Concert Review: Trombone Shorty and Seratones at Crossroads KC

Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue concerts are preposterous.  The garish presentations of the high-energy New Orleans band are completely over-the-top.  Every solo is presented as a heroic achievement.  About 1,000 people lapped up the shameless showboating of the nine-piece band at Crossroads KC on Tuesday, June 4.  It would have been corny if it wasn’t so effective.  The musicians back up their ostentatious grandstanding with stellar ensemble work.  Often billed as a jazz act, Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue is actually a jam-oriented funk band with a thick New Orleans accent.  Fans dictate the band’s direction.  More than half the audience used the group’s occasional forays into serious jazz-based improvisations as excuses to yak at their pals on Tuesday.  Most also talked through an opening set by Seratones.  I look forward to catching the soulful Shreveport group in a more accommodating setting.


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Mac Rebennack, the Louisiana musician better known as Dr. John, has died.  A few personal notes:
*The Top 40 radio hit “Right Place, Wrong Time” blew my mind in 1973.
*A cutout copy of Desitively Bonnaroo was the first Dr. John album I purchased.
*Bluesiana Triangle is my favorite Dr. John-affiliated album.
*My adamant defense of Dr. John almost came to fisticuffs during a racially-charged argument at a bachelor party.  (I still regret my obstinance.)
*The first of the four or five Dr. John concerts I attended was in 1984.  I reviewed his 2006 appearance at the Beaumont for The Kansas City Star.
*My life partner asked Dr. John about his mojo hand during a question-and-answer session at a 2012 concert at Yardley Hall.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)

Album Review: The Mavericks- Brand New Day

Regrets, I’ve had a few thousand.  Like Frank Sinatra, I did it my way.  It hasn’t always been easy.  I was reminded of one missed opportunity while listening to the Mavericks’ new release Brand New Day.

An unsolicited CD by the then-unknown Miami based band crossed crossed my desk when I was the sales manager of a beleaguered music distribution company in 1990.  Even though I loved the music, I had to pass.  As a one-off, unproven project in the pre-internet era, I knew that timely payment to the band for shipped units would be impossible.

Having recognized the music’s potential, however, I should have offered to assist the Mavericks in a different capacity.  I would have loved to have been a part of selling and promoting What a Crying Shame, Music for All Occasions and Trampoline, three of my favorite albums of the 1990s.

The band was marketed as a country act at its commercial peak, but Brand New Day continues the band’s drift into an alternate universe in which Roy Orbison, Johnny Otis, Pérez Prado and Phil Spector are in the same band. It’s gloriously preposterous.  Here’s the title track.


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I reviewed the sixth of Garth Brooks’ seven sold-out concerts at the Sprint Center.

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I reviewed a concert by Soundgarden and the Dillinger Escape Plan on Sunday.

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I honored Ensemble Ibérica with the KCUR’s Band of the Week designation.

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I didn’t attempt to hide my inner fanboy in my extended concert preview of Chance the Rapper’s return to Kansas City.

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I write weekly music previews for The Kansas City Star and Ink magazine.

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I extol Bobby Watson’s Made in America at Plastic Sax.

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Bruce Hampton has died.  I first heard the jam band pioneer perform at a festival in a field outside of Lawrence, Kansas, in the early 1990s.

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Patti LaBelle performs a Broadway-style version of jazz on her florid new album Bel Hommage.  It’s hammy, cheesy and entirely delicious- and I love it.  LaBelle pitched the project on QVC.

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The combination of Avishai Cohen, Manfred Eicher and Nasheet Waits lights up several of my pleasure centers.

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Smino’s invigorating Blkswn is recommended if you like Chance the Rapper, St. Louis, Frank Ocean.  Here’s ”Anita”.

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Trombone Shorty courts the mainstream on Parking Lot Symphony. RIYL: Allen Toussaint, artists with staying power, Fred Wesley.

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Sarah Shook & the Disarmers’ Sidelong doesn’t quite do it for me.  Even so, I hope to catch the group in 2017. RIYL: Grisly Hand, boozin’, Bottle Rockets. Here’s ”Dwight Yoakam”.

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Don Bryant’s Don’t Give Up On Love is an unexpected treat.  RIYL: Otis Clay, soul survivors, Syl Johnson.  Here’s ”How Do I Get There?”.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)