Danny Elfman has spent decades moving among seemingly incompatible musical worlds — new wave, film scores, industrial rock, orchestral music, and the manic art rock of Oingo Boingo. But at The Fillmore Silver Spring on Sept. 14, he demonstrated that they belong together far more naturally than one might expect.
Annapolis Songwriters Festival: Of Magic Potions and Superpowers
Words by Liz Wyatt
Photos by Steve Satzberg
For four talent-packed days, the Annapolis Songwriters Festival filled the historic streets, bars, restaurants, and music venues of downtown Annapolis with giants — and not just Young the Giant.
From Sept. 10-13, songwriters from around the country converged on Maryland’s capital for performances stretching from late morning well into the night at venues including 49 West, Rams Head On Stage, The Garden on Market Space, Blackwall Hitch, Stan and Joe’s Saloon, Galway Bay, and the festival’s large Calvert Street stage.
Few touring bands today channel a joyful, soul-stirring energy of street-corner party music quite like The California Honeydrops. On Saturday, Oct. 3, the Bay Area-based outfit brings their mix of Bay Area R&B, New Orleans second-line brass, southern soul, and delta blues to the iconic 9:30 Club for a night guaranteed to transform the room into a dance floor.
When close relatives (especially siblings) sing together, the result is often what is called “blood harmony,” the similarities in the two voices almost melding together into a single instrument. Lydia Slagle and Laura Rogers, who perform as The Secret Sisters, are part of this long tradition in country and folk music.
They’re also fantastic songwriters; they may have only released five albums (they’re recording a new one soon), but they already have a number of gems, and they delighted the audience at The Birchmere with a selection of their best material on Friday evening.
If you’ve been paying attention to the underground circuit lately, you already know that Quebec’s microtonal math-rock duo Angine de Poitrine is currently delivering some of the most bizarre, exhilarating, and technically jaw-dropping live music anywhere on the continent. Wrapping up their two separate nights in Washington DC at the historic Lincoln Theatre, Khn de Poitrine and Klek de Poitrine delivered a masterclass in controlled sonic chaos.
On this humid September eve, our fearless reporter braved the not so mean streets of Northwest DC to catch two very different performances at Black Cat: Lancaster, PA – based folk-punk act Apes of the State, and Los Angeles’ sardonic pop-rock favorites, Cheekface.
Steve Winwood and John Fogerty might not seem like the most natural pairing. Winwood’s career, which began in the ’60s with the British invasion band The Spencer Davis Group, ranges from blue-eyed soul to progressive rock. Winwood was a teenage prodigy, an immensely gifted vocalist and multi-instrumentalist. As the driving force behind Creedence Clearwater Revival and beyond, Fogerty has always drawn on old-school American rock, country, and blues. Revered for his songwriting, he towers over roots, heartland, and even punk rock.
While it may have been an unlikely pairing, it worked out splendidly on last week, when Winwood and Forgerty shared the bill at Wolf Trap.
Some artists just seem custom-built to play certain venues. If his batshit-delightful appearance there last week was any indication, Jeff Rosenstock is most certainly a perfect match for Baltimore’s Ottobar.
The poster promised three bands: HammerFall, Evergrey, and Elvenking.
Virgil was excited for Elvenking because of “Seasonspeech,” their four-seasons song from the early aughts. We walked into Tally Ho Theater hoping for some of that Italian folk flair.
The First and Second British Invasions collided in a night of wonderful and inventive tunes at Warner Theatre as MTV-era innovators The Fixx teamed with chamber-pop pioneer Colin Blunstone of The Zombies for a thoroughly enjoyable bill of English pop music. Adding even more class to the evening was the dapper Peter Asher, once of the duo Peter and Gordon, who opened the show with a set of timeless songs and the stories behind them.
