If the incredibly diverse 2013-2014 South Florida concert season points out anything, it’s that everything that isn’t considered jazz, opera or classical music must fall into the popular music category by default.
Sure, there are the usual classic rockers (The Eagles, Bonnie Raitt and John Fogerty seem to appear about every one to three years lately), but also neo-classic artists as diverse as Nine Inch Nails and the Indigo Girls; outstanding veteran R&B vocalists (Smokey Robinson, Darlene Love) and middle-aged pop singers (Natalie Merchant, Joan Osborne), and even a country legend in Merle Haggard.
New millennium rock acts Paramore and Minus the Bear have undoubtedly influenced the up-and-coming indie rockers — including South Florida’s own Surfer Blood — that are playing the Coastline Festival, and the 2013-2014 blues artists range from iconic (Buddy Guy) to regional and established (The Lee Boys) and regional and rising (Southern Hospitality).
“Sacred steel” is a modern term used to describe the mix of sacred gospel music and the electric lap steel guitar, an instrument that’s become increasingly prevalent in blues and its musical offshoots. It’s definitely a Southern sound, and one of its southernmost practitioners is Miami-launched sextet the Lee Boys, a fourth-generation family act that proves that only the phrase used to describe the music is relatively new. Founding guitarist Alvin Lee; his brothers, vocalists Derrick Lee and Keith Lee, and their nephews Roosevelt Collier (pedal steel guitar), Alvin Cordy Jr. (bass) and Earl Walker (drums) all learned to sing and play multiple instruments in the House of God church in Perrine (between Miami and Homestead). They’ve released a DVD and three CDs, including the new disc Testify, which also features elements of funk (with Cordy’s expanded range on a seven-string bass), jazz, bluegrass, rock, and hip-hop. See the Lee Boys on Oct. 4 at the Bamboo Room in Lake Worth (9 p.m., $12).
When it comes to old-school reggae, Bob Marley may stand alone, but Yellowman is among a small fraternity (with artists like Peter Tosh, Steel Pulse, and Third World) that was once a relative peer before Marley’s South Floria death in 1981. The 57-year-old vocalist, born Winston Foster in Kingston, Jamaica, actually wasn’t expected to live much longer himself. A doctor told the albino singer, who was deserted by his parents in infancy and raised in an orphanage, that he’d only live another three years after he
developed skin cancer in 1983. Thirty years later, even after invasive, disfiguring surgeries to his jaw, Yellowman’s scroll of albums (from A Dee-Jay Explosion and King of Rock in the 1980s to Mister Yellowman and Freedom of Speech in the 1990s to Yellow Gold and Club Dread since 2000), have made him an inspiration to, and collaborator with, hip-hop artists like Public Enemy, Run-DMC, NWA, and Doug E. Fresh. See Yellowman on Oct. 7 at Respectable Street in West Palm Beach (8 p.m., call 561-832-9999 for ticket prices).
At age 51, Kentucky-born vocalist Joan Osborne is equal parts pop star, soul singer, and blues woman, since she’s tried her hand at each style with equal conviction. Her 1995 CD Relish was the kind of debut that establishes a lengthy career, with sterling original compositions and performances (St. Teresa, Right Hand Man) and a monster hit (One of Us, made even more popular when Osborne performed on fellow singer/songwriter Sarah McLachlan’s Lilith Fair tour in 1997). The downside to such a smash pop debut is that there’s nowhere to go but down. But once Osborne realized this, she delivered soulful performances of Heat Wave and What Becomes of the Brokenhearted while backed by the unheralded Funk Brothers in Paul Justman’s 2002 documentary about them, Standing in the Shadows of Motown. Her latest CD, Bring It On Home, was nominated for a 2013 Best Blues Album Grammy Award. See Joan Osborne on Oct. 10 at the University of Miami’s Gusman Concert Hall in Coral Gables (8 p.m., $25-45).
Perhaps no individual artist has ever so personified the classic rock band they were a part of more than John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater Revival. The quartet’s string of Fogerty-penned hits from 1967-1972 — including Down On the Corner, Born On the Bayou, Bad Moon Rising, Proud Mary, Fortunate Son, Sweet Hitch-Hiker. Who’ll Stop the Rain, Lookin’ Out My Back Door, and Have YouEver Seen the Rain? — essentially bankrolled its record label, Fantasy, which has since become one of the iconic names in jazz recording history. And the 68-year-old native of Berkeley, Calif., created CCR’s swampy, bluesy persona with lyrics more akin to Louisiana than his home state. Fogerty’s singular, upper-register singing voice has since been featured in a solo career that’s included the hits The Old Man Down the Road and Centerfield, and his meteoric former band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. See John Fogerty on Oct. 29 at the Hard Rock Live in Hollywood (8 p.m., $80.20-101.70).
Singer, multi-instrumentalist, producer, one-man band, enigmatic control freak and independent recording pioneer all describe Trent Reznor, who formed the band Nine Inch Nails 25 years ago. The industrial rock act’s first CD, Pretty Hate Machine (1989), contained only Reznor’s singing, playing and programming, yet required a large ensemble of sidemen to recreate during the band’s raucous sets during Jane’s Addiction frontman Perry Farrell’s first Lollapalooza Tour in 1991. The scenario repeated
itself with the long-awaited 1994 follow-up The Downward Spiral, and inclusion in the 25th anniversary Woodstock ’94 all-star concert. Reznor has released only six more CDs by the band in the nearly 20 years since. The latest, 2013’s Hesitation Marks, comes after a five-year hiatus while he focused on production and soundtrack composition. The new disc is available in both standard mastering and a special high-end audiophile form befitting Reznor’s obsession with the mixing board. See Nine Inch Nails on Oct. 30 at the BB&T Center in Sunrise (7:30 p.m., $50.25-112.25).
Seattle famously spearheaded the grunge movement of the 1990s with acts like Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains, making it easy to forget that Rock and Roll Hall of Fame artists from the ’60s (Jimi Hendrix) and ’70s (Heart) also originated there. More recently, the Northwestern hub produced the heady independent rock quintet Minus the Bear in 2001. Consisting of singer/guitarist Jake Snider, guitarist David Knudson, keyboardist/vocalist Alex Rose, bassist Cory Murchy, and drummer Erin Tate, the band’s fifth CD is last year’s Infinity Overhead — a melodic and unpredictable update of its four predecessors. It’s also somewhat familial, since it was produced by Matt Bayles — the band’s original keyboardist, and whose synthesizer work helped set the table for both the band’s sound and Rose’s updated role within it. The single Listing mixes Snider and Knudson’s acoustic and electric guitars with Rose’s atmospherics amid shifting rhythms by Murchy and Tate. See Minus the Bear on Nov. 1 at Revolution Live in Fort Lauderdale (7 p.m., $28.50).
Tennessee is known for a country music scene centered around the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville, and the blues scene epitomized by the Beale Street area in Memphis. So it’s safe to say that post-punk band Paramore, from Franklin, Tenn., came as a bit of a surprise when it debuted with the CD All We Know Is Falling and played the Warped Tour in 2005. Fronted by singer/keyboardist Hayley Williams, an orange-haired, Mississippi-born fireplug influenced by everyone from Etta James to The Cure (and who’ll only turn 25 in December), Paramore became an immediate independent sensation despite fluctuating personnel. Only Williams and bassist Jeremy Davis (who took time off in 2005) remain from the original lineup; guitarist Taylor York joined in 2007, and the trio now uses side touring and recording musicians. The band’s new self-titled CD is its first since 2009’s Brand New Eyes — after which it lost two members on tour. See Paramore on Nov. 4 at the BB&T Center (7:30 p.m., $42-57.50).
Warner Bros. recording artist Surfer Blood makes a triumphant return to its West Palm Beach roots as part of the Coastline Festival, an all-day bash also featuring 10 indie rock acts at Cruzan Ampitheatre. Massachusetts band Passion Pit, with its Berklee College of Music-honed pop sensibilities, gained a sizable area following with its strong showing at SunFest in 2012; Los Angeles-based group Fitz and the Tantrums offers cool neo-soul, and Welsh alt-rockers The Joy Formidable travel all the way from their home base in London. The creative event gives rising worldwide acts local exposure, in a festival setting with full sound and lights, in hopes that they can return to headline smaller venues between Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties. See Passion Pit, Two Door Cinema Club, Matt and Kim, Fitz and the Tantrums, The Joy Formidable, The Neighbourhood, Capital Cities, Surfer Blood, The Mowgli’s, St. Lucia, and The Royal Concept at the Coastline Festival on Nov. 10 at Cruzan Amphitheatre in West Palm Beach (noon-11 p.m., $25-45).
It’s refreshing, and rare, to see three rising young singer/songwriters in any genre join together to put the emphasis on combined talents over individual careers. But Florida-based, guitar-playing blues vocalists J.P. Soars and Damon Fowler and Memphis vocalist/pianist Victor Wainwright have done just that with Southern Hospitality, rounding out the quintet with Fowler’s bassist Chuck Riley and Soars’ drummer Chris Peet. The idea formed when the three bandleaders held an impromptu jam after they’d all played at a Florida festival in July of 2011, resulting in raucous applause and offers for future gigs. A month later they opened for Buddy Guy, and both the group interaction and crowd reaction sealed the union. Southern Hospitality released its debut CD, Easy Livin’, on the legendary blues label Blind Pig Records in March, and the quintet has since lived by the blues credo, playing a series of one-nighters throughout the United States and Europe. See Southern Hospitality on Nov. 15 at the Bamboo Room (9 p.m., call 561-585-2583 for ticket prices).
Seventy-seven-year-old, Louisiana-born guitarist/vocalist Buddy Guy is the living link between his peers in the blues (B.B., Albert and Freddie King, Muddy Waters) and the rock icons he influenced (Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Keith Richards). Ranked 30th among Rolling Stone magazine’s “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time,” Guy has earned six Grammy Awards, 23 W.C. Handy Awards, and is a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee. He’ll perform selections from his 2013 release Rhythm and Blues, the first double CD of his 50-year recording career. Opening the show is fellow soulful singer, guitarist and Grammy-winner Jonny Lang, already a veteran blues man at age 32. Lang released his first CD at age 15, and his new recording Fight for My Soul is his first effort in seven years. See Buddy Guy and Jonny Lang on Nov. 20 at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach (8 p.m., $25 and up) and on Nov. 21 at the Knight Concert Hall in Miami (8 p.m., $39-99).
When a band’s current tour is named for a recent documentary film recalling its 30-plus-year career, you know it’s a nostalgia act. Yet History of the Eagles is compelling viewing, both musically and for the personal drama. Remaining original members Don Henley (vocals, drums, guitar) and Glenn Frey (vocals, guitar, keyboards) detail their shared visions and the band’s inception as they were backing singer Linda Ronstadt in the early 1970s; co-leadership, and tensions that resulted in the hiring of current members Joe Walsh (vocals, guitar) and Timothy B. Schmidt (vocals, bass) in the latter ’70s. The only CD releases since the band’s 1980 breakup (and announcement that there would be no reunions) have been 1994’s tongue-in-cheek Hell Freezes Over and 2007’s Long Road Out of Eden. Henley says this might be the last Eagles tour, but then
again, we’ve heard it before. Expect material primarily from the band’s self-titled 1972 debut through 1976’s Hotel California on Nov. 22 at American Airlines Arena in Miami (8 p.m., $67.30-203.40).
At age 63, slide guitar-torching rock, blues and pop chameleon Bonnie Raitt seems somehow limitless. Her first release on her own new Redwing Records recording label, last year’s Slipstream, won the ageless wonder her latest Grammy Award for Best Americana Album in February. The California native once recorded a string of critically acclaimed, bluesy classics through the 1970s, then turned more toward the pop realm with a sporadic yet equally identifiable output in the ’80s — all making it that much more unbelievable that she was dropped from her lengthy Warner Bros. recording contract after her 1986 release Nine Lives. Her answer was the 1989 Capitol Records debut Nick of Time, a multi-Grammy winner that put the ahead-of-her-time star where she belonged, and where she’s been ever since. See Bonnie Raitt with her outstanding band of guitarist George Marinelli, keyboardist Mike Finnigan, bassist James Hutchinson and drummer Ricky Fataar on Nov. 30 at Hard Rock Live (8 p.m., $70.50-102.20).
Hip-hop is the music of the street, and Eric Biddines learned his trade on the local streets of Delray Beach. It didn’t start out that way, though. His parents separated when Biddines was 6 years old in Ocala, and he moved south to Delray Beach with his mother and three siblings. Going from rural horse country in Central Florida to the cultural melting pot that southern Palm Beach County was becoming through the 1990s had a profound effect on the budding artist, now 29. Especially influenced by Southern hip-hop predecessors like Outkast and the Goodie Mob, Biddines started recording while in high school, and now has five CD releases. The official first, 2009’s FLAlien: planetcoffeebean, was successful enough to spawn a video for its tune Walkin’ and inspire his latest, the sequel Planetcoffeebean 2. Eric Biddines appears on Dec. 27 as part of director of education and outreach Drew Tucker’s Urban Underground series at the Arts Garage in Delray Beach (8 p.m., $10-15).
Vocalist, keyboardist and guitarist Gregg Allman is best-known as a founding member of legendary Southern rockers the Allman Brothers Band, but he’s a blues man at heart. And if anyone’s ever had the blues, it’s Allman, even if some of his wounds have been self-inflicted. He lost two founding members of his rising band, brother/guitarist Duane Allman and bassist Berry Oakley, in 1971 and 1972 motorcycle accidents only a few blocks apart. Both were only 24. Yet the Georgia-spawned group is still an enduring act despite the losses; Allman’s substance abuse, and a rocky ’70s marriage to Cher. The 65-year-old Nashville native started a sporadic, simultaneous solo career in 1973 with Laid Back, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer his since released Playin’ Up a Storm (1977), I’m No Angel (1986), Just Before the Bullets Fly (1988), Searching for Simplicity (1997), and the Grammy-nominated Low Country Blues (2011). See Gregg Allman on Jan. 4 at the Kravis Center (8 p.m., $25 and up).
Vocalist and keyboardist Natalie Merchant rose to fame between 1981 and 1993 with the band 10,000 Maniacs in her hometown of Jamestown, N.Y. But the group was an underground sensation compared to the solo recording career she started afterward with her 1995 debut Tigerlily — which featured the hit singles Carnival, Jealousy, and Wonder. Yet while that CD’s sparse instrumentation wasn’t unlike that of 10,000 Maniacs, Merchant took a big step toward this orchestral tour with the strings on its 1998 follow-up Ophelia. More hit singles from it inspired her inclusion on Sarah McLachlan’s Lilith Fair tour that year. The 49-year-old artist has certainly followed her own muse since, as indicated by her latest CD, Leave Your Sleep. The 2010 disc was inspired by conversations she had with her daughter from birth through age 6, prompting an additional children’s picture book. See Natalie Merchant accompanied by a 38-piece symphonic ensemble on Jan. 12 at the Knight Concert Hall (8 p.m., $35-95).
The Indigo Girls didn’t open Eddie’s Attic in Decatur, Ga., but they certainly helped put the venue on the map. The duo of singing guitarist Amy Ray and Emily Saliers had already released a few albums, and developed a substantial following in clubs around nearby Emory University, when the popular touring stop for acts like John Mayer and Jennifer Nettles opened in the early 1990s. Yet Ray and Saliers have continued to feature their simpatico vocal harmonies and crafty folk-pop songwriting there, even while playing larger halls as Epic and Hollywood recording label acts from the late 1980s through mid-2000s. And since. The ever-independent, Grammy-winning duo has released the last few of its 14 CDs on its own label, IG Recordings, since 2007 — all while staying additionally ahead of its time by bravely championing environmental causes, animal rights, and the LGBT community. The Indigo Girls appear on their first-ever tour with a full symphony orchestra on Jan. 16 at the Kravis Center (8 p.m., $25 and up).
They don’t make country stars the way they used to, and 76-year-old singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Merle Haggard remains living proof. The consummate songwriter from Oildale, Calif., penned 38 No. 1 hits during the 1960s (Mama Tried, Okie From Muskogee) ’70s (Carolyn, Cherokee Maiden) and ’80s (Yesterday’s Wine, with George Jones; Pancho and Lefty, with Willie Nelson) rather than hire the closeted Nashville composers who’ve become in-demand in modern country. All came after doing hard time in his 20s following 17 escapes from jails and reform schools, then turning things around with his voice, guitar and violin playing, and unique storytelling abilities. A multi-Grammy Award winner, Haggard is a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Country Music Hall of Fame, and received Kennedy Center Honors in 2010. He also has a new CD, Working in Tennessee, that further exemplifies his unique blend of country, blues, rock, and bluegrass styles. See Merle Haggard on Feb. 3 at the Kravis Center (8 p.m., $20 and up).
The a cappella gospel vocal sextet Take 6 celebrates the 25th year of its recording career on its current tour, but its roots stretch back more than 30. Initially formed in 1980 at Oakwood College (now Oakwood University) in Huntsville, Ala., Take 6 has since won 10 Grammy Awards, collaborated with icons in soul, jazz and rock, and performed at the White House. The group now features original first tenor singers Mark Kibble and Claude V. McKnight III; longtime second tenors David Thomas and Joey Kibble and bass vocalist Alvin Chea, and recent baritone Khristian Dentley since 2011. The group appeared on the legendary Quincy Jones all-star 1989 CD Back On the Block; released three acclaimed Christmas albums between 1991 and 2009, branched from strict a cappella into instrumental backing with its 1994 release Join the Band, and has become the most nominated vocal act in Grammy Award history. See Take 6 on Feb. 9 at South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center in Cutler Bay (7 p.m., $10-50).
Soulful, 72-year-old singer Darlene Love sang lead on several Phil Spector-produced hits in the early 1960s, and then seemingly faded into the role of a first-call backing vocalist. Until recently. Ironically, Spector’s 2009 conviction for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson, and Al Pacino’s portrayal of him in a recent 2013 HBO film, brought Love’s name back to the fore for many. For others, like Bette Midler, that was never needed. Midler gave the induction speech in 2011 when Love went into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and this year’s documentary on backing vocalists, Twenty Feet From Stardom, features her prominently. The versatile Love also portrayed Danny Glover’s wife in the series of Lethal Weapon films that also starred Mel Gibson starting in the ’80s, and as her compilation CDs from the past five years point out, she can still appropriately torch a love song. See Darlene Love on Feb. 14 at the Parker Playhouse in Fort Lauderdale (8 p.m., $37.50-47.50).
When Bob Dylan calls you “America’s greatest living poet,” you’ve received the ultimate justification as this country’s native lyricist, songwriter and performer. Detroit-born, 73-year-old Smokey Robinson was an architect of the Motown sound during the 1960s and 1970s, and the person who suggested the idea of Motown Records to president Berry Gordy. And he has perhaps the greatest falsetto singing delivery of all-time, featured on Smokey Robinson and the Miracles hits like Shop Around, Tears of a
Clown, I Second That Emotion and Tracks of My Tears. The silky vocalist also wrote hits for other Motown artists as the label’s vice president, producer and talent scout; has had chart-topping hits (Being With You, Cruisin’) since as a solo artist, and is a member of both the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. See Smokey Robinson on March 15 at the Kravis Center (8 p.m., $30 and up) and on March 16 at the Knight Concert Hall (8 p.m., $35-125).