A Friend in Need
If you’re a struggling blues musician and you just arrived in Music City, chances are one of the first people you looked up was Shannon Williford. At Red Hot & Blue, Williford hosted a weekly blues jam that attracted buddies and players every Sunday, and if that room wasn’t available, he’d get a jam going somewhere else. For newcomers, he helped find contacts and gigs. So when a fire wiped out Williford’s home near West End a few weeks ago, leaving him, his wife, and his two daughters homeless, his many friends decided to pool their resources on his behalf.
This Sunday, Williford is the guest of honor at an all-day roots/blues blowout at the Bat Bar on Lower Broadway. His band Delicious Blues Stew will perform, along with a lineup that includes Dean Hall, Buddy Spicher & the Nashville Swing Band, the Blue Tone Big Band, Patton James & the Synchromatics, James “Nick” Nixon, Miranda Louise, Swing Thing, Kingsize, Los Cookie Guys, Rumerz, and surprise guests still to be announced. Epiphone Guitars and Crate/Ampeg Amplifiers are cosponsoring the event, which kicks off at 3 p.m.
“He’s a good man, and he’s helped a lot of people out,” says Chris Bealle of AMP Entertainment, one of the evening’s organizers. “We’re just letting him know we’re here for him.” A minimum $5 donation will be taken at the door, and all proceeds will go to the Willifords. If you can’t go, you can still send a donation payable to the Williford Family, Suntrust Bank, Nashville, N.A., 4310 Nolensville Rd., Nashville, TN 37211.
Keep an eye peeled for the enormous new issue of Grand Royal, the Vanity Fair of fanzines, which is published every several months by the Beastie Boys. Inside “Live Issue Five” are a review of Kenny Rogers’ Roasters by the British band Supergrass; an interview with Mississippi fife-and-drum legend Othar Turner by Memphis guitarist Luther Dickinson; and a photo spread on “the evolution of Whitey’s afro.”
The centerpiece, though, is an exhaustive 40-page feature that tells you more than you ever wanted to know about Miami bass, the bottom-heavy rap/dance-music movement that spawned 2 Live Crew, “Boom! I Got Your Boy/Girlfriend,” and “Whoomp! There It Is.” Not only do you get profiles, X-rated dance-club tours, and a timeline that traces Miami bass history back to “circa 8000 B.C.,” you get your own cool punch-out cardboard bass Jeep in the centerfold. Best of all, though, is an amazing story about an unaired pay-TV show on which stoned, femme-baiting rapper Luther “Luke Skyywalker” Campbell found himself confronted by the hardcore SF lesbian group Tribe 8. They had knives and foot-long strap-on phalluses. The rest is not pretty.
You don’t get this kind of dope in Southern Living. Look for Grand Royal at Tower Books, Lucy’s, Mosko’s, and wherever fine rump-shaking magazines are sold.—Jim Ridley
Two shows this week at Caffé Milano reinforce just how much the club has invigorated the local live-music scene of late. On Monday, Diana Krall, one of the nation’s premier jazz vocalists, makes a return visit to the Third Avenue venue. Her singing combines stunning melodic interpretations and distinctive phrasing, and she’s among a handful of contemporary singers who’re equally effective doing traditional jazz standards, show tunes, pop-oriented numbers, or original compositions.
Krall has worked in both intimate and elaborate musical settings, but she’s at her best in venues like Caffé Milano, with its cozy, audience-friendly atmosphere. Her latest Impulse! LP, Love Scenes, has topped the Billboard Jazz Albums Chart since August; but unlike her prior releases, this entry has also found a home on New Adult Contemporary and smooth-jazz radio stations, including Nashville’s 101.1 FM. Krall has been generating a nationwide buzz and rave notices over the last few months, so don’t miss your chance to catch this stunning singer. Show times are at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.
The following night provides yet another excellent opportunity to hear top-notch jazz players. Saxophonist Joshua Redman, bassist Christian McBride, and drummer Brian Blade have all earned formidable credentials through their numerous live and recorded performances. But they’re also excellent composers, and this element of their repertoire is being spotlighted during their three-month touring engagement as The Trio.
Redman’s newest release, Freedom in the Groove (Verve), showcases his versatility, with songs accenting hard bop but also veering into funk, reggae, pop, and soul. McBride has been arguably the most prolific bassist of the ’90s, recording and working with a number of jazz greats, including Redman; his second LP as a leader was the critically acclaimed Number Two Express (Verve). Blade just inked a new contract as a solo artist with Blue Note, which will be issuing his debut recording in early ’98. He’s also featured on new releases by Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan. Combined, these three musical powerhouses should create a formidable presence. Show times Tuesday night are at 7:30 and 10 p.m.—Ron Wynn
For nearly two decades, flannel-clad bassist Mike Watt has barnstormed the stages of America’s rock clubs, first with the groups Minutemen and fIREHOSE, and for the last couple of years as a solo artist and bandleader. In the process, he has influenced a generation of musicians with his fierce commitment to DIY ideology, bottomless funk grooves, and politically and emotionally charged songwriting. On his second and latest solo album, Contemplating the Engine Room (Columbia), Watt has taken a bit of a departure. He describes the LP as “a punk rock opera,” in which “each song is a piece of the day, starting from just before dawn, and ending 23 + 1 hours later.” The subject matter includes “fish stories” that Watt heard from his father, a 20-year Navy veteran, along with events taken from Richard McKenna’s Navy novel The Sand Pebbles. The songs also touch more directly on Watt’s own experience with The Minutemen, the celebrated early-’80s jazz/punk/funk hybrid he cofounded with his childhood friend, D. Boon.
Contemplating the Engine Room marks Watt’s return to the trio lineup, or “power troika” as he calls it. In fact, Watt has played in trios for most of his musical career, but on his last album, 1995’s Ball-Hog or Tugboat, he used 48 different players. For Engine Room, the bassist recruited L.A. avant-jazz guitarist Nels Cline and drummer Stephen Hodges. Throughout the entire recording process, he kept an easel with a complete storyboard and track listing for the album. To convey the feeling he wanted to get across, Watt assigned a different color and time of day to each song. He then asked his bandmates to use these as jumping off points for their musical contributions.
Watt sings on each of the album’s 15 songs, and his voice is the very personification of a double bass: deep, warm, gravelly, sincere yet wise. He sounds like a friendly grandfather spinning his favorite yarns, while Cline provides jagged, sinewy guitar lines and Hodges keeps the beat with a barking snare and throbbing toms. The bassist himself provides a gentle pulse with his low, funky playing. Throughout, Watt reveals himself to be something of a rare bird—an earnest, middle-aged punk in an era when ironic detachment has become the cardinal rule of modern pop music.
Watt has dubbed his touring musical aggregation The Black Gang Crew, in homage to the folks who work in the engine rooms of Navy ships. Because of Nels Cline’s current commitments to L.A. group The Geraldine Fibbers, Watt’s touring troika will be rounded out by Joe Baiza, formerly guitarist for Saccharine Trust and Universal Congress Of. Expect to hear the new record in its entirety, along with a few older songs, and be sure to stick around after the set, when Watt will be hawking T-shirts from the stage. The “Sticking the Head Out the Hatch Tour ’97” comes to Exit/In Nov. 10.—Alex Sniderman
WKDF-FM (103.3) scored a coup for its new live-on-the-air series, Studio 103, when it presented Sheryl Crow in a 30-minute concert the Saturday before last, a day before she opened for the Rolling Stones. Appearing with her full band in East Nashville’s Woodshed rehearsal hall, Crow offered a charming and engagingly loose set accented with spirited instrumental breaks and colorful asides.
When the band added a Latin rhythm segment to “Every Day Is a Winding Road,” Crow broke into an inspired riff, going from shouts of “babalu!” to “Lucy, you got some ’splaining to do!” Picking up the accordion to perform “Are You Strong Enough to Be My Man?,” she opened with a snippet of a Nino Rota tune from Federico Fellini’s Amarcord. Then, while laughing and playing off her band, she altered the song’s ending to say, “Are you man enough to be in my band?” When she mentioned that she was in town to open for the Rolling Stones, she reached down to the portable keyboard in front of her and added a sports-organ accent, “ta ta ta DA!”
Crow and her fine six-piece ensemble responded well to the intimate setting, displaying a personality that would be impossible to put across in an auditorium or a stadium. The Kennett, Mo., native also pointed out that her “whole family” was in the audience, no doubt in town to watch her warm up the crowd for the world’s most famous rock band. “We love Nashville, I gotta tell you,” Crow said. It showed.—Michael McCall
Elliptical dispatches: Guitar hero Link Wray, who recorded some of the most ominous, swaggering instrumentals in rock history (“Rumble,” “Jack the Ripper”), plays a can’t-miss gig Nov. 13 at the Exit/In. Wray enjoyed a deserved career boost after his music appeared in Pulp Fiction and Independence Day, and the 69-year-old guitarslinger is touring to support his new live album Shadowman, an Ace import that was just released domestically by MCA’s Hip-O classics imprint....
Deana Carter, Dean Dillon, Skip Ewing, Paul Overstreet, Jim Weatherly, and Gary Burr are among the songwriters contributing tunes to Girl on the Run, the upcoming debut album by country singer Jenny Morris. Morris, a 17-year-old powerhouse from Ohio, is the first artist on the new Nashville imprint of Del-Fi Records, an L.A. label renowned for its killer surf compilations and reissues of ’60s rockers such as the Bobby Fuller Four. The record hits stores Dec. 2....
