The Musical Box

News that Tom Waits is playing anywhere in the region is alone cause for celebration.

The iconic composer, song stylist and barking pop surrealist ignored this part of the country for decades, but ventured as close as Louisville during an August 2006 swing of eight Midwestern cities. The performance sold out in under an hour.

This summer, the ever mercurial Waits returns - sort of. His just-announced 13-stop Glitter and Doom Tour won’t play any closer than the Ohio Theatre in Columbus on Saturday, June 28 and the Civic Theatre in Knoxville on Sunday, June 29. But, hey folks, these are weekend dates. I smell a road trip.

Waits has no new album to promote. But then, he hardly needs one. The 2006 concerts prefaced the release of his triple CD scrapbook collection Orphans by only three months, yet Waits played next to nothing from it. Instead, the Louisville performance drew upon such relatively recent doomsday musings and carnival vignettes as Eyeball Kid, God’s Away on Business and Hoist That Rag. Only a stark, but still roughcut reading of Tom Traubert’s Blues was plucked from his golden ‘70s catalog.

No specific word has been given on when tickets for the summer shows will be available. TicketMaster listed an on-sale date of Saturday for the Knoxville concert on its website as of yesterday morning. But by last night, no info on any show was posted.

Until confirmed details surface, we suggest stopping by www.tomwaits.com and checking out the You Tube video of Waits’ “press conference” for the tour. It’s an absolute riot. Take notes, though. You’ll quizzed this summer on the definition of “pedhdtsckjmba” (pronounced by Waits as “peads-kuh-jum-bah”)

You also might want to look out for the company you’re keeping if you view the video this weekend on Mother’s Day. You’ll know why when you see it.

According to a post by the very prolific Elvis Costello on his website, his new Momofuku album takes its name from Momofuku Ando, the inventor of the cup noodle.

OK. Why?

“Like so many things in this world of wonders, all we had to do to make this record was add water.”

Well, in truth, Costello simply added some musical acquaintances new (Rilo Kiley’s Jenny Lewis) and longstanding (Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo) as well as the support of his Imposters band (which is really his career-defining Attractions with the very flexible bassist/vocalist Davey Faragher as the only modification). Costello recorded and mixed the album in a week and then made it initially available, in the heart of this download age we live in, only as a vinyl album. The CD Momofuku hits stores today.

The recording process aside, though, Momofuku is no retrofest. Admittedly hearing Steve Nieve’s cheesy organ runs whip around the album’s opening tunes like a Jack Russell terrier conjures thoughts of the wondrously obstinate music the Attractions cut, amazingly, three decades ago. But Momofuku is as instinctual as any record Costello has made. It boasts a mix of pop smarts and coarse rock ‘n’ roll cunning that brings to mind such great upstart Costello albums as Mighty Like a Rose and Blood and Chocolate. But even those comparisons trivialize the sparks that fly off these tunes.

As usual, Costello is a sucker for stories of dark melody and even darker wit, as in the way the Dickensian badlands of Harry Worth - where “streets are paved with heaven’s penance, gutters are full of suicide” - are given mighty shoves from Nieve’s piano pounding jabs and loads of jagged, fuzzy guitar.

“I rather go blind for speaking my mind,” Costello’s sings earlier in American Gangster Time, where a vintage Attractions-style attack and Lewis’ vocal support create a sense of pop urgency that is familiar yet vitally new.

And then there are instances when Costello blithely takes on the essentials of the human condition.

On Drum and Bone, he sings unapologetically over a spry acoustic shuffle from the standpoint of “a limited, primitive kind of man.” But on Pardon Me, Madam, My Name is Eve, the unrest goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. There, jealousy and hypocrisy is no match for the burdens of the waiting world (”there’s always someone on the outside doing all the suffering”).

A lighter turn is taken on My Three Sons, a tune that is tender and autobiographical in tone and subject matter, respectively. It’s not exactly an ode to the generations old Fred MacMurray TV show of the same name. But it’s equally wholesome.

The journey concludes with Go Away, a gem of a rave up/kiss off rocker built around a deliriously static drum and organ roll that recalls the ‘60s single 96 Tears. It’s the kind of melody that will stick in your brain for days.

In the end, Momofuku comes off like a movie set on fast forward that still manages to make perfect sense. In abundance are color, noise, passion, regret, humor, joy, melody and an incredible sense of motion. Just don’t forget to add water.

Elvis Costello and the Imposters perform at 8 p.m. May 7 at the Louisville Palace. Tickets are $44.50 through TicketMaster. Call (859) 281-6644.

Off-hours Derby week listening has included:

The Black Keys: Attack & Release - The psychedelic boogie duo meet the smart grooves of producer/pop stylist Danger Mouse. The result is The Black Keys’ most daring and varied set yet. The fun shifts from the prickly banjo and keyboards that pepper Psychotic Girl to the jagged dance of guitar and flute on Same Old Thing. But the straight up, two-man drive of guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney still fuels I Got Mine. Not raw but definitely not refined, Attack & Release is the sound of The Black Keys approaching color. 

Steve Winwood: Nine Lines - When Winwood turns off the star machine and gets down the more organic guitar/organ fueled rockers of his youth, he sounds positively ageless. While warmer and simpler than recent solo works, Nine Lines is also far meatier than Winwood’s beer commercial music of the late ‘80s. But when Dirty City cranks up the guitar with help from a swelling, percussive melody, the regal ghost of Traffic is stirred. And that, brother, is a mighty sound indeed.

Egberto Gismonti and Academia De Dancas: Sanfona - For this 1980, double-disc opus, Brazilian guitarist/pianist Gismonti drags the Nordic jazz sound of ECM Records south of the equator without sacrificing any of its patented mystery. One disc is a quartet session full of lustrous atmospherics. The other features Gismonti alone with a spacious guitar tone rivaled only the great Ralph Towner for its worldly scope. Don’t let the Brazilian heritage mislead you. Sanfona is grand, global music in every sense of the term.

The Replacements: Let It Be - Part of Rhino Records’ overhaul of the ‘Mats’ Twin/Tone catalog, 1984’s Let It Be presents Paul Westerberg and pals at the crossroads. The band’s punkish beginnings still bristle on We’re Comin’ Out and the hysterical Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out. But I Will Dare and Answering Machine edge the music closer to the pop inclinations that would soon envelope the band. Six bonus tracks, including a boozy, but straightfaced cover of The Grass Roots’ Temptation Eyes round out the ‘Mats’ finest hour. 

Soft Works: Abracadabra - A sumptuous session by four alumni members of the British prog rock/fusion band Soft Machine released in 2004. The music here is far more jazz inclined than the post-psychedelic grinds and fuzzy amplification of the Softs in their prime. But hearing the late saxophonist Elton Dean in an atypically tempered mood as he trades licks with the wiry guitar orchestrations of Allan Holdsworth while bassist Hugh Hopper and drummer John Marshall propel the modest swing makes for a grand listen.

Onstage at Headliners Music Hall in Louisville just before 2 this morning were roughly a dozen members of Chicago’s self-proclaimed “circus punk marching band” Mucca Pazza in action. But they only made up the rhythm team - the core groove merchants playing guitar, glockenspiel, sousaphone, violin and accordion - and its two-woman cheerleading squad.

But up in the balcony, blowing like mad, was the trombone section. In the back, standing atop the bar, were sax players adding their own brassy calamity to this live-action, sense-a-round, Derby morning soiree.

You couldn’t keep track of how many players the band had on board for the show. It advertised a performance crew of 30. The number seemed closer to the low 20s this morning. But with musicians constantly milling through the crowd - like Mucca Pazza’s “K12″ percussion section, which initiated the concert-opening Carousel with a beat of merry, slamming thunder - it was tough to get an accurate head count. Suffice to say, it was sizable lot.

Shoot, the band is so huge that we had to place its promo photo, at left, on its side just to get everybody in.

As for the music, Mucca Pazza - which is Italian for “crazy cow” - proved to be a marching band that dodged any sense of convention. Yes, they dressed predominantly in uniforms, none of which even remotely matched. And bandleader Mark Messing, instead of playing bass, handled the bottom end for much of the 65 minute set on sousaphone. But then there were the guitars, the ensemble’s preferences for gyrations and shimmies and a repertoire that touched on funk, ska, rhumba, Balkan folk, surf and klezmer music as well as covers by such unfathomably disparate artists as Nubian singer/bandleader Ali Hassan Kuban and Russian composer Dimitri Shostakovich.

This sure wasn’t like any marching band that played at my school.

But for all its seemingly novel performance profile - clarinetist/saxophonist Eve Monzingo was dressed like Gilda Radner’s Lisa Lupner character while trombonist Elanor Leskiw zipped through the audience looking like she was ready to hoist her instrument like a javelin - Mucca Pazza’s music was serious stuff.

On Coat Czech, the band took a traditional Balkan gypsy brass tune (called a “cocek”) and matched it with a cheery, incantatory shout from the cheerleaders. For Alarm!, an original group tune, drums and spasmodic guitar provided a sense of punkish nerve. And for the final encore, the purposely cartoon-like Nod to Magoo (which bore the greatest reflection of a sunny marching band in full stride), the band filled out of the club - a herd of happily crazed cows that had just ushered in one of Derby Day’s first and, to be sure, most inventive parties.

The debut of the seasonal concert celebrarion known as the Derby Eve Jam was staged in 1971 at the other Downs, the harness racing track known as Louisville Downs, which closed in 1990. The event’s first star attraction was the fabled blues and boogie band Canned Heat. The group had released its seminal collaboration with blues giant John Lee Hooker, aptly titled Hooker ‘N’ Heat, only four months earlier.

The Derby Eve Jam became a more visible happening in the mid ‘70s, when Freedom Hall became its home. The Allman Brothers Band (in a 1976 outing that came shortly before the first of two extended breakups), ZZ Top, Aerosmith, Foreigner and Lynyrd Skynyrd were among the Derby Eve Jam headliners before the event was discontinued in 1997.

Tonight, the Derby Eve Jam lives again in the great downtown Louisville outdoors of Waterfront Park. Steering it in a somewhat new musical direction, as well, will be the party band of a generation, The B-52s.

Though the Athens, Ga. foursome of (above, from left) Kate Pierson, Fred Schneider, Keith Strickland and Cindy Wilson are touring behind Funplex, the first album of new B-52s music in 16 years, audiences will undoubtedly be drawn to New Wave hits from the late ‘70s (Dance This Mess Around, Rock Lobster) and MTV-savvy pop confections of the late ‘80s (Love Shack, Roam). 

The B-52s today are among pop’s most unlikely elder acts. Pierson, in fact, turned 60 earlier this week. And while the vibe of Funplex steers uncomfortably close to generic guitar hooks and electronica grooves, the group’s undeniably fun vibe is as inviting as ever. Veteran act though it is, The B-52s should prove an ideal pick to spark the Derby Eve Jam’s second life.

Eagle Seagull, a Nebraska outfit that sounds like a nervous variation of Arcade Fire, opens tonight’s performance. 

(above photo of The B-52s by Pieter M. Van Hattem)

The B-52s and Eagle Seagull perform at 8 tonight at Waterfront Park Great Lawn in Louisville for the Derby Eve Jam. Admission is free with a Derby Festival Pegasus Pin.

How wonderful and warped it is when cultures brush up next to each other as they did last Saturday.

Parking along Mill St, my street of choice when covering an event at Rupp Arena, I was quickly met by the gathering masses that would soon number about 17,000 for a concert by country-pop stars Keith Urban and Carrie Underwood.

But for once in my life, I was early. Intentionally so. With a few hours to go before Rupp became a self-contained NashVegas, I walked the opposite route down High St. There, atop the Transit Center, just a few blocks from the arena, was a merry, throbbing drone in audible motion. It belonged to the indie Chicago band Mahjongg and it was just part of the fun that was FreeKY Fest.

This absorbing celebration was in honor of WRFL-FM’s 20^th anniversary. And it was already a hit for a number of reasons.

The most immediate one was the weather. At FreeKY Fest’s disposal was a gorgeous spring afternoon and evening, not the chill and grey that had been in the forecast (don’t worry; all that came Sunday). As Mahjongg’s electronica morphed into percolating rhythms, almost funk, the sun began giving way to early evening cool - just as it should in late April.

There was just enough time before Rupp duties called to check out the festival’s Underground Art Exhibit, which essentially converted the Transit Center parking garage into a makeshift gallery of projections, participatory painting and abundant curiosity.

This was precisely the sort of event Lexington needed after a spring that saw a shutdown of the indie jazz, pop and rock haven The Icehouse and the impending, if not altogether impossible relocation of The Dame in the wake of announced plans for the downtown CentrePoint project.

In an altogether unassuming way, the WRFL celebration was the single biggest positive to hit the local music and indie arts community all year. Let’s just hope local government and development officials had the event at least partially on their radar. This is activity downtown needs and exactly the audience that should be courted, welcomed and encouraged. With summer at hand, there is no reason the Transit Center couldn’t be rocking with something similar on a handful of Saturdays.

We’ll see.

Best of all, though, was the fact that FreeKY Fest had a mission. The event was a celebration of WRFL’s past and present, sure, but it also made a priority of the future - specifically, a massive upgrade of the station’s broadcasting tower power (from 250 watts to nearly 8,000). And for that, dozens of the station’s alumni staffers returned, celebrated and put their money very much where their mouths were.

Spearheaded by fundraising efforts organized by Kakie Urch, who over two decades earlier was instrumental in getting the station off the ground and on the air, the WRFL alumni raised $10,000 for the “Boost the Power, Build the Tower” fund.

“Back in the day, I was completely a consciousness raiser, staff trainer, motivator, music, freak and record/band liaison,” Urch said via email the morning after FreeKY Fest. “I couldn’t dream of asking anyone for money. But this was really a joy. I thought of the idea out in California and didn’t really know if it would work. But it did. And it was easy, because this time around, I had full confidence in the quality of what I was talking about and a 20 year track record.”

Just before 11 on Saturday night, as I was making a mad dash from Rupp back to Mill St. to file a review of the Urban/Underwood concert, I could hear FreeKY Fest at full power. Robert Schneider and The Apples in Stereo were winding the event up, merrily dragging one dazed country straggler, if for just a moment, back into the world of pop, color and beautiful noise.

(Above photo of Ben Phelan of Big Fresh performing at FreeKY Fest by Herald-Leader staff photographer Whitney Waters)

It took a catastrophe like Hurricane Katrina to hammer into all of our consciences the significance of New Orleans as a cultural epicenter of the South, if not the entire country. Amid the horrifying images of death and neglect in a struggle for survival that is still very much ongoing, we were also reminded of what was nearly lost: Music. Jazz. Joy.

Henry Butler was nearly one of those victims. Blind since birth, he became a vital link in piano traditions that stem to pioneers like James Booker, Allen Toussaint and, most directly, Professor Longhair. The piano, under Butler’s fingers, communicates a sound steeped in boogie woogie, blues, gospel, jazz, R&B and wondrous permutations of those styles and inspirations.

Butler lost his house, instruments, sheet music and nearly all of his possessions in floods triggered by Katrina and New Orleans’ failed levees. Though he now lives in Colorado as another unintended Crescent City expatriate, the pianist has issued a sublime new solo concert recording that echoes the heartbeat of his homeland.

From the moment he is introduced by the celebrated Windham Hill pianist George Winston, a longtime and vocal champion of Butler’s music, and as PiaNOLA Live sails grandly into Basin St. Street Blues, we are reminded of a culture and music that is only now regaining its proper artistic legging following an epic natural disaster and the very human blunders that came in its wake.

PiaNOLA Live isn’t music of retribution, although Larry Blumenfeld’s informative liner notes suggest, half-jokingly, that Butler’s cover of the Billy Preston pop-soul hit Will It Go Round in Circles - served with fat, percussive phrasing and mischievous performance playfulness - might be a response to dealings with FEMA. Instead, the album is a simple celebration not only of New Orleans music, but its kinship with other soul sounds.

Dock of the Bay, the Otis Redding staple that is among the most established R&B hits of all time, is played by Butler with luscious gospel fervor. As such, we are forced to give a serious, renewed listen to the lyrics. Sure, we may still bask in the soothing escapism Redding initiated in the ‘60s. But against Butler’s more reverential piano rolls, we are clued into what else the song is about: loneliness, hopelessness and, get this, the loss of one’s home. Within this more severe reading, Butler’s vocals provide a hurricane force intensity of their own.

Lighter spirits are at work here, as well, from the one-man-band R&B harmonies created for Toussaint’s Mother-in-Law to the rich gumbo of funk, pop and stride melodies stuffed into the Butler original Orleans Inspiration.

But what is most stunning is that PiaNOLA Live is a scrapbook of live recordings. Some stem back to the 1980s while others are from last year. Yet the mood is so seamless that you never fully realize the specific impact Katrina had upon the music. You just know that Butler’s sense of soul and tradition, like New Orleans itself, has survived with its vitality intact.

How ironic that James McMurtry, in deflecting conversation about the assumed literary inspiration of screenwriter/novelist dad Larry McMurtry at last night’s Kentucky Theatre taping of the WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour, would reference the father of the program’s other guest, Justin Townes Earle.

So came this quote from Americana renegade Steve Earle: “Songs are just literature you can digest while driving.”

True to that notion, and despite a few, very atypical WoodSongs broadcast glitches (the fortunes of war in any live radio setting), the tunes of McMurtry and Earle served as expert vehicles for tales set in the very wild, bluesy yonder.

McMurtry stuck entirely to the darker rural material from his new Just Us Kids album. He turned Dylan-esque phrasing into swampy retribution on Hurricane Party before courting the stark Texan storytelling prowess of Townes Van Zandt while singing for all the world like Lou Reed during the downward crackhead spiral of Fire Line Road.

Crisp, wiry support by McMurtry’s Heartless Bastards band (funny… no one mentioned that moniker on the air) came to a head on Just Us Kids‘ title tune, which, in keeping with the show’s unintended family theme, the singer dedicated to his teenage son. The more worldly dismay of You’d a Thought (Leonard Cohen Must Die), the closing song on Just Us Kids, was served as an encore.

The younger Earle (yes, his middle name is a tribute to Van Zandt) sounded less like his father and more like Hank Williams. When matched with the mandolin, banjo, and very serviceable vocal harmonies of co-hort Cory Younts, Earle’s unadorned country musings fueled the hootenanny Hard Livin’ and the swing-savvy turns in an update of Fiddlin’ Arthur Smith’s Chitlin’ Cookin’ Time in Cheatham County.

Topping it all was The Ghost of Virginia, an encore tune pulled from Earle’s Yuma EP disc that reveled in the cherished country imagery of a train running like a lost soul in the moonlight with cold steel tracks as its only companion.

The imagery may have been cold, but the performance couldn’t have been cooler.

Who said there is nothing to do in Lexington on a Monday night? Not the good folks at the WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour, that’s for sure. They’ve got a beaut of a show on tap to tape tonight at the Kentucky Theatre: a double Americana bill featuring singer/songwriters James McMurtry (above) and Justin Townes Earle.

McMcMurty has long displayed a great flair for the narrative. And why not? He’s the son of celebrated Western novelist and screenwriter Larry McMurtry. But over the past two decades, James has issued one extraordinary set of worldly themed rural life snapshots after another. The political slant of his music has become increasingly pointed, as well.

A regular visitor to Lexington over the years (he’s played The Dame, High on Rose and Lynagh’s Music Club several times), tonight marks his first local performance since the release of what just might stand as his finest album, Just Us Kids. Rather than repeating myself ad nauseum, I’ll refer you to the critic’s pick 15 entry of The Musical Box for a full review. Let’s just say the record is a gem, one of the best so far in 2008, for sure. And that only ups the anticipation of tonight’s show, which will likely be devoted to the new songs. 

Earle (left), of course, is the son of Americana “hard core troubadour” Steve Earle. But a listen to The Good Life, the younger Earle’s debut album on the indie insurgent country label Bloodshot, reflects a life less amplified. There’s no Lone Star drawl to Justin’s singing, no brazen electric overtures, just a deep folky tenor with a flair for stark, conversational tales (like Lone Pine Hill and Far Away in Another Town, which recalls the late Townes Van Zandt, who Earle is partially named for), a hearty groove (the neo-Jamaican South Georgia Sugar Babe) and traditional country elegance (the Ernest Tubb-flavored Ain’t Glad I’m Leaving).

If you miss Earle this time around, be patient. He will be back for a full set this fall at the Christ the King Okotoberfest. Keep Sept. 20 open.

James McMurtry and Justin Townes Earle perform at 7 tonight for the WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour at the Kentucky Theatre, 214 E. Main. Tickets are $10. For reservations, call (859) 252-8888.

Keith Urban sure knows how pack a sense of celebration into a final chorus.

Some 107 concerts after it began, the country star wrapped up his tour in support of his Love, Pain and the Whole Crazy Thing album last night with an electrifying performance at Rupp Arena - his first there as a headliner.

Urban kept matters very lean and simple onstage with a workmanlike five-man band that easily filled every square inch at Rupp with a highly cosmopolitan sound that  approximated ‘70s rock ‘n roll more than even the most modern of country formulas. But the singer had plenty of help. In the seats were 17,000 fans that merrily cheered the show on from the moment a hydraulic lift hoisted Urban to the back end of the stage precisely at 10 p.m. amid the opening strains of Once in a Lifetime.

That wasn’t all. Around the stage - and the crowd, for that matter - cameras were on boom cranes, cameras were suspended from the ceiling and camera men were scampering around the stage like cocker spaniels capturing every rocking moment for a live DVD.

Not a bad deal, really. Play Rupp for only the second time (the first was as an opening act for Kenny Chesney four years ago) and you get a near sell-out crowd and a camera crew to capture “the whole crazy thing.”

Oh, yes, Urban got to share the bill with Carrie Underwood as part of the deal, too. That undoubtedly sold a few tickets, as well.

Underwood’s 70 minute opening set was as over-the-top as Urban’s was concise.

The Oklahoma-born American Idol winner opened with Flat on the Floor after being shot up through the stage floor (country stars must have a phobia of simply walking onstage anymore). After tearing down a walkway (in stilettos, no less) that sliced the arena floor in half and with a shower of guitar power chords egging her on, Underwood made quick business of making the show, at least its first half, her own.

Aside from an upper register that is still need of some taming, Underground had ample vocal sass to back the already rockish and anthemic Get Out of This Town and sufficient patience and phrasing to sell the hard sentimentalism of Just a Dream.

But, boy, was her set ever a production. Light beams dropped to the center of the stage like marionettes or else followed Underwood around like predatory drones. There were roughly three dress changes, four if you count the rip-a-way number she draped herself in and out of for the uptown I Ain’t in Checoteah Anymore. By the time a video backdrop of Las Vegas lit up for Last Name, you almost thought the high rolling setting was real.

Yeah, dedicating a song to her dog (The More Boys I Meet - you figure out the parallel) was cute and all. And hearing a relatively restrained Don’t Forget to Remember Me was a nice breather. But by the time Underwood tore into a cover of the Guns N’ Roses hit Paradise City, the Vegas attitude took hold completely.

Urban’s set was just as electric, but a lot more streamlined and far less frilly.

Shine was one of many vehicles for the singer’s expert guitarwork, which regularly approximated the popish swagger of Lindsey Buckingham. Where the Blacktop Ends mixed banjo and mandolin to sound like a G-rated Copperhead Road. And on Raise the Barn, a Hazard youth was picked from the crowd to play lead guitar while Urban switched to bass. The smiles artist and audience member beamed to each proved to be the most honest special effect of the night.