items tagged with Redstone Room

When J.J. Grey got off the road late last year, he immediately started preparations for what would become the Orange Blossoms record.

"I essentially recorded the album in November," he said last week.

Then he did it again in January.

And once more in February.

And then he went into the studio to finish the job with his band, Mofro.

Ask Polyrhythms' Nate Lawrence about the highlights of more than two years presenting the Third Sunday jazz series at the River Music Experience, and his response tells you a great deal about his goals.

"Lenora Helm put together a choir real quick, out of the kids, and they're doing ‘Ain't Misbehavin','" he recalled last week. "Ray Blue, he had a six-piece with percussionists and whatnot, and as soon as the workshop was over, the kids just bum-rushed the stage. They sat at the piano. Some of the kids just grabbed the mic and started singing. Some kids went to the congas and started playing. The drummer got up, the kids sat down. It's hands-on. Those are the high points."

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When Lois Deloatch recorded what became Hymn to Freedom in late 2006, she intended it as a tribute to pianist Oscar Peterson, a living legend.

But one of the perils of being an independent artist is that albums done right require patience. "I'm a totally independent artist," the North Carolina-based Deloatch said earlier this week, in advance of her November 16 performance and workshop at the Redstone Room. "When you're literally doing every piece of it yourself, it takes a little bit of time."

Carrie Rodriguez has always gravitated toward the spotlight, even if it's taken a while to get there.

"My mother said that when I was in Montessori school, they would put on these plays," she recalled in a phone interview last week. "And I would always have the part of the tree or the plant or something. And my mom asked the teacher, ‘Why do you keep giving Carrie the role of the tree?' And the Montessori-school teacher says, ‘Because no matter what I do, Carrie's going to end up on the front of the stage, singing and dancing, so I can afford to give her the tree role. I need to give the shy kids the main roles.'"

In 1980, Living Blues magazine founder Jim O'Neal approached left-handed guitarist Eddy Clearwater about making an album for his new label, Rooster Blues.

That's when everyone started calling Eddy "The Chief," he said in a recent phone interview, "because I wanted to wear my headdress and ride a horse for the artwork, for the cover." The headdress has since become a signature piece in Clearwater's stage shows.