Dan Hicks R.I.P | February 6, 2016

Dan Hicks, of the Hot Licks, Dies at 74; Countered the ’60s Sound
By PETER KEEPNEWS

Dan Hicks, a singer, songwriter and bandleader who attracted a devoted following with music that was defiantly unfashionable, proudly eccentric and foot-tappingly catchy, died on Saturday at his home in Mill Valley, Calif. He was 74.

The cause was liver cancer, said his wife, Clare.

The 1971 album “Where’s the Money?” by Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks

Mr. Hicks began performing with his band, Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, in the late 1960s in San Francisco, where psychedelic rock bands like Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead dominated the music scene. The Hot Licks’ sound could not have been more different.

At a time when rock was getting louder and more aggressive, Mr. Hicks’s instrumentation — two guitars (Mr. Hicks played rhythm), violin and stand-up bass, with two women providing harmony and backup vocals — offered a laid-back, all-acoustic alternative that was a throwback to a simpler time, while his lyrics gave the music a modern, slightly askew edge.

He came to call his music “folk swing,” but that only hinted at the range of influences he synthesized. He drew from the American folk tradition but also from the Gypsy jazz of Django Reinhardt, the Western swing of Bob Wills, the harmony vocals of the Andrews Sisters, the raucous humor of Fats Waller and numerous other sources.

The 1972 album “Striking It Rich” by Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks.
“It starts out with kind of a folk music sound,” Mr. Hicks explained in a 2007 interview, “and we add a jazz beat and solos and singing. We have the two girls that sing, and jazz violin, and all that, so it’s kind of light in nature, it’s not loud. And it’s sort of, in a way, kind of carefree.”

The 1972 album “Striking It Rich” by Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks

Songs like “How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away?,” “Milk-Shakin’ Mama” (“I saw the girl who keeps the ice cream/And now it’s I who scream for her”) and “Hell, I’d Go,” about a man whose fondest wish is to be abducted by aliens, displayed his dry and often absurd wit, as did his gently self-mocking stage presence. But he had his serious side, too: “I Scare Myself,” a longtime staple of his repertoire, was a brooding, hypnotic minor-key ballad about being afraid to love.

Mr. Hicks’s records never sold in the millions, but at the height of his popularity in the early 1970s, he and his band appeared on network television and headlined at Carnegie Hall, and he appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone.

Fellow musicians were among his biggest fans: Guest artists on “Beatin’ the Heat” (2000), the first Hot Licks album after a long hiatus, included Bette Midler, Elvis Costello and Tom Waits, while Willie Nelson and Jimmy Buffett joined him in the studio four years later for “Selected Shorts.”

Daniel Ivan Hicks was born on Dec. 9, 1941, in Little Rock, Ark., the son of Ivan Hicks, a career military man, and the former Evelyn Kehl. His family moved to Santa Rosa, Calif., near San Francisco, when he was a child.

Dan Hicks in 2012. Credit Alan Dep/Marin Independent Journal, via Associated Press

He took up drums in sixth grade and guitar as a teenager. After graduating from San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University) with a degree in broadcasting, he performed in local folk clubs while also playing drums with dance bands.

From 1965 to 1968, Mr. Hicks was the drummer and occasional vocalist with the Charlatans, widely regarded as the first San Francisco psychedelic band, although he himself remembered it as less a band than “just kind of some loose guys.” While still with the Charlatans, he formed the first version of the Hot Licks.

The group’s 1969 album, “Original Recordings,” sold poorly, but three subsequent albums for the independent Blue Thumb label established it as a successful touring act.

Mr. Hicks nonetheless disbanded the group in 1973, at the height of its popularity. “It was getting old,” he explained in 1997. “We became less compatible as friends. I was pretty disillusioned, had some money, and didn’t want to do it any more.”

His career stalled after that, but he returned in the 1980s with a new group, the Acoustic Warriors, which duplicated the Hot Licks instrumentation without the female singers. In the late 1990s, he added two singers and brought back the Hot Licks name.

The band, with frequent changes in personnel, toured regularly and continued to perform occasionally in recent years when Mr. Hicks’s health allowed, most recently in December in Napa, Calif.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Hicks is survived by a stepdaughter, Sara Wasserman.

“I will always be humble to my dying day,” Mr. Hicks, tongue in cheek as usual, said when interviewed in 2013 by Roberta Donnay of the Hot Licks. “On my dying day I will explain to the world how lucky they have been to be alive the same time as me.”

Sending love and respect to Ms Mavis Staples

Be sure to look out for Ms. Staples’s new album is being released alongside “Mavis!,” an HBO Documentary Films biography that has its premiere Feb. 29.

Mavis Staples No Longer Wants to Make You Cry
By JON PARELES

Mavis Staples at her home in Chicago. Credit Ryan Lowry for The New York Times

CHICAGO — Awards and mementos fill the walls of Mavis Staples’s apartment in a high-rise on the South Shore here. Next to a window with a long view over a choppy Lake Michigan on a rainy, windy February afternoon, there was the platinum single of the indelible 1972 Staple Singers hit “I’ll Take You There.” There was a tambourine with Prince’s trademark glyph, a souvenir of the two solo albums he produced for her on his Paisley Park label. There was a photo of Ms. Staples with the Obama family, autographed by the president with thanks for a “magical evening” when she performed at the White House for a PBS soul-music special. And on a small table sits “my one Grammy,” Ms. Staples said, for her 2010 album “You Are Not Alone.”

That album, produced by Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, was only the midpoint of an extraordinary productive streak for Ms. Staples at a time when most performers have retired or wish they could. Her late-blossoming solo career has yielded six albums and an EP since 2004, including her new album, to be released on Feb. 19, “Livin’ on a High Note” (Anti-). She has had previous solo albums: attempts to make her a pop hitmaker on Stax and Paisley Park that ran aground in part on record-company politics. But her 21st-century run of albums has reaffirmed Ms. Staples’s lifelong messages — faith, family, freedom, honesty, perseverance — as she both reaches back to the sound of the Staple Singers and tries some new twists.

Mavis Staples Credit Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

“Livin’ on a High Note” is a collection of songs written for her by indie rockers half her age, among them Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Merrill Garbus (Tune-Yards), Nick Cave, Neko Case, Ben Harper and the album’s producer, M. Ward. It uses the electric-guitar twang and bluesy ease of her longtime road band; it also takes some chances while bringing out the pleasure and righteousness of her singing. Pharrell’s “Happy” was very much on her mind when she made the album, she said: “I wish I had that song.”

When she spoke to songwriters, she told them: “I want something joyful. I want to stop making people cry. I’ve been making people cry all my life. The songs I sing, the freedom songs and my gospel songs — I know I’ve been inspiring and uplifting people. But now I want to reach them in a joyful way.”

Ms. Staples, 76, is a small, round woman with a cherubic face and a voice that has lost none of its gutsy power since she unleashed it, some six decades ago, as the teenage lead singer in the Staple Singers, the gospel group directed by her father, Roebuck Staples, known as Pops, who died in 2000. Pops Staples had grown up picking cotton in Mississippi, learning guitar from the Delta bluesman Charley Patton, before coming to Chicago and bringing some of that rural blues flavor — along with a particular tremolo electric-guitar tone — to the devout songs he performed with his children. When the family first appeared at churches in the 1950s, Ms. Staples recalled, “They’d have to stand me on a chair so people could see where the voice was coming from.”

The Staple Singers perform "Respect Yourself" and "I'll Take You There" at the 1999 Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, when they were inducted into the Hall of Fame.

In conversation, exactly as in her songs, Ms. Staples’s cadences are deep, syncopated and emphatic — preacherly — and regularly punctuated by her easy laugh. “Sometimes I sit here, and I talk to the Lord and I talk to Pops,” Ms. Staples said. “I say: ‘Well, Daddy I’m getting ready to make another record. Do you believe that?’ And then I can just see him getting tickled and getting a twinkle in his eye.”

She added: “When you take a lyric and you know what it means, you want to make it real. Make it where you can see it and feel it. What comes from the heart reaches the heart. If you sing from your heart, you will reach the people.”

As the opening song on the new album notes, Ms. Staples’s mother nicknamed her Bubbles as a child. “I said, ‘Mama, why you call me Bubbles?’” Ms. Staples said. “She said: ‘Mavis, because you’re so bubbly. Your spirit—you’re so bubbly, you’re so happy all the time. You keep all of us happy.’”

Ms. Staples’s new album is being released alongside “Mavis!,” an HBO Documentary Films biography that has its premiere Feb. 29. It sums up a life that has encompassed singing gospel in a segregated South, performing freedom songs at civil-rights rallies alongside the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and touring the world and racking up million-selling hits with her family, including “I’ll Take You There” — a vision of heaven delivered with Ms. Staples’s breathy, sultry moans over a reggae-funk backbeat — and the more secular “Let’s Do It Again.” For Ms. Staples and her family, a previous generation’s strict boundaries between gospel and pop were porous; the blues and gospel, she believes, are “first cousins.”

The documentary notes that Bob Dylan proposed to Ms. Staples when their paths crossed on the folk and civil-rights circuit. Their first kiss was at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, Ms. Staples said in the 2014 book “I’ll Take You There,” by the Chicago Tribune music critic Greg Kot. “It was always in my mind that I couldn’t marry a white guy. I was so young and stupid,” she told Mr. Kot. “To this day, I could kick myself, because we were really in love. It was my first love, and it was the one I lost.”

The Staple Singers archives have been revisited lately, too. Last year saw the release of a four-CD compilation, “Faith and Grace: A Family Journey 1953-1976” (Stax/Concord) and “Freedom Highway Complete,” a stirring concert and church service recorded in 1965 soon after Dr. King led a march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. Ms. Staples’s new album ends with “MLK Song,” M. Ward’s quiet, acoustic-guitar setting of a King sermon that Ms. Staples delivers as intimate advice. “He’s the greatest man I ever met,” Ms. Staples said. “I remember hearing that sermon.”

Ms. Staples’s 21st-century comeback follows the death of her father, which left her unmoored; he had been her mentor for decades. “He taught me to sing from my heart,” she said. “He would always say, when we were getting ready to make a record, ‘Make it plain. Make it plain, Mavis. Make it so you know what you’re talking about.’”

Ms. Staples made the album “Livin’ on a High Note” soon after a four-song EP released last year that she recorded with Son Little, who brings some hip-hop to the blues. That project was mournful and cramped in its arrangements; “Livin’ on a High Note” has more space and feistiness.

“This was the greatest recording experience of my life,” said M. Ward, the new album’s producer. “I feel like every song is an opportunity to make a spiritual connection. She calls her vocal booth her prayer room. To be able to have that frame of mind whenever you go into a vocal booth, just sharing a song in that way — I’m definitely inspired by the way that she’s able to make these connections.”

When Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards heard about the project, she eagerly joined it because, she said, “The Staple Singers have always done music that is relevant, and unfortunately the same songs are still relevant today.”

Ms. Staples discussed what she wanted with each prospective songwriter. “We probably talked for 15 minutes, and all of my suspicions about how to last long in this career, she proved them all to be correct,” Ms. Garbus said. “As in be humble, be everyday people, be a human being. No need to cop an attitude, we’re all human beings. She set me at ease right away.”

The song Ms. Garbus came up with, “Action,” is an upbeat successor to Staple Singers songs like “Respect Yourself”; it moves from fear to activism, insisting, “Gotta share the truth that’s inside me” and asking, “Who’s gonna do it if I don’t do it?”

Thinking about Chicago — a city that has been torn lately by police shootings of young black men — Ms. Staples said, “It’s so sad. Sometimes I feel like I’m living back in the 1960s. All of the marching, all of the freedom songs. It’s so sad that it’s not better. Let’s wake up. Let’s get over this.”

The title song for “Livin’ on a High Note” is by Valerie June, a singer from Tennessee with a deep accent. When Ms. Staples first heard it, she thought Valerie June was singing “Leaving on a high note.”

“I said: ‘She’s got me leaving! I don’t want to leave!’” Ms. Staples recalled. “And then when I saw the lyrics, it said, ‘living on a high note.’ Now that’s more like it. I can go for that! I want to be living. I don’t want to be leaving here. I’m not tired yet! Get out of my way, I’m coming through like a speedball. Like a ball of fire!”

Maurice White R.I.P. | February 4, 2016

Earth, Wind & Fire's Maurice White Has Died
He was 74

By Zoe Camp on February 4, 2016 at 5:50 p.m. EST

Maurice White, co-founder of Earth, Wind & Fire, has died. TMZ reports that White died in his sleep Thursday morning following a long battle with Parkinson's disease. He was 74.

Photo via Facebook

Born in Tennessee, White moved to Chicago in his teens and got his start drumming for the Ramsey Lewis Trio (he appeared on nine of the band's records). In 1969, he founded the Salty Peppers with Wade Flemons and Don Whitehead. They subsequently moved from Chicago to Los Angeles, signed to Warner Bros., and changed their name to Earth, Wind & Fire. They released their self-titled debut in 1971.

White played a key role over the course of EWF's decades-long career, writing and producing such successful albums as 1975's That's the Way of the World, 1977's All 'N All, 1980's Faces, and more. Several years after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in the late '80s, White stopped touring with the band, but remained active as a composer and producer for not only EWF, but also Barry Manilow, Barbra Streisand, the Urban Knights, and many more.

In addition to his work with EWF and as a producer, White released one solo album: 1985's Maurice White.

Paul Kantner R.I.P | January 28, 2016

Paul Kantner, Jefferson Airplane Co-Founder & Guitarist, Dies at 74

by Colin Stutz

Jefferson Airplane's Paul Kantner in June 1973
Michael Putland/Getty Images

Jefferson Airplane guitarist, vocalist and founding member Paul Kantner has died. He was 74.

Kantner passed away on Thursday (Jan. 28) of multiple organ failure, following a heart attack earlier in the week.

From 1965-1972, Jefferson Airplane was a pioneer in the Bay Area counterculture psychedelic rock scene, first defining what became known as the "San Francisco sound."

Kantner and guitarist and vocalist Marty Balin formed the band in a bar called the Drinking Gourd, intending the group to be a folk-rock group. Amidst the city's drug experimentation, they developed something far more interesting.

"Jefferson Airplane had the fortune or misfortune of discovering Fender Twin Reverb amps and LSD in the same week while in college. That’s a great step forward," Kantner told author and music historian Harvey Kubernik. "We went into it our normal selves.... The point is if you find something that makes you joyful take note of it. Amplify it if you can. Tell other people about it. That's what San Francisco was about. Both musically, idealistically and metaphorically and every other way. That's what we did here."

As more and more flower children moved to San Francisco, Jefferson Airplane's local following grew and it became the first of the city's psych-rock bands to sign to a major label, releasing its debut Jefferson Airplane Takes Off in 1966. That same year, they became the first band to headline concert promoter Bill Graham's now legendary Fillmore Auditorium.

By the following year, the band's second album, Surrealistic Pillow, became a soundtrack to the Summer of Love. It hit No. 3 on the Billboard 200 with the help of singles "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit," as the rest of the country began following in San Francisco's hippy footsteps.

"On our first U.S. tour we were in cities where all the kids came in prom gowns and tuxedos. Then we came back to Iowa a year later and they were having nude mud love-ins and everybody had their faces painted," Kantner told Kubernik.

Jefferson Airplane performed at the three most famous American rock festivals of the 1960s'  -- Monterey in 1967 and Woodstock and Altamont in 1969. In 1996, Kantner was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for his work with the band.

Kantner is the first of Jefferson Airplane's founding members to have passed away. He was also a founding member of the group's spinoff band, Jefferson Starship. which took off in 1974.

Kantner is survived by three children: sons Gareth and Alexander and daughter China. Funeral arrangements are pending.

*Kubernik's interviews with Kantner will appear in his upcoming book called 1967 - The Complete Rock History of the Summer of Love, due in 2017.

Glenn Frey R.I.P | January 18, 2016

Another sad loss. In the last months we have lost some great rockstars, like Lemmy from Motorhead, David Bowie and now, Eagle's guitar player Glenn Frey.

Message from the Eagles

It Is With The Heaviest of Hearts That We Announce…

It is with the heaviest of hearts that we announce the passing of husband, best friend, father, comrade, and Eagles founder, Glenn Frey, in New York City on Monday, January 18th, 2016.

Glenn fought a courageous battle for the past several weeks but, sadly, succumbed to complications from Rheumatoid Arthritis, Acute Ulcerative Colitis and Pneumonia.

The Frey family would like to thank everyone who joined Glenn to fight this fight and hoped and prayed for his recovery.

Words can neither describe our sorrow, nor our love and respect for all that he has given to us, his family, the music community & millions of fans worldwide.

Cindy Frey | Taylor Frey | Deacon Frey | Otis Frey|
Don Henley | Joe Walsh | Timothy B. Schmit | Bernie Leadon | Irving Azoff

“It's Your World Now”
Written by Glenn Frey and Jack Tempchin
From the Eagles’ Long Road Out of Eden album

A perfect day, the sun is sinkin' low
As evening falls, the gentle breezes blow
The time we shared went by so fast
Just like a dream, we knew it couldn't last
But I'd do it all again
If I could, somehow
But I must be leavin' soon
It's your world now

It's your world now
My race is run
I'm moving on
Like the setting sun
No sad goodbyes
No tears allowed
You'll be alright
It's your world now

Even when we are apart
You'll always be in my heart
When dark clouds appear in the sky
Remember true love never dies

But first a kiss, one glass of wine
Just one more dance while there's still time
My one last wish: someday, you'll see
How hard I tried and how much you meant to me

It's your world now
Use well your time
Be part of something good
Leave something good behind
The curtain falls
I take my bow
That's how it's meant to be
It's your world now
It's your world now
It's your world now

Jackson Browne, Grace Potter, Shovels & Rope and more... 7th Annual 30A Songwriters Festival

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ALONG FLORIDA'S SCENIC HIGHWAY 30A:  EVENT TO FEATURE 150 SONGWRITERS AND OVER 200 PERFORMANCES AT MORE THAN 25 VENUES

The 7th annual 30A SONGWRITERS FESTIVAL- set for January 15, 16 and 17, 2016 - has announced the initial line-up for the 2016 celebration of singers and songs. The festival, held in venues along scenic Highway 30A in Florida's South Walton County, will feature headline performances from esteemed artists Jackson Browne, Grace Potter, Shovels & Rope and Wine, Women & Song featuring Matraca Berg, Suzy Bogguss & Gretchen Peters. 

Also confirmed are Ani DiFranco, Emerson Hart (Tonic), Kristian Bush (Sugarland), Shawn Mullins, Jay Farrar (from Son Volt), Peter Holsapple (the dB's), Drew Holcomb, Jeffrey Steele, Parker Millsap, Dan Bern, Steve Poltz, Hayes Carll, Charlie Mars, Grant-Lee Phillips, Bob Schneider, David Ryan  Harris (John Mayer band),  David Hodges (Evanescence), Bobby Bare, Jr., Chris Stills, Jim Lauderdale, Callaghan, Kris Delmhorst, Kristy Lee, BettySoo, Randall Bramblett, Griffin House, Jennifer Knapp, Toby Lightman, Liz Longley and Heather Maloney.  

Headliner Jackson Browne has written and performed some of the most literate and moving songs in popular music and has defined a genre of songwriting charged with honesty, emotion and personal politics. He was honored with induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, and the Songwriter's Hall of Fame in 2007. He will perform Saturday afternoon, January 16.  "Hopes and dreams become reality at the 30A Songwriters Festival," says Russell Carter, co-producer/Festival Chair.  "We are thrilled to present Jackson Browne as the 2016 headline act. Jackson will perform solo on guitar and piano. It is a singer songwriter performance in its most basic form and it is quite simply profound."

Grace Potter, who Time Magazine says "can belt heartily and coo seductively while displaying swagger," comes to 30A for a Sunday afternoon headlining performance (January 17) in support of her new solo album, "Midnight". 

The 30A Songwriters Festival production team transforms amphitheaters, town halls, restaurants, theaters, bars and covered patios into unique music venues ranging in capacity from 75 to 400 indoors and 4,000 outdoors.  Festival weekend passes are now available for $250 and can be purchased at www.30asongwritersfestival.com, and locally in South Walton at the Cultural Arts Alliance office and at Central Square Records in Seaside.

This year, the 30A Songwriters Festival is teaming up with NPR's Folk Alley, a multi-media music service produced by WKSU. Folk Alley will be on site throughout the weekend interviewing artists and filming and recording performances in a home studio on 30A. Edited 30A Songwriters Festival segments will be aired on Live From Folk Alley's syndicated radio show and on their website and mobile app throughout the year. As part of Southern Living's 50th Anniversary Celebration partnership, the magazine is sending a production team to the 30A Songwriters Festival to film interviews with musicians, which will be featured in their 50 Favorite Things About South Walton and Biscuits and Jam Series. 

Additional artists confirmed for 2016 include Joe Crookston, Guthrie Brown, Peter Karp, Bonnie Bishop, Caroline Aiken, Jeff Black, Brigitte DeMeyer, Will Kimbrough, Willis Alan Ramsey, Deana Carter, Tommy Talton, Hailey Whitters, Webb Wilder, Brett Young, Hayley Reardon, Jessi Alexander, Corey Crowder, Jamie Lin Wilson, Elise  Davis, Alan Rhody, Joel Rafael, Kelsey  Waldon, Farewell Angelina, Kyle  Jacobs, Sonya Kitchell, Jeff Cohen, Austin  Plaine, Jeffrey Foucault, Dylan Pratt, The Cactus Blossoms, Ken Johnson, Jonathan  Tyler, Andrew Combs, Count This Penny, Davin McCoy, Carson McHone, Leah Edwards, Annalise Emerick, Liz Vice, Ashleigh Flynn, Friends of Lola, Dean Johanesen, Grayson Capps & Corky Hughes, Kevin Gordon, Hannah Thomas, Old Salt Union, Blue Mother Tupelo, Chris DeStefano, Chuck Wicks, Caroline Spence, Kyshona Armstrong, Donnie  Sundal, Boukou Groove, Brian White, Karyn  Williams, Jonathan Mitchell, Jerry  Salley, Pete  Sallis, Eric Erdman, JT Harding, Brett James, Matt Jenkins, Rick Brantley, Crys Matthews, Geoff McBride, The Mulligan Brothers, Jon Nite, David Olney, Josh Osborne, CJ Solar, The Owsley Brothers, Wildlife Specials and more.

The 30A SONGWRITERS FESTIVAL is known throughout the music community as a destination where writers who perform their own music, and performers who write their own songs, come together for an extended weekend to perform varied genres of music ranging from country, blues, folk, soul and Americana. For audiences, it's a rare chance to connect with their favorite artists in a more intimate, informal setting. "I think we will all look back on 2016 as the year that the 30A Songwriters Festival fully comes of age," says Jennifer Steele, co-producer/ Executive Director of the CAA.  "All of the South Walton community embraces and supports the event financially, as volunteers, as participating musicians, or as attendees. And as the thousands of fans who travel here in January attest, music lovers across the country are fully on board."

www.30ASongwritersFestival.com Filmed by Alan LeBlanc Edited by Cooper Carter

DAVID BOWIE R.I.P. | JANUARY 11, 2016

In Memoriam: David Bowie: Jan 2016

Sending love and respect for the influence and artistic contributions to the industry over the years which has inspired many. Rest in peace. 

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