ll stop doing it.”

Fair enough. But surely he must feel some obligation to his fans; they do, after all, keep storm shutters on the farmhouse. And isn’t there a small part of him that wants to return the love? “I have talked to some people here and there who’ve expressed that my music really does mean something,” he says, “that it helped them through a certain time, a difficult time, even a good time. That’s nice, I guess.”

As you might expect, LaMontagne is an inwardly directed performer, rarely addressing his audience, never dancing, never doffing his shirt. It took him quite awhile to find a relative comfort zone on the bandstand. “It’s not about stage fright or anything like that,” he explains. “I was never a self-confident person, never really craved the center of attention.

“So to reveal myself, that was a big hurdle — not only to be the center of attention, but saying ‘Look at what I’ve created. Do you like it?’ As you know, everyone has an opinion, but I’ve been through a lot in my life and I have a thick skin. I learned to trust my gut early on. I knew that I was on the right tracking writing songs and performing, knew that it was going to open up for me. I trusted myself.”

Ray LaMontagne w/Jessica Lea Mayfield, Wed., April 29, 8 p.m., Tampa Theatre. $38, $29. tampatheater.org

Here’s a video of LaMontagne singing his song “Shelter.”

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.

The skinny: Soul Stew Revival is an 11-piece ensemble led by slide guitarist Derek Trucks and vocalist/guitarist Susan Tedeschi. The ensemble also includes horn players Kevin Hyde, Paul Garrett, Mace Hibbard and Derek’s younger brother, Duane, on second drum kit in addition to current members of The Derek Trucks Band: Todd Smallie (bass), Yonrico Scott (drums), Kofi Burbridge (keys & flute) Mike Mattison (vocals), Count M’Butu (percussion).

Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi Soul Stew Revival, 7:30 p.m. Mon., Dec. 29, Tampa Theatre, Tampa, $57.50/$47.50/$37.50.

Read my interview with Derek Trucks that ran Jan., 2007.

Here’s my review of the Susan Tedeschi show, Saturday, April 21, at Jannus Landing, St. Petersburg, 2007.

Derek Trucks Band w/Susan Tedeschi — The Weight (NOLA Jazz Fest 2008)

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:

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.

Every one of her shows is a tribute to Valerie, and the singer talked extensively about her late daughter on stage, at times fighting back tears. (And sometimes the tears won. Snow at one point asked if anyone in the audience had a tissue, and three people rushed forward.)

That was the underpinning for the master vocalist’s first Tampa Bay performance in many a year. While her four-piece band backed her ably, and Snow showed off extraordinary chops and feeling, there was never a sense of celebration about the night. Most every one of the ardent fans in the half-filled theater knew Snow’s story, and they were rooting for her. But a sense of sadness hung over the proceedings, which was certainly poignant, but was also at times lugubrious.

Snow was quick with a quip, and told some funny stories, but never did it seem as if her heart was truly in the performance. Not that the audience minded. They hung on every note.

Snow has been taking classical voice lessons for a dozen years, and her skills are extraordinary. Her range is umpteen octaves, but she didn’t overdo it last night, was never too showy. That said, she did swoop up into the stratosphere a few times; she is, after all, an entertainer, and knows that a crowd needs pleasing.

Snow mixed originals like her signature hit “Poetry Man” with several cover tunes, the best of which was “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man.” She also performed “A Little Piece of My Heart,” and made me almost like a song that I would’ve gone out of my way to never hear again. It helped that her rendition was playful, and included several teasing snippets from random pop tunes.

It’s rare that you see a performer who reveals herself completely to the audience like Phoebe Snow did last night. Those on hand were the better for it.

I interviewed Snow last week, and if you didn’t catch it, I really feel it’s worth reading. Check it out here.

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?

[Laughs] Nothing’s indestructible, baby. It just so happens that I’m a big fan of vocal technique. I train every day. It’s based on classical technique, operatic. I’ve been doing that seriously for more than 12 years. I have a couple of different coaches. I do sing arias now and then.

It’s well known that you pretty much scaled back your career in the mid 1970s after your daughter was born with severe brain damage. Do you mind sharing what her condition was like?

Her brain damage came as a result of neonatal malpractice. Valerie far exceeded everyone’s prognosis. She learned to walk at the age of 9; she had very good visual perceptions, they were incredibly acute. She could see things that I couldn’t see.

How was her speech?

She never spoke. Toward the end of her life, she had an operation to remove an adenoid from her sinuses. It was extremely large and probably blocked her ear canals her whole life. They said her window for assimilating language had closed at age 12 or 13. Near the end of her life, she was making baby gibberish sounds and I thought, “My God, she’s going to talk.”

How did she die?

[Pause, choked voice] Brain hemorrhage. [Pause] It was sudden, very rare. We don’t know why she had it. She was on an upward spiral at the time of her death — healthier, better. I don’t understand. I’m still in shock over it. I can’t process it.

Has getting back on stage helped your recovery?

Maybe a little. I just have to wait it out. I was in an extreme state of shock soon after she died, and I told myself that I should go back to work, that it’ll help. But I really wasn’t thinking clearly. I sort of had this sense of urgency to fill the vacancy, to do something right now. I didn’t think personally I could survive her passing. It was too shocking for me. It still is.

How does songwriting fit into the picture at the moment?

I’m trying to figure that out too. I’ve stockpiled books of potential lyrics. I’m a musical person, so you’d think the melodies would come to me. But I get lost with melodies.

Did you ever have a song just sort of tumble out, finished?

The ones that I think are the better-constructed songs, I usually get a phrase, with a melody and lyric in it.

I think “Poetry Man” is an exquisite tune. I’ve never gotten tired of it. I listened to it maybe 10 times or so in the last few days. Can you tell me how the song was written?

Sure. [Laughs] That was the second song I ever wrote in my whole life; the first one so lame I hardly remember it. It was just an exercise for me. I was trying so hard to be this hip and a groovy person. I was so stupid.

The second one, “Poetry Man,” came about because I was really getting the hang of guitar picking and I had these open chords, not open tuning, open chords. And I was having a relationship with somebody. From the words you can probably deduce that the guy was married. It was a bad thing to do. But I got a lovely romantic sonnet out of it.

As it turns out, he was not a particularly great guy either. I turned it into this ode to romance. It’s funny looking back on it — I sat there and hunched over the guitar and said “I’m gonna finish this.” I was in the throes of young romance.

How old were you?

Twenty or 21. It came right out, a finished product, within an hour or so. I played it for my mother, and she stopped me. “Who is this about?”

I said, “Well, what about the song. Do you like the song?” She said, “What are you doing and who are you doing it with?”

Everybody’s a critic.

At the time I was playing amateur nights in the Village — at the Gaslight and the Bitter End and places like that. There was this group of people who were bandstand regulars. They were more experience and more polished than me, and I looked up to them. I was just this hippie from New Jersey who didn’t have it together.

So all my mother wants to know is am I getting laid? I’m not gonna talk to her anymore about the song. So I went to play it for these people. A bunch of hippies. I sat down in an apartment and played it. There was this one woman, she was beautiful and an incredible singer, and I put her on a pedestal.

So I said, “OK, what do you think? She said, “You want me to be honest with you? You sound like bad Carole King imitator.”

That was almost the end of a promising career. They all said the song was so pedestrian, not very good. It was “Phoebe forget it, stick with the blues covers.” I was performing Delta blues stuff by Memphis Minnie and Big Bill Broonzy and the like. That was my hook. I was a decent blues guitar player.

Well, it’s good you didn’t listen to them? Do you remember what it was like when the song became a hit?

There was this one promotions person — I reconnected with her a few years ago. She was either at Shelter [Records] or their parent company, MCA. This woman, Linda Alter, she worked the Southeast. She fell in love with the album just when it was a fledgling thing.

She took it around to [radio] stations single-handedly. She was responsible for breaking the single and the album. I never knew her; she was just part of the support team. I got in touch with her later. I missed certain opportunities because I was really busy with my daughter. I called her and I cried: “You’re the one.”

How did the label in general get behind it?

The project took a year to do. It was acoustic, on an amazingly low budget. No one had high hopes for it. But there was this one gal who saw something in it.

Was there a situation where you heard “Poetry Man” on the radio for the first time, or did you follow all the radio adds and stuff like that?

A little of both. My first major North American tour was opening for Jackson Browne in 1975. The album [Phoebe Snow] was released at the end of ’74. We were on tour in Florida, I’m pretty sure. We were out there doing so many dates and I was pregnant with Valerie at the time, although I didn’t know it. So I was totally off balance. And some guy comes up to me backstage and hands me a piece of paper with all these positions on different charts. And I said, “I don’t know what all this means.”

A little later, we were driving in the van, this horrible utility van with a fanbelt that kept breaking, and the radio’s on. The announcer goes, “That was ‘Poetry Man.’” I was like “Oh my God, that’s me!” Then he says, “That’s the new one from “Phobie” Snow. I said, “Pull the van over.” I called the station, and either talked to the DJ or his engineer, and said, “It’s Phee-bee, not Phobie!” I didn’t even tell him who I was.

Do you ever think about what might have been with your career if you hadn’t made the decision to care for your daughter — not in a regretful way, but just a what-if?

[Quietly] No. Ah, 20 years ago maybe. I was a little bit more ego-driven. But overall, nah.

Does performing on stage offer a brief reprieve from your grief?

To some degree. But I’m very clear, I state it in the show, that my ability to appear there, to perform, is all a tribute to my daughter. I invoke her spirit. She was the role model. She was the parent a lot of the time. She was the teacher. She was the guide, the gift.

Whatever courage I have that makes me do what I do in the state of mind I’m in most of the time, it’s all due to her. I draw upon those lessons. So I do have to think about her on stage.

[Pauses] I don’t know if I can do this, but …

Don’t feel the need to.

No I should. [Choking up] Next week is her birthday. She would’ve been 33. So I’m in particularly bad shape right now. I just got through with a therapy session. I left an urgent message for my grief counselor: “I need help.” I know I can start going under again. There are tough times ahead. I get it. But it hasn’t gotten any better.

I’m not going to even attempt a platitude like ‘It’ll get better with time,’ but I’m very sorry about your situation. It breaks my heart. Let me switch into another area to finish up. One of my favorite artists is [the late] Laura Nyro. I know you’re a bit younger than her, but you’re both from the New York area, and I sort of see you two as kindred artists. I was wondering if you knew her.

Yeah. Not well. I sort of started getting to know her better at the end of her life. (Nyro died of ovarian cancer in 1997 at age 49.) She was incredibly compassionate and supportive. She was also brilliant. She did reach out to me. Raising my daughter was never in question, but it was very difficult, and I wasn’t getting a lot of support. She always said, “If there’s anything I can do, don’t hesitate to ask.”

The last time I saw her, she was brilliant. I saw her perform at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel (in New York). It was just her and her keyboard. She and Desmond Child were doing retrospectives of their material. All she had was her keyboards, three woman backup singers and a percussionist. And it was so good. The audience was beside themselves. We called her back for four encores.

Afterward, I hung out with her a little. She said, “What are you up to?” I said, “I’m taking opera lessons?” She looked at me like I was crazy.

That’s funny, because Nyro’s voice has often been described as operatic.

Yeah, well she wasn’t going there that night.