Author: Michael Witthaus

Black Violin transcends genres

Black Violin earned a Grammy nomination for its 2020 album, Take The Stairs — a fitting title, given the band’s challenging journey to success.

Led by Kev Marcus on violin and Wil Baptiste on viola, the group mashes up classical music and hip-hop. They invented their innovative genre years before YouTube, Twitter and TikTok virality existed, when making it in the world of music came from wearing out shoe leather, not web clicks.

Their first big break came as the new millennium was unfolding, and it’s illustrative. Hoping to perform at basketball star Allen Iverson’s birthday bash, they got a meeting with the promoter of Teasers nightclub in Miami.

“He laughed us out the door,” Marcus said in a recent phone interview. “He said, ‘What am I gonna do with violins?’”

Their irate manager responded by opening the back of his Ford Expedition, cranking up the sound system, and instructing the pair to play on the sidewalk in front of the club. A crowd quickly formed that soon included the shocked promoter. He got it, and agreed to hire them — as long as they promised to stay in flow.

“We needed to create a set for the DJ to mix in [so] our music didn’t stop everyone dancing,” Marcus said. “It’s the same kind of hip-hop music, except now you’re hearing violins, and you’re like, where is that? Then once they see us, they start crowding around. That was sort of the beginning.”

A couple of years later, they earned a spot on Showtime At The Apollo, a talent contest famous for unforgiving audiences.

“They boo you off the stage if they don’t like you,” Marcus said. “I mean, they are legendarily ruthless.”

The two waited in the green room as four acts went out ahead of them and were quickly dispensed by the crowd.

“A guy called the Sandman jumps from his box, hits the stage, and starts tap dancing you off,” Marcus said. “I remember being underneath … and just seeing the dust fall from the green room ceiling.”

Staring down at their violins, the two feared they’d been set up. But that feeling soon vanished.

“We walk on stage and we never lose,” Marcus said. “We won four straight competitions, we got standing ovations. It was the ‘we call home and quit our jobs’ moment. … If this crowd is gonna take us, then any crowd is gonna take us.”

The spark for their unique sound came when Marcus and Baptiste were in high school together — via a Sony Ericsson cell phone.

“Before ringtones, you could program notes,” Marcus said. “Busta Rhymes took the theme from Psycho and made a hip-hop beat, and it was the No. 1 song in the country…. I thought that was cool, so I created the notes for it and put it in my phone.”

When it rang in orchestra class, Marcus’s teacher predictably confiscated it, but not before his intrigued fellow musicians started replicating the digital sounds on their own instruments.

“The violinist next to me started playing the notes from my phone, and he went, ‘What if the violinist played?’ The next thing you know, the whole orchestra is playing,” he said.

Although Black Violin’s first Grammy nomination came for Best Instrumental Album, there’s an uplifting lyrical message throughout Take The Stairs, particularly on “Impossible Is Possible” and “One Step.” The latter song was made into a hard-hitting video, reminiscent of Childish Gambino’s “This Is America.”

C&I Studio CEO Joshua Miller wrote a short film that touched on racial profiling, the immigration crisis, and the scourge of gun violence in schools.

“We wanted it to be really controversial,” Miller said in a ‘making of’ video. “Our whole pitch was really telling the story of what’s happening in America right now.”

“One Step” had been written two years earlier, with a different message in mind, Marcus explained, but they also felt a need to update it for the present moment.

“Everything you see in the video … we’re dealing with directly,” he said. “We wanted to show our reality, and if we can’t do that within our own art then we’re in the wrong business.”

Black Violin

When: Sunday, Dec. 12, at 7 p.m.
Where: Capitol Center for the Arts, 44 S. Main St., Concord
Tickets: $35 and up at ccanh.com

Featured photo: Black Violin. Courtesy photo.

Christmas at The Rex with Morgan James

From her debut album, a live tribute to Nina Simone, to recreating Joni Mitchell’s iconic Blue track by track a few years back, Morgan James relishes a challenge. Her guiding lights are interpreters like Simone and Aretha Franklin, who “get a hold of a song, and the original goes out the window,” she said in a recent phone interview.

In 2019 James set out to make a throwback soul record with vintage equipment, backing from a rhythm section used by Al Green, and a bevy of veteran session players. Named for the studio where it was recorded, Memphis Magnetic is an R&B celebration. Alas, it came out weeks before the pandemic hit, so a planned supporting tour had to be scrapped.

She responded by returning to Memphis to make the live-in-the-studio A Very Magnetic Christmas. Incredibly, it’s even more soulful than its predecessor, with skillfully curated nuggets like William Bell’s “Every Day Will Be Like A Holiday” and “Backdoor Santa,” the latter unearthed from the 1968 Atco Records holiday compilation Soul Christmas, along with some seasonal standards and a few winning originals.

The Clarence Carter track about a Santa with more on his mind than gift-giving — “I make all the little girls happy while the boys are out to play” goes the chorus — was memorably sampled in 1987 by Run-DMC for its “Christmas in Hollis” and is a standout track on an album already packed with them.

“I do straight-up classics like ‘White Christmas’ and ‘O Holy Night,’ of course,” James said, “but I wanted to do a couple that people might not expect me to sing. I think that song turned out so great. It’s so fun to sing, and it’s so funky; we had the best time making that.”

James and husband guitarist-producer Doug Wamble co-wrote “Long As I Got You,” which she called “a little love song about winter,” adding, “when people are complaining about the weather, we’re not … we love being cozy.” Another delight from the couple is the bouncy “I Wanna Know,” which echoes Natalie Cole’s hit “This Will Be (An Everlasting Love).”

Idaho-born and California-raised, James set her sights on New York City after high school. She applied to Juilliard and was initially declined, but kept at it, eventually persuading the prestigious school to open up an extra vocalist slot for her.

“It tells you all you need to know about my personality,” James said with a laugh. “I’m very stubborn, and if I have a vision for something I don’t really take no for an answer.”

Later she performed on Broadway, notably playing Teena Marie in The Motown Show, where she caught the attention of Berry Gordy Jr. He became her mentor and helped guide her to a major-label deal with Epic Records.

“He really encouraged me to write and have a stake in my own music,” James said. “The best advice he ever gave was he reminded me to always do my best work and always go with my vision, whether or not I’m reaping benefits from it. One day he said to me, ‘You know, Morgan, a star is a star even when it’s light out. When the sun goes down, we can see the stars, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there in the daytime. You are a star all the time, so act like a star.’”

James’s Magnetic Christmas tour stops in Manchester on Dec. 4 for a show at the Rex Theatre. How does she feel about being back on the road after a two-year break?

“We are getting all our ducks in a row, and there’s a lot to think about,” James said. “We’re going to have to get used to the lifestyle again [but] we’re so excited to see everybody, and play music, and be in a different city every day. We start the day after Thanksgiving, and go all the way up until Christmas. It’s going to be so joyful and celebratory; that’s what we want from the shows.”

Morgan James – A Very Magnetic Christmas

When: Saturday, Dec. 4, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester
Tickets: $25 and up at palacetheatre.org

Featured photo: Morgan James. Courtesy photo.

Yngwie Malmsteen hits Tupelo

When he’s not revving his Fender Stratocaster at impossible speeds, shredding with a fury that other guitarists aspire to, Yngwie Malmsteen likes to drive Ferraris — he owns five, all of them red. During the pandemic Malmsteen had a lot of time for both endeavors. What resulted was a tour de force album, Parabellum.

Like his fiery playing and his fast cars, Malmsteen’s mind moves at a frenetic pace. A year in the studio, something he hadn’t experienced in decades, was a unique challenge.

“I learned a long time ago to be careful with having too much time,” he said from his home in Miami. “I had 80, 90, 100 ideas; I only took the most inspired things and refined them.”

Malmsteen pointed to Van Halen’s early albums as a source of inspiration.

“They were done very spontaneously in the beginning,” he said. “I keep that spontaneity. … Every time I come up with something new I record it right away, and usually I keep that take.”

Malmsteen played every instrument on Parabellum and sang on the non-instrumental tracks. He once hired guest singers but stopped using them a few records ago.

“That’s definitely a thing of the past,” he said.

When Malmsteen’s first tour since early 2020 begins, a band he calls “a good group of guys” is expected to learn the new songs, and expect surprises.

“We go through the songs at soundcheck; that’s all they get,” he said. “Here’s another thing I do — half an hour before show time, I call them in and we put a setlist together. Then we go on stage and I play different songs anyway! They just gotta know it.”

Malmsteen has long sneered at the idea of collaborating with other musicians, and his history helps explain why. Swedish-born, he grew up in a musical family.

“Everybody was very artistic, which was unusual there in the ’70s, because it was a socialist country [that] didn’t allow that. God bless America, man,” he said.

Classically trained from the age of 5, Malmsteen discovered rock music when he saw a clip of Jimi Hendrix smashing his guitar at the Monterey Pop Festival that accompanied a news report of his death in 1970. Later came blues from John Mayall, and hard rock via Deep Purple.

As soon as he could, Malmsteen headed to the United States.

“I took my guitar, my toothbrush, and I got on the plane,” he said. “I had a plan — my plan was to not live in a socialist welfare Marxist bull—- country.”

Soon after arriving in Los Angeles, he joined Steeler, a rising glam rock band. His first gig with them attracted a small crowd, but the following week at L.A.’s Troubadour, Malmsteen looked from his dressing room and saw a line stretched around the block.

“I said to someone working there, ‘Who’s playing tonight?’ He points at me and says, ‘You are.’ It was pretty crazy,” he said. “I was 18 years old, and all of a sudden people were digging it.”

He was in Steeler long enough to appear on their lone album, then joined another metal band, Alcatrazz. His stint there lasted less than a year, an exit hastened by onstage clashes with singer Graham Bonnet after Malmsteen received a solo offer while the group was on tour in Japan.

A reunion is, emphatically, not in the cards.

“When I left, they fell into obscurity, but I kept on going, kind of like rising up, I never stopped,” he said. “These guys … they’re selling car insurance; I don’t know what they’re doing. They asked me so many times to join, and I’m, ‘No, I didn’t sit on my ass for 40 years.’”

Malmsteen insists, “I don’t have a chip on my shoulder; the only person I feel have to prove something to is myself,” and on one of Parabellum’s standout cuts, “Eternal Bliss,” he expresses gratitude for his continued success and life’s blessings.

“I have the most beautiful wife in the world, I have a great son, nice house, I’ve played music I want to play and I never compromise,” he said, citing two reasons for his longevity. “One, I find it exciting and challenging, and only because I improvise all the time. If I were to play the same thing over and over that wouldn’t do it. Also, to quote Paganini … one must feel strongly to make others feel strongly.”

Yngwie Malmsteen w/ Images of Eden and Sunlord

When: Friday, Nov. 26, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry
Tickets: $45 and up at tupelohall.com

Featured photo: Yngwie Malmsteen. Photo by Austin Hargraves.

Jamantics get down again

Being in Jamantics is like riding a bicycle; however long its five members are apart, the moment they plug in and play, their reliable groove reappears. As rehearsals began for a Nov. 19 reunion show at Bank of NH Stage in Concord, the synergy “was immediate,” guitarist Lucas Gallo said. “Beyond Jamantics, we all have experience musically with each other. … Now the whole band’s back together and it’s sounding great, in my opinion.”

“It’s like putting on a well-oiled glove,” fellow guitar player Freeland Hubbard added.

The group officially existed only from 2009 to 2011 but didn’t break up; it disbanded. Drummer Masceo headed west, and the rest — Gallo, Hubbard, bass player Eric Reingold and fiddler Jordan Tirrell-Wysocki — carried on with other projects.

Reingold worked with several bands, including NEMA winners Cold Engines, while Tirrell-Wysocki appeared on recording sessions and played solo, as did Hubbard and Gallo, who also helped promote local shows. Masceo worked for Napa, California-based Enchanted Hills Camp and served as Jamantics’ archivist.

In October 2015, Jamantics “re-banded” for a show at Concord’s Capitol Center.

When Masceo moved back to Concord in 2019, a 10th anniversary reunion show happened at the newly opened Bank of NH Stage. A planned event the following year was scrapped due to pandemic concerns, but they’re back on Nov. 19 at the same venue for what’s hoped to be a yearly JamAnnual GetDown.

In advance of the show, a new single dropped; “Immortal” began in Masceo’s home studio.

“I was bored like everybody else during the pandemic, and what happened was a ball rolling situation,” he said. “Freeland, Reingold and I had been playing together as a trio; [then] I just kind of sprung it on everybody when it was done…. I wanted everybody to be happy; when there’s five people in a band, that can be a little stressful. I guess it was taking it one person at a time.”

Called InstaJam, the trio had a live debut planned in April 2020 that didn’t happen, but later in the year they began playing around the area as The Special Guests. Masceo remembers walking on stage for the first time after months of lockdown as emotional and unexpected.

“It certainly was a reflection of nostalgia about all the times we’d felt that way… in the pocket of the crowd’s energy, feeling good about the music we’re playing,” he said.

Reingold was philosophical about the experience.

“It’s very rare that we basically as a species all experience the same thing as one people,” he said. “We all experienced lockdown, and I think it goes without saying that nobody was unhappy to get back to the world. Not only musicians, but just everybody in general. It was a breath of fresh air … enhanced by the fact that we’re the ones that get to play for the people coming out.”

When Jamantics formed, their two-part mission was making music and fostering the local music scene. Even as they hit milestones like opening for Little Feat at Casino Ballroom in Hampton, they worked to bring regional bands to Concord for shows at Penuche’s, the Barley House and other venues. Ten years on, they’re pleased with the city’s commitment to local arts, particularly the Capitol Center and its satellite 600-seat room that Reingold calls “the perfect venue.”

Beginning with transforming the Spotlight Room lobby space early in the decade, the nonprofit has long boosted area acts, Reingold observed.

“You’d be talking to the same people who just got off the phone with Willie Nelson’s booking agent, and they’re still making time in their schedule,” he said, adding the new space “fills a gap that I think has existed in Concord for quite some time. So we’re pretty excited to be able to be part of it.”

Jamantics Reunion w/ Teeba

When: Friday, Nov. 19, 8 p.m.
Where: Bank of NH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord
Tickets: $15 and up at ccanh.com

Featured photo: Jamantics. Courtesy photo

Legendary band returns to New England

Although it took a while for Little Feat to catch on with audiences in the early ’70s, other musicians quickly got their heady gumbo of rock, soul, funk and New Orleans boogie. Its members were frequently booked for session work, none more than keyboard player Bill Payne, whose resume of studio credits runs for multiple pages.

Beginning with Toulouse Street, Payne was a de facto Doobie Brother, and in recent years a part of their touring band, including a just-completed run of shows marking their 50th anniversary. That’s ending soon, however. The band he co-founded in 1969 with Lowell George and Richie Hayward is back on the road, beginning with several dates across the Northeast, including one at Lowell Memorial Auditorium on Nov. 19.

“I’m 100 percent Little Feat from here on,” Payne said by phone from his home in Montana recently, adding, “there’s just not enough hours in the day.”

Payne explained that Feat recently signed with Vector Management, a Nashville agency that also works with Emmylou Harris, John Hiatt, Alison Krauss and Lyle Lovett.

“I want to give them free rein to really promote our band … having a conflict with the Doobie Brothers about when they can tour, that’s not a great way to run a railroad.”

The audience-driven By Request Tour will include new additions Tony Leone on drums and guitar player Scott Sharrard, who joined after Paul Barrere, a member since 1972, lost his battle with cancer. Leone and Sharrard’s quick fit with the band helped convince Payne and his mates Kenny Gradney, Sam Clayton and Fred Tackett that Feat should carry on.

“It’s about music, it’s about legacy, and it’s about musicianship,” Payne said. “Do we harm our legacy by continuing, or do we add to it? If we’re strictly going out and playing ‘Dixie Chicken’ or ‘Oh Atlanta’ or ‘Time Loves a Hero’ — I can do that by going out and joining a Little Feat tribute band.”

Part of moving forward includes making new music.

Released in July, “When All Boats Rise” is a gospel-infused tune that confronts the hope and despair of a fractious nation. Payne came up with the nautical-themed title and handed it to frequent collaborator Tom Garnsey, a songwriter he’s long admired.

“I’ve written songs with [Grateful Dead lyricist] Robert Hunter, for example,” he said. “His lyrics hold up with that caliber of stuff; he’s just excellent.”

The song is a clarion call for harmony in divided times; Payne knows some will greet it cynically.

“There’s a lot of people out there that will go, all boats rise, well, I don’t even have a boat,” he said. “It’s aspirational — liberty and justice for all is what we aspire to, and that’s what we aspire to with ‘All Boats Rise.’”

Fans have submitted a lot of requests for the upcoming tour.

“The Little Feat fan base is obviously a very knowledgeable group,” Payne said. “We’re just going to have to see how many of them we can learn, to be honest with you.”

Some, he added, won’t make the cut, and not for musical reasons, Payne said.

“I think given the state of affairs of the world, ‘The Fan’ is an interesting request, but it’s not exactly a song with a good view of women.” It’s true, the Feats Don’t Fail Me Now track’s misogyny is glaring in hindsight. “Look, we’re not going to sing that, OK? Let’s play some of the music … we’d be in a world of trouble if we actually got up there and sang it.”

Payne is receptive to focusing on Little Feat’s most successful album, the 1978 double live Waiting For Columbus.

“[That’s] been brought up year after year, and I’m like, I don’t know,” he said.

New management, and new blood in the band, however, encourage him.

“The weight of it is you’re going after one of the best albums we ever put out and certainly one of our most well-known. … I think it’s a perfect way to say, ‘Put it right down: the gauntlet has been thrown.’”

Little Feat By Request

When: Friday, Nov. 19, 8 p.m.
Where: Lowell Memorial Auditorium, 50 E. Merrimack St., Lowell
Tickets: $39 to $289 at event.etix.com

Featured photo: Little Feat. Courtesy photo.