#col bruce hampton

[immaculatelyamiss]

The legendary Colonel Bruce Hampton and the Madrid Express playing live at The Northside Tavern in Atlanta - October 3, 2015

[papitalist-cig]

oh geez you guys, I was recently sent the motherlode of Hampton Grease Band bootlegs, thank youniverse

[papitalist-cig]

Hampton Grease Band – Music To Eat

[krispyweiss]

Album Review: Todd Snider - Live: Return of the Storyteller

No one was happier to return to the post-quarantine road than Todd Snider.

The joy is evident on Live: Return of the Storyteller, an album that culls 27 songs and stories from Snider’s 2021 gigs to recreate one spectacular Todd Snider concert, which in this era tended to open with “Big Finish” and close with “Opening Statement.”

So does this record.

Few live albums - including 2011’s Live: The Storyteller - capture the essence of a performer the way Return of the Storyteller captures the essence of Todd Snider.

And with the benefit of editing, there’s no ebb, only flow. The listener winds up with 95 minutes of excellent performances, laugh-out-loud-hysterical stories, engaged audiences and an even more-engaged Snider, who accompanies himself on acoustic guitar, harmonica and jokes.

The tracklist spans Songs for the Daily Planet (“Alright Guy”) through First Agnostic Church of Hope and Wonder (“Sail On, My Friend”) and finds Snider talking about taking acid with Hard Working Americans, witnessing Col. Bruce Hampton’s storybook death, walking off stage when a fan kept yelling for “Freebird” and lying about how well he knew John Prine.

Music lovers who haven’t witnessed Snider for themselves have an item left on the bucket list. In the meantime, Return of the Storyteller is the best you-were-there substitute one could ask for.

Grade card: Todd Snider - Live: Return of the Storyteller - A

9/28/22

[papitalist-cig]

Mix reel for side B of Col. Bruce Hampton’s ‘One Ruined Life of a Bronze Tourist’ (1978)

[krispyweiss]

Todd Snider at Holland Theatre, Bellefontaine, Ohio, Nov. 13, 2021

Todd Snider opened with “Big Finish” and closed his main set with Hard Working Americans’ “Opening Statement.”

Then, he encored with “Freebird.” This after earlier telling one of his trademark stories about how requests for the Lynyrd Skynyrd song once caused him to flee the stage two songs in to a show.

“These colors run like the wind at the first sign of trouble,” Snider said.

Such is the humor of Todd Snider, who played a terrific, mask-mandatory concert to a two-thirds-full house Nov. 13 in Bellefontaine’s Holland Theatre.

“I’ve missed you so much,” he said at the beginning of the 100-minute show during his first post-lockdown tour, which is being recorded for a live record.

“I’ve been getting away with this shit for so fucking long,” Snider said. “I still love it. … I did my fist tour in ’94 and never stopped until this pandemic. This is my second tour.”

Snider played free, weekly livestream concerts and recorded a new album, First Agnostic Church of Hope and Wonder - “always hoping for something and wondering what the fuck,” he said - during lockdown, so there was no rust. And though he copped to lamenting “new shit” when he goes to shows as a fan, Snider played several well-received tracks from the funky, full-band LP, which were much different in this solo-acoustic presentation.

This time out, there was no piano or banjo. Just Snider, a guitar, a harmonica rack, his ubiquitous red Solo cups and a bouquet of flowers on a table alongside him on the theater’s large stage.

“Sail On, My Friend” was a touching farewell to Snider’s late HWA bandmate Neil Casal. “Turn Me Loose (I’ll Never be the Same)” nodded to Col. Bruce Hampton. “Handsome John” was a sweet paean to John Prine. And “That Great Pacific Garbage Patch” was a lament of environmental degradation in the lyrical style of “Statistician’s Blues” - percentages and percentages of percentages, for example.

But Snider wasn’t all doomy and gloomy as the recalled the days when Americana “used to be called unsuccessful country music.”

He took requests for funny, older songs like “Alright Guy,” “Beer Run” and “Happy to be Here,” which turned into rambunctious, Saturday-night singalongs. He told riotous stories about traipsing - and tripping (on acid) - his way through the woods at night, looking for a song and realizing no mother would ever wish this for her child. And Snider imparted sage advice:

“When in doubt, give up.”

The simpatico Chelsea Lovitt, a self-described “broken-hearted songwriter from East Nashville,” opened with 40 minutes of similarly stripped-down - guitar, harmonica, foot percussion - often-biting songs like “Only a Pussy Runs from True Love” and “Order Me a Pizza.”

Grade card: Todd Snider at Holland Theatre - 11/13/21 - A-

11/14/21

[channelperiwinkle-blog]

TBT: Col. Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit - “Fixin’ to Die”

RIP Bruce