Listening Room Blog

Goth artist/musician Voltaire will be back on the road this summer, taking his unique blend of macabre and folksy music to stages as nearby as Tribeca and as far off as Hawaii.

The 42-year-old Cuban-born artist, an accomplished animator who also teaches at New York’s School of Visual Arts, has released 10 albums and written various books — most notably, he penned various books on goth lifestyle and culture.

Born Aurelio Hernandez, Voltaire took his stage name from the famed French Enlightenment writer.

Voltaire’s music relies heavily on Eastern European traditional folk music, and is atypical of more mainstream goth music. He began making a name for himself in the 1990s by performing at clubs throughout the Big Apple, eventually building a national following.

His itinerary of upcoming peformances will begin July 10 in Tulsa, OK, and bring him back home the following night for an appearance at the Ace Film Festival at Tribeca Cinemas.

His latest album, the self-released To the Bottom of the Sea, came out last year.

Check out his website for other performances, which will take him as far as Honolulu, Toronto and Atlanta.

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Former New York Yankees centerfielder and current jazz guitarist Bernie Williams will be performing at Borders book store in Mount Kisco tonight.

Williams will be performing tunes from his new album, Moving Forward.

Williams has certainly done well for himself since the Yankees declined to resign him after the 2006 season.

Already an icon in New York sports for his significant role in four world championships, Williams made a smooth transition into music — Moving Forward came in at number 2 on the contemporary jazz charts.

In fact, Williams was well known to be an adept guitar player even during his baseball days, and has repeatedly pointed out that he has been playing music as long as he’s been playing ball.

The performance will be at 7 p.m. at the Mount Kisco Borders, 162 Main Streeet. He’ll also be signing copies of his CD and greeting eager fans.

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Pop rockers Fountains of Wayne are slated to take the stage at the Tarrytown Music Hall, part of their tour behind their fourth album, Traffic and Weather.

It’s an acoustic set, and you can get more info on ticket availability, show times and the like through this link.

(photo courtesy of the Associated Press/Jim Cooper)

Founded in 1996, Fountains may not yet be a household name, but they’ve certainly put themselves on the map in 2003 with their pop hit, “Stacy’s Mom.”

The hit came off their third album, Welcome Interstate Managers, released the same year.

Formed by frontman Chris Collingwood and bassist Adam Schlesinger, the group is rounded out by guitarist Jody Porter and drummer Brian Young.

In true indie rock fashion, they named themselves after a lawn ornament store in Wayne, N.J. They disbanded in 1999, but got back together in 2001 and are now doing their thing — in Tarrytown.

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The six-CD, 77-track commemoration of the Woodstock Music & Art Fair is expected to be released on Aug. 18, Guitar World magazine reported.

Of course, the music collection would mark the famed festival’s 40th anniversary.

It’s hard to imagine that you could get anything “new” from the 1969 festival, which has been coverd to death in the four decades since, and captured on film in Michael Wadleigh’s famed documentary.

But, in fact, Rhino Records says the commemorative collection will include 38 previously unreleased cuts from the concert, including performances by the Grateful Dead, The Who and Jefferson Airplane.

The CD set is just part of what’s supposed to be in store for the concert’s anniversary, which was held in Bethel, N.Y. in August, 1969. Organizers also planned simultaneous concerts in upstate New York, near the original site, and in Europe.

But earlier this year there were questions whether they could get the whole thing together in time.

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This in today from jam kings Phish, according to Relix mag:

Phish has placed an announcement on its website, encouraging fans to “Save The Date” for a three day event. The band indicates that a festival will take place on October 30, October 31 and November 1 but no addiotnal information is provided. Three states pop out of the map following the announcement: Idaho, Oklahoma and West Virginia but it’s not clear what (if anything) this represents as rumors had pointed to a West Coast run.

Phish is set to begin its late summer tour on July 30 at Red Rocks.

Like the story says, three states pop up on the Phish home page: Idaho, Oklahoma and West Virginia.

So, start packing.

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Queen guitarist Brian May revealed today that pop icon Michael Jackson and former Queen front man Freddie Mercury recorded “a couple” of tracks together, tunes that May says “have never seen the light of day.”

May, who said Mercury even played the recordings for his bandmates, made the comments on his website, where he shared his thoughts on Jackson’s death.

“Hard to know what to say – what I feel,” May wrote.

“He used to come and see us (Queen) play when we were on tour in the States, and he and Freddie became close friends… close enough to record a couple of tracks together at Michael’s house… tracks which have never seen the light of day,” May (pictured below) wrote.

(photo courtesy of the Associated Press/Fabrice Coffrini)

It’s unclear whether May’s “light of day” comment will hold up — there’s already a clip making the rounds on YouTube that is billed as a duet between Mercury and Jackson, and certainly sounds legit:

As the world knows by now, Jackson died yesterday after being rushed by ambulance from his home. He was 50. An autopsy on the now-late King of Pop is due today.

Mercury, the dynamic and vocally gifted singer for Queen, died in 1991, but not before May said he and Jackson formed their personal – and, it turns out, musical – friendship.

“Amusingly, after Freddie and Michael has spent some time together recording, Freddie came back and played us the work in progress, and he remarked that Michael had come up with a great album title… BAD,” May wrote. “A little later, Freddie smiled his wicked little conspiratorial smile, and said… ‘I have a perfect idea for our album title – you may love it or hate it… but think about it… we can cal lit… wait for it… GOOD!’”

Obviously, it never came to pass, as Queen and Jackson never released a major recording together — aside from the clip making the YouTube rounds.

It will be interesting to find out if those recordings are still around.

If they are, you can bet somebody will come up with it.

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There are already too many sudden tributes to the late King of Pop, so I won’t belabor mine.

But, to be fair, I wasn’t a Michael Jackson fan at all when I was growing up. I was a metal head and you just didn’t do that back then.

Then he blindsided us with Thriller.

(photo courtesy of the Associated Press/Kevork Djansezian)

In a way, Jackson tricked us and pulled us in by sticking an Eddie Van Halen solo into the middle “Beat It,” one of the seemingly countless hits off the 1982 award-winning album. It worked.

By then, I had begun to broaden my musical horizons, and had started to get into some Steely Dan and a little jazz. And when I first heard “Billie Jean” off the Thriller album, I was blown away.

Written and arranged by Jackson, and produced by Quincy Jones, the song was a production masterpiece, up there with cuts from Steely Dan’s Aja and the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack — albums which, whether you like them or not, you have to respect for their musical genius and production.

“Billie Jean” made me listen to Thriller beyond the Van Halen licks, and to appreciate much of the album, which was Jackson’s sixth.

So, whacky as it may have gotten, and whatever happened in recent years, respect the man for his talent, his innovation, and the remarkable music he put out there — music even a metal head came to appreciate.

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When Keller Williams takes the stage, it’s typically with an arsenal of guitars and a squad of looping pedals. He has no band to rely on for support; he has no frontman to turn to for solos.

Yet layer by layer, he creates rhythms that morph into one seemingly unthinkable groove, spreading an uplifting vibe that has amassed the Virginia native a loyal following from coast to coast.

Coming for the first time to the Tarrytown Music Hall on Saturday, Williams is intent on turning the place into one big dance party by the time the night’s through.

“It’s totally exciting playing at a new venue,” Williams said. “Some of the songs I’ve been playing for years and the old fans want to hear them, but the new folks are getting them for the first time and so that gives me a little something extra. Just knowing they’re hearing it for the first time and seeing their reaction, it’s always a joy.”

The show in Tarrytown comes amid a high-profile national tour, which includes stops at the Rothbury Festival in Michigan, the All Good Music Festival in West Virginia, and the Gathering of the Vibes in Bridgeport, Conn.

He also will be teaming up with Dark Star Orchestra during the tour for several dates throughout New York, including Governor’s Island on July 11 and the Saranac Brewery on July 17.

“They’ve become good friends of mine,” Williams said of Dark Star Orchestra. “I have a huge amount of respect for what they’re doing.”

Chatting by phone earlier this week, Williams also offered up respect for the bands String Cheese Incident and Phish, both of which he is happy to see performing together again — even if SCI has so far only been talking about pulling it together for one performance.

“Reading about things that went down (with Phish’s breakup), I can totally relate to Trey (Anastasio) and how he wanted to get away from that monster that was Phish Tour,” Williams said. “I saw a lot of shows and I had a great time with it, so as a fan I’m elated that they’re playing music again.”

One of the most prolific songwriters on the scene in his own right — with his 14th album to be released this summer — Williams is intent on getting more of his music out to fans, utilizing a new online feature called “The Once A Week Freek.”

Available at www.kellerwilliams.net, “The Once A Week Freek” gives listeners the opportunity to download a new song each week at a cost of 99 cents. To start things off, Williams is offering a track a week from his latest album, “ODD,” in the order that the tunes appear on the disc. The album’s official release date is Aug. 12.

There’s really not much reason to think that you would’ve ever heard of Adam Fulara.

But don’t go anywhere, because you might soon enough.

(photo courtesy of adam.fulara.com)

The 32-year-old software engineer-turned jazz musician has started to make some noise in his native Poland and parts of Europe, where his impressive two-handed polyphonic tapping style of guitar playing has made him something of a musical sensation.

And thanks to his wildly popular YouTube videos and the recent debut release from his comtemporary jazz trio, Fool-X, Fulara now seems like a safe bet to earn wider acclaim on this side of the Atlantic as well.

Born in the small town of Ostrzeszow in central Poland, Fulara took up accordion and piano at age six — an understandable path for a musicially inclined kid. In fifth grade, he took up guitar, idolizing and mimicking American guitar virtuosos like Stevie Vai and Joe Satriani, and taking that passion on stage with a few local rock bands.

But at 18, things started to take a turn. Fulara says he started experimenting with two-handed tapping. Then he went to a concert by prominent guitar player Partyzant, who parlayed the technique into a successful musical career in Poland.

“I was blown away by his music,” Fulara says.

It opened the way for him. But he was finding himself limited in what he could do musically: He tried playing pieces by Bach in music school but found himself frustrated, able to play only one harmony at a time while using standard technique.

“However,” he  says, “when I employed the two-hand tapping technique, I could play the entire piece.”

Several years ago, Fulara began videotaping his playing from home and posting it on YouTube. The videos started to get hits. Lots of hits, particularly his renditions of Bach’s Goldberg Variations and standards like Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag — with some of the videos getting nearly 400,000 hits.

And people outside of Europe began to take notice.

“I enjoy Chopin, Bach and (jazz guitarist Pat) Metheny, and still it’s for me very important to combine jazz and classical with some very smart methods of working,” Fulara emailed me yesterday. “Everything I do in music, I do FOR MUSIC ITSELF. Not for money, not for appreciation, only want to have good music, good compositions, improvisations and fun with it.”

He now plays custom-made, double-neck six-string guitars made to his specifications — they feature wider necks that are closer together than in standard double-neck guitars. It allows him to play two-part harmonies on the Bach songs he favors, which were written for harpsichord.

More recently, Fulara formed the jazz trio Fool-X, and has toured throughout Poland and nearby Germany. They recently released their first album, Doubleshred, which is available by mail order in the U.S. through his website — and has yet to make it onto Amazon.com.

But it might just be a matter of time.

Fulara also tells me that he’s just completed “Two-handed tapping: Guitar Workshop,” a teaching DVD and accompanying book that is being released in both English and Polish.

So, he’s clearly setting his sights on a wider audiance. My money’s on him making it.

Here’s one of the video clips that made Fulara a YouTube sensation:

(NOTE: This is part of my ongoing series of reports on guitar players who fly under the mainstream radar. Keep checking The Listening Room for future installments of guitar players you should know – JF)

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Avant garde Icelandic singer/songwriter/actress Bjork has put the finishing touches on Voltaic, her eighth solo release and the seventh since she parted ways with the Sugarcubes.

NPR music is offering sneak previews of some of the material on its music website.

(photo courtesy of the Associated Press/Jacques Brinon)

Bjork has always been hard to pin down musicially, as she borrows from a broad and sometiimes unusual range of genres. But she’s always been blessed with a remarkable vocal range that has brought her acclaim and fame in the past — and not just in her native Iceland.

She released her first self-titled solo album in 1977, and went on to front the Sugarcubes from 1986 until the band’s split in 1992.

She has since been recording pretty regularly and occasionally making the Paparazzi happy with a bizarre wardrobe or some unusual behavior.

But she’s always unmistakably Bjork, and her music is clearly her own. Not many artists can say that.

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The Listening Room hears from Britney Spears’ people that the pop diva is extending her “Circus starring Britney Spears” tour and will be returning to the U.S. this summer.

For us in the NY Metro area, that means dates at Madison Square Garden in late August.

Give Spears credit for working her butt off after more than a bit of turmoil in recent years, which has dragged her onto more tabloid covers than anyone should bear.

But she’s still cranking out the tunes and  putting on the high-energy stage shows that her fans have come to expect from her. And she clearly has a loyal fan base that has stuck with her — and that she hasn’t disappointed on stage.

If you’re among them, you can get more info on the shows and how to pickup tickets through this link.

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AC-DC will be playing a show at Giants Stadium on July 31, and they’re bringing recently-revived metal heads Anvil along for the ride.

Tickets are now on sale for the legendary Aussie rockers’ summer show at the Jersey venue.

(photo courtesy of the Associated Press/Pekka Sakki)

The show will be part of a summer tour that will begin at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., July 28, and is part of the band’s Black Ice road trip backing up their latest release.

There’s no denying that Angus Young and company can still bring it. I’ll always be a Bon Scott over Brian Johnson guy, but we’re at the point where we’re splitting hairs:These guys just continue to rock.

As for Anvil, the band was founded in Toronto and seemed poised for metal stardom in the 1980s. But they eventually fizzled and never really hit the big time.

However, earlier this year a documentary about their quest for fame revived their careers. And don’t look now, but here they are opening for one of the giants of metal.

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Kiss is just days away from finishing their first studio album in 11 years, front man Paul Stanley told fans yesterday.

In a message on the band’s website, Stanley assured that the 11-track album “is a classic.”

(photo courtesy of the Associated Press/Paul Warner)

“Hey all,” Stanley said on the Kiss website.
“We’re about four days from finishing the new KISS album. Eleven tracks, and it IS everything I’ve told you. It IS classic. It IS all written within the band. And IT ROCKS BIG TIME! Tommy and Eric both handle lead vocals. The songs, sound and playing will knock your socks off. You will all be as proud and excited as we all are. Oh…and WAIT till you see the cover!
We ARE just getting started!”

The album will be the first studio release for Kiss since Psycho Circus came out in 1998.

The current Kiss lineup — and the lineup on the upcoming album — will include bassist/singer Gene Simmons and Stanley, Kiss’ lead singer and rythm guitarist, the band’s founders.

Rounding out the band these days are drummer Eric Singer and lead guitar player Tommy Thayer, who fill the slots originally held by founding  members Peter Criss and Ace Frehley on drums and lead guitar, respectively.

Simmons and Stanley founded the band in New York City in 1972, and soon brought on Criss and Frehley. Their raunchy stage perfomances were marked by larger-than-life personas they created, complete with makeup and costumes. They received moderate local acclaim on three studio albums until hitting it big in 1975 with the live album Kiss Alive.

There’s really been no looking back since, with Kiss establishing itself as one of the most successful rock bands of all time.

But the band eventually splintered, with Criss and Frehley going their separate ways. In 1983, the remaining members began appearing without their trademark makeup, and recorded with several lineups.

There have been reunions with the original lineup on a few occasions, and even a highly lucrative world tour with both makeup and the founding members intact.

But other lineup changes followed, with only Simmons and Stanley as the only bandmates appearing together on every Kiss album to date. That will continue to be the case with the newest release.

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It took Axl Rose 13 years, 14 studios and an estimated $13 million to put together Chinese Democracy, billed as Guns n Roses’ sixth studio album.

But some seven months after its release, it seems nowhere to be found – and I’m having a hard time finding it on store shelves these days.

Obviously, this was Axl’s baby – the rest of GnR was off with Velvet Revolver, even if the troublesome singer kept the brand name to himself.

And the album did start out well: It sold 261,000 copies in the first week and went Platinum. It came in at No. 3 on the Billboard charts. Rolling Stone magazine also gave it four out of five stars, and called it “a great, audacious, unhinged and uncompromising hard-rock record.”

But, as the LA Times reported less than a month after the Nov., 2008 release, sales plummeted in the second week – dropping as much as 78%.

Geffen Records wasn’t thrilled that Rose didn’t do much to promote the album, and word was that he disappeared for two months after its release.

It’s unfortunate. The cuts I’ve heard showed promise, although I hardly gave it a complete listen. I’m sure I’ll pick up a complete copy at some point – or simply wait 13 years for the sequel.

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Jon Bon Jovi and his musical partner, Richie Sambora, were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame this week, joining Crosby, Stills and Nash for the honors.

Also on had was Jason Mraz, who was honored as a rising star, USA Today reported.

(photo courtesy of People.com)

The induction was the Hall’s 40th. Also on had was James Taylor, who not only performed but inducted Crosby, Stills and Nash into the hall, which was founded in 1969.

Don’t hold me to this, but Bon Jovi could be the first hair band to make it in. And that seems fitting: They were the hair band with most “legs.”

Besides, you can’t help but sing along with the chorus from “Livin’ on a Prayer” when it comes on. That’s gotta be worth something.

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