IN
SEVEN THINGS TO DO IN SEVEN DAYS
PHOTO BY ZACK SMITH
Between the bars
Lucinda Williams FRI. APRIL 29 | When Lucinda Williams rains, she pours. Louisiana’s alt-country laureate had slow (but acclaimed) decades in the ’80s and ’90s followed by the busy 2000s (four studio LPs plus a live record). Her current decade’s C.V. includes 2011’s Blessed, the 2014 double-album Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone and February’s self-released The Ghosts of Highway 20. Buick 6 opens at 9 p.m. at House of Blues.
Punk rock percussionist Mike Dillon plays the music of Elliott Smith on Functioning Broke.
Michael Cerveris & his Accomplices
BY ALEX WOODWARD @ALEXWOODWARD
FRI. APRIL 29 | The Tony Award-winning performer hosts a New Orleans debut for his latest album, Piety, his return to his role as a folk-influenced roots singer-songwriter. With string arrangements from Jimbo Walsh, the album also features Shamarr Allen, Mia Borders, Anders Osborne and others. At 8 p.m. at The Theatre at St. Claude.
THE ONLY TIME MIKE DILLON WAS NERVOUS BEFORE A GIG ended
with the crowd making bird noises. Primus’ Les Claypool asked Dillon to open a show in Hawaii with a set of “Hawaiian music.” Dillon fired up one of Martin Denny’s tropical “exotica” compositions and asked the crowd to fill in the requisite bird calls and jungle sounds. “I got to the gig — ‘Oh my god, I’m playing with a drum machine in front of 800 Primus fans in a small club,’” Dillon says. “It was really hilarious and really terrifying.” Dillon has an unpredictable, octopus-like control of his mallets and sticks, orchestrating his percussiononly wall of sound, the New Orleans Punk Rock Percussion Consortium, or his Minutemen jazz-punk and sledgehammer funk with the Mike Dillon Band, or as a secret weapon in Primus’ live arsenal. “I talk about punk rock — punk rock is giving everything you have on the stage, whether you’re a singersongwriter or jazz,” he says. “When I saw punk rock shows in the ’80s, these guys weren’t doing this stale, contrived music thing the industry was presenting. It was something real and gritty and everyone was sweaty in the club. My first punk rock show was Bad Brains in ’86. I remember being there and all of a sudden they came on, H.R. did a flip into the crowd, and the place erupted. I’d never seen anything like that in my life.” But with his new album, following the February release of Dogs from his new jazz quartet Nolatet, Dillon takes another stab at pushing percussion’s melodic boundaries with delicate, meditative arrangements (Dillon says
THU. APRIL 28 | Steve Marion’s last show in New Orleans was a 2013 Circle Bar love-fest that couldn’t have been sunnier if a rainbow had touched down in its converted living room. Such is the smiley-faced guitar heroics of Positive Force, whose mind-boggling technical proficiency is outshined only by how it makes you feel. Val Hollie opens at 10 p.m. at Gasa Gasa.
Anders Osborne suggested he show off “a soft, gentle side of Mike Dillon”). On Functioning Broke, Dillon transforms several songs from Elliott Smith, the singer-songwriter whose heart-on-sleeve confessionals delivered earnest folk from his darkest edges, and Denny’s “The Enchanted Sea.” Dillon performed a set of their music at Preservation Hall last year after working on arrangements between tours, laying them down in the studio and gradually adding to what would become an album he never intended to release (to the public, at least). “I wasn’t intending on putting it out,” he says. “I just wanted to hear how it sounds, have it in my car, give it to my girlfriend.” Dillon’s Smith arrangements highlight the singer-songwriter’s playful vocal delivery, performed here on vibraphones and xylophones singing above their percussive echoes and a handful of other percussion instruments (and only percussion instruments — marimba, xylophone, timpani, bells, tabla, congas). “I like playing those songs as an exercise in becoming more lyrical on the vibraphone,” he says. “You come up with harmony and melody, it’s just natural. … It taught me a lot about harmony. I’ve learned a lot from Elliott — not just talking about his lyrics. He’s
APRIL 26 FUNCTIONING BROKE ALBUM RELEASE FEATURING NOLATET AND HILDEGARD 9 P.M. TUESDAY GASA GASA, 4920 FRERET ST.; WWW.GASAGASA.COM
simple and complicated. The little things he does, you can tell he studies music. He knows the Beatles inside and out. There’s a lot of depth to what he’s playing. … It really shows the childlike nature, the innocent nature, of a lot of those songs.” Dillon borrows a tropical arrangement for “Needle and the Damage Done” (the only song on the album Dillon didn’t arrange) and includes several original compositions — the relative chaos of “Bachelor Pad” mellows to a tropical “Martin Denny/ Les Baxter vibe,” Dillon says. “We’re in the jungle, running away from King Kong or whatever.” The album closer is a mantra-like, minute-long “Tabla Goodnight.” “That’s the other thing I was enjoying,” Dillon says, “building songs with my percussionists, my mallet family I’ve been building.”
Catahoula Music Exchange SAT. APRIL 30 | Lafayette meets New Orleans at this annual fete showcasing artists from the Cajun capital and New Orleans. Cajun folk, country and psychedelic rock ’n’ roll outfit Feufollet headlines, with New Orleans R&B revivers King James & the Special Men and rising swamp pop stars The Revelers. At 10 p.m. at Siberia.
La Luz SUN. MAY 1 | On the Seattle-based surf rock quartet’s acclaimed second album, the Ty Segall-helmed 2015 LP Weirdo Shrine (Hardly Art), the band’s punky garage takes on spooky, girl-group doo-wop harmonies and trippy twang. Nots, Massenger and Black Abba open at 10 p.m. at Siberia.
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard MON. MAY 2 | The Australian septet’s Nonagon Infinity (ATO Records), out April 29, drops out and into pummeling psychedelic rock, a nonstop barrage of four-onthe-floor drums and hazy waves of distorted riffs. The Murlocs opens at 9 p.m. at Gasa Gasa.
5 G A M B I T > B E S T O F N E WO R L E A N S . C O M > A P R I L 2 6 > 2 0 1 6
7 SEVEN
Delicate Steve