In this weeks The Reader, I wrote a dual story on two neighborhood festivals this Saturday.
Saturday is a beautiful day in two local neighborhoods By Brent Crampton
"Some
great things are happening this Saturday in two of Omaha’s communities.
So good that The Reader decided to cover both, so that you might decide
to make a day of it and check out the two occasions. We’re talking
about North Downtown Day and Farnam Festival — both celebrations of
communities on the rise.
“It could be a cool thing where people
come down and enjoy both events and see two cool neighborhoods in the
same day,” said Brad Iwen, one of the event organizers for Farnam
Festival and a photographer who opened his own studio, Iwen Exposures
Photography, near 40th and Farnam last October.
Iwen said the neighborhood surrounding 40th and Farnam had “kind of been falling apart for a long time.” . . . Read the full story here.
Johnny Ray Gomez reminisces on storied music career by Brent Crampton
“I’m
still not dead, baby — I’m still cookin’,” exclaimed Johnny Ray Gomez
at the close of an hour-long phone interview with The Reader,
reminiscing on his multi-decade music career and upcoming 50th
Anniversary Reunion Show.
Omaha’s music news today may focus on
indie bands in Benson or various DJs at dance parties, but back in
Gomez’s heyday, the buzz was sock hops, surfer music, Peony Park and a
time when performing was all about having big smiles and classy acts.
Most
of our readers weren’t born when Gomez made his debut, but quite
possibly your parents once squeezed enough nickels out of their parents
to buy a cola at any one of the happening teen clubs where Gomez rocked
his accordion.
“King Arthur’s was one of Omaha’s first teenage
nightclubs in Benson. It was 50 cents to get in and they served
hamburgers and French fries. Then came Sandy’s Escape. And when we’d
play the YMCA, that’s when the twist came out,” said Gomez.
All
the while Gomez covered emerging pop trends. “The unusual thing was that
I played the accordion during that time,” he said. “You don’t think of
the accordion as a hip instrument. But" . . . Full story here.
Poncho Sanchez opens Jazz On The Green 2010 season by Brent Crampton
"While
most celebrated our country’s independence with fireworks and hot dogs,
Poncho Sanchez’s large family celebrated with carne asada and a
conga-laden drum jam. “After a few beers, little by little my sister
begins bringing the drums out,” said Sanchez. “Next thing you know, the
granddaughter is on my lap playing the drum while I’m surrounded by
nephews and nieces all drumming and banging away.”
While it’s
freshly squeezed limes and impromptu drumming with the family on the
Fourth, Sanchez will be blasting out “Latin jazz, hot salsa and a whole
lot of Latin soul stirred up like a big pot of gumbo,” amongst thousands
of Omahans this Thursday, July 8.
It’s no mistake that Jazz On
The Green, which will debut at its new home of Midtown Crossing, is
jump-starting the season with the dynamic, driving and legendary sound
that comes with Poncho Sanchez.
Sanchez is no small wonder in
the world of Latin jazz. While growing up in L.A., his family’s eclectic
twist brought the sounds of everything to his ears from John Coltrane’s
bebop jazz, to Tito Puente’s mambo to Motown’s soul. After
experimenting with everything from guitar, flute, drums and timbales, he
found his calling with the congas. In his early 20s while gigging
around the city, he fell upon the opportunity to play for a week under
one of his idols, Cal Tjader." . . . Read the full article here.
This past month I did some more freelance writing for 5 Mag out of Chicago. This time I had the opportunity to interview NYC's world traveling soulful house producer and DJ, Quentin Harris. I posted the article in its entirety below. Check it out and grab a subscription to 5 Mag here.
Pink Martini recently did a weekend of performances in Omaha at the Holland Center. I interviewed the band leader, Thomas Lauderdale for The Reader. Check out the article below . . .
Drink in the sounds of Pink Martini
by Brent
Crampton
If retro fabulous and cosmopolitan chic both got a
passport, marked it up with stamps thicker than any ink found in Bert
Grimm’s World Famous Tattoo Shop and then decided to tell their tales
musically — you’d have Pink Martini. More simply, if Holly Golightly
from Breakfast At Tiffany’s had a date with Henry Mancini and went to
Broadway to catch a production, Pink Martini would be doing the score.
Or,
as Pink Martini bandleader Thomas Lauderdale put it: “If the United
Nations had a house band in 1962, hopefully we’d be that band.”
This
sassy group jumps continents and generations in a drop of a musical
note, whether it be pre-bop jazz, classical orchestrations, poppy
latitudes of yester-decade, Latin percussion or unexpected instrumental
treats from the Orient and beyond. In some kind of post-Tower-of-Babel
moment, the languages sung in Pink Martini’s music switch so
effortlessly, it’s as if they have a multilingual Rolodex at the tips of
their tongues.
I recently started writing and designing one-sheets for Josh One's Boomnote Music imprint out of LA. He just put out a new release from Julie Walehwa. Check it out on SoundCloud or iTunes.
Indeed, Omaha's lost a musical giant, as one person posted on the YouTube of Luigi Waites performing below. He was a wise man filled with volumes of stories and memories about the early days of Omaha's music history. I saw him as a grandfather figure of our music scene of sorts. But as reported in the OWH yesterday, he's finally passed. Something we all knew was near.
I had the honor of sitting down with Waites one windy afternoon last spring - right in front of his musical sanctuary known as Mr. Toad. I interviewed him for The Reader in lure of April's Jazz Appreciation Month. And now that he's passed, I'm wondering if this interview was his last with the media? I can't find anything else on google. If you know, please share. But otherwise, with permission from The Reader, I've put the article below that appeared in The Reader newspaper on April 22, 2009.
Jazz Man A conversation with Luigi Waites by Brent Crampton
"April is Jazz Appreciation Month and no proper conversation about jazz in Omaha can be had without mentioning Luigi Waites, one of the city’s last patriarchs of off-kilter syncopation.
Looking forward to his 83rd birthday in July (information once highly privatized), Waites has seen peers come and go, while he’s still bopping on the vibes or trapping on the drum set. In fact, his regular Sunday night gig at Mr. Toad’s in the Old Market has happened consecutively since 1975, making it one of the longest running jazz nights held down by one band, Luigi, Inc., in American history, according to Waites.
And it’s evident. As we were sitting outside on the windy patio of Mr. Toad’s, the waitress asked if we needed another drink. He immediately shifts from our conversation to exclaim, “Be still my heart! Listen to it, listen to it,” as he slams repeatedly beneath the table with his fist. With his scruffy, warm and worn voice, topped by his signature top hat, he’s outlasted countless bartenders there, yet still has a rapport with whoever does the duties, as if he had met them in ’75.
His love and toil with jazz hasn’t gone unrecognized. Waites received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the inaugural OEAA program in 1997. “I just happened to be at the right place at the right time,” said Waites of his award.
He keeps the roots of jazz in his veins without fully understanding it, saying of the music, “It’s got to move, it’s got to change.”
“If it doesn’t change, it’s not jazz,” said Waites. “I’m using the word jazz, but I’m not even sure what it means.”
Regardless of his self-professed intangible grasp, he’s been practicing it since the age of 14. In a final bout with the genre, he’ll be recording a live album over the next two weeks at Mr. Toad’s. It will be his last record “unless someone else is gonna pay for the next one,” said Waites.
“I’ve always wanted to do a live album,” he said. “I was never into the studio thing. I’m from the old school where, ‘Wham!’ first take, you record it. “I’m a pioneer only because of my age,” Waites said. “All of my peers are dead.”
In addition to Sunday’s at Mr. Toad’s, Waites plays the vibes Tuesday through Friday during lunch at the Dundee Dell. He will be doing a Sunday brunch performance from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. with Luigi, Inc. April 26, at the downtown Stokes in honor of Jazz Appreciation Month."
I interviewed Lorin Ashton of Bassnectar in this weeks The Reader in preview of his upcoming performance this Wednesday at Slowdown. Below is a portion of the interview. To read the full bit, check it out here.
Nectar of the Gods
The music and message of Bassnectar
by Brent Crampton
It
was late in the night one summer Saturday when I found myself tucked
between two rolling Ozark hills in southern Missouri. Tall trees lined
the slopes that cut out any cell phone reception and a perfectly clear
stream cut the valley deeper and deeper.
But this was no quiet
weekend getaway. Multiple music stages and tents were strewn throughout
the landscape as thousands of ravers wandered from spectacle to
spectacle during the three-day music festival known as Underground
Sound. For whatever reasons, the scattered masses seemingly joined
together for at least one performer that weekend — Bassnectar.
Bassnectar’s
music lead in with a chopped up, hard electronic hitting beat. Melodies
chirped in and out alongside quirky sound effects. A rising synth line
signaled the peak of the track was coming. All hands raised in the air
as an out-of-your-mind bass line slammed in sending the crowd into a
roaring frenzy. As people jumped all around, glow sticks began to fly
into the air and folks lost their minds, pouring drinks on each other.
Then, as if on a roller coaster, the beat would come back down and the
cycle would begin all over again.
“My focus is to create a big
meltdown sound clash,” said Lorin Ashton, who fronts the San Francisco
based Bassnectar.
Ashton uses a program on his Mac laptop called
Ableton Live along with a custom built template.
“I’m able to
play any sound or combo of sound in any order with however many layers
at whatever speed with whatever tuning,” said Ashton of his highly
regarded live performances. “I can remix the entire world, live and on
the spot . . . read the full article here.
Based out of Chicago, 5 Magazine is a monthly publication focused on house music culture. It's been a minute since I've done some free lance work with them, but the latest addition is a Q&A with Mark Farina. Below I put a portion of the interview. To read the full thing, you can subscribe to the online addition here.
"If this magazine has made it into your House-music loving hands, an introduction on Mark Farina is probably unnecessary. From the creation of the Mushroom Jazz series to winding up on Top DJs of the World lists by URB, MUZIK & BPM, Farina has risen as one of the most recognizable names in American House music.
But you knew all that. So we'll skip the intros that usually refer to him as a "traveling minstrel," or describe his music as "chunky-funky" and just jump into the questions that usually fall to the way side. From his part-time relocation to LA, choice of production tools, thoughts on Serato and his philosophy called the revolving evolution scale, we invite you to get to know the famed Farina on a deeper note. It seems as though there are a lot of musicians moving to LA right now and I read that you actually have made it a second home as of late. What's happening out there?
Ya, LA has been a second home for the past year. There is a really big club scene - bigger than most places in the states. It's a city where you can play for different promoters and no one has any beefs with it. A lot of places I play, I have to stick with the same promoter or check with them to see if it's okay to go another route. But LA I play a bunch of different scenes and it doesn't overlap somehow. For producers, you have access to doing music for film, TV, video games and other media based projects. Plus people can live there and you don't really know they live there. Usually they just assume you're visiting, so it's a discreet town in a way.
There's also a big rave scene that doesn't seem to exist in other US towns from what i can tell. When you leave a party, you'll have 12 flyers on your car window. Of course it's not as big as it was around Y2K, but it doesn't seem like the rave scene actually ever went away.
What are your primary tools for production?
I'm old fashioned you could say. I haven't fully incorporated the bridge, whereas Derrick Carter - he's fully incorporated into the digital world. I use the MPC 4000, Jomox drum machines, MP7, midi up 3 or 4 units together, I record to DAT and I use Logic or Peak for editing. I like old style drum machines that incorporate new technology through compressors and effects.
My label, Great Lakes Audio is going digital in February with my EP, Geograffiti. And I've been working with Gene Farris lately on remixes, some of which will be out on his label, Farris Wheel Recordings.
I remember you being one of the first big names to switch to CDJ's in your travels. Why haven't you picked up on using your laptop?
I don't like looking at a laptop and DJing. I never put the two together and it never excited me. Unless it's" . . . To read the full article, check out here.
I got the chance to interview Bela Fleck of Bela Fleck And The Flecktones fame and Bassekou Kouyate of Ngoni Ba, who is on the rise as one of Africa's top musicians. They performed at the Holland last Saturday to rave review. Below is the preview article I wrote for The Reader. You can read the full interview here.
"In a world of ever-changing style tips and trends, somewhere along
the recent way, African music became hip. Hip as in hipsters flipping
their iPhone screens over to vintage Highlife tunes while they do the
Williamsburg walk. Hip as in the Billboard charts putting Vampire
Weekend, who’ve been described as “Afro-poppers,” at the #1 slot the
week their new album debuted. Hip as in the story of the polygamous
Nigerian inventor of Afro-beat, Fela Kuti, being in a Broadway
production.
But to lifelong musicians like Bela Fleck and
Bassekou Kouyate, it comes up as chatter in the background as they
pluck their ancient instruments connected through countless generations
and bound by continents separated by many miles of ocean. These two
masterminds of the strings are just too damn talented to be seen as
in-the-moment accessories.
Fleck is the 11-time Grammy winning
cream of the crop of America’s banjo performers — even the world. He’s
ridden that long neck and round bottom of a banjo to the moon and back
and . . . read the full article here.
For last week's edition of The Reader, I interviewed Renee Jeffus about her life path with tantra and the class she taught at the Omaha Healing Arts Center last weekend. You can read the full article here . . .
While hubbies are scouring the city for red roses, dark chocolates
and over-priced dining experiences this Valentine’s season, there’s one
way to stay ahead of the curve and provoke an intimacy with your
significant other deeper than what lays behind any red ribbon package.
It’s called Tantra, and the Omaha Healing Arts Center hosts a night of
instructional Tantric dance this Saturday.
Before you write
off this article, many misconceptions persist about the ancient
practice of Tantra, according to Renee Jeffus, who’ll teach the class.
Jeffus is a world-traveling, Bellevue-born instructor and organizer of
the event.
After a recent trip to Jamaica where she taught private Tantra classes, The Reader
caught up with Jeffus while she lunched in NYC, and asked her to set
the record straight on Tantra. In the process of the phone interview,
she revealed the dark and rocky road that led her to become a holy
woman of sensuality.
