Friday, May 26: On As Eli, the queer and trans Latinx songwriter (and accomplished academician) Elías Krell does in fact reflect in a variety of clever and direct, candid and literate ways on hot-button themes of identity and the experience of transformation. But it may take a listener a few spins to key in on such currents and undercurrents, so immediately striking is Krell’s songcraft.
An exhaustive guide to local music venues: Where to go and what you’ll hear.
If the national news doesn’t visit every few years for organic reasons, someone will do something to induce it.
Saturday & Sunday, May 6-7: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee required only his first big gig – as an original member of Springsteen’s E-Street Band – to justify his induction; but for good measure, he went on the play with Sting, Peter Gabriel, Eric Clapton, Seal, Aretha Franklin, Santana, Jeff Beck and a “many more” list that I’ll leave to your imagination.
Saturday, May 6: For quite a few years now, Flying Cat Music has quietly been bringing a special class of folk talent – both Americana and world – into the small-but-acoustically-and-visually-stunning space at the Empire State Railway Museum in Phoenicia. The room tends to be not only packed, but also attentive in that endangered listening-room way.
Our first order of business here is clerical. It is to be called Colony now, not the Colony Café, as we have long been conditioned to think of it: that stylish, on-again off-again hotel/restaurant/venue that has been standing there all cool and Euro on Rock City Road just past the Green in Woodstock since 1929.
Saturday & Sunday, April 29-30: There is an old Zen proverb that you may have heard: “You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes every day, unless you’re too busy. Then you should sit for an hour.” I like to imagine that the organizers of Basilica’s famous 24-Hour Drone Festival feel similarly about the agency of drone-based music: Those with the least patience for it are those who need it the most.
Friday, April 28: As a young band, B4tB simply smoked the clubs of New Paltz and environs. Most people who caught them by accident would thenceforward catch them on purpose.
Saturday, April 29: Jazz bassist, producer, composer, electronic music pioneer: Malcolm Cecil has quietly had about as varied and storied a music career as one could quietly have. He won a Grammy for engineering on Stevie Wonder’s greatest record, Innervisions. His innovative duo Tonto’s Expanding Head Band made what is widely considered to be essential early electronic music, and was, in a bizarre turn, recently referenced on TBS’ popular show People of Earth.
Saturday, April 22: “I have a large seashell collection that I keep along all the major coasts.”