Friday, Sept. 29: He sang with Springsteen. Bono toasted him. Townshend and Lou Reed are among his vocal admirers. A verbal dynamo and complex character in the tradition of Zimmerman, Willie Nile has released no fewer than 11 records. Still, he is NYC’s secret weapon – maybe because that’s just a cool thing to be.
Opening this week: Tangent held a pub reading of the play last year, which proved to be one of its most popular to date. “The audience reaction was so strong… With so much conflict in the world today, this play will get people thinking about life, love, fate and consequences.”
New Gustafer Yellowgold CD debuts in Woodstock; Steampunk Day at Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome; tales from Hudson’s crypts; “Nighttime in the 18th Century” at New Windsor Cantonment; and Erica’s cancer journey.
Wednesday, October 4: This is indisputably a supergroup. It finds the great and epochal jazz guitarist John Scofield reuniting with the Jazz Rushmore drummer and Woodstock icon Jack DeJohnette, as well as John Medeski (whose primacy in the reclamation and reinvention of fusion simply cannot be overstated) and Larry Grenadier on bass.
Very thin cirrus can be invisible, and here is where their magic can truly shine. Occasionally at this time of year, when the Sun is lowish but not extremely low, look overhead and you may see an upside-down rainbow called a circumzenithal arc.
Saturday-Sunday, Sept. 30-Oct. 1: Have a clove affair with music, chef demos and a cornucopia of garlic-based foods including salsa, hummus, sauce, sausage, pickles, olives, cheese, as well as garlic caramels, fudge and ice cream!
Friday, Sept. 29: Most of the players here, many of whom you’ve heard if not heard of, earned their musical stripes elsewhere but live and work here now, forming a kind of new model collective for the post-industry music world, where you might as well live and play in the Catskills, for all anyone cares. Few, however, take on the Catskills as subject and as inspiration as directly as Koester, the Bard of Pakatakan Mountain.
Friday, Oct. 6: As influential for her funk- and punk-inflected take on singer/songwriter acoustic rock as for her rigorous self-determination and relentlessly energized activism, walking the talk where so many others are content merely to talk it, Ani DiFranco is simply important. She’s a lightning rod for polarized opinion as well, but that just comes with her territory.
It’s apple cider doughnut time in the Hudson Valley
Thursday, Sept. 28: There’s no overestimating the influence of the Cowboy Junkies on the aesthetics of “low”, leading, decades after they rocked the world with whispers, directly to the phenomenon of dreampop and to the genre that I hereby deem closet folk (think early Iron and Wine).