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December 22, 2008

Dawn Cooksey: Because it's therapy

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"I write songs because I need to," said Yellow Springs singer/songwriter Dawn Cooksey. "I would write them even if I didn't play them for anyone."

It's therapy, she said, and she knows a little bit about that because she is a therapist and a licensed social worker. For a time, she worked for an agency in Hamilton, and through her contacts began performing for the Farmer's Market, which in turn led to her upcoming appearance at the Music Cafe on Tuesday, Dec. 23.

Born in Dayton, Cooksey lived several years in Austin, Texas, where she performed in the folk/alternative rock band Dik Dam Dyk. It was in the Austin open mic nights that she overcame her fear of performing her own songs.

"I didn't think anyone would care about my problems," she said. "I'd be a wreck for days before a gig, but I told myself I'd go every week until I'm not scared anymore.

"It took a long time."

Her songs tend to be sad, mad and everywhere in between, she said. "There have been a few exceptions, but I generally don't write when I'm happy and enjoying my life — which is most of the time.

"There are a few exceptions that blow me away, but happy songs tend to be kind of dorky anyway," she said.

She has a band, 68 South.

 Dawn Cooksey on MySpace

October 31, 2008

Hotel Cafe Tour boasts up-and-coming singer/songwriters

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New York singer/songwriter Jaymay is part of the Hotel Cafe Tour 

The Hotel Café in Los Angeles has become an influential venue — “the place that breaks artists” — featuring the country’s up-and-coming singer/songwriters.

“The stellar songwriters that grew The Hotel Café scene into community and camaraderie are the focus,” said spokesperson Patrice Fehlen, and the Hotel Cafe Tour, stopping next week at Bogart’s, follows the same formula.

“There are no headliners, the band is shared and spontaneous collaborations between artists are encouraged,” she said. “With a revolving cast of songwriters jumping on and off the bus, each evening is unique, creating a feeling of 'these people in this place will never happen again.’”

Now in its fourth year, Over the Hotel Café Tour will feature an all female line-up for the first time. Nineteen female songwriters, both established musicians and hot rising stars such have embarked on this 34-city tour, featuring a different line-up on each stop.

“One bus, one band, and a bunch of girlfriends on the road,” Fehlen said.

Cincinnati’s stop features Rachael Yamagata, Meiko, Thao Nguyen, Jaymay and Alice Russell.

“It’s almost like a talent show,” Jaymay said. “The band gets all of our songs in advance, so we go out and do three songs, let someone else play for a while, go back and do two more.”

 

how to go
  • WHAT: The Hotel Cafe Tour
  • WHERE: Bogart’s, 2621 Vine St., Cincinnati
  • WHEN: 8 p.m. Monday, Nov. 3
  • COST: $13.50
  • MORE INFO: (513) 562-4949; www.bogarts.com

 

October 23, 2008

Ellie Fabe: Checking back in

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Cincinnati singer/songwriter Ellie Fabe is still finding her way back into the scene, making her second appearance at the Music Cafe at the Fitton Center on Tuesday, Oct. 28.

“I have two kids, and that can check you out for a while,” she said. “But they’re a little older, 10 and 14, so I’m just now checking back in.”

Admitting that it’s hard to negotiate her way this time around — there was no MySpace.com when she first started playing her songs — Fabe said her strategy is just to play as much as she can, especially in performer-friendly venues like the Music Cafe.

“Sometimes you find yourself in uncharted territory at open mic nights,” she  said. “But I’ve been writing regardless of whether or not I’m playing out, so you start to get into this ‘if a tree falls in the forest’ thing.

“So for now, I’m just trying to stay next to myself and not get too far out ahead.”

Part of that includes recording. Although she’s recorded some demos of her work, she’s not sure what to do with it all other than post it on MySpace.

“I’d love to make a record, but I don’t see that as something that will catapult you to the top,” she said.

Fabe, who is also a working visual artist, said her songs, laden with girl-longing themes, seem to be especially popular among teenage girls.

“My work is a little self-confessional,” she said, “writing about what’s going on with me — although a lot of it is fictional. I also like words that just go together well.”

Also performing at the Music Cafe will be Christian pop artist Kevin Stokely, Debbie Silverman and Mitch Lieberman playing novelty and parody tunes, singer/songwriters Myron Gabbard and Brent Burch, and folk/rock/country band Diamond Blue.  


October 16, 2008

Hamilton native slings his axe on "The Late Show"

JournalNews feature

NASHVILLE — Butler County native and Nashville guitarist Tim Baumgartner is a little nervous about his apperance on “The Late Show” with David Letterman, airing Friday, Oct. 17.

Except for a couple of music videos in which the camera has “breezed by,” this will be Baurmgartner’s first performance on national television.

Baumgartner takes two solos on “Butte America USA,” a song performed by country singer Tim Montana. The first, he said, he emulates the solo played by the studio musician on the record, but the second one is all his and he’s out front and center.

Montana is just one of several musicians that Baumgartner slings his guitar for. In fact, the Letterman appearance marked his 210th gig of the year, no small feat in a city overflowing with pickers.

Baumgartner said that his first musical gigs were playing in a family band at Queen of Peace Church that included his siblings and his mother, Celeste Baumgartner, a frequent Journal-News contributor, on mandolin.

Like many other guitar players from Hamilton, Baumgartner took his first lessons at Mehas Music with Dave Sams, now the resident guitar teacher at the Fitton Center for Creative Arts. 

While a student at Badin High School, class of 1985, he played in a couple of different rock bands, including Risk and Scimitar, both of which played a lot of original music.

He got his first taste of professional work at Kings Island at the encouragement of  his mother.

 "It was the best thing she could have done for me," he said. "I had spent my summers baling hay and making maybe $300 the whole summer. At Kings Island, I was making $300 a week playing 30 minute shows with one-hour breaks, and we were treated royally."

After a year at the prestigious Berklee School of Music in Boston, Baumgartner finished his education at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music where he studied jazz guitar performance. He continued his theme park career in the meantime, not only at Kings Island and at Bush Gardens in Florida before moving to Nashville in 1992.

Tim Montana first approached him last summer to go on tour in (where else?) the state of Montana, which included a gig in Choteau, where David Letterman owns a vacation ranch.

He and one of the other band members were playing cards on the bus outside the venue after a sound check when Letterman came knocking on the bus door, wanting to meet Montana. Apparently, he was impressed enough to offer the band a slot on "The Late Show."

“He was just the nicest guy you could imagine,” Baumgartner said. “The people there treat him like one of their own.”

In New York at the theater, however, it’s a different story. While the band and the stage crew were all very friendly, he said, Letterman was kept isolated.

Although “The Late Show” normally tapes the same day as the broadcast, the Friday shows are sometimes taped earlier in the week. Other guests tonight, Oct. 17, include comedian Tina Fey, who has been making headlines for her impersonation of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

“All in all, I think the performance came off great,” he wrote on his MySpace.com blog. “However... the TV mix won’t lie.  Any tuning or intonation glitchs that are buried in the live stage volume will come out clear on the TV mix. So... I am biting my nails until I see it.”

October 02, 2008

Natalie Stovall: Peace, Love, Fiddle

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It started out as a choice between acting lessons or violin lessons when Natalie Stovall was 4 years old. Because her mother had fiddled with a violin while carrying the child, music won out.

“I’m not even sure I understood what the instrument was at the time,” Stovall said, “but I had a lot of fun in class.

Practicing, however, was another matter.

“I liked the attention and I liked being on stage,” she said. “That was a big deal, but she couldn’t get me to practice until she figured out that if she took me to a park, people would gather around me to listen, and then I’d practice all day.”

She loved playing so much that her teachers sometimes chastised her for smiling too much during recitals. Music, after all, is serious business, Stovall learned, until she discovered the other side of the instrument, the fiddling side.

“You could play fast and you could play two strings at once and you could make it up as you go,” she said. “I continued classical training up until I was 16, just to work on technique, but I was really a fiddler by then.
When she was 10, she auditioned for a job performing in Opryland park when they asked her to sing something. She didn’t sing, she told them. Sing anything, they said. She sang “Happy Birthday” and got a job singing as well as playing fiddle, and taking voice lessons.

Stovall ended up studying at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she played in orchestras and formed her first band, taking them home to Nashville with her to play around there during the summers. The drummer in that band is still with her today, but it took her 27 different musicians to create the lineup, now together for two years, that will perform with her on Saturday at the Fitton Center.


September 18, 2008

Daniel Ryan: "Nothing Else to Do"

Sparrow Quartet finds its wings

Continue reading "Sparrow Quartet finds its wings" »

September 01, 2008

Just Sisters: "Irishman's Heart for the Ladies"

We were walking Chaplin and decided to have lunch on the patio at Molly Malone's on Pleasant Ridge when a pair of young ladies sat down and played some fiddle tunes. I asked if they were in a band, and they said, "We're Just Sisters." Merril Flanary on fiddle, Julie Powers on bodhran. You can hear Chap chime in on the last chorus.

August 25, 2008

Mindy Smith's Cincinnati connection

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Although Mindy Smith spent some time in Cincinnati — and joined  her first band while there — one gets a sense that it was not exactly a memorable part of the native Long Islander’s life. For one thing, she was recovering from the death of her mother, her musical idol and inspiration.

“She had the most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard,” said Smith, who was 19 when her mother died of cancer. “She had the ability to touch people, to move mountains with her voice. If I learned anything from her, it’s to put all of your emotion into your performance.”

So she found herself enrolled at Cincinnati Bible College.

“I went there because I had some friends who went there,” she said. “I was a lousy student, but I needed to get out of New York. I tried to do a band-thing, but that only lasted about two months. It was fun, but...”

After dropping out, she re joined her father, who had relocated to Nashville, and that’s where she found her voice and her instrument.

“That was my version of college,” she said, “learning how to write. I started out singing them a capella, but realized I needed to learn how to play guitar to accompany myself. But I felt like that’s what I was meant to do: Write original songs.”

Smith got to work on her career, going to songwriters showcases and open mics nearly every night. Winning the Tin Pan South writer’s contest in 2000 led to a staff position at Yellow Dog Music. The company allowed her to earn a living writing songs for others while she made demos and generated a buzz that earned her an appearance with Lee Ann Womack at South By Southwest and as the only unsigned artist on the Dolly Parton tribute CD, “Just Because I’m a Woman.” She was singled out by Parton herself for that project.

She’s still on the road for her 2007 album “Long Island Shores,” her second, playing solo acoustic sets.

“That’s really the way I like to do things,” she said. “That’s how I started out, so I’m quite comfortable out there alone.”

Official site

MySpace 

August 13, 2008

Okeanas: High as the Hills

Recorded live at the Third Street Tap & Grill, Hamilton, Ohio, and on location in Okeana, Ohio. Thanks to Barb Didrichsen for the additional camera work, and to Ernie Mills of Okeanas for showing me around his country home...

August 06, 2008

Couple calls their sound ‘Christian blues’

JournalNews feature 

HAMILTON — “Musicianaries” Gary and Julie Tussey have both been making music since they were children.

 

She’s a little bit pop and rock with three self-released solo CDs to her credit. He’s a little bit country and blues. Together they’ve hit upon a sound that has landed them a national distribution deal for their next record, “Dance!”

The Tusseys have been together as a couple for 13 years, but it wasn’t until about two years ago that they joined forces in their music ministry to perform as a duo, inspired by an enigmatic encounter after a gig.

“He always played piano with the floating left-hand technique like Jerry Lee Lewis,” Julie said.

“Then about two years ago, I was playing in a church, a guy came up to me after and said, ‘The Lord is using the guitar now,’” Gary said. “I think he meant it like a smart aleck, but I took it as a challenge,” and he retired to his studio to study.

For the next six months, even his wife didn’t really know what he was up to except that she’d hear him playing endless scales.

Then one day, he came to her with a riff he had written, and she immediately started writing lyrics to it, and they kept writing until they had their first duo disc in the can, a self-produced and self-marketed project they called “Hillbilly Praise.”

When they started on the second set, the music became more “rhythm ’n’ blues meets gospel,” they said, or what they decided to call “Christian blues.”

“‘Hillbilly Praise’ was more praise-and-worship, but for the next CD we tried to tell more life stories,” Gary said.

While there are still details to be worked out in regard to post-production on the music, the Tusseys hope that “Dance!” will be released in time for the Christmas season.

Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2188 or rjones@coxohio.com.

July 23, 2008

"Walk On" by Tattoo Billy

I've been working with the local country band Tattoo Billy... Going to do a full-blown music video later this summer, but for now, I've just been following them around with my video camera and drove up to Waynesville to capture some concert footage... The situation was less than ideal (poor sound, humidity driving guitars out of tune, bright sunlight and shadows playing havoc with camera levels), but I managed to get one good song from the event ...

March 17, 2008

Going pro with a rock star fantasy

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Gary Mullen had long been a rabid fan of Freddie Mercury and Queen when his mum pulled a fast one on him.

“I was always singing their songs when I was a kid, using my bed as a stage and a hairbrush for a microphone,” the Scotsman said. “Freddie was my hero: larger than life, super-confident, but also with a dark and insecure side.

“He was also very tongue-in-cheek with what he did and never really took himself seriously.”

Mullen played in a few bands and such in high school, but believed he’d had enough of that when it came time to raise his family and took a job with Compaq as a computer salesman, but continued to wow local karaoke audience with his Mercury impersonation.

Then with the consent of the missus, his mother put in an application for him to be on the British television show “Stars In Their Eyes,” a contest in which people impersonate famous singers.

“She knew I wouldn’t do it myself,” he said, “so when they called to tell me I would be in the show, I was incredibly sarcastic with they guy because I thought someone was having me on.”

But compete he did and when he won the Grand Final in 2000, “No one was more surprised than me,” he said.

He also found an opportunity to really make his dreams of being a rock star come true and put together a band “to re-create the Queen experience.”

“For some, it’s a nostalgia trip,” he said, “but the fans keep getting younger and I see people bringing their children and grandchildren. Sometimes I feel like one of the boy bands up there on the stage.”

Since 2002, “A Night of Queen” has been touring the United Kingdom and Europe virtually non-stop, and this year makes its first swing through the United States with rousing renditions of Queen’s greatest hits, such as “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “We Are the Champions,” “Somebody to Love” and “Another One Bites the Dust.”  

“Like Freddie, we give it 140 percent every night,” Mullen said. “Otherwise, you’re cheating the fans if they're not deaf and blind by song four.”

  • WHAT: “One Night of Queen” by Gary Mullen and the Works
  • WHERE: Procter & Gamble Hall, Aronoff Center for the Arts, 650 Walnut, Cincinnati
  • WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday, March 22
  • COST: $30-$40
  • MORE INFO: (513) 621-2787; www.cincinnatiarts.org


February 04, 2008

Corey Smith's 'calculated risk'

One of Corey Smith’s earliest memories is being allowed to hold his father’s guitar. “Dad played in bands and I sang in church when I was a kid, so I’ve been around music all my life,” he said. “I didn’t take it very seriously as a teenager, but because I was exposed to it at an early age, it came more or less naturally.” At age 7 he won third place in a talent show for his Elvis impersonation, but it wasn’t until he went to college and started playing to earn a little money that music took off for him. “I played cover tunes and would work in my original songs,” he said. “It’s a challenging way to go about it, but playing cover songs, I felt like people were plunking quarters into me and I didn’t like it.” After college, he taught high school social studies for four years, married and fathered two children, with the hope of having something like a normal life. But he continued to write and record and the time finally came when he took the “calculated risk.” “I knew I had to make a certain amount of money,” he said, “and once I realized that I could make more money in one sold-out show than in a month of teaching, it wasn’t such a hard decision.” Writing songs, he said, is “a lot like therapy.” “I never thought that making a living at this was an option, so I wrote the songs I wanted to write, about the stuff that keeps me awake at night,” he said. “But I was lucky that people responded to the sincerity, the authenticity, the whatever it is that the artist strives for, to be as open to ourselves as we can be.”

January 15, 2008

Kate Voegele makes TV debut

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Singer/songwriter Kate Voegele gets to add another line to her growing resume as she makes a seven-episode guest appearance on the CW series “One Tree Hill.”

“I heard about the audition from my manager and he encouraged me to do it, though I thought it was a long shot,” said the 21-year old during a phone interview from Los Angeles. “I was totally floored to find out that I got it.”

Voegele plays Mia, a (what else) singer/songwriter, who gets signed to the label of one of the show’s regular characters.

“She was really fun to play,” said Voegele, who studied at Miami University for two years. “In some ways she’s a lot like me, but she starts out very quiet and timid and I’m a really outgoing person, so it was really cool to be able to do something so different.

“As the story goes on, she gets to come out of her shell a little bit.”

Except for a couple of high school plays, Voegele said she’s not done any acting at all and was surprised by the feedback.

“When I was auditioning, the creator of the show said, ‘I know that music is your gig, but you could really do this, too,’” she said.

Voegele hopes that being on the show, however, will boost her recording career. Six of her songs will be featured in her story arc and her debut album, “Don’t Look Away,” will be re-released on Jan. 22, the date of her “One Tree Hill” debut, with a new cover that will reflect her role on the show.“‘One Tree Hill’ has been a great vehicle for new artists that have hit the spotlight yet,” she said.

AlThough it was a great experience, she said she’s not rushing out to every audition.she can just yet

“Right now, I’m focused on the record, but it’s definitely something I enjoyed doing and would love to do more in the future,” she said.

Voegele, 21, is from the Cleveland area and spent two years at Miami University in Oxford before taking what she thought would be a one-year hiatus this school year to focus on her musical career, but now, she said, her education may be on hold indefinitely.

Screaming Mimes make some noise

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When Screaming Mimes first got together in 2002, they made sure that the music came first and foremost, above any dream of hitting the big time.

 

 

Since then, the Mimes have encountered some modest success: Good reviews and local radio play for the debut full-length CD “Live My Life” in 2002 and a serious of prestigious gigs, including four MidPoint Music Festivals, two Earth Day concerts, and two Redsfests, where the band performed in front of crowds as large as 38,000 people.

The downside is that with a concern for quality production and juggling the demands of day jobs and families, it takes a long time to get the music out there.

But the time has arrived, and Screaming Mimes will celebrate the release of their second CD, “Tragedy Comic,” Jan. 18 at the Southgate House.

“We went into it with all intents and purposes of getting it out in 2006,” said guitarist Randy Campbell, a graduate of Ross High School, who also co-produced the effort with singer/songwriter David Storm. “It’s been a long process, but I think the final product is a giant step up from our first CD.”

Of course, such a long production time means that the shape and focus of the project evolved, but Campbell said there was no overall plan except to present the new songs as a cohesive unit.

“We had changed drummers just before the last record, so this is the record that presents us as we are now,” he said. “All of the songs were hand-picked for the album and we wanted something that flowed a little nicer.”

The band is making sure that the next set doesn’t take quite so long, admittedly putting together a grab-bag of songs for release later in 2008.

“This will be a hodge-podge of stuff that we’re pulling from the vault,” he said.

In the meantime, “Tragedy Comic” will be available at area record stores and online (with samples) at www.CDBaby.com. Tracks from both albums can also be heard at www.myspace.com/screamingmimes.

 

 

 


Screaming Mimes: Who Needs Bowling?

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December 14, 2007

Over the Rhine explores the darker side of Christmas

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Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler, the couple better known to pop music fans as Over the Rhine, are suckers for Christmas music.

“Growing up in the Midwest, we both have a lot of vivid childhood memories about Christmas,” Detweiler said. “Christmas music evokes a child-like hope and wonder that gets squelched out of us as we grow older.

“Also, my dad was an avid Christmas music fan who liked to find the odd gems in his collection.”

This year sees the release of the second OTR Christmas album, “Snow Angel.” The first, “The Darkest Night of the Year,” was released in 1996 and precipitated what has become a tradition for the duo: An annual Christmas that includes a show at the hometown Taft Theatre.

“We have tried to write one or two Christmas songs a year to try out on our unsuspecting audience,” Detweiler said. “But we also want to apply the same standards to a Christmas record that we do to our other records, so we try to write songs that stand up on their own whether or not they are Christmas songs.”

And if that means delving into the darker side of the holidays, that’s what an Over the Rhine song would do.

“It’s not all jingly and jolly, so we honestly represent the broad spectrum of human experience during the holidays,” Detweiler said. “There are a lot of conflicting feelings, complicated family dynamics and all manner of little challenges that need to be dealt with during the holidays.”

The bluesy, piano-driven “All I Ever Get For Christmas Is Blue” kicks off the album, which closes with “We’re Gonna Pull Through,” a sparse, acoustic song about a struggling couple determined to survive, pausing to lift a glass in a moment of clarity.

“Snow Angels” also inlcudes adaptations of two traditional songs, including “O Little Town of Bethlehem” sung to a new melody and new lyrics, which imagine two lovers walking the prone-to-violence streets of modern-day Bethlehem.

“A fan recently mailed us a photograph of some Over the Rhine lyrics spray-painted on the apartheid wall in Bethlehem,” Bergquist said, “a sort of plea for peace. We were stunned by the photo, and felt it merited a response.”

  • WHAT: Over the Rhine with Michelle Shocked
  • WHERE: Taft Theatre, 317 E. Fifth St., Cincinnati
  • WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday
  • COST: $13-$28
  • MORE INFO: (513) 562-4949; www.ticketmaster.com
     

December 01, 2007

Oxford songwriter takes show off-Broadway

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Oxford singer/songwriter Lisa Biales is taking her children’s show “Yellow Shoes” to New York City for her off-Broadway debut, but not before giving local fans a sneak peek on Sunday.

“It’s basically a collection of songs with a story about how I got interested in singing by singing for my mom,” Biales said. “All of the questions people ask me when I get off stage, I put into the show.”

Although it’s geared toward children with sing-alongs and audience interactions, it will also have some grown-up appeal, she said.

The title comes from a song she wrote about a boy who puts on a colorful costume — yellow shoes, purple suit, red hat — to catch a certain girl’s eye.

“When you’re in love, you let your defenses down,” Biales said.

The off-Broadway version will be staged at the Barrow Street Theatre in Greenwich Village, where she and her husband went to see the musical “Gone Missing” last summer.

“I’ve known the producer there for about five years and we started talking after the show,” she said. “He said he was looking for new shows to get people, especially families, into the theater on dark days.”

When she got home and sat down to write a proposal, she said she was thinking she wasn’t worthy to do an off-Broadway show.

“But then I put on a wacky hat to write and all of a sudden I saw the whole show in my mind,” she said. “I wrote an eight-page proposal and put together a CD of songs and put it in the mail.”


Oxford vocalist performs ground-breaking string quartet

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Soprano Audrey Luna, a voice instructor at Miami University, will be the special guest of the renown Amernet String Quartet when it makes its Cincinnati debut next week.

She will perform Arnold Schoenberg’s Quartet No. 2, a rare piece of music in the canon of string quartets because it is one of the few that includes parts for a vocalist.

“Schoenberg’s groundbreaking Quartet No. 2 was the beginning of his adventure into atonality,” she said. “I’ve sung this piece dozens of times with the Hagen Quartet in Europe and look forward to performing it with the renowned Amernet String Quartet.”

Schoenberg wrote the quartet in 1908. The first two movements use traditional key signatures, but the final two movements uses poems by the German mystical poet Stefan George, not only breaks with previous string-quartet practice by incorporating a soprano vocal line but also ventures into atonality.

“The last line is 'I feel wind from another planet, combining the expressionistic style of poetry with the atonality of the music,” she said. “That is, rather than relying on the traditional style of chords based on three-note groups (or triads), the structure is more flexible and “each note is as significant as the next.

“It was a challenge when I first began to look at it because it’s a lot more dissonant than anything else I’d ever done,” she said. “It’s also a real tour de force for the string quartet.”

The audience is invited to learn more about the music at a pre-concert lecture with Bowling Green State University musicologist Effie Papanikolaou at 7 p.m.

“Interestingly, when they add another instrument to a string quartet, it becomes a something quintet,” she said. “For instance, if you add a piano, it’s a piano quintet. But only when its a vocalist that’s added does it remain a quartet.”

The program also includes two classical string quartets—Haydn’s Quartet, Opus 74, No.3, “Rider,” and Beethoven’s Quartet in A Minor, Opus 132.

November 19, 2007

Cowboy Junkies return to Trinity

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To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the band, Cowboy Junkies decided to return to where it all began, the Church of the Holy Trinity in Toronto where they recorded their first album, “The Trinity Sessions,” to revisit the music and the magic that jump-started their careers.

This time, instead of just the four of them (Alan Anton on bass with the Timmins siblings: Michael on guitar, Margo on vocals and Peter on drums) and an engineer, the Junkies also invited along some special guests, including Ryan Adams, Natalie Merchant and Vic Chesnutt, and a video crew to capture the magic.

“We hadn’t been back there since,” Anton said. “We thought it might be problematic with 40 people in the crew, but they stayed out of the way.

“We all nailed it, I thought. We definitely brought our experience to it — and an edge. We’re all older and nastier now.”

“Trinity Revisted” turned out to be a two disc CD/DVD combo, along with a bonus documentary included on the DVD which features the band sitting around talking about the good old days.

Anton said that the Junkies have managed to stay together for 20 years without any personnel changes because they don’t try to hard for mainstream success.

“We have a dedicated but small following that knows what to expect from us,” he said. “If you try to sustain a career, it can be difficult, but we just do what we do and the years just rolled by.”

  • WHAT: Cowboy Junkies
  • WHERE: 20th Century Theatre, 3021 Madison Road, Cincinnati
  • WHEN: 8 p.m. Nov. 27
  • COST: $30 advance, $35 day of show
  • MORE INFO: (513)731-8000; www.the20thcenturytheatre.com