Listen Up
Tommy Alverson
Jeff PrinceA Tommy Alverson live performance with his band at a smoky dancehall is something to see as well as to hear. Alverson’s die-hard fans get juiced up, sing, heckle, laugh, holler requests, and generally have a noisy boot-sc...
The Shortest Distance
Ken ShimamotoThe Shortest Distance is an alias for activist Ramsey Sprague, an early driving force behind the 1919 Hemphill radical arts/educational collective. Folks might not realize that Sprague is also a singer-songwriter who has perfor...
The Crash That Took Me
Anthony MarianiHuge, shimmering, occasionally fuzzy guitars. Pounding, splashing drums and syrupy atmospherics. Slinky, androgynous vocals that slowly transmit Beatles-esque melodies with lyrics about transmutation, self-reflection, and trans...
Breaking Light
Ken ShimamotoBreaking Light is yet another performing alias of Burleson-based guitarist Kavin Allenson (who usually goes by “Kavin.” with the period). Aside from performing solo acoustic, Allenson occasionally joins forces with ...
Jhon Kahsen Quartet
Anthony MarianiEveryone knows Johnny Case as that guy who’s played straight-ahead piano jazz at Sardines Ristorante Italiano every night for nearly 30 years. Folks even a little plugged in might also know that Case has done some sonic a...
Erik Deutsch
Ken ShimamotoThe Colorado jam band scene and the Brooklyn avant-garde would seem to be as mutually exclusive as oil and water, but this disc proves they aren’t as incompatible as one might think. Since relocating to the Apple from Bou...
Jon Irabagon
Ken ShimamotoAs the new millennium approaches the end of its first decade and folks who habitually worry about such things ponder the death of jazz yet again, young alto saxophonist Jon Irabagon’s latest, The Observer, arrives like a ...
Mike Reed’s People, Places & Things
Ken ShimamotoThe jazz myth of Chicago is powerful, dating back to 1922, when King Oliver summoned Louis Armstrong from New Orleans to change the world. It continued in the ’60s and ’70s, when players who’d germinated in th...
Age of Disinformation
Ken ShimamotoSince coaxing their trumpeter-father Dennis Gonzalez out of musical retirement a decade ago and forming Yells at Eels, brothers Aaron (bass) and Stefan Gonzalez (drums) have been performing ever more impressively. (YAE’s ...
Eaton Lake Tonics
Ken ShimamotoProlific indeed is Eaton Lake Tonics frontman Domenic “Tony” Ferraro, who’s already released two of this year’s most intriguing local discs under his literary-inspired alias Bob Fante: Rancho Folly V and...