Author Archives: Roger Catlin

Billy Bragg wrapped up his five week North American tour Sunday in familiar surroundings —the 9:30 Club in Washington, where he was quick to joke he was starting at 9.

He had just played a more intimate show Saturday at the Atlantis next door the night before, but a big crowd still was on hand to hear a career’s worth of ringing songs as cutting as his slashing solo electric guitar chords. He had a few things to say about the political situation as well, of course, especially about the imminent election. But he also had some hard-learned lessons from his 40th anniversary tour of the States, some of which he stated, and others of which he demonstrated.

Looking sharp in neatly cut grey hair and beard, and a shirt-like jacket, the purchase of which he went into great detail, Bragg took care to tune between every song as he continued his banter. Because every performance these days is duly shot by fans on smartphone video and shared online, he explained, musicians dare not turn out a sloppy performance, lest it live forever in some corner of the internet.

This may be unexpected in a rocker who rose up in punk, raising his voice and single guitar since the start, but it made for a nicely honed performance which swelled beyond its setlist to last nearly three hours. The extended set was filled with favorites from early in his career—with “Greetings to the New Brunette,” a big singalong to “New England,” and the poignant sting of “Levi Stubbs’ Tears” in a year that claimed the last of the Four Tops.

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Stephen Merritt’s challenge to himself, at the end of the last century, was to write 100 love songs. He had been inspired by hearing a piano bar revue of Stephen Sondheim’s works—and by 114 Songs by Charles Ives, the composer born 150 years ago this weekend, as it happens.

He only got to 69 Love Songs. But that was fine, or maybe better, as it fit his droll style. The epic songscape is marking its 25th anniversary this year, sparking a series of two-night concerts in which it’s played in order, 35 songs the first night and 34, the second with no additions or changes possible. The whole project is something of a math problem, after all, with some of the songs of the first night’s set Thursday at the Lincoln Theatre, (“Roses” specifically) originally clocking in at only 27 seconds, and three others were written at just under a minute.

Reacting to a single yelled request, the ever-deadpan Merritt advised that those who requested songs that were not next one on the list would be fed to alligators; and those who needlessly requested songs that would be next would cause them to just skip the song altogether. So it was a bit of a recital of the assembled seven-piece Magnetic Fields, all of whom were pretty much sitting down, like the audience. Unlike the very fanciful playhouse stage setting and colorful costuming the last time the band played the venue, for the 50 Song Memoir in 2017, this was a very plain presentation, bordering on drab.

Merritt sat at right, in an ELO T-shirt, barely playing any instruments (except for key triangle at one point and a moo-cow toy elsewhere). The main event, as always, was his deep baritone, which seems to have gotten even deeper over the years. As it was, he tilted his head and stretched his neck as if to empty out the furthest reaches of every low note.

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The still-touring The Rubinoos tend to close their main set with their anthem “Rock and Roll is Dead.” Like a lot of the work they’ve been doing for more than a half century, it could be taken with a wink and a grain of salt. After all, when they used it to close their Sunday gig at the rockin’ Hank Dietle’s Tavern in Rockville, they’d been disproving it the whole time.

Formed by Berkeley high schoolers at the dawn of the ’70s, they began their own love with rock ’n’ roll by leaning into its roots, practicing doo-wop street corner harmonies that’d serve them throughout their career. At Dietle’s, a cool dive amid dismal office towers across from a shuttered mall, they began their early evening show and closed their encore displaying this a cappella prowess with a couple of songs from the 1950s, starting with Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers’ “I’m Not a Juvenile Delinquent” and ending their encore with the Chordettes’ “Mr. Sandman.”

Their love for the arcane cover song has served them well over the years, scoring them a minor hit with Tommy James & the Shondells’ once-controversial “I Think We’re Alone Now.” On stage, basking in the retirement age rocker energy of the room, they began its loping baseline with a long story about the time they played it on American Bandstand.

They bring a vibrant authenticity to songs not often played live in small bars—or played so well—from the Electric Prunes “I Had Too much to Dream (Last Night)” to the Stingrays’ surf instrumental, “Stingray” to their stab at the Byrds’ experimental “Eight Miles High” in the encore.

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PHOTO: MIKAI KARL | Where it’s at, Beck famously declared nearly three decades ago, was two turntables and a microphone. But in his long and inventive career, he’s dabbled in a number of musical genres, and for his current summer tour he’s backed by much more than that DJ setup to perform in front of his own band and full 80-piece orchestras.

It’s a rich and rare opportunity to hear him do justice to a couple of his best received albums this century, the contemplative and orchestral 2014 Morning Phase and its thematic predecessor Sea Change from a dozen years earlier. The sweeping swells of strings that accompanied his ballads of heartbreak and isolation were finally being given the full backing they deserved.

Saturday night at Wolf Trap, the full National Symphony Orchestra set the tone with the brief instrumental “Cycle” before Beck strolled on with an acoustic guitar to begin “Morning” just as he did on the 2014 album. Wearing a dark suit over an unbuttoned white shirt, the ever-youthful Beck bounded around the stage when he didn’t stand stock-still at the microphone. His supple voice was well-mixed over the waves of music supporting him, intoning the deepened lyric turns from a guy once known only for his slacker stance.

In all, he played nearly a dozen songs from Morning Phase and Sea Change. The orchestral undertow didn’t just work for songs from those two melancholy albums, though. He had dabbled with the sounds on many of his other albums, if only through samples, so was eager to bring them to the stage for in some cases, the first time. That was the case with “Missing,” from his 2005 Guero, and the ballad “We Live Again” from 1998’s Mutations. But even “Tropicalia” from that 1998 album got a sprightly reading—and much needed change of pace, from the NSO. “We’ll bring the tragedy back in a little bit,” Beck deadpanned.

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When the summer tour of Daryl Hall and Elvis Costello was announced, I first thought Declan MacManus was opting to fill the slot of Hall’s former partner. After all, he’s performed in many guises over the years, from his famous stage name to The Imposter to Napoleon Dynamite (before the movie of the same name). So why not John Oates?

There was some precedent for such a partnership. Hall sang and co-starred in the video for Costello’s “The Only Flame in Town” an alarming 40 years ago. But no, here they were only sharing dates on a summer tour, co-headlining in the sense they both presented their own full sets that otherwise had no other intersection with the other.

It might have seemed an odd pairing; the hit-making popular appeal of Hall & Oates catalog has little to do with Costello’s more esoteric but critically appraised songbook. Yet fans of each artist may have been surprised by how many songs they may knew by heart from the other.

Hall in recent years has built on his musical legacy by building Daryl’s House, a pleasing musical web series turned brick and mortar club in Pawling, N.Y. Inviting other artists to join him in more than 90 episodes, he’s built a solid band that stood out in the tour’s final stop Thursday at Wolf Trap in Vienna, VA.

With his poofy mane now completely white, Hall himself, at 77, may have been exhibiting the effect of two months of touring, but for a guy who built his career on a soulful falsetto, his upper register was shot. Sometimes he’d skip the lyrics with the highest notes, as on “Sara Smile”; other times he’d let the audience take it. Most times, though, he tried to go for it, as if it could still possibly happen, reaching with a kind of growl that seemed painful at times. And mostly, it didn’t work. It was a rough night to be sure.

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It’s a satisfying, full circle moment when Robert Plant and Allison Krauss close their summer set with “When the Levee Breaks.” Not just because of the continuing truth of the 80-year-old meteorological prognostication in an era when flooding is on the rise.

As in the first of two shows at Wolf Trap in Vienna, VA, the two are bringing a palpable yet atmospheric feel of the 1929 blues song that Plant and his band had rocked up so much to end their bestselling Led Zeppelin IV that they freely added their own names to the songwriting credit of originator Memphis Minnie.

Like much of the rest of the set on a sizzling summer night, the two were bringing their thoughtful, expansive interpretations closer to the original nuggets of American music that so inspired them both. Still, the sold out crowd would give standing ovations only when they covered Zep songs, however differently arranged, which happened a couple of other times too.

Plant, at 75, with signature curls now a wild silvery mane, was steady on vocals, returning at times to the mercurial oscillations of his past band and his unexpected ad libs and yelps. No longer stalking the stage bare-chested like a rock god, he more often gestured like a courtly gentleman, particularly in deference to his collaborator Krauss, 52, who in her high necked blouse and jeans appeared like a Wild West schoolmarm.

Raised in bluegrass but with an affection for rock ’n’ roll, she harmonizes surprisingly well with Plant. And like that other seemingly odd recording duo, Norah Jones and Billy Joe Armstrong, they have found their North Star in the Everly Brothers—whose songs, it turns out, were heard as often as anything from Led Zep, with “The Price of Love” early in the set and two tuneful ditties, “Stick with Me Baby” and “Gone Gone Gone” to cap the encore.

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Los Straitjackets have a whole subgenera of rock to themselves—guitar-led surf instrumentals, twanging away the way The Ventures once did—and with a second gimmick all their own, Lucha Libre wrestling masks.

Even when joining forces with Nick Lowe, as they have for an album and a couple of tours, they’ve maintained their distinct identity and cool swagger. To celebrate the band’s 30th anniversary, the band is on tour that included the Hamilton in DC. Led by Eddie Angel, a rockabilly stalwart who has played with a lot of bands, and flanked by lanky Greg Townson.

With steady backing by bassist Pete Curry and drummer Chris Sprague, the band could go in any direction, but were celebrating its anniversary by largely doing originals from their dozen or so albums, with titles that sounded like artifacts from the past—from the opening “Pacifica” to the signature “Kawanga!” to their version of horror novelty, “Rockula.”

By the second tune, “Outta Gear,” the front line was arranged to do cheesy choreographed moves, augmented by their matching black suits, wrestling mask,s and matching custom guitars. There were a few familiar instrumentals—back from the days when instrumental s were played enough on the radio to become familiar. One was “Out of Limits” from the Marketts, later remade by the Ventures; and the Revels’ “Church Key,” with the drummer adding other non sequitirs in the key breaks (“bird bath!” was one).

Making an instrumental out of a pop hit is a good move, and they did so with “Love Potion Number Nine” (as the Ventures did before them). They went further, though, putting their stamp on the theme from “Midnight Cowboy” such that it retained its haunting melody through reverb. The Benny Goodman staple “Sing, Sing, Sing” becomes a set-closing stinger (with plenty of room for a Gene Krupa-like drum attack). Best of all is their unexpected reworking of the theme from Titanic, “My Heart Will Go On” into a thrilling rocker.

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When The Feelies started nearly half a century ago in New Jersey, nobody expected they’d be playing well into the second decade of the 21st century at full strength.

Looking like twitchy, shy, bespectacled kids on their influential 1980 debut—best described by the title of the frantic track that kicked it off, “The Boy with Perpetual Nervousness”—they nowadays more resemble professors emeriti. But at a big sold out show at the Black Cat in DC, they seem even more shy than ever—or at least start their shows that way.

Over the din of the crowd Saturday, they quietly took seats for an opening acoustic set some may not had realized had begun. The frantic strumming and entwining rhythms were there, if one listened, but the vocals were so low in the mix, one could stand right next to the club’s biggest PA and still strain to hear Glenn Mercer’s baritone.

By their second number, a cover of “Sunday Morning,” the crowed quieted enough to pay attention. After all, the track kicks off the band’s release last fall, Some Kinda Love: Performing the Music of the Velvet Underground, chronicling a 2018 show.

It was just one of three songs performed from that salute, however. It was as if a song that had so internalized that band’s tone, intensity and simple, poetic lyrics (not to mention Mercer’s Lou Reed-like deadpan) there was no need to further reference their biggest influence.

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PHOTOS: SHAWN MILLER/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS | The sheer appeal and influence of Elton John’s music can be seen in the wide-ranging top-name artists who came to pay tribute and perform his songs last week at the 2024 Library of Congress Gershwin Awards Prize for Popular Song.

From the jolting opening strains of Metallica, of all people, at the DAR Constitution Hall slashing and burning through “Funeral for a Friend / Loves Lies Bleeding” (that may have left some Congressional ears bleeding) to the frailer tones of 80-year-old Joni Mitchell, declaring “I’m Still Standing,” albeit aided by cane and high profile backup singers in Annie Lennox and Brandi Carlile.

Mitchell, who won the Gershwin Prize last year (an event whose subsequent broadcast earned an Emmy) wasn’t the only past winner in the mix. Garth Brooks, the 2020 prizewinner, doffed his black hat and crooned two tunes, “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word” and “Daniel.”

Few of the artists seemed willing to stray far from the original arrangements of the songs by John, 76, and lyricist Bernie Taupin, 73, who was sharing the award. In winning the prize named after George and Ira Gershwin, John and Taupin were the third team to be so honored, after Bacharach and David in 2012 and Emilio and Gloria Estefan in 2019; and only the second and third Brits—after Paul McCartney in 2010.

Still, both effusively praised the American music that inspired them both. “It’s been responsible for everything that I love in my musical life,” John said. “Everything I do emanates from the American songbook, which is the fountainhead,” Taupin said.

For most of the evening the two got to sit in the front row and bask in the performances of their songs by others. Of them, Lennox gave a strong gospel undergirding to “Border Song”; Maren Morris gave a reverent reading of “I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues.” Juilliard grad and Elton neighbor Charlie Puth approached “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” like a recital, pausing dramatically before it began to take the moment in.

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Cat Power has devoted a large portion of her career to reinterpreting other artists’ material, with three full albums and two EPs of cover songs, from artists as wide ranging as Billie Holiday, Nick Cave, and The Rolling Stones. She’s also covered Bob Dylan on those releases, largely sticking to early outtakes like “Kingsport Town” and “Paths of Victory,” or “I Believe in You” from Slow Train Coming. 

Compared to those, her latest project more resembled a hugely ambitious performance art piece—reproducing an entire Dylan concert, one of his most notorious, song for song, from the very stage it was purported to have been performed. Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert replicates the concert that was actually recorded at the Manchester Free Trade Hall but widely bootlegged as being from London’s Royal Albert Hall—and is so much associated with that hall so that Dylan’s eventual official bootleg release of it in 1998 retained that title in quotation marks: Bob Dylan Live 1966: The ‘Royal Albert Hall’ Concert.

No need to do that when Cat Power, also known as Chan Marshall, recorded her show at the Royal Albert Hall to further extend the legend by bringing it to the place where it had never been. Manchester was the famous stop amid Dylan’s contentious English tour when UK folk audiences were reacting to the electric presentation of songs in the second half of the show—catcalling, slow-clapping and with someone ultimately yelling “Judas!” before the final number.

Someone, either as a joke or stirred by history, yelled the same thing when Marshall booked the Royal Albert Hall in November 2022 and recorded her version of the songs in order. Released a year later, the live album is being promoted on the current tour—for an entirely more positive audience response.

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Steve Forbert teaming up with Freedy Johnston to tour sounds like a perfect match, until you imagine them trying to combine their distinctly rough-hewn, sometimes ragged voices as they tool down the road.

That may be the reason why the two never quite share the stage in shows like the one Saturday night in northern Virginia. Instead, the idea that each brings their audience along to appreciate the other’s set which are after all pretty simpatico in lyric smarts and tuneful melodies (if not always the smoothest of pipes).

Johnston, the Kansas native, burst on the scene with a bunch of fine songs in his early albums 30 years ago. Songs from his 1994 This Perfect World still comprise about half of his freewheeling solo set (which was pretty different from the set a week before). But he had songs from three other albums, including his latest, the 2022 Back on the Road to You, as well as a new, yet unrecorded tune about the time he tried to be a drummer in a band but was fired (since he had no experience whatsoever behind a set).

“I’ve played here about 200 times,” he said to the familiar settings of the strip mall club in Vienna, VA. “It’s great to be here for the 201st!” He didn’t dress for the occasion, in his ball cap, black T shirt over black long sleeve T-shirt, jeans, and a key ring outside his belt loop, janitor-style. But he had a good rapport with the fans, requesting some “hot liquid” two songs in because “my voice needs help.” He weighted the end of his set with “This Perfect World,” his cover of Jimmy Webb’s “Wichita Lineman” to his conclusive “Bad Reputation.”

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PHOTO: DAVID DOOBININ | Juliana Hatfield looked a little severe as she stepped onto the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage for a well attended free show last weekend. In a slim dark military coat with epaulets, her greying hair center parted and pulled back in a bun.

But soon into her set, accompanying herself on her Barbie-pink electric guitar, she was as we’ve ever known her, in that earnest, high voice, staying true to herself as she mowed down subjects in her songs. There was a sort of logic to her set—the opening “Candy Wrappers” were strewn “all over the hotel room floor,” which led to “Hotel” (“welcome me when I need a home”). She may have been thinking about coming down from Boston and checking into her DC hotel.

Later, she laid bare her process of sequencing songs, saying she paired “Wonder Why,” the well-observed song describing her parents’ house, with an Electric Light Orchestra cover, because the former song described “a transistor radio held up to my ear” on which her teenage self was likely listening to ELO.

Doing cover albums has been a thing in recent years for Hatfield—her latest is Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO, from which she did “Telephone Line,” which required a bit of crowd participation, as well as the lesser known “Sweet in the Night,” which she said was her favorite.

From her other thematic cover albums she played the most famous one from the Police collection, “Roxanne,” with just the right tone, and two from her surprising collection of Olivia Newton John songs—the yearning country ballad “Please Mr. Please” and the splendidly poppy “Dancing’ ‘Round and ‘Round.”

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