#sweetback sisters

[mhisadj]

Sweetback Sisters - My Uncle Used To Love Me But She Died

...chicken ain’t chicken ‘til he’s lickin’ good and fried...

[jillathrilla]

Wrote about this band, The Sweetback Sisters, for the next Time Out New York issue today and am really diggin their vibe.

[musiccityroots]

Chapters - MCR 6.18.14

  Is there a word for something that feels like an ending that’s really not? What’s the emotion that attends change or that feeling when a chapter in a really great novel closes and the next one awaits? It’s hard to put your finger on because of a paradox in human nature. We crave stability and the affirmation of the familiar. And yet we’re no longer living in small farming villages in Mesopotamia, so obviously we’re more restless than complacent.

I’ll start with Trooper, because getting him on Roots has been an evangelical  cause for me for some time. It’s finally happening.

In liner notes to Trooper’s remarkable 2003 album Floating, Steve Earle told the slightly self-incriminating story of meeting and falling for the songs of Greg Trooper. The New Jersey born songwriter, who’s lived in a lot of cities since, including Nashville, joined a short list of greats whose songs made it into Steve Earle’s memory and performances. “The covers that really count,” Earle wrote, “are the ones that I do in live shows because they are the songs I sing because I wish I’d written them.” Earle also is outspoken about his envy of Troop’s singing voice, which is indeed the hickory-smoked, plain-spoken essence of what a male songwriter should sound like.

I first discovered Troop when I was writing at the Tennessean and his album Straight Down Rain just walloped me with its rare blend of tenderness, strength, textured sound and illuminating lyrics. He shifted over to Sugar Hill Records where he released two more excellent projects, including one produced by the legendary Muscle Shoals figure Dan Penn. Trooper’s most recent disc came in late 2013 entitled Incident On Willow Street. It’s got a film noir cover and 12 story songs that take us inside complex characters. I keep getting drawn back to “Everything’s A Miracle,” where a cynic and a dreamer can’t keep their love alive. But there are many other testimonials to the verdict of rock critic David Marsh, who proclaims that Trooper “deserves about 12 times the attention he’s received.” Troop visits us from his New York home for a special show-opening set.

James Intveld also merits wider awareness as one of the seasoned veterans of hard West Coast country music. His resume is full of accomplishments as an anchoring musician at LA’s famous Palomino Club, as a songwriter (he penned Rosie Flores’s best known tune “Cryin’ Over You”) and an actor who’s worked with Sean Penn and others. Some photos of James back in the day with colleagues John Jorgenson, Dale Watson and Dwight Yoakam recently went up on Facebook, and it’s a time machine back to a great era for country music revivalism. It’ll be a great pleasure to hear Intveld croon and twang on our stage again.

Derek St. Holmes surprised me on his first visit to Roots. He’s spent his life playing mostly hard rock with Ted Nugent and others. And while his set was loud and tough, his rocking blues left plenty of space for his roots to show. He was first inspired he said by seeing Elvis on Ed Sullivan and his music school was Detroit soul. His songwriting is tight and his voice is impressive. He’s been a Nashville area resident for years now, and we feel he deserves a regular stage here amid his fellow master musicians and rock legends. Watch for some stretched out guitar jams with his buddy and our boss John Walker.

We haven’t seen the Sweetback Sisters in years, so it’ll be a happy reunion. The Brooklyn  based band shares a record label (Signature Sounds) with some of our faves like Lake Street Dive and Joy Kills Sorrow, though their vibe is more classic and throwback. Not-real-life-sisters Emily Miller and Zara Bode believe in the magic of sibling harmony an a sense of forward looking fun. “We’re a renegade retro band that mixes up country, swing and honky tonk,” explains Bode in the band’s official bio. “Sometimes what we deliver is straight out of the 50s; other times it’s BR549 meets The B52s.” And they have a picture of themselves with the rockin’ parade car of our MCR West Coast affiliate KRSH 95.9 FM, so we’re feeling particularly cuddly with them right now.

Planning for our final set and final jam(s) will be underway right up to show time. We hope to surprise and delight and celebrate. We understand the disappointment some of expressed about leaving the Loveless. It has something special. But so does our new home and we can’t wait to commune with you there. It’s not the end of the story. Just another chapter.

  Craig H.

[oberlinspringfolkfest]

16th Annual Oberlin Spring Folkfest

Free Admission

Thursday, May 1

Wilder Hall Room 101 (135 W. Lorain Street)

8:00pm - Screening of "Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune" followed by Q&A with Sonny Ochs

Friday, May 2

Cat in the Cream Coffeehouse (180 W. Lorain Street)

6:00pm - GitArvin and the Spring Ephemeral

6:30pm - Joe MacPhail

7:00pm - Phil Ochs Song Night (featuring Josh White Jr., Magpie, Sharon Katz of the Peace Train, and Rolly Brown)

8:30pm - Sam Amidon

10:30pm - The Sweetback Sisters

Saturday, May 3

Clark Bandstand, Tappan Square (OH St. Rtes. 58 & 511)

Rainspace: Cat in the Cream Coffeehouse (180 W. Lorain Street)

1:30pm - Soul Proprietors

2:00pm - O'Hara

2:30pm - Jess Banks

3:00pm - Becky K

3:30pm - Brannon Rockwell-Charland

4:00pm - Gabe Marx

4:30pm - Butter Heathen

5:00pm - Sweet Potato Spoon

Saturday, May 3

Finney Chapel (90 North Professor Street)

8:00pm - An Evening with Leo Kottke

[bluegrassnyc-blog]

Long time readers of BluegrassNYC will know that every year I implore you to get tickets early to The Sweetback Sisters' Country Christmas Sing Along Spectacular. There's simply no better way for a fan of old time, bluegrass or country music in the greater New York metropolitan area to get in the holiday spirit than to attend one of these shows.  The band has announced two dates in Brooklyn this year at the ever Fabulous Jalopy Theatre- Thursday December 19th and then again on Sunday, December 22nd.  Don't miss it- from Jesse Milnes' The Nine Days of Christmas (the greatest Christmas country song written in the past ten years) to the Sisters' cover of Ralph Stanley's O Beautiful Star of Bethlehem, you'll leave with a jingle in your step.

[bluegrassnyc-blog]

I've always loved this song- Elk River Blues- by a fiddler named Ernie Carpenter.  He wrote it while depressed about his lifelong-home on the Elk River in West Virginia being flooded when Sutton Lake was made in the 1950s.  Carpenter's family had lived on the Elk since the 1700s. He had hired a lobbyist, sued, taken every road he could to save his home and couldn't.  For several years while the dam was constructed, he played a cat-and-mouse game with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers after the area was closed off. After they closed the main roads, he came via backroad, and as the feds found his backroads in, they closed them off one by one. After his homeplace was forever underwater, he wrote Elk River Blues.

Coincidentally I was talking to amazing fiddler, guitarist, singer and songwriter Jesse Milnes- he of Sweetback Sisters fame- about this song at the annual Christmas show the Sisters play at Jalopy Theatre.  He told me it was actually his father, Gerry Milnes, who suggested the song's name to Carpenter.  How cool!

[bluegrassnyc-blog]

Sweetback Sisters featured on WNYC; Christmas shows at Jalopy this weekend, Friday and Saturday December 14 & 15

The Sweetback Sisters hit New York this weekend to spread some Christmas cheer.  See WNYC's gig alert and download a free .mp3 of the Sisters' Walking in a Winter Wonderland here.

Visit the Jalopy show page here. There are still tickets for Saturday night!

[bluegrassnyc-blog]

Catch the Sweetback Sisters Friday night November 30th at the 92Y Tribeca!  And while you're at it- book your tickets for their super special Jalopy Christmas show- more on that later.... 

"The Sweetback Sisters may not be blood relations, but their precise, family-style harmonies recall the best of country music from the Everlys to The Judds, as well as the spirited rockabilly energy of Wanda Jackson, one of the band’s role models. Like the artists they admire, the Sweetbacks are concerned with the traditional subjects of heartbreak, revenge, remorse and staying strong in the face of relationships gone wrong, albeit with a contemporary sensibility. “We’re a renegade retro band that mixes up country, swing and honky tonk,” explains the band. “Sometimes what we deliver is straight out of the 50s; other times it’s BR549 meets The B52s.”