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I started a quest to find terrific blues music and incredible musicianship when I was just a little kid. I also have a tremendous appreciation of fine musical instruments and equipment. One of my greatest joys all of my life was sharing my finds with my friends. I'm now publishing my journey. I hope that you come along!


Please email me at Info@Bmansbluesreport.com
Showing posts with label The Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Show all posts

Monday, July 18, 2016

Uptown Theatre Napa - The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, July 30



The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, July 30
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Thirty-five years later, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band is a world famous music machine, whose name is synonymous with genre-bending romps and high-octane performances. They have revitalized the brass band in New Orleans and around the world, progressing from local parties, clubs, baseball games and festivals in their early years to touring nearly constantly in the U.S. and in over 30 other countries on five continents. The Dirty Dozen have been featured guests on albums by artists including David Bowie, Elvis Costello, Dr. John, Widespread Panic, Modest Mouse, Dave Matthews Band and the Black Crowes. 

Tickets $40/35/20, click HERE to purchase!. Call (707) 259 0123 x 6 for more info.

Uptown Theatre description: 

Nestled in the famed West End district, this stunningly restored art deco masterpiece from 1937 showcases only the finest acts in music and comedy. A historic landmark, the Uptown offers a phenomenal, intimate live show experience with world class sound and site lines. Distance from the last row to the stage is only 98 feet making every seat truly a great seat!

The Uptown has played host to some of the biggest names in blues, rock, jazz, folk, and country entertainment; live music and comedy. Uptown Theatre is a must-see hot spot for anyone visiting Downtown Napa or looking for things to do in the Napa Valley!

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Tommy Malone On Mtn. Stage!





 Tommy Malone Rocks Mountain Stage This Week!
Moving Up On AMA & Roots Music Report

Texas Tour Starts Later This Month


Northport N.Y. - Tommy Malone will make his Mountain Stage debut later this week starting June 7. The program also features Keb Mo, Joan Osborne and The Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Mountain Stage is heard on over 130 NPR stations nationwide and overseas on the Voice of America Satellite Service. Click to get more details.


Poor Boy moves up 6 notches to No. 23 this week on The Americana Music Charts.  You can view the entire chart right here: http://www.americanaradio.org/ama/displaychart_beforetracks.asp?mode=lw&dtkey=

Tommy Malone's Poor Boy also lands at No. 5 on this week on the Roots Music Reports Top 10 Roots Rock Albums.  Click the logo for more!


Tommy will be touring all Summer, solo, with his trio and with the Subdudes! Tommy starts his Texas Tour on June 19.  Scroll down to find out more

On April 29, M.C. Records released Tommy Malone's second solo effort for the label, Poor Boy.  Tommy co-produced the recording with his longtime musical friend Ray Ganucheau in New Orleans. Ray was the engineer for the Subdudes' "Primitive Streak" and Tommy's first solo recording, "Soul Heavy."

Poor Boy features Tommy's unique songwriting that bleeds true Americana. The one amazing exception is Tommy covering Stevie Wonder's "Big Brother."

You can listen the new release via Airplay Direct. The first 11 songs are from Poor Boy , the next 12 are from his 2013 release, "Natural Born Days." Click the cover for more.


In April, Tommy visited the studios of WYEP in Pittsburgh for a Live and Direct Session. Click the photo to check out the performance/interview. Let us know if you would like Tommy to pay a visit!


Poor Boy is getting serious reviews!

This third solo release and second on M.C. Records by Tommy Malone, front-man for the popular New Orleans bluesy-rock band, The Subdudes, offers a soothing, laid-back feel and a dash of Southern charm.
The Toledo Blade

"Poor Boy" mines the Americana vein with sophistication and grit. Its songs run the gamut from layered, Beatleish psych-pop to rock-infused soul, with a consistent thread of eloquent, gut-level storytelling skill.  
The Times Picayune

What raises his personal bar on Poor Boy is the confident comfort that is a part of each track, and the album as a whole. The Alternate Root

Tommy Malone makes music that alternately soothes and fires up the soul. He’s always been able to do that, and it’s clear on Poor Boy that it’s become second nature for him. Something Else

With Poor Boy, Tommy Malone has released another album full of great songs complete with excellent guitar work and singing that should extend his stellar musical reputation beyond the cognoscenti and to the general public, where it deserves to be. OffBeat

You'll learn a lot about Tommy Malone s world after hearing his third, and arguably finest solo album, Poor Boy. Americana Boogie

Tommy Malone is not only one of the greatest songwriters of his generation, he’s a superb guitarist and a magnificent vocalist who animates every corner of his compositions. Over the past 40 years Malone has been at the center of some of the most storied and often star-crossed bands in Louisiana history, beginning with the family band formed with two of his brothers, Dustwoofie. Malone went on to help develop the eccentric songwriters’ collective the Continental Drifters before becoming a charter member of the still-beloved subdudes. Along the way he played in the well regarded one-off groups Tiny Town and Monkey Ranch as well as in a duo with his older brother Dave from the Radiators, the Malone Brothers. Poor Boy marks the third solo recording in his storied career.


Tommy Malone has a bunch of dates solo and with the Subdudes.

Tommy Malone & The Subdudes on Tour!
For Bookings contact - Kyle Day - kyle@sweetwinegroup.com

June
Jun. 19 - Sams Burger Joint - San Antonio TX (Trio)
Jun. 20 - Continental Club -  Houston TX (Trio)
Jun. 21 - Threadgill's - Austin TX (Trio)
Jun. 25 - An Evening With Subdudes-Birchmere- Alexandria VA
Jun. 26 - An Evening With Subdudes- - Rams Head - Annapolis MD
Jun. 27 - An Evening With Subdudes - Sellersville Theater, Sellersville, PA
Jun. 28 - An Evening With Subdudes - World Cafe Live, Wilmington DE

July
July 12 - Public House - New Orleans LA (Band)
July 17 - Vermilionville Performance Center - Lafayette LA (Solo)

July 18 - Red Dragon Listening Room - Baton Rouge LA (Solo)
Jul. 22 - An Evening With Subdudes Fairfield, CT -  Fairfield Theatre StageOne
Jul. 23 - An Evening With Subdudes Fairfield, CT -  Fairfield Theatre StageOne
Jul. 24 - An Evening With Subdudes- B.B. Kings, NYC
Jul. 25  - An Evening With Subdudes - The Boulton Center - Bayshore NY
Jul. 26  - An Evening With Subdudes - The Egg - Albany NY

September
Sept.10 - Yoshi's - Oakland - CA - (Band)
Sept.11 - Moe's Alley - Santa Cruz CA - (Band)
Sept. 13 - American River Music Festival - Lotus CA - (Band)
Sept.  26 - An Evening With Subdudes - Tipitina's - New Orleans, LA

Monday, March 11, 2013

Dirty Old Man - The Dirty Dozen Brass Band

To describe how the Dirty Dozen Brass Band has arrived at its 35th Anniversary, trumpet player Gregory Davis employs a tried-and true New Orleans-centric analogy: “It ends up being like a pot of gumbo – you drop in a little okra, drop in a little shrimp, you drop in some crabs. Before you know it, you’ve mixed in all these different ingredients and you’ve got a beautiful soup. That was our approach to music early on and it still is today.” Baritone sax player Roger Lewis -- who, like Davis, has been with the combo since its inception in 1977 -- echoes that sentiment: “It’s a big old musical gumbo, and that probably made the difference, separating us from other brass bands out of New Orleans. It put a different twist on the music. We were not trying to change anything, we were just playing the music we wanted to play and not stay in one particular bag.” An appetite for musicological adventure, a commitment to honor tradition while not being constrained by it, and a healthy sense of humor have brought the world-traveling Dirty Dozen Brass Band to this remarkable juncture in an already storied career. To celebrate its 35th, the band is releasing Twenty Dozen, the septet’s first studio release in six years. The new album, cut at the Music Shed in New Orleans, reunites the band with producer Scott Billington, who helmed DDBB’s first major-label release, Voodoo, in 1989. It’s a resolutely upbeat effort that seamlessly blends R&B, jazz, funk, Afro-Latino grooves, some Caribbean flavor, and even a Rihanna cover. Twenty Dozen mirrors in flow and feel a vibrant DDBB live set. The disc reaches an exuberant peak with a medley of New Orleans staples, including a particularly high-spirited rendering of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” The final track – or, as Lewis puts it, “the after-party” – is an audience encore favorite, the ribald “Dirty Old Man,” with Lewis doing an outstanding job in the title role. Twenty Dozen, says Lewis, is “classic Dirty Dozen. It’s got something for your mind, body, and soul. We’re gonna get you one way or another.” Twenty Dozen is also very much a group effort, with each of the members – Davis, Lewis, tenor-sax man Kevin Harris, trumpeter Efrem Towns, sousaphonist Kirk Joseph, drummer Terence Higgins and guitarist Jake Eckert -- bringing original compositions or arrangement ideas to the sessions. It kicks off with the light-hearted funk of “Tomorrow,” segues into the jazzier “Jook” then heads into the party-hearty island groove of “Best Of All.” Billington suggested DDBB cover Rihanna’s “Don’t Stop the Music,” and the group’s reinterpretation is as ingenious as it is fun. The tough, seventies-style soul of “We Gon’ Roll” supplies the most serious moment, as composer Higgins pays tribute to the indomitable nature of his fellow NOLA residents. As Davis – whose own “Git Up” is a smoking jazz workout -- explains, “Just about everybody had a song or something they wanted to contribute. As we started to record the songs and listen to them, each song seemed to fit not just with the character of the individuals who wrote them but the character of the band. We are the Dirty Dozen and it’s the overall character of the band that makes the live show work --and that makes this record work. Had we planned to make a certain kind of record, it might not have come out like that. In letting the guys’ voices speak and come out on their own, the album turned out this way.” The traditional numbers at the tail end of Twenty Dozen serve as a reminder of how the group, since the beginning, has tried to reinvigorate the standards and build a bridge between old and new. Says Davis, “Over the last few years we have been doing a medley that has included ‘Paul Barbarin’s Second Line,’ ‘E Flat Blues’ and ‘Saints.’ It had been going over so well that we thought maybe we needed to capture the spirit of what we’re doing with this medley and put it on a record. ‘Saints’ is one of the most requested songs we do and you have to face the challenge of playing that song so many times. But once you get that started and see the smiles on people’s faces and they start dancing to it, it makes you want to do it a little bit more. In the studio, I was envisioning different scenes from our audiences. I’d remember the reaction I would get attempting to get people up to dance, to do certain steps and follow me. It made it so much fun to remember the faces, the smiles, the body movements of the people. To get them up, to get them sweating -- it’s always a pleasure.” Listening to this new “Saints” rendition on disc has the same effect: it’s impossible to remain in your easy chair. Davis considers this and, laughing, imagines a new opportunity for the band: ““Maybe we need to sell this as a work-out CD.” While traditional numbers infused with a DDBB flavor have always been crowd-pleasing staples of the group’s repertoire, it’s the Dirty Dozen Brass Band’s willingness to look beyond the New Orleans songbook and find connections amongst a wider range of music that has endeared them to critics, fellow musicians and a multi-generational, global audience. They’ve been embraced enthusiastically by the jam-band followers at Bonnaroo as well as by the devotees who flock to the yearly New Orleans Jazz Fest. Acts like the Black Crowes and Widespread Panic have taken them on tour and artists from Dizzy Gillespie to Elvis Costello to Norah Jones have joined them in the studio. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, DDBB participated in the From the Big Apple to the Big Easy benefit at New York City’s Madison Square Garden and offered its own response to the aftermath of the disaster with an acclaimed 2006 song-by-song remake of Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On. Their music has been featured on the HBO series, Treme, named after the New Orleans mid-city neighborhood where the band had formed, and the group performed on screen with Galactic and rapper Juvenile in Season 2. New Orleans remains a wellspring of musical inspiration and DDBB is a living, breathing embodiment of the continued vitality and evolution of the sounds of the city. But, Davis cautions, “We’ve never been the norm, even though we started out as a traditional New Orleans brass band. In the beginning we weren’t getting work of any kind, so we thought it was okay to explore other music. That allowed us as individuals to bring ourselves into the rehearsals and that’s where we started to experiment. At the time the band started, I was a student at Loyola University and we were all being introduced to other music – to jazz from the twentieth century and so on. It’s impossible to think that you can be exposed to the harmonies that Duke Ellington was making, the rhythms coming from Dizzy Gillespie or the funk being done by James Brown, and then ignore it when you’re playing New Orleans music. New Orleans music is all of that. If we had chosen to just put in the music presented to us then as traditional, it would have stunted our growth. Being more than what we heard is what the band was about. “ DDBB enjoyed the opportunity to look back with the 2011 reissue of it galvanizing 1984 debut, My Feet Can’t Fail Me Now, but the hard-working band has little time for nostalgia. For mainstays like Davis and Lewis, 35 years have passed in the blink of an eye, as Lewis, who also sits in with several other NOLA combos, acknowledges: “Check it out – I’m 70 years old, I’m the oldest dude in the band – I’m the oldest dude in everybody’s band, now that I think about it. I don’t know where the time went. I guess it’s just the music, man, you don’t be thinking about all that. I’ve been in it 35 straight years. The reason why the band stayed together for so long, despite all we’ve gone through, it’s the right chemistry. We’re trying to make it do what it do. If we have this conversation when I’m 80, we’ll still be trying to make it do what it do.” “As we continue to do live shows,” Davis concludes, “the challenge is still going to be, how am I going to entertain these people that are in front of me tonight? You have to make that happen at the moment, and that’s what we do best.” -- Michael Hill  

If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, ”LIKE” ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorite band!

Thursday, December 20, 2012

I Wish - Efrem Towns and Warren Haynes Band with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band

Dirty Dozen Brass Band trumpeter Efrem Towns is recovering at home in New Orleans from a vicious attack by a dog in an Atlanta motel. He missed performances in Colorado and New Orleans after the attack on Nov. 18, and tells The Times-Picayune that he doesn't know if he'll make the band's next scheduled gig on Dec. 28. He and baritone sax player Roger Lewis say the dog surged from an open door after Towns knocked at Lewis' room. Towns was transported to Grady Hospital, where he received 30 stitches in his groin. The Dirty Dozen Brass Band formed in 1977, and is credited with creating the contemporary, funk-infused brass band sound. It's been featured on albums with David Bowie, Elvis Costello and the Black Crowes. The Dirty Dozen Brass Band is a New Orleans, Louisiana, brass band. The ensemble was established in 1977 by Benny Jones together with members of the Tornado Brass Band. The Dirty Dozen revolutionized the New Orleans brass band style by incorporating funk and bebop into the traditional New Orleans style, and has been a major influence on the majority of New Orleans brass bands since. If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, Like ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorites band! ”LIKE”

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Dirty Old Man - The Dirty Dozen Brass Band



To describe how the Dirty Dozen Brass Band has arrived at its 35th Anniversary, trumpet player Gregory Davis employs a tried-and true New Orleans-centric analogy: “It ends up being like a pot of gumbo – you drop in a little okra, drop in a little shrimp, you drop in some crabs. Before you know it, you’ve mixed in all these different ingredients and you’ve got a beautiful soup. That was our approach to music early on and it still is today.”

Baritone sax player Roger Lewis -- who, like Davis, has been with the combo since its inception in 1977 -- echoes that sentiment: “It’s a big old musical gumbo, and that probably made the difference, separating us from other brass bands out of New Orleans. It put a different twist on the music. We were not trying to change anything, we were just playing the music we wanted to play and not stay in one particular bag.”

An appetite for musicological adventure, a commitment to honor tradition while not being constrained by it, and a healthy sense of humor have brought the world-traveling Dirty Dozen Brass Band to this remarkable juncture in an already storied career. To celebrate its 35th, the band is releasing Twenty Dozen, the septet’s first studio release in six years. The new album, cut at the Music Shed in New Orleans, reunites the band with producer Scott Billington, who helmed DDBB’s first major-label release, Voodoo, in 1989. It’s a resolutely upbeat effort that seamlessly blends R&B, jazz, funk, Afro-Latino grooves, some Caribbean flavor, and even a Rihanna cover. Twenty Dozen mirrors in flow and feel a vibrant DDBB live set. The disc reaches an exuberant peak with a medley of New Orleans staples, including a particularly high-spirited rendering of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” The final track – or, as Lewis puts it, “the after-party” – is an audience encore favorite, the ribald “Dirty Old Man,” with Lewis doing an outstanding job in the title role. Twenty Dozen, says Lewis, is “classic Dirty Dozen. It’s got something for your mind, body, and soul. We’re gonna get you one way or another.”
If you like what I’m doing, Like ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorites band! ”LIKE”

Saturday, May 26, 2012

John The Revelator - The Dirty Dozen Brass Band


The Dirty Dozen Brass Band is a New Orleans, Louisiana, brass band. The ensemble was established in 1977 by Benny Jones together with members of the Tornado Brass Band. The Dirty Dozen revolutionized the New Orleans brass band style by incorporating funk and bebop into the traditional New Orleans style, and has been a major influence on the majority of New Orleans brass bands since.
The Dirty Dozen Brass Band ultimately grew out of the youth music program established by Danny Barker at New Orleans' Fairview Baptist Church. In 1972 Barker started the Fairview Baptist Church Marching Band with the goal of providing young people with a positive outlet for their energies. The band achieved considerable local popularity and transformed itself into a professional outfit led by trumpeter Leroy Jones and known as the Hurricane Brass Band. By 1976, however, opportunities for brass bands were drying up; Jones left the group to play mainstream jazz and, after a brief period as the Tornado Brass Band, the group fell apart.

Nevertheless, a few of the musicians from the Tornado band—trumpeter Gregory Davis, sousaphonist Kirk Joseph, trombonist Charles Joseph, and saxophonist Kevin Harris–continued to rehearse together into 1977, and they were joined by Efrem Towns (trumpeter/lead singer) and Roger Lewis on saxophone and Benny Jones and Jenell Marshall on drums. By this point the popularity of brass band music in New Orleans was at a low ebb, and paying gigs were rare, a circumstance which influenced the early development of the band. As Davis describes it,

In the beginning, there was a lot of rehearsal going on, ... [and] we started to develop a repertoire. ... We were just rehearsing, and we were interested in learning the chord progressions and the melodies. ... We were all free to bring in whatever we wanted to rehearsal. We weren't thinking about getting gigs.

This sense of freedom allowed the band to incorporate bebop tunes and jazz standards into their repertoire, as well as lighthearted pieces like the Flintstones theme song.

When Benny Jones, who was active in the social and pleasure club scene, was asked to get a band together for a parade he would draw from this rehearsal group; before long, Gregory Davis assumed leadership of the band. "I thought it would be better to use the same people as often as I could," he explains. "That helped to keep it tight." The band initially called themselves the Original Sixth Ward Dirty Dozen, a name designed to show their strong connection to the Tremé neighborhood and the local social club scene, as represented by the Dirty Dozen Social and Pleasure Club.

The band began playing regular Thursday night gigs at a Seventh Ward club called Daryl's, and later added a regular spot at the Glasshouse, a neighborhood bar in a black neighborhood of Uptown New Orleans, which lasted "about seven or eight years". The Daryl's performances caught the attention of Jerry Brock, a radio broadcaster and co-founder of new local radio station WWOZ. Brock describes his initial reaction to the band:

I'll never forget the first time I walked in there. ... The people were so exuberant—the floor was covered with people, rolling on the floor! ... This is what the Fairview band and the Hurricane Brass Band had been leading up to—the Dirty Dozen had renewed this music to the New Orleans community. The people were going wild. Going to Daryl's became the weekly ritual.
In 1980, Jerry Brock made the first professional recording of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, which he played "constantly" on WWOZ. He also prepared a press kit for the group and, in his words, "helped them to present themselves professionally".

According to the December 7th, 1981 Times-Picayune article (Section 5, Page3), by writer Betty Guillaud, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band was one of the groups that performed at the Rolling Stones' private party aboard the Riverboat S.S. President in New Orleans. Dianna Chenevert handled band bookings and assisted with guest selection for promoter Bill Graham. A photo taken of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band onstage at the Stones party was later used on the inside of Chenevert’s agency brochure. Dirty Dozen band members were featured as stellar musicians from Louisiana, on the Southern Stars poster created by Chenevert to help promote them and historically document their contribution to the music industry. On October 12, 1983 USA Today reporter Miles White highlighted the poster, which provided more nationwide attention.

Back in 1982 Brock had arranged a concert for the band at the well-known local music venue Tipitina's, which was the first time they had played at a "white club" in New Orleans. Afterwards the band had one of its first international appearances, when Kidd Jordan recommended the band to the organizers of the Groningen Festival in the Netherlands.

The band's popularity began to take off in 1984. Promoter George Wein booked them on a tour of southern Europe, and when they returned to the United States they secured engagements at two clubs in New York, Tramp's and The Village Gate, where their original short bookings were ultimately extended to six weeks. After a week at home in New Orleans the band travelled to California for four weeks, and before the year was out made three more trips to Europe. 1984 also saw the recording and release of the band's first album, My Feet Can't Fail Me Now, on the Concord Jazz label. Gregory Davis assesses the band's popularity at the time:

Outside Louisiana, support was in pockets. It was okay in California, but our widest support was in Europe. ... There were many more festivals and clubs that featured jazz, and a high level of enthusiasm. We got the same sort of reception in Japan.

In 1986 the band's set at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland, was recorded and released as Mardi Gras at Montreux on Rounder Records. The album and the band's touring successes attracted major-label attention, and in 1987 the band signed a contract with Columbia. Their Columbia debut, 1987's Voodoo, featured guest appearances by Dr. John, Dizzy Gillespie and Branford Marsalis. This introduced a trend for the group, and future recordings saw them joined by a variety of special guests including Elvis Costello, DJ Logic, Norah Jones, and the man who started it all, Danny Barker. The group has also toured and recorded with jam band Widespread Panic, as well as spending almost all of 1995 as the opening act for The Black Crowes 'Amorica Or Bust' US Tour.

In 1998, after a five-year hiatus from recording, the band switched labels to release Ears to the Wall on Mammoth Records. They followed it up in 1999 with Buck Jump which was produced by John Medeski of Medeski Martin & Wood. (Medeski also played Hammond B3 on the album.) Their next album, 2002's Medicated Magic, appeared on Ropeadope Records, as did their subsequent studio release, Funeral for a Friend, which appeared in 2004. Funeral for a Friend represents something of a return to the band's roots: it is a documentation of a New Orleans "funeral with music", the original environment of the brass band form. They appear on the 2005 benefit album A Celebration of New Orleans Music to Benefit MusiCares Hurricane Relief 2005, with the song "Mardi Gras In New Orleans". They were also featured on two tracks on Modest Mouse's album "Good News for People Who Love Bad News": "Horn Intro" and "This Devil's Workday." On August 29, 2006, the Dozen released What's Going On, their version of the entire 1971 Marvin Gaye landmark disc What's Going On as a response to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina that struck New Orleans exactly one year earlier.
If you like what I’m doing, Like ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorites band! - ”LIKE”