Anthology: Behind the Scenes

By Dave Good | San Diego Reader

“Suzy Bogguss and I knew each other when we were teens,” says Jessica Baron. “I was a music teacher who gigged a little bit. Suzy was already an early celebrity. She would come through Chicago in her tour bus.… We got to be friends,” she says, “because we were peripherally part of the same music scene. Then, we lost touch for a long time.”

Jessica Baron is founder and executive director of a national outreach called Guitars in the Classroom that is headquartered in Solana Beach. Suzy Bogguss’s country albums reached platinum and gold sales in the ’80s and ’90s; to date, she has had six top-ten singles.

Baron says that when she learned her old friend would be performing at Anthology, she reached out. “I said the people who own that club [Marsha and Howard Berkson] support Guitars in the Classroom. And Suzy said, ‘Well, let’s do something. I don’t know what, but let’s put something in the evening.’ ”

To date, Anthology has donated five pairs of tickets to Bogguss’s February 18 concert with profits to benefit GITC, and a Martin guitar donated by a GITC supporter will be raffled as part of the event.

Guitars in the Classroom has been active for more than a decade. Their website states that they have trained 9000 teachers in 29 states. Unlike other charitable music programs, GITC puts instruments in the hands of teachers.

“We’re a train-the-trainer model,” says Baron. “We train the educators. We loan the teachers the guitar, and when they feel secure on the instrument, they give it back and we pass the guitar along to the next teacher.”

She says that there are currently 100 local teachers enrolled in the program, which is evenly divided between Crown Point Elementary and Oak Park Elementary schools.

Baron says that if an instructor wants to continue on as a classroom troubadour after the loaner guitar has been returned, he or she must purchase their own.

“Then, you become a customer of the music-products business, which is how we get funded by NAMM.” Baron says that NAMM, a trade association for music-product companies, has given them grant money for five years. “When a teacher does purchase a guitar, there is a good chance that they will become a customer of a NAMM member business.

“I started the program as an experiment. It’s just grown from there,” says Baron.

What: Suzy Bogguss
When: Thursday, Feb 18, 2010
Where: Anthology
Tickets: $7 – $38

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Via San Diego Reader

By JIM TRAGESER – jtrageser@nctimes.com

For his hard-core fans, an appearance by self-proclaimed historical folk music singer Al Stewart is a chance to hear him perform a mix of songs from the 20 albums that he’s recorded since the late ’60s.

For the more casual fan of a certain age, for whom “Year of the Cat” and “Time Passages” will forever be associated with their youth —- well, Stewart (who plays Feb. 12 at Anthology in San Diego) thinks you probably don’t really know his music all that well. Not that he doesn’t welcome new fans of his gentle narrative folk songs that explore different chapters of history —- but he wants people to know that “Time Passages” and “Year of the Cat” aren’t really representative of his career.

“It’s a mixed blessing, really,” Stewart said during a phone interview earlier this week from his L.A.-area home. “The hits are a calling card. If someone says my name, there’s some faint recognition.

“I spent 10 years on the English folk scene, and then Alan Parsons took a song which is not really a commercial song, and plastered it with strings and overdubs. If I played you ‘Year of the Cat’ on an acoustic guitar the way it was written, it would never have been a hit in a million years.

“There was a two-year period where we spent lots of money on production and people bought lots of records. But what I did before and after has nothing to do with that period.

“I’m not a pop singer —- I’m a writer of folk-historicial songs.”

Not that he’s bitter about that success. As the Glasgow-born Stewart points out, those two songs opened a lot of doors for him. Not a few people who found themselves humming along to his hits ended up becoming lifelong fans. And the financial security provided by having two hits played on oldies radio is not easily dismissed, either.

Although he laughingly pointed out, “It took me 20 years to recover from being ostracized from the English folk scene, who thought I sold out!”

A discussion of his most recent recording, 2008′s “Sparks of Ancient Lights,” led to a wide-ranging discussion of the roots of World War I —- a topic Stewart has addressed in song. He’s also written about Warren Harding, the Duke of Marlborough, and recently rewrote Don McLean’s lyrics for the classic “American Pie” and moved the story to 18th century Russia.

“I can’t say that I will write about anything that anyone else will write about it —- if it hasn’t been covered by anyone else, then I’m your man,” he said of his own songwriting. (And how many songwriters cite the late historian Barbara Tuchman as an influence?)

“There’s room for one historical folk music singer in the world to make a living, and I happen to be it.”

Stewart said that the venues he plays in determine how the evening’s show will go. Audience expectations are different at a public arts center, for instance, than at a night club.

“What tends to happen in arts center environments is they’ll have a Hungarian choir, then jugglers the next week —- which means that people tend to buy season tickets. It could be 75 percent of them don’t know me —- they don’t know anything about me! ‘Oh, he plays guitar and sings —- that sounds nice, we’ll go out and see him.’

“A completely different dynamic is at work because they judge the songs based on whether they like them or not, not whether they’ve heard them before.

“When I play a club, the more obscure the better —- they definitely don’t want to hear ‘Year of the Cat’!”

Stewart said this will be his third show at Anthology. “Whenever I’m there, it brings out the jazziness with me. The very next night, I’m playing McCabe’s here in Santa Monica, which brings out the folkie in me.

“You pick up the vibes in a room, and it influences the playing.”

But he added that he also works hard to make sure that he doesn’t play the same show for the same crowd —- and that he goes back through his entire catalog to revisit songs that he hasn’t played in a while.

“We try to never play the same songs twice —- we’ll make a strenuous effort to play things we’ve never played there before.”

Even songs that he does bring back in shows, he reworks.

“‘On the Border’ we have to play every show; people demand it. But we change it all the time. It may not look it from the perspective of the audience, but in the middle of a song I’ll wonder how it would work with completely different chords! Sometimes we play different time signatures. I’ve played ‘Time Passages’ in 6/8 time —- I’ve turned it into an Irish jig. It mystified the audience; I think some of them were mad at me for mauling my own song.”

He said he will also regularly throw in new songs that aren’t on any of his records.

“I wrote a song about a javelin salesman the other day,” he said, laughing. “I set myself small tasks, and that was one of them: Can I write a song about a traveling salesman of javelins?”

While he said he stays busy writing, he also said a follow-up to “Sparks of Ancient Light” is unlikely.

“I don’t have any plans to make a record when there aren’t any record shops —- it’s a self-defeating thing. There’s no money in it. If you can’t sell it, why make it?

“If the music industry sorts itself out and there’s some way to make it pay for itself, then sure. But I’ve got 20 records out already —- how many historical folk songs does the world need?”

Al Stewart

When: 7:30 p.m. Feb. 12

Where: Anthology, 1337 India St., San Diego

Tickets: $29

Info: 619-595-0300

anthologysd.com

Web: alstewart.com

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Via nctimes.com

Eclectic artist to play at Anthology on Wednesday

Morgan M. Hurley, SDGLN Copyeditor

Singer, songwriter, bassist and recording artist Meshell Ngedeocello flies into San Diego this week, to promote her latest release, Devil’s Halo. Ndedeocello will be performing an intimate show at Anthology, located in Little Italy, on Wednesday.

The petite, tattooed, bisexual musician with closely cropped hair, thinks media attention focused on her sexuality is boring. She may be right. It certainly isn’t the most interesting thing about her, by a long shot.

She first got interested in performing at 15, when Prince blew her mind with his over the top style and presence. She counts Prince and also Sting, as two of her earliest bass influences and you can still pick those influences out in her music today.

Her categorization on iTunes™ under “R&B/Soul” is rather a misnomer; the fact of the matter is, you never really know what you’re gonna get with Ndegeocello.

“It is really disturbing when the color of your skin affects what genre of music you should be playing,” she said recently.

The most unfortunate aspect of that miscategorization, is that a lot of people will miss out on what a truly amazing, edgy, eclectic and talented musician she really is. Her influences and appreciation for music genres vary far and wide, which could also describe her own musical journey. She seems to pull ingredients from all those genres together, throw them into a blender with a few ideas of her own, and produce a frappe that is all of them, yet none of them. She is not afraid to take chances, and it shows.

Ndegeocello is not hung up on who gets her music, either. “You either get it or you don’t,” she has said. You won’t know if you get it or not unless you give it a listen – and everyone should – because she just might surprise you.

Devil’s Halo, her eighth studio album, is much less personal and less autobiographical than her previous works. She tends to write songs that offer a look into her soul. This time, she steps out of herself and becomes the looker, instead of the one being looked at, and has written songs looking into the souls of others.

Almost every track on Devil’s Halo tells a story that could have easily played out on the rough and tumble streets of a town she’s spent a day walking through, or in a bar that she’s sipped a scotch in from that corner seat. It’s definitive storytelling, combined with tragic lyrics, steady back-beats and the most luxuriously melodic tracks you may ever hear, laid right on top.

She has never cared for her own voice, but that is not easily understood. On tracks such as Tie One On, White Girl, Blood on the Curb, Crying in Your Beer and the title track, she seems to settle in somewhere between Sade and Joan Armatrading, lending it a familiarity that is at the same time, clearly and uniquely hers.

SDGLN got the chance to ask her a few questions recently, in advance of her arrival. Here’s what transpired:

SDGLN Your privacy is obviously important to you. Why was the fact that you identify as bisexual something you decided to let be known?

Meshell Ndegeocello (MN) Someone asked the question and I told the truth. I was naïve not to know it would be a big part of my marketing but I didn’t. I don’t regret it but it has been defining in a way that’s confining.

SDGLN “Ndegeocello” means “free as a bird.” What language is it derived from and how did you come to choose it as your surname?

MN Swahili. Seemed like what I was trying to achieve, feel, be.

SDGLN You’ve said that you are a “bass player above all else,” and you have played your bass alongside the greatest of the great, but you are also a songwriter with 8 albums of songs and a dozen more you wrote for movie soundtracks. What truly fulfills you the most – writing, singing or playing – and why?

MN I like recording. I love making the music, hearing the parts, putting them together, exploring the sounds, and making new sonic environments. I love to play. Singing is definitely not my favorite.

SDGLN You were one of the first artists that Madonna “chose” for Maverick Records. I have to ask..is she really involved in the whole process, and how was it to work with her?

MN That was 20 years ago. I’m sure Madonna is entirely different than she was then, as I am. She was involved in signing me, but not in the records I made with Maverick.

SDGLN You toured with the first Lillith Fair, did you enjoy it and would you do it again?

MN I loved it. Really nice people and really good food. I’d consider it again but it would probably depend on the line up. I don’t know who the Lilith artists might be nowadays or if I’d fit the bill.

SDGLN What is the difference (production-wise) with how you made your current album, “Devil’s Halo” with Mercer Street and say, “Peace Beyond Passion,” with Maverick?

MN This record was played and recorded as a live band. We all played together, rather than parts recorded individually. I also produced this record with Chris Bruce, our guitar player, and it was generally a more intimate production. It was one of the most satisfying record making experiences I’ve had.

SDGLN In 2002, you participated in a benefit for the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) at Carnegie Hall. Is Carnegie Hall everything that its cracked up to be?

MN Definitely. I’ve played there since then, too and remembered how intimidating it is to look up at those steep balconies. It’s incredible sounding. The acoustics are singular.

SDGLN What musicians inspire you? What inspires you in life?

MN My band inspires me. Chris Bruce makes me work harder. Mark Kelley, our bass player, makes me humble. Deantoni, who plays drums, just blows my mind. Right now, David Bowie and Stevie Wonder are topping the list but I listen to a lot of music, cycle through inspirations on a regular basis. There’s something to find everywhere. In life – my family. My imagination. I live in the country now, so I’ve got the natural world to dazzle me too.

SDGLN You once were a judge for the Independent Music Awards. What advice do you have for up-and-coming independent musicians?

MN Dig deep to determine if you want to play to make music or for fame and fortune. It’s not the same road.

Ndegeocello presents “The Best of Bitter” at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Anthology, 1337 India St. in Little Italy. Call (619) 595-0300

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Via SDGLN

“San Diego is starving for Bruce,” says KPRI co-owner and show host Robert Hughes. “Bruce and the E Street band last played San Diego 28 years ago. No matter what we do, they just won’t come here. So we decided it’s time to act.”

Hughes and a group of fellow musicians formed Thunder Road, a Springsteen tribute, in the fall of 2008 and after some grueling session work, the band debuted on February 28, 2009 at Anthology in San Diego’s Little Italy. The eight man line up of Thunder Road closely emulates the core sound of the legendary E Street Band. According to Hughes: “We play a selection of Bruce’s best songs from the richest period of his music, plus some of his newer material. This music needs to be heard live. If Bruce won’t come here and play his stuff – we will.”

The project is the brainchild of Barry Rosenbaum, keyboard player and lifetime Springsteen fan. According to Rosenbaum: “Robert and I met years ago and started playing these songs for our own entertainment. We quickly realized that Bruce was the best show in rock & roll and a worthy role model. We’re not Bruce, of course, but we intend to do justice to these songs.” The band draws from a deep catalog of Boss tunes ranging from his early E Street days (Tenth Avenue Freezeout, Born to Run, Spirit in the Night) to his radio days in the 80′s (Dancin’ in the Dark, Cover Me, Fire) to some of his more current material (The Rising, Girls in Their Summer Clothes) to some of his show-closing covers (Quarter to Three, Devil With a Blue Dress medley). From stripped down rock tunes (Pink Cadillac) to the orchestral (Jungleland), Thunder Road has something for every Bruce fan, from the casual to the fanatic.

Start your new year right and plan to join Thunder Road at Anthology on January 23 for shows at 7:30 and 9:30PM. If you haven’t been there before, don’t miss this opportunty to experience perhaps the best music venue in San Diego. For directions, tickets and other info, go to: www.anthologysd.com

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Via KPRIfm.com

By George Varga | SignOnSanDiego.com

Can an expatriate Russian Jewish jazz singer, who immigrated to Israel as a child with her family and now lives in Canada, find happiness by mixing vintage swing, bop and Brazilian-tinged music with jazzy versions of classics by Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt and Paul Simon?

Absolutely, in the case of Sophie Milman, who performs here Wednesday at downtown’s all-ages Anthology. Now 28 (or 33, depending on the source) and recently married, Milman sounds equally inviting whether she’s caressing a ballad, riding on top of a sultry samba beat or saluting and building on the rich vocal traditions of some of her idols, which include Carmen McRae, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald and Dianne Reeves.

Her fifth and latest album, “Take Love Easy,” finds her singing with increased assuredness and maturity. Rather than over-emote or launch into empty technical displays, as many young musicians tend to do by nature, she lets each note she performs breathe and resonate for maximum effect.

Milman is still rooted in the Great American Songbook, as she demonstrates on her new album with loving renditions of chestnuts by Duke Ellington and Cole Porter. But she also offers ingeniously fresh takes on such disparate songs as Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” and Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire” (the latter having never been covered by any jazz artist I can recall).

By virtue of her ravishing, movie-star looks, Milman was initially lumped into the so-called “jazz babes” movement that followed in the wake of Diana Krall’s rise to stardom. Happily, she is much more than just another pretty face with jazzy pretensions and minimal vocal abilities. A star in the making, Sophie Milman does her music and her country — or is that countries? — proud.

* Wednesday, January 27, 2010, 7:30 p.m.
* Anthology
* $10 – $33
* Buy Tickets

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Via SignOnSanDiego.com

Supper Club —Anthology. On the western edge of Little Italy, you’ll find an intimate supper club that seats 300 in a hip architectural design encompassing two levels plus a mezzanine. You’ll find 30-foot high ceilings, natural wood finishes, an undulating wood ceiling – truly, an upbeat atmosphere, all the better to enjoy the culinary offerings of Eric Bauer and his signature farm-fresh ingredients menu. And taking center stage is an exciting calendar of local and national artists playing jazz, blues, classic rock, R&B, world, Latin and more. View what’s coming up at anthologysd.com.
1337 India St. | (619) 595-0300

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Via sandiegometro.com

Guitarist Larry Carlton, pianist Bob James, bassist Nathan East, and drummer Harvey Mason. The best of the best.

Three best-selling albums after their contemporary jazz chart-topping, solid-gold debut in 1991, Fourplay has lost jazz guitar speedster Lee Ritenour to the entrepreneurial lure of his own record label. Replacing Ritenour is hand-picked cohort Larry Carlton, whose three decades’ discreet success on the periphery of musical fame include gold albums, two Grammys, an Emmy nomination (and you may remember his 1968 “With A Little Help From My Friends”). Piano man Bob James, whose “Grand Piano Canyon” led to participating players forming Fourplay, has churned out panoplies of airy jazz pop since bidding adieu to his sturdier ’60s work with Sarah Vaughan. With the pedigrees of bassist Nathan East and drummer Harvey Mason–Berklee College of Music, New England Conservatory, L.A. session work with Ellington, Quincy Jones, Herbie Hancock–one approaches Fourplay knowing that despite wallpapery compositions, their technical finesse will pull you over the top. -Mary Boles

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via SignOnSanDiego.com

By Nina Garin
Union-Tribune Staff Writer

DETAILS
Endoxi
When: Tonight, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Anthology, 1337 India St., Little Italy
Tickets: $7 to $22
Phone: (619) 595-0300
Online: myspace.com/endoxi or anthologysd.com

So maybe Chris Wilson‘s band, Endoxi, isn’t the most popular one in San Diego.

He plays a groovy, Dave Matthews-esque rock that doesn’t quite fit in the trendy nightclub circuit.

But that doesn’t matter. Wilson has other intentions for his band.

“I know one day we’re going to be playing for millions of people,” he said. “And Endoxi is focused on delivering a pure message, we’re going to give rock ‘n’ roll a new face. It’s not about doing cocaine or having a bad attitude. We stand for living the good life, being pure, bettering yourself.”

Endoxi is actually a Greek term he learned from his grandmother that means “everything in its place.”

And for Wilson, 22, Endoxi isn’t just a cool-sounding band name, but a way of life. It’s living honestly and harmoniously and being a good person — and the attitude comes through in in his eclectic music.

There’s a little bit of R&B, some reggae and hints of jazz in the young band. It’s the kind of feel-good stuff you hear at outdoor festivals on a sunny day.

The group, which also includes saxophonist Joe Cardillo, bassist Kevin Wall and drummer Sean Sepulveda, recently won a People’s Choice award at the San Diego Fair’s Musicpalooza contest.

“Our fans are just really happy people,” he said. “You’ll see, like, a therapist and a guy who just got out of jail and an East Coast guy in basketball clothes in our audience. They may all look different, but really they’re all the same person.”

The songs are catchy enough to be played on local radio stations and earn the band spots on TV news programs.

And just when momentum was building, Wilson decided to mix things up by playing a stripped-down gig at Anthology tonight.

“I want to show everyone a different side to us,” he said. “This is how we are in a raw, simple state. I want to sit down and make some beautiful music. I want the night to be so beautiful that people are laughing and crying.”

If it sounds like Wilson thinks big, it’s because he’s been pretty lucky in the music business. He really has been at the right place at the right time.

Like when he was 10 years old. His family left San Diego and relocated to Mill Valley. That’s where he happened to make friends with musicians in a Top 40 band called Mr. Big.

(Remember that Mr. Big song? I’m the one who wants to be with you, deep inside I hope you feel it too.)

They invited Wilson to play guitar and sing with them on stage. He was only 11.

But that turned into a regular thing. Before long, Wilson was getting sponsored by guitar string companies and hanging out with Andre Pessis, a man who writes songs for such people as Bonnie Raitt and Tim McGraw.

“I was 14 and Andre was 60-something,” said Wilson. “But we were like brothers, we had this awesome chemistry.”

When Wilson’s family moved back to San Diego, he took all that experience and knew he had to form his own band.

At first, it was called Chris Wilson’s Endoxi but that name didn’t stick for long. “The music I write is way bigger than Chris Wilson will ever be,” he said. “Endoxi is an ideal that can’t just be represented by one person.”

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Union-Tribune
Nina Garin: (619) 293-1284

From Parlor to Parking Lot

By Josh Board (San Diego Reader) | Published Wednesday, May 13, 2009
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Alison Brown went from playing banjo outside of Shakey’s Pizza in La Mesa to performing with Alison Krauss + Union Station, being named the Banjo Player of the Year by the International Bluegrass Music Association, and starting her own label, Compass Records.

I asked Alison a few questions about her instrument and her days in San Diego.

How did you become a banjo player?

“There’s not much that was cool about the banjo in the mid-’70s. Most students at La Jolla High School were more into being surfers and surfer chicks than banjo pickers. But I was really drawn to the sound of the instrument when I first heard Earl Scruggs’s Foggy Mountain Banjo album, and when we moved from Connecticut to San Diego in 1974 I fell in with the San Diego Bluegrass Club.

“There was a really vibrant bluegrass community in Southern California in the ’70s. There used to be banjo/fiddle contests nearly every weekend. The first contest I ever entered was in Old Town. The next one was at Balboa Park. I’ll never forget going to Lou Curtiss’s shop Folk Arts to collect my prize for the banjo contest; I still have the hand-drawn picture of a banjo with the words ‘First Prize!’ that he sketched for me on a piece of manila paper while I waited.

“I also have very fond memories of the parking-lot jam sessions at the Shakey’s Pizza parlor in La Mesa. Lots of great local bands — Pacifically Bluegrass, Pendleton Pickers, Damascus Road — played sets on stage while several circles of pickers jammed outside in the dark, scattered among the parked cars. That’s really where I cut my teeth on the bluegrass repertoire.

“And I tuned in every Sunday night to Wayne Rice’s Bluegrass Special on KSON. He’s still on the air and probably has one of the longest running bluegrass radio shows in the country. So, as it turned out, San Diego was a great place to learn to play bluegrass, even though that might sound a little counterintuitive.”

…
Click here for the rest of the article.

On a recent night out at Anthology, which has officially passed the new-restaurant-survives-downtown test, I watched spring turn to summer in San Diego. Perhaps it was the fresh-tasting, locally grown fava beans and cherry tomatoes served with my salmon. Perhaps it was the smooth saxophone of the house jazz band that serenaded the other diners. Perhaps it was the young, vibrant crowd.

Whatever it was, Anthology’s getting it right.

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CLICK HERE to read the rest of the San Diego News Room article by Gina Giacopuzzi.