Author Archives: Mel Minter

hONEyhoUSe Goes Live at the Outpost

image2BACK FROM A SONGWRITING/RECORDING TRIP TO NASHVILLE, HONEYHOUSE GETS SET TO RECORD A LIVE ALBUM IN ALBUQUERQUE

If you see little red marks up and down the arms of Mandy Buchanan, Yvonne Perea, and Hillary Smith—collectively known as hONEyhoUSe—there’s no need to be concerned. They’re still pinching one another after a dream week in Nashville, where they opened for the Burrito Brothers at Douglas Corner Café, performed at the Blue Bird Café, and spent marathon songwriting sessions in the studio with award-winning luminaries on the Nashville scene.

Back home, they’re preparing for two performances at the Outpost this Sunday, which will be recorded for a live album to be released this summer. Continue reading →

Birds of Chicago: ‘Real Midnight’ Sings to the Wolves at the Door

Birds of Chicago: J.T. Nero and Allison Russell

Birds of Chicago: J.T. Nero and Allison Russell

Real Midnight, the new release from Birds of Chicago—the collective of musicians that centers on the peripatetic singer/songwriters J.T. Nero and Allison Russell—demonstrates that words and music put together in just the right way can melt hearts, heal wounds, and stiffen backbones. Again and again on Real Midnight, Nero and Russell, who will be in concert in Santa Fe and Albuquerque this week, manage to snare big feelings in the tiniest details (“He can see her now he can see her now/Sunlight through her camisole”), memorialize hallowed moments of youth in a handful of words (“We watched you fade/Dim star of the palisades/Drowning in the sun”), and celebrate truths that can make you shudder (“Nobody keeps anything/Nobody gets to keep anything/I’m trying to catch a feeling/I’m just trying to catch a feeling”). Continue reading →

Chris Lightcap’s Bigmouth: Jazz Currents with a Rock ’n’ Roll Undertow

Chris Lightcap’s Bigmouth: (left to right) Tony Malaby (tenor sax), Craig Taborn (piano, Wurlitzer electric piano), Chris Cheek (tenor sax), Chris Lightcap (bass), Gerald Cleaver (drums, percussion). Photo by Nada Zgank.

Epicenter (Clean Feed Records ), the recent impressive release from bassist/composer Chris Lightcap’s Bigmouth, offers a sonic love letter to New York City, with ferocious references to the city’s raunchy rock ’n’ roll history (“Down East”) to delicate love songs that recall tender moments in Lightcap’s personal history (“Arthur Avenue”). Along the way, the composer tips his hat to a wide range of influences that stretches from Velvet Underground to Ornette Coleman, and his layered compositions are ably fulfilled by Bigmouth’s sterling personnel—Chris Cheek and Tony Malaby (tenor saxes), Craig Taborn (Wurlitzer electric piano, piano, organ), and Gerald Cleaver (drums, percussion).

This Thursday at the Outpost, this stellar quintet, touring in support of the new release, will grab you by your musical lapels for a tour up and down the boroughs and byways of New York City. Continue reading →

An Evening with Bobby Shew and the NM Philharmonic

Bobby Shew

Bobby Shew. Photo by Victoria Rogers.

Internationally renowned trumpeter, Albuquerque native, and Corrales resident Bobby Shew will be front and center Saturday evening, backed by the sterling rhythm section of pianist Jim Ahrend, bassist Colin Deuble, drummer Cal Haines—and the New Mexico Philharmonic Orchestra—in a concert that will reprise the material on Shew’s favorite album of his, Metropole Orchestra. The album features 10 tracks, including 8 standards, an original by Shew, and an original written for him by Lex Jasper, who arranged all the tunes on the album.

The Metropole Orchestra, founded in 1945 and based in the Netherlands, has held a lofty position in the European jazz world for over 70 years. The New Mexico Philharmonic will play the Metropole’s original arrangements.

I had the opportunity to chat with Bobby—no disrespect intended; he’s my neighbor, and everybody here calls him Bobby, and when I type “Shew,” I’m wondering who that is—about the album, the concert, and how he once jumped off a 35-foot windmill with a surplus parachute, and lived to tell about it. Continue reading →

Three Quickies: Reviews on Releases from Ralph Alessi, Tom McDermott and Aurora Nealand, and Herlin Riley

Ralph Alessi
Herlin Riley. Photo by Leonard Smith III.
Aurora Nealand and Tom McDermott. Thanks to You Tube’s jazzbo43 for the screen grab.

Short reviews of the latest releases from these masters. Continue reading →