music

The Asylum Street Spankers’ van was in Arizona heading west when I rang Christina Marrs, the band’s saw player (and vocalist, tenor guitarist, banjo and uke player) on her cell. We started off talking about Asylum Street, a thoroughfare in the Spankers’ hometown Austin, Texas. "It’s the street that goes by the asylum," said Christina. […]

The Greyboy Allstars first came together 15 years ago at the Green Circle Bar in San Diego, a club that’s now gone like a cool breeze. A DJ who calls himself Greyboy spun funk, soul and boogaloo jazz records there. A scene developed and there was a call for live music. With the help of […]

Monday is St. Patrick’s Day, which makes this St. Paddy’s weekend — a time when Celtic bands are sure to find work. In oh-so-green Humboldt County that pretty much boils down to two bands: the quartet Good Company, who play Saturday at Muddy’s Hot Cup, and Scatter the Mud, a somewhat wilder band that leads […]

It’s not hard to imagine Iowan folksinger Greg Brown climbing out of a dusty, battered pick-up truck parked down some lonesome road, pulling an equally battered guitar and canvas bag full of fishing tackle from the back and ambling down an overgrown path looking for a hole where they’re biting. That’s the picture he paints […]

Joseph Shabalala, leader and founder of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, has told the story of his dream many times. He told it to me years ago when the group was on one of many world tours. The dream came in 1964. "In my dreams I heard children singing sweet harmony," he said. "These children were singing […]

His name is Tilmann Otto, but he’s best known as Gentleman , the No. 1 reggae performer in Germany. He was born and raised in Cologne, the cultural center of the Rhineland — not exactly a place that comes to mind in connection with reggae. "There’s a big scene there," says Gentleman, who is in […]

We’ll start by forgiving the fact that the Mardi Gras/Carnaval Blow-Out and Dance Extravaganza coming up this weekend is on a Saturday, even though Mardi is French for Tuesday. Who wants to (or has time to) party on a Tuesday, what with work and all, even if it is Fat Tuesday? And we’ll overlook the […]

He’s the master of the psychedelic funk he branded funkadelic, the spacey Captain of the Mothership. With James gone, you could say George Clinton is the funkiest man on Earth. The music he made with various iterations of his bands Parliament and Funkadelic was sampled left, right and sideways to become the basis of hip […]