items tagged with RIBCO

Rachel Brooke grew up with bluegrass and country standards and in high school played them in her father’s band. Her album A Killer’s Dream (from late last year) puts that experience and her voice in a blues context.

All three of those genres share simplicity. Yet Brooke’s dream is to record her equivalent of the Beach Boys’ famously dense and unconventional Pet Sounds.

She’ll be performing with her band on May 23 at RIBCO, and you’ll hear a little bit of both aspects in her live show.

Photos from the Lucero concert at RIBCO on April 27, 2013, with opener Langhorne Slim & the Law. For more work by Matt Erickson, visit MRE-Photography.com.

Lucero:

Coleslaw’s delivery over acoustic guitar is poignant without being doleful – matter of fact yet clearly felt.

The sequencing here is smart – implicitly framing the second limited-edition local compilation as a rebuttal to the argument that our community is a dull dead end and then backing it up with “Sterling ILL” and 11 other exclusive tracks. (Hello Quad Cities is available on colored vinyl only, but each copy comes with a digital-download code.) Last fall’s Volume 1 was notable for its consistency, and the follow-up comes close to rivaling it.

Photos from the Bernie Worrell Orchestra concert (with Jaik Willis) at RIBCO on April 13, 2013. For more work by Matt Erickson, visit MRE-Photography.com.

Plenty of musicians talk a good game about loving many types of music. Bernie Worrell lives it.

“I play it all,” he said in a recent phone interview. “I’ll play a Jewish chant. A Gregorian chant. A chant in the middle of a rock piece. I’ll go to India. I’ll go to Africa. All in one piece.”

A brief sketch of his career should suffice as an illustration. He was a piano prodigy who wrote a concerto at eight and two years later performed with the Washington Symphony Orchestra. He studied at Julliard and the New England Conservatory of Music. He was music director and bandleader for soul singer Maxine Brown before becoming a central figure in Parliament-Funkadelic, with whom he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. He recorded and toured with the Talking Heads and has worked with experimental artists including Bill Laswell and the super-group Colonel Claypool’s Bucket of Bernie Brains. In 2011, he released an album of jazz standards.

As the Chicago Tribune’s Greg Kot wrote in a review of his 1993 album Blacktronic Science: “Bernie Worrell explores the possibilities of 21st Century funk with blithe disregard for boundaries. Bach, hip-hop, organ-trio jazz – it’s one big canvas for this virtuoso ... .”

“I get bored quick,” Worrell said. “I’ve got to be free, man. ... I will be free.”