#Noam Pikelny

[krispyweiss]

Song Review: Mighty Poplar - “Chico River” (Live, 2023)

Mighty Poplar summoned the power of quietude to deliver a devastating performance of “Chico River” at the 2023 Green Mountain Bluegrass & Roots festival.

Now out on professional video, the bluegrass supergroup’s rendering of Mapache’s number is astonishing in its finesse as mandolinist Andrew Marlin, guitarist Chris Eldridge and bassist Greg Garrison climb to the top of their ranges on the chorus:

Abigail/Abigail

The mic into which they sing also serves as the band’s amp, to which fiddler Alex Hargreaves, then Marlin, then banjoist Noam Pikelny move closer so their respective, pre-chorus solos can be dispersed to the audience.

It ends with Marlin and Eldridge weaving a soft, delicate tapestry that flirts with silence. It leaves the audience hushed and the band smiling in quiet, hard-earned, self-satisfaction.

Grade card: Mighty Poplar - “Chico River” (Live, 2023) - A+

3/18/24

[garudabluffs]

www.songsofbillyconway.com/album.

Billy Conway’s pals put his songs out into the world Jan. 16, 2023

READ MORE https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/01/16/arts/billy-conways-pals-put-his-songs-out-into-world/#bgmp-comments

" This much is no secret: Billy Conway played the drums. Over the course of four decades in American music his distinctive and profoundly musical style animated and elevated the work of Treat Her Right, Morphine, Twinemen, Kelly Joe Phelps, Jeffrey Foucault, Chris Smither, and a seemingly endless discography of others. He was an outsize influence – musically, existentially – on the players he worked with, offering a complete investment in the moment, and radiating a tangible joy.Less widely known is that Billy wrote songs, quietly but steadily, throughout his life. He recorded a few here and there, and released a full album (Outside Inside) in 2019, but most of what he wrote – freewheeling songs about love, dogs, horses, dreams, booze, trucks, America, strange characters, old friends, his Grandma, the weather –existed only on four-track cassette demos, beer-party field recordings, or, in the case of some of the latest and most poignant, voice memos from within the shadow of a terminal cancer diagnosis.A few months after Billy’s death in December 2021, his wife and musical partner Laurie Sargent gathered some of their musical comrades for a kind of working wake. Assembling a makeshift studio in the rambling old New Hampshire farmhouse where he’d spent his last few years, taking turns singing lead, the group of friends poured their love and grief into a collection of the remarkable songs Billy had left behind. From shambling rock ’n’ roll numbers to wry gospel, weeper ballads to darkly driving R&B, these songs form a portrait of a beautiful soul. They telegraph the free-range nature of Billy’s mind, the heaviness and lightness which he wore in hard-won balance, turning always toward wonder. The songs overflow with gratitude, humility, willingness to laugh, and celebration of community: the central pillars of the life he made and shared."

I’m gonna go now  Somewhere I don’t know how No shadow cast, I guess I’ll disappear But it helps if you know  The river will flow further on A little further on

Laurie Sargent: vocals

Jeffrey Foucault: vocals; acoustic, resophonic, and electric guitars

Chris Smither: vocals, acoustic guitar

Kris Delmhorst: vocals

Caitlin Canty: vocals

Jabe Beyer: vocals; electric and acoustic guitars

Jeremy Moses Curtis: electric and upright bass; vocals

Jeff Berlin: drums, percussion

Eric Heywood: pedal steel; acoustic and electric guitars

Dana Colley: baritone sax

Russ Gershon: tenor sax

Tom Halter: trumpet

Hazel Foucault: vocals

Alex McCollough: electric, acoustic, and baritone guitars

Jim Fitting: harmonica

All songs written by Billy Conway/Elmer’s Lid Music ©2023

RECORDED BY Justin Pizzoferrato and Jabe Beyer at Soundwitch

ADDITIONAL RECORDING BY Laurie Sargent, Noam Pikelny, and Kris Delmhorst

MIXED BY Paul Q. Kolderie at Camp St. Studios

MASTERED BY Alex McCollough at True East Mastering

STUDIO ASSISTANT Steve Folsom

COVER PHOTO Hope Zanes

[sinceileftyoublog]

Orville Peck & The Nude Party Live Preview: 6/1, Riviera, Chicago

BY JORDAN MAINZER

On his sophomore album Bronco (Columbia), Orville Peck is ready to show who he is, as unrestrained as the titular bucker. If on Pony, he was, as contributor Lauren Lederman wrote when the album made our top albums of 2019, “a masked queer cowboy with a secret identity,” on Bronco, he’s more open, both about his past and about his feelings. While he hasn’t revealed his name, he’s arguably shared much more. For one, his upbringing: though he lived in Canada for a while, he’s actually from South Africa, and Bronco is littered with references to cities and mountain ranges in his native country just as much as to classic country singers on a first name basis. More notably, he’s been keen to share the real-life heartbreak and depression he suffered during COVID that inspired the album. “Buddy, we got major blues / Another suitcase in your hand / I hope you brought your walkin’ shoes / ‘Cause it’s quite a ways from what I understand,” he croons with classic country wordplay on opener “Daytona Sand”, his voice exaggerated and theatrical but undeniable. The song’s about a real-life cowboy he knew who was from Mississippi but grew up in Daytona, and Peck finds a kinship in him, somewhat lost, away from home, feeling lonely as hell.

Where “Daytona Sand” also contextualizes the rest of the album is in its stylistic variance. Bronco covers everything from glam country to bluegrass, and the opener, propelled by thumping, rolling drums and a harmonic acoustic guitar line, actually sounds like something from an Arcade Fire album or Ants From Up There. “Kalahari Down”, which sees Peck reflecting on his first crush, was written for Pony but didn’t fit, according to him: It was too big. As is the title track, an epic, stadium-sized electric guitar-laden gallop. On the flip side, Noam Pikelny (of The Punch Brothers) adds banjo to acoustic folk tunes “Iris Rose” and “Hexie Mountains”, Luke Schneider an expansive lap steel to “The Curse of the Blackened Eye”. That song is especially impressive in its multitudes, Peck’s falsetto in the chorus reminiscent of Chris Isaak, the backing band delving into country exotica while he admits to suicidal ideation after abusive relationships. It’s a fitting sonic mirror to his ever-altering emotions.

Still, despite his ambitions, Peck is most effective when he goes back to what he’s always done: imbuing the traditional country ethos with sensitivity and vulnerability. “Baby, don’t deny what your poor heart needs,” he sings on “C’mon Baby, Cry”, a Tobias Jesso Jr. co-write that displays Jesso’s trademark emotive songwriting stamp. “Outta Time” is also a surefire highlight, chock full of strummed acoustic guitar, lonesome, yet clever wordplay, and buoyant guitar solos. “Headed for the back, I meet a girl who’s tryna shoot the breeze / She tells me she don’t like Elvis / I say, ‘I want a little less conversation, please,’” he sings with a wink and nod.

On the penultimate track “City of Gold”, an acoustic sway where Peck looks back on where he’s from, he sings, “I’m told that Jozi [Johannesburg] is doing just fine.” From there, it sounds like he’s ready to move forward--from his past, from his depression, from COVID, from the toxic relationships he refers to when he sings earlier on the album, “I love when it rains but I hate getting wet.” Bronco seems like the beginning of that transition, an album where he shows all the tricks he’s learned, not quite yet ready to hone in on his craft.

Peck plays the Riviera Theatre tonight. Doors at 6:30 PM, show at 7:30 PM. Tickets still available at time of publication. Opening for Peck is North Carolina six-piece The Nude Party, who have released two very good indie rock records, including 2020′s terrific Midnight Manor (New West).

[skyofdarkmatter42]

Pickles looking happy:

[thebowerypresents]

Punch Brothers’ Considerable Talents on Display at Beacon Theatre Punch Brothers – Beacon Theatre – March 2, 2022

“Don’t judge a book by its cover” is a well-worn idiom we’ve all been told—there’s more than meets the eye. With the Punch Brothers, that’s certainly the case. To look at the quintet in front of a packed house at the Beacon Theatre on Wednesday night was to see a classic string band: mandolin, banjo, guitar, fiddle and upright bass all huddled around a single microphone in the center of the stage. And in fact, the first half of their set leaned heavily on classic material taken from their latest album, Hell on Church Street. That album is a reimagining of the late Tony Rice’s Church Street Blues album, which is itself a progressive take on bluegrass traditionals. So yes, the no-relation Brothers—Chris Thile on mandolin, Noam Pikelny on banjo, Chris Eldridge on guitar, Gabe Witcher on fiddle, and Paul Kowert on bass—were wearing the “cover” of a traditional bluegrass band. But by the time these songs got to the stage Wednesday night, the story they told went well beyond the picture on the cover.

The second half of the show was a masterful weaving of musical storylines and genre-defying compositions. “The Blind Leaving the Blind” was a full-on song suite, Thile leading the group through a downright Mozartian set of sections, dizzying complexities matched by the skill of the musicians. The instrumental “Jungle Bird” felt equally byzantine with little symphonic pieces interacting with one another, mind-enhancing solos on banjo, fiddle, guitar and mandolin that went beyond categorization but maintained a groove, nonetheless. “It’s All Part of the Plan” was more terrestrial, an indie-rock vibe with a prog-rock-on-strings twist, Thile’s vocals going mandolin staccato then violin drawn-out, Pikelny providing one of many impressive banjo solos midway through.

The set had a controlled inertia as songs bled from one into the next, the band orbiting around the single microphone, creating and then manipulating the dynamics of volume and tempo as a single unit. The closing pair of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” one of the covers-of-a-cover-of-a-cover tracks from the album, and “Rye Whiskey,” a crowd-favorite Punch Brothers original, was an exercise in dynamics to the extreme, everyone in the audience on their feet, hooting along with the band by the end. The encore opened an instrumental hootenanny, “Watch ’at Breakdown,” Pikelny again combining progressive notions to the traditional banjo solo, Thile playing just one more of countless wow! mandolin solos throughout the night, and Eldridge saving his best for last, not quite channeling Tony Rice, but infused with his beyond-Americana spirit. The performance ended with “Julep,” the Punch Brothers at their best—singing about booze, all five instruments in a complicated, beautiful dance together, the whole concept of genre reduced to nothing, a book without a cover altogether. —A. Stein | @Neddyo

(Punch Brothers play the State Theatre in Portland, Maine, on Saturday.)

Photos courtesy of Maggie V. Miles | @Maggievmiles

[owenwilsonsbestfriend]

I would like to find whoever worked on The Peanut Butter Falcon and decided the soundtrack would contain the musical styles of Noam Pikelny, and Gabe Witcher, as well as the songs of Colter Wall and Gregory Alan Isakov. I’d like to meet that person and kiss them on the mouth

[hector-leznod]

Punch Brothers

- Passe pied -

(Claude Debussy)

[krispyweiss]

Song Review: Mighty Poplar - “Grey Eagle” (Live)

“Content to only steal the show,” as his bandmates put it, fiddler Shad Cobb proves himself much more than a standin for Alex Hargreaves on Mighty Poplar’s live rendering of “Grey Eagle.”

Captured on professional video during the bluegrass supergroup’s appearance at the 2023 FreshGrass festival in Massachusetts, the clip may feature Cobb’s sawin’ prominently. But Noam Pikelny’s banjo pickin’, Avdrew Marlin’s mandolin fannin’ and Chris Eldridge’s guitar stylin’ are not inessential ingredients, as evidenced by the explosion of applause that follows each musician’s turn in the spotlight.

Grade card: Mighty Poplar - “Grey Eagle” (Live) - A+

11/22/23

[somethingvinyl]

A great day for a Vinyl Appreciation Club!

Arrival Music: Noam Pikelny Plays Kenny Baker Plays Bill Monroe

The Playlist:

Sly & The Family Stone, You Can Make It If You Try

Queen, Killer Queen*

Can’t Afford No Shoes, Frank Zappa

Iron & Wine, Carousel*

The Teddy Bears, To Know Him is to Love Him / The Beatles, Yes It Is / Billy Joel, Through the Long Night

Janelle Monáe, Americans

Kraftwerk, Autobahn*

Patti Smith, Gloria

This week instead of a Cover to Cover, we traced the influence of a song: the Teddy Bears’ doo wop classic which inspired a Beatles song which inspired a Billy Joel song. They’re fun to listen to in sequence, there’s so many little details to focus on.

(And no, we didn’t listen to all 23 minutes of Autobahn.)

[scalepsychosis]

I WILL NEVER NOT TALK ABOUT HOW MUCH I LOVE THE PUNCH BROTHERS

[idiosyncratictransmissions]

Punch Brothers - It's All Part of the Plan

Back with a new video, Punch Brothers have announced a new album All Ashore which will be released on July 20th. This is the video for one of the first singles “It’s All Part of the Plan.” More about the band, the new album, and ways to pre-order it here.

Punch Brothers – It’s All Part of the Plan was originally published on Idiosyncratic Transmissions

[geofroi]

Noam Pikelny - “Folk Bloodbath”

Basé sur Louis Collins de Missippi John Hurt

[trysteroo]

SONG OF THE DAY Waveland -- Noam Pikelny

[pastmusicmonday]

Bluegrass classical music? Yes please. 

You GUYS! It’s impossible to describe how talented this group is. They can and DO play anything. Just in this video, they play Fiona Apple, Bill Monroe, RadioHead and their own stuff. But this last segment was particularly fun. I’m not versed in Classical music enough to know whether it’s an actual piece they learned or if they just wrote this in the style of...? Regardless, it’s awesome. Such a warm, FULL, sound. All the different parts moving together, away from each other but still complementing each other. Just watching their fingers fly... gaaaah! Just great.

The whole thing is pretty fun from a behind-the-scenes standpoint but I could see how you might not want to watch over an hour of Q&A mixed with some songs. But you NEED to listen/ watch this last bit starting at about 1:06:15.  

Enjoy!

[owenwilsonsbestfriend]

I am, once again, back on the wagon that is my love of Noam Pikelny