In their song "Old Salt Wells," the honky-tonk musicians of the Alkali Flats - based out of Sacramento, California - perform an up-tempo ode to the titular establishment, described in one of songwriter Tim White's lyrics as "the place where I first fell in love." It begins: "If you ever get the notion / That you'd like to see some motion / And you really wanna have yourself a ball / There's a roadside attraction / That'll give you satisfaction / They let it all hang out and that ain't all."
But if you're unsure about exactly what sort of roadside attraction the band is referring to, a subsequent introduction to its employees might help:
It's a busy day for Daphne Willis.
Dear Sheryl:
Kent Burnside is the grandson of blues legend R.L. Burnside, the nephew of blues musicians Duwayne and Dan Burnside, and the cousin of blues performer Cedric Burnside. Yet during a recent phone interview, the 36-year-old Kent recalls that when he decided to finally embark on his own professional blues career in 2006, his inspiration for doing so wasn't one of his famed family members.
From the opening minutes of Elegies: A Song Cycle, the debut presentation by the Riverbend Theatre Collective, it's clear that the production is going to be beautifully performed. An uninterrupted, 90-minute collection of reminiscences by composer William Finn, the revue finds Allison Collins-Elfline, Patrick Gimm, Jackie Madunic, Dana Joel Nicholson, and Bryan J. Tank offering musical tributes to people (and pets) that Finn loved and lost, and they form an intimidatingly strong vocal ensemble, excellent in their solos and even finer in harmony.
THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: PRINCE CASPIAN
In times of crisis, it helps to have friends. And as you'll see during May 25's Woodstock on the Rock benefit event, Mick Verschorre (pictured) has a bunch.
Say what you will about the Prenzie Players' latest presentation, but you can't say that the classical-theatre troupe, with its production of Pedro Calderón de la Barca's Life's a Dream, is merely resting on its laurels.
Near as I can tell, there are two types of people: those who like Reginald Rose's jury-room drama 12 Angry Men, and those who haven't seen it yet. So speedy and smart, so filled with personality and (mostly) unforced emotion, the work seems practically indestructible, and I actually fall into a special subset of people: those who love 12 Angry Men with a passion bordering on mania. (Between Sidney Lumet's 1957 film version and the 1997 television remake, I've watched it - and this is a conservative estimate - more than three dozen times.) So it was with nearly delirious excitement, and just a touch of dread, that I attended the Playcrafters Barn Theatre's Saturday-night presentation of the show, the first stage production of Rose's piece that I'd seen.
