Friends of Bob live music co-op February 2009 Newsletter
Sunday, February 15 7:00 p.m. (doors 6:00)
From New Orleans
Rebirth Brass Band
Lafayette Brewing Company, 622 Main St., Lafayette
Tickets $13 (adv) $15 (day of show): available now at Von's Records, JL Records, and McGuire Music
Advance tickets by mail are $14. Send your check to:
Friends of Bob, PO Box 59, Battle Ground, IN 47920
Please provide your name, address, phone #, and e-mail address.
It’s Mardi Gras! It’s Valentine’s Day—sort of! And it’s a celebration of the conception of Friends of Bob! Two Lafayette music fans were visiting New Orleans in 1994. They’d been told that if they wanted to see real New Orleans music they needed to go to the Tremé Music Hall on Monday evening to see the Rebirth Brass Band. They arrived there at the appointed time and discovered that they had several hours to sip subpar beer (widely available throughout Louisiana) and brainstorm about how they could talk friends and strangers into making it possible to regularly hear great music right in Lafayette, Indiana. Surely it’ll work! Let’s just try it! And now, for its 120th show, Friends of Bob brings the Rebirth Brass Band to the Lafayette Brewing Company.
Yes, it is Mardi Gras. And we have the opportunity to enjoy a few hours of it with a band of musicians who have built a reputation for making a good time irresistible. Rebirth Brass Band plays the soundtrack for a party, incorporating jazz, r & b, ragtime, spirituals, pop, hip hop, reggae, Latin, and funk funk funk! The band consists of a drummer (with a bass drum strapped on his front) and another drummer (with a snare around his waist) and 7 brass players: a sousaphone, 3 trumpets, 2 trombones, a saxophone.
The group was founded in 1982 by tuba player Phil Frazier, his brother Keith Frazier and trumpeterKermit Ruffins, along with other musicians at the Alfred Lawless High School in the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans. The New Orleans brass band tradition began during the Civil War when players picked up abandoned Confederate instruments. New Orleans second-line marching bands have provided two very different styles of music for funerals: the mournful dirge for the procession to the burial and then the lively celebratory rhythms that provoked mourners to get happy and celebrate at the wake. It’s that celebratory provocation that we can expect at the Lafayette Brewing Company on Sunday, February 15th.
Please download a handsome poster or two—designed as always by the handsome John Frigo—from our website and help announce that there is going to be a party band extraordinaire coming to town.
“It’s clear that Rebirth is the band to beat.” Offbeat Magazine
“Rebirth Brass Band stretches a New Orleans tradition into the era of funk and hip-hop. Philip Frazier plays sousaphone bass lines that carry New Orleans rhythm-and-blues, mambos and interpolated pop hits over a parade beat laced with funk; tenor saxophone and pairs of trumpets and trombones deliver melody, harmony and solos. At any given moment, half the band seems to be playing fixed parts, the other half monkeying around. It's a working model of the New Orleans musical ethos: as long as everybody knows what they're doing, anyone can cut loose.”
New York Times
Bonnaroo:
Simply put, The Rebirth Brass Band is an institution. Formed in 1983, the band has long since graduated from the streets of New Orleans to theaters and festivals all over the world. Rebirth is committed to upholding the tradition of brass bands while at the same time incorporating modern music into their show. Their signature brand of heavy funk has placed them among the world’s top brass bands and they are the hands-down favorite among the younger generation. In reference to the sometimes-stringent competition amongst brass bands, Offbeat magazine remarked, “…it’s clear that Rebirth, which boasts 10 albums and has traveled the world, is the band to beat.”
Our next Organizational Meeting will be February9th at 7:30 at the Lafayette Brewing Co. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to attend.
Please Do the Dues!!! Membership dues are by the calendar year—2009 dues are due! Your donations are crucial!!!Please help us keep the music coming. Become a Friend of Bob! Dues are $10 per person. If you can make a donation above the $10 we would greatly appreciate it, and since we are a 501[c][3] not-for-profit organization, donations above the dues are tax-deductible and really assist us HUGELY in what we're trying to do. We keep admission charges modest to lure the unconvinced, so the admission charges seldom cover the costs of a FoB show. We operate on a business model (ha!) that relies on your donations to keep the ship afloat. The following people have sent in their 2009 dues since the last newsletter and before the paper version of this one went to print:
Jean Andres
Dan Annarino
Gail Beck
Anu & Velu Bala-subramanian
Susan Calvert
Norm & Carina Childress
Diane Damico
Steve & Mary Firestone
Al Gerth
Kelly Kerns
Edwin Layer
Shelley Lowenberg-DeBoer
Robert Mertz
Mark Pugh
Dave Samuelson
Jim Siebecker
Randy Starks
Dena & Harry Targ
Charlotte Werner
Membership info at How Can I Help?--
FYI: The Gourds—who entertained us mightily last November—have a fine new CD titled Haymaker out this month. Our pal Alejandro Escovedo’s 2008 album Real Animal made it to several national best of ’08 lists (even hitting #1 in some); Alejandro will be at the Theater Royal in Danville, Indiana on April 10th.
Friday, April 3, 8:00: Graham Parker, Duncan Hall
Emerging out of the English pub rock scene of the 1970s Graham Parker wrote gritty, literate songs and always found great musicians to turn them into recordings that could survive hundreds of listens. Reminiscent of a range of arch rock and rollers—Van Morrison, Sam Cook, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones—Parker crafted songs that are laden with hooks, energy, clever wordsmithing, genuine ideas, and indelible melodies. His very first album—1976’s Nick Lowe-produced Howlin’ Wind—was lavishly praised by critics as a masterpiece both for its quality and its astonishing range of styles, and critics have been highly impressed with most of what he’s created since. It isn’t unusual to find Parker’s 1997’s Squeezing Out Sparks on somebody’s best-albums-ever list. His most recent CD—2007’s Don’t Tell Columbus—is as great as any record he’s ever made.
Reviews for Don’t Tell Columbus:
"Columbus" offers the best of Parker, and considering his body of work includes "Squeezing Out Sparks," "Howlin' Wind" and "The Up Escalator," that is saying something. -- Dave Ruden, The Advocate
Parker is in full smartass mode on these songs, the band is having a rambunctious good time, and Don't Tell Columbus is a very early contender for Album of the Year -- Andy Whitman, Paste Magazine
The best thing Graham Parker's done since his 1970s heyday. -- Roger Holland, PopMatters
"Don't Tell Columbus," is his best release in a dozen years. -- Geoffrey Himes, Washington Post
Sunday, April 26, 7:00: Richie Havens + Harry Manx, University Church
Possessed with a signature, awe-inspiring, craggy, soulful voice and a similarly distinct open-tuned guitar strum, Richie Havens is an iconic figure in modern music, his 3-hour opening set at Woodstock setting the tone for that festival. Richie will be accompanied by a second guitarist, Walter Parks, and cellist, Stephanie Winters. Canadian Harry Manx plays guitar, harmonica, and banjo fusing traditional blues with Indian rajas.
Sunday, February 15 ; 7:00 p.m. (doors 6:00)
Rebirth Brass Band
Lafayette Brewing Company, 622 Main St., Lafayette
New York Times:
The eight-man Rebirth Brass Band stretches a New Orleans tradition -- the bands that still play for funeral parades -- into the era of funk and hip-hop. Philip Frazier plays sousaphone bass lines that carry New Orleans rhythm-and-blues, mambos and interpolated pop hits (like TLC's ''Waterfalls'') over a parade beat laced with funk; tenor saxophone and pairs of trumpets and trombones deliver melody, harmony and solos. At any given moment, half the band seems to be playing fixed parts, the other half monkeying around. The Lady Buck Jumpers, some holding feathered carnival fans, danced alongside the band, following instructions in the songs like ''Shake that booty.''
There's strategy behind the uproarious music. Rebirth plots long pieces that move from crest to crest, building again and again with new riffs bouncing around the band. The whole group coalesces in punchy chords, then spins off improvisations, from triplets that ricochet between trombone and snare drum to outbursts of high-note trumpet. Rebirth can be precise whenever it wants to, but it's more like a party than a machine, as minigroups form and dissolve at any moment. It's a working model of the New Orleans musical ethos: as long as everybody knows what they're doing, anyone can cut loose. The band will perform on Friday and Saturday at the Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard Street, TriBeCa.
Parade Of Styles
The ReBirth Brass Band brings the melting-pot rhythm of the second line to New Orleans by the Bay
by Dan Young (San Jose Metro News)
NEW ORLEANS is the first place people think of when someone mentions wild and crazy street parties. Visions of people swirling in a multicolored whirlwind, dancing to the strains of a funky brass band marching down the street, are vividly burnt into America's psyche. And no one fits this bill better than the ReBirth Brass Band, one of the headliners at this weekend's 12th annual New Orleans by the Bay celebration at Shoreline.
The ReBirth Brass Band upholds a proud tradition, which started just after the Civil War, of funeral brass bands that play a slow dirge on the way to the cemetery, then perform lively tunes on the way to the wake. Brass bands provided the soundtrack to public spectacles known as "second lines" that are unique to the Crescent City.
The second line is a street parade that features people egging each other on to dance more crazily while other folks shake tambourines or hit sticks on wine jugs and cowbells--and all the while a brass band plays its ass off. This outrageous behavior inspires the band to become more dynamic and more explosive.
The ReBirth Brass Band is the current king of the brass-band genre, successfully integrating jazz history with funk. Taking that party sound and mixing it with a spiritual side, ReBirth has introduced this style of music to youth culture.
Using infectious syncopation and adding licks and rhythms absorbed from reggae, hip-hop and pop, ReBirth incorporates a wide range of genres into its sound--everything from jazz rock to bebop. Songs by the artist now again known as Prince, James Brown, Bob Marley, TLC, Michael Jackson, Rick James and War have all found their way into ReBirth's ultrafunky bag of tricks.
As well as Maceo Parker and the Grateful Dead, ReBirth has opened for the Ohio Players, the Neville Brothers, Ani DiFranco, Dr. John and the Meters. The band's invigorating and spontaneous sound is youthful and fun-loving, but, musically, the members are mature and sophisticated. As the title of one of the songs on The Main Event: Live at the Maple Leaf (Louisiana Red Hot Records), the band's latest release, puts it, "We Come to Party."
Allaboutjazz.com:
New Birth For New Orleans Brass Bands
By Todd R. Brown
You could hear it almost every night of the week: the call of a trumpet piercing the air, saying, “Here is where the party’s at!” The booming bass drum pounding out a hip hop rhythm, and the sizzling snare building on that beat with choppy, Latin-style syncopation. The trombone crying out with baritone joy, the sousaphone pumping out a bass line and the saxophone winding its cool way through the whole sonic celebration.
The musicians would play in clubs such as Blue Nile, Donna's, Le Bon Temps Roule, Maple Leaf. They'd mourn the passing of Mardis Gras Indians with funeral dirges, they’d take it to the streets and bring impoverished, homebound, everyday people to their doorsteps and windows with joy on their faces. The notes would waft through the heavy, humid air that smelled of jasmine and spicy creole cooking in that fairy tale city in the land of dreams.
Now the sound is gone from its birthplace, along with the hundreds of thousands of New Orleans residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina’s ungodly force.
The city’s brass bands have come a long way through the years, from the pioneers who took up abandoned Confederate marching band instruments to today’s firebrands who infuse the jazzy music with classic R&B and the latest rap. Now they must adapt anew, to unfamiliar homes in Baton Rouge, Houston, San Antonio, even as far away as California and Alaska. Gulf Coast evacuees are spread across 33 states by the American Red Cross’ count.
“I guess I’ll be staying in Dallas,” said Keith Frazier, bass drummer for the ReBirth Brass Band, whose latest album, ReBirth for Life, pays tribute to late jazz icon Tuba Fats and the band’s own 20-year-plus tenure, and features the ferocious funk of “Stereo” and “Who Took the Happiness Out.”
Frazier, reached Wednesday, September 7, on his cell phone, said he evacuated the Sunday before the storm; his mother, sisters, wife and children fled even earlier to Mississippi. Frazier left so quickly, he said, that he doesn’t even have his drum with him in Texas: “I mean I have nothing except the clothes on my back. My house is totally underwater.”
Frazier said his Carrollton home, near City Park in New Orleans, is about a half-mile from the 17th Street Canal’s levee breach--so close “you could walk to it”--which flooded the northern and central parts of the city.
“My mom always said, ‘If we ever get a hurricane like Andrew or Betsy we’ll be underwater,’ and I would just laugh,” Frazier said. “I guess now I'm living through it.”
Most of his bandmates are accounted for, Frazier said: Trombonist Stafford Agee, tuba player Philip Frazier, snare drummer Derrick Tabb and trumpeter Derrick “Kabuki” Shezbie made it to Houston. Philip Frazier, Keith’s brother, said by cell phone from Houston, “Derek had a little drama” in New Orleans, explaining that Shezbie “had to swim to flag down a ride.” He said ReBirth’s saxophonist Vincent Broussard, trumpeter Shamar Allen and trombonist Herbert Stevens wound up in Baton Rouge.
But Keith Frazier said he hasn’t heard from long-time trumpeter Glen Andrews since before the city’s evacuation. Still, the rest of ReBirth planned to regroup in Houston and head right out on the road for a tour that was planned before Katrina.
New Orleans Times-Picayune:
Rebirth Brass Band celebrates 25 years of blowing its horns
It was a Tuesday night, and Phil and Keith Frazier were at the Maple Leaf Bar, where they have played every week for 18 years with the Rebirth Brass Band. Instead of performing, however, they were reminiscing about the past 25 years of Rebirth. It took them a while to get started, but once the stories started flowing, they didn't stop.
Their favorite touring partner?
"Ani, " Phil said.
As in Ani DiFranco, the dreadlocks-sporting, righteous babe, acoustic-guitar-playing Ani?
"That's our girl!" exclaimed Phil, as he went on to describe Rebirth's six-week tour opening for the indie-rock heroine. DiFranco's audiences, more in tune with anti-war chants than with brass band beats, "didn't know what was coming, " Keith said.
"And then we'd just hit 'em with it, " Phil said.
They played for more than 10,000 people at Red Rocks in Colorado -- "That was the show, " Phil said -- and opened for the Grateful Dead in 1989, "when Jerry Garcia was still around -- cool guy, " he said.
One summer in the 1980s, they traveled the same European festival circuit as a slew of jazz legends, and several times shared a hotel floor with Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Art Blakely.
At the North Sea Jazz Festival, they crashed the end of a James Brown concert. "He sang the last note, and we busted through the crowd. People were like, 'What is this?' " Keith said.
"We went to Africa for six weeks, " Phil said.
"We went to Syria -- by mistake, " Keith added.
After 20 European tours, 14 albums, four tours of Japan and gigs in 46 states, these guys have seen a lot.