For this weekend's tunes, we look toward the Keswick Theatre in Glenside, where - supporting his first album in 17 years - guitar maestro David Bromberg and his Big Band take the stage Friday night.
"Try Me One More Time" comes out Feb. 27. Its 16 songs of acoustic folk and blues feature Bromberg and his guitar, and was recorded at the Delaware Center for the Arts' Baby Grand Theater. You can find some two-minute samples here.
The Philly-born, Columbia-educated picker and singer emerged from the Greenwich Village music scene as an in-demand session guitarist, playing on records like Bob Dylan's New Morning and Self Portrait. After his solo performance at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970, he signed a record deal and "The Holdup" from his 1971 debut was a favorite of underground radio.
On Appleseed Records' site, Bromberg talks about why he dropped out of the record-and-tour whirl back in 1980. "I got burned out, but I didn’t know it was burn-out. I thought I wasn’t a musician anymore. I wasn’t writing or practicing. And I didn’t want to be one of those musicians who ends up ‘phoning it in.’ Music was too important to me to treat it that way."
He moved to Chicago to study violin making, and after graduation, moved to Wilmington, where he opened a violin store. He tours from time to time, but hasn't recorded much since 1990. Here, he's caught on video playing at the Philadelphia Folk Festival in 1985.
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Also Friday night is a double feature of serious jazz chops: singer Dianne Reeves and pianist Jason Moran. She's got the smoky alto that provided the after-deadline atmosphere in George Clooney's Good Night and Good Luck. He's a major player. To sense what's in store, visit the never-disappointing Motel de Moka mp3 blog to hear her play a keeper version of "Maiden Voyage" with pianist Geri Allen.
Moran offers a lots of samples to download on his site, from six CDs, and I'd starting with recommend the bizarro "Ringing My Phone" from The Bandwagon.
