Bearsville Theater
TRACY BONHAM with special guest.. HAPPY TRAUM
TRACY BONHAM with special guest.. HAPPY TRAUM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 6TH, 2010
Doors: 8pm
Show: 9pm
Tickets: $15 - AVAILABLE AT THE DOOR STARTING AT 8PM
Tracy's new record, 'Masts of Manhatta' just out, 7/13/10, on Engine Room Recordings.
When Tracy Bonham set out to make her fourth full-length record, a lot had changed. She'd moved back to Brooklyn, after spending three years in Los Angeles, had fallen in love and gotten married, and watched as the record industry ceased to exist. Bonham got together with guitarist Smokey Hormel (Tom Waits, Beck, Rufus Wainwright) and his "Roundup" trio in a Brooklyn studio and began cutting tracks that reflected the changes in her life in an honest, open way. "It was so liberating to do this totally on my own, without the pressure of a record label.. I felt like I was pushing myself to tread new ground."
That freedom comes across on, 'Masts of Manhatta' (Engine Room Recordings, July 13), Bonham's best and most personal record to date. Recorded in Brooklyn and Woodstock, NY (where the singer alternates between residencies), Masts suggests the dichotomy surrounding the two environments, the singer's own personal journey as well as the changing rules of the music industry.
The title taken from the Walt Whitman poem "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," "sums up these new songs for me," says Bonham. "It's about maintaining a sense of peace, stillness, and connectedness to all in nature, while living in a bustling New York City."
There's tango-influenced rhythms ("Devil's Got Your Boyfriend"), Tom Waits-inspired Klezmer folk-punk ("Josephine") and pastoral country ("We Moved Our City to the Country") with multiple pit stops in between. Bonham retains her unique ability to make the prosaic poetic and on Masts, her lyrics reflect, "Take it or leave it ..who I am now". Her wry wit, remains, conjuring up a mix of humor and despair on "Reciprocal Feelings": "I'd like to be my own best friend/Turns out there's no reciprocal feelings/What a total snob."
On her 1996 debut The Burdens of Being Upright, Bonham established herself as a brash rocker with ironic nods to the emerging music of punk grrrrl bands. With blunt, direct observations on love and loss, the album went gold and earned the singer Grammy nominations for Best Alternative Music Performance and Best Female Vocalist.
"Mother Mother", her first single, became a nationwide anthem and earned the singer an MTV Video Music Awards nomination. She appreared with everyone from Blue Man Group to Aerosmith to Ron Sexsmith to Juliana Hatfield. (excerpts from, www.tracybonham.com/ )
Happy Traum is one of the world class musician's that lives in our neck of the woods. On Friday, 8/6/10, he'll be on stage as the special guest opener for Tracy Bohnam and her band. We hear there may be other estemed guest appearances as well.. ;-) It was in 1963 when a group of young folk musicians, including Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Pete Seeger, Peter LaFarge, and Happy Traum & The Freedom Singers gathered in Folkways Records studio for an album called "Broadside, Vol.1." With his group, the "New World Singers," Happy cut the first recorded version of "Blowin' In The Wind," and Happy sang a duet with Dylan on his anti-war song "Let Me Die in My Footsteps". 47 years later he's still going strong..
291 Tinker St., Woodstock, NY - (845) 679-4406