photos by Chris Graham

"John Wesley Harding just sang a song with an Atlantic Yards reference." - Kate

John Hold Steady Walkmen Mountain Goat Wesley Harding

"Well, you know, I've been making music for twenty something years now, and over the years, you meet many people in and out of your lives. They may or may not be your best friends, and you may or may not be close with their families, but there is a mutual respect and in some cases, that blossoms into very long friendships. For example, when I first came into America in 1990, I think my first ever solo show here was in Athens, Georgia. There, I was invited to stay at Peter Buck's house, and staying there was Nikki Sudden who has since sadly demised, and Billy Bragg; it was quite a wild scenario. It was my first time in town really, and my first solo show in America, so I've known Peter 21 years now. Scott, the producer of the record, came up to me at a show in Seattle in 1992 and said, "I'm a fan, I'm in the Young Fresh Fellows," and I said, "Fantastic." Now, bizarrely, he's not only in the Young Fresh Fellows, he's also in The Minus Five who was the backing band of my last album, and R.E.M who are now no more. Rosanne Cash, I met totally by chance in a New York lunch place. We were introduced, and I'm an artist-in-residence at this university, and I asked her to do a talk for the students with me because she's also a writer and musician. We've become very good friends, she's a great user of the social networking device Twitter, and we kind of keep in touch through that. So, I've known her a few years now, and her voice is so very recognizable to me, and I've loved it for so long that she is a very easy person to summon how good she would be in your mind of how good she would be in a song; then there's John Roderick of The Long Winters who is quite a recent friend; also Laura Veirs--I needed a woman to sing the parts of the ghost of my ex-girlfriend in one of the songs; and Steve Berlin of Los Lobos does the horns on everything, and he produced an album for me in 1992 called Why We Fight. He also found me a place to live. I was his neighbor for a couple of years. So, as you can see, it's a lovely web of friendship and mutual history."
- John Wesley Harding to Huffington Post

Tickets are still on sale for the Decemberists-filled Cabinet of Wonders that will go down in the same venue on 11/18. Many of the same musicians will also be in the house the next night at the Bell House and then at Maxwell's right after that.

More pictures from City Winery below...

Continue reading "John Darnielle, Rosanne Cash, Hamilton Leithauser, John Hodgman & others played John Wesley Harding's show (pics)"

The National show in Prospect Park (more by Amanda Hatfield)

We already knew that 'Celebrate Brooklyn' is hosting an impressive lineup of ticketed Prospect Park Bandshell shows this summer: The Decemberists, Animal Collective, Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver & Cut Copy. And we knew that the 33rd annual series of free shows would start with an Andrew Bird show on June 10th, and that BRIC is also hosting three free 'dance parties' in Brooklyn Bridge Park this summer too.

Now the entire 2011 lineup of "24 free performances, including 20 music concerts, two dance performances, two film screenings with live music, and a family concert" is here! You can check it all out (The Feelies, Real Estate, The Books, Junip, Doveman, Justin Townes Earle, Punch Brothers, Raekwon, Oumou Sangaré, Times New Viking, Ra Ra Riot, Delicate Steve, Buke & Gass and Hal Willner included), below...

Continue reading "Celebrate Brooklyn - complete 2011 Prospect Park show lineup"

photos by Andrew St. Clair

"No more room at she and him, walking over to Rosanne Cash"
- Lisa Davis (July 4th, 1:49pm)

"It was 3 squillion degrees on Gov's Isle but SUCH fun afternoon, & a tweetup! Heard ferry lines were long. Next year, extra ferries please!" - Rosanne Cash

I accidentally lied when I said there wouldn't be any more concerts this summer in "Colonel's Row" on Governors Island. Though it wasn't quite the production that the ticketed-nighttime Passion Pit gig was, the free, July 4th afternoon Rosanne Cash show was held in the same spot. The She & Him show happened right afterward on the same island, but at The Beach. And as the above tweet points out, it would have been impossible hard to see both shows due to She & Him reaching capacity before Rosanne Cash even started....

"You are wrong. It was far from impossible to catch both. Getting there at 12:30, we got wrist bands into She and Him then headed over to Rosanne Cash and walked right back into She and Him when Cash was done. The trick was to get there early and it was kind of funny watching the people stuck outside the beach grumbling to security about letting us in. Next time get there early fools." [Anonymous]

The full setlist and more pictures from the show below...

Continue reading "Rosanne Cash played Governors Island on the 4th of July - pics & setlist"

Grace Potter & The Nocturnals @ Rockwood in April (more by Chris La Putt)

XPoNential Music Festival will take place over three days, July 16th-18th in the waterfront Wiggins Park in Camden, NJ. The lineup includes Rosanne Cash, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, The Walkmen, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes, Free Energy, Nicole Atkins and Dawes. Tickets and three-day passes are on sale now.

The current lineup as of now (more are TBA) and more info are posted below...

Continue reading "XPoNential Music Festival in Camden - 2010 lineup & tickets"

She & Him @ Bowery Ballroom in March (more by sarahana)

She & Him will be coming to NYC for two shows this July as part of their summer tour dates. All of those shows are posted below.

So far, music on July 4th in NYC includes kids music at Battery Park, the Old 97s at South Street Seaport, and a free 2pm Rosanne Cash show on Governors Island (presented by Trinity Wall Street) - you can add to that a free She & Him show at the Beach @ Governors Island (presented by The Bowery Presents, Highline Ballroom and Mad Dog Presents). Roseanne Cash and She & Him - same date, same island, separate shows. She & Him time TBA.

Two days after that (7/6), She & Him play Terminal 5. Tickets for the not-free show go on AmEx presale Wednesday, April 28th at 11am. General tickets go on sale Friday at noon.

Last time they were in NYC, in March, She & Him played two nights at Bowery Ballroom.

All tour dates (quite a few around North America, and Europe before then) are below...

Continue reading "She & Him playing a free 4th of July show on Governors Island (Rosanne Cash too), Terminal 5 & other 2010 tour dates "

We need your help to raise $100,000 in four nights to help the victims of Haiti's catastrophic earthquake. No country in the Western Hemisphere has been battered more than Haiti in the last 500 years--the nearly complete annihilation of its native population over two decades, a brutal slave regime, ongoing foreign military interventions over hundreds of years, brutal dictatorships supported by western powers, blockades of aid and more recently, devastating natural disasters from hurricanes to this latest earthquake.

100% of proceeds from this benefit will be donated to Doctors Without Borders, Partners In Health and the mobile hospital initiative directed by the Jewish Renaissance Medical Center - all recommended by the Haiti Consule General. We ask that you give any way you can.

Continue reading "Patti Smith, Swell Season, Josh Ritter, Roseanne Cash, JW Harding & many more playing Haiti benefits @ City Winery"

"Join New York Times journalists and some of today's most celebrated talents and thinkers from film, television, music, theater, dance and books, including Cirque du Soleil, Jimmy Fallon, Natalie Portman, Jeff Bridges, Carrie Fisher, Pulitzer playwrights and much more." [Tickets are on sale]

"Join hosts Nick and Helen Forster at this 2-plus hour special recording of the nationally syndicated radio variety show "eTown." This "more-than-a-concert" experience will feature live performances PLUS up close and personal conversations with musical guests Tori Amos and Jesse Winchester as well as the presentation of this week's prestigious E-Chievement Award®." That describes what's going on at The Grand Ballroom at Manhattan Center on December 7th. Tickets are on sale.

Lady Gaga has added two more shows at Radio City Music Hall making the total four. Tickets to the new shows go on sale Friday morning.

Rosanne Cash, The Low Anthem and Mike Doughty all play a WFUV Holiday Cheer Benefit Concert together at the Concert Hall in NYC on December 8th. Tickets are on sale.

Yeasayer tickets are on American Express presale.

ALL and other tickets are on sale too.

photos by Chris La Putt

"During the final moments of her sold-out concert at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn on Friday night, Rosanne Cash stood beneath an image of her with her father, Johnny Cash. It was a photograph projected on a backdrop, and it faded soon enough to feel like a mirage. Given that Ms. Cash had just sung "Sweet Memories," a country ballad of haunted remembrance, that apparitional suggestion was on the mark...

...On Friday she worked without any outside help. ("Is Bruce here?" she quipped, looking around. "I think Bruce is playing a larger venue tonight," she added, alluding to Giants Stadium.) She was more than capable of carrying the material herself, backed by a precise and flexible band. Her husband, John Leventhal, who produced the album, doubled as lead guitarist and musical director... [NY Times]

Continue reading "Rosanne Cash @ St Ann's Warehouse, DUMBO - pics & setlist"

Rosanne & Johnny...

NY Times: On Tuesday [Oct 6], you're releasing your 14th album, "The List," a stirring leap into the past whose title refers to an actual list of 100 mostly country songs compiled by your father, Johnny Cash, in 1973 in an effort to expand your teenage taste in music beyond the Beatles.

Rosanne Cash: He realized that I lacked something essential about my own musical genealogy, and he made this list for me. He said, "This is a template for excellence." He would play the songs for me on his guitar, and I sought out the records in the years afterward.

Did you have a good relationship with him?

It's hard to be close to a drug addict when they're active. He was erratic and withdrawn. But when I was 17, he said, Come with me, and I left the day after I graduated high school, went on the road with him. It was wonderful. He was clean and sober by that time. That's when he wrote the list for me, on the bus.

As an acclaimed songwriter who is just releasing your first album composed entirely of other peoples' songs, do you think "The List" will bring new life to old classics and raise the country-music consciousness of a generation of kids?

Not just young people. I have a 50-year-old, culturally astute girlfriend who heard a recording of "Sea of Heartbreak" and said, Did you write that? I said, Hardly. Not even close. The definitive version was recorded by Don Gibson in 1961.

She discussed the album and played material from it on September 23rd at WNYC's Souncheck - that show is streaming online.

More info on the album (art, tracklist) and a schedule of Rosenne's live and TV performances (including Letterman & Today show) are below...

Continue reading "Rosanne Cash's new album & live show comes from 'The List' of country songs Johnny made (2 St Ann's Warehouse shows)"

photos by Tim Griffin

DOWNLOAD: John Wesley Harding and Eugene Mirman's Cabinet of Wonders w/ special guests - Oh! Pandora (MP3)

At Le Poisson Rouge[on March 11th], the Cabinet of Wonders show unfolded with an appealing airiness and a confident sort of self-deprecation. Mr. Whitehead read an essay in which the narrator encouraged T.S. Eliot's character J. Alfred Prufrock to lighten up. While reading from a novel in which he fictionalized the life of Rudolf Nureyev, Mr. McCann plugged in Mr. Harding's name for one of his characters. Ms. Wallen's performance of her suite for children, text by Mr. Harding, was a delight, and Ms. Cash's reading from her memoir contained a touching passage about her late father, Johnny Cash. She sang a few songs with her characteristic perceptive grace.

A spoof by the new duo of Harding and Mirman of Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson" gave the evening its touch of vaudeville. The song concluded with the comedian unleashing wild feedback-like squeals via a handheld oscillator that let him play the rock star for a few seconds. Mr. Mirman glowed with glee, as did Mr. Harding, who stepped back to enjoy the inspired silliness. The audience roared in delight.-[Wall Street Journal]

Tonight (3/20), the traveling revue hits SXSW, with a show at Maggie Mae's.

Then "Wes & Eugene's Cabinet of Wonders" tour heads across the US, before a final show at LPR on April 15th (feat. guests Graham Parker, Josh Ritter, Eugene Mirman, Daniel Wallace, Dan John Miller, Sam Lipsyte, Daniel Felsenfeld). Tickets are still on sale.

More pictures from the March 11th show, below...

Continue reading "John Wesley Harding, Eugene Mirman, Roseanne Cash & more @ Le Poisson Rouge, NYC - pics "

John Wesley Harding will be releasing his latest album, Who Was Changed And Who Was Dead, on March 10 via Popover Corps/Rebel Group. Recorded with backing band The Minus Five (featuring Scott McCaughey and Peter Buck of REM), Who Was Changed is Harding's first rock album since 2004's Adam's Apple. Included with the new record is a live bonus CD, recorded at Brooklyn's Union Hall on October 27, 2008 with guest duetist Josh Ritter among others.

John Wesley Harding will be hosting a series of unique variety shows, featuring a hand-picked crew from the worlds of music, literature and comedy. The three-show residency will be held at NYC's Le Poisson Rouge on February 11, March 11 and April 15.

- Jonathan Ames (author, HBO pilot, Bored to Death, with Jason Schwartzman)
- Rick Moody (author, The Ice Storm, Demonology, The Black Veil)
- Eugene Mirman (comedian, Flight of the Conchords)
- Shivaree (musician, Zoë Records)
- Carla Rhodes (rock and roll ventriloquist)
- P.T. Walkley (songwriter/film composer, Ed Burns collaborator)

Tickets for that JWH show are still on sale.

One day earlier (February 10th) you can catch Eugene Mirman celebrating the release of his new book at The Bell House in Brooklyn. John Oliver, John Hodgman, Kristen Schaal and Paul F. Tompkins are also performing at that show, which is sold out.

One day earlier than that (February 9th) (TODAY!) Eugene Mirman will be performing, for free, again with Kristen Schall, at UCB. It's all part of Leo Allen's 11pm Whiplash show that Zach Galifianakis will also be attending. Info and free tickets HERE.

As stated above, John Wesley Harding will be back at LPR in March and April. So will Eugene Mirman. A video trailer for this week's show, and the full lineup of all three (including Roseanne Cash, Josh Ritter, and Graham Parker), below...

Continue reading "JOHN WESLEY HARDING's Cabinet of Wonders... and other EUGENE MIRMAN shows, Josh Ritter, albums & stuff"

Ani Difranco, RZA & Steve Albini @ 2005 New Yorker Festival (CRED)

The eighth annual New Yorker Festival happens in NYC from October 5-7, 2007. Though not completely announced yet, this year's lineup will include all of those you see in the title, and more....

Continue reading "Diplo, Fiona Apple, Sigur Ros, David Byrne, Roseanne Cash, Yo La Tengo & more for the 2007 New Yorker Festival"