Twilight Concert Series, Trombone Shorty, The Dustbowl Revival: August 26, 2013

august 29, 2013

FREE, THURSDAY NIGHTS, 7-10PM

Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue The Dustbowl Revival

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Table of contents page 4

A taste of NOLA

pages 8-9

Genre-bending Trombone Shorty brings his ‘Supafunkrock’ to the Pier

Map

page 5

pages 10-12

Insider’s guide

TCS lineup

The 411 on this year’s shows

Learn about this summer’s future shows

Find your way around the Pier

page 6 page 14-15

Life’s a circus Cirque du Soleil shares a long history with the Pier

Picture post Shots from last week’s show

Twilight Concert Series Schedule Sept. 5

Gardens & Villa and Mr. Little Jeans Aug. 29

Sept. 12

Trombone Shorty

Jimmy Cliff

with The Dustbowl Revival

with The Delirians

Twilight Concert Series Partners Myspace Cirque du Soleil KCRW OneWest Bank 98.7 FM G'day USA Quantas Airways Shore Hotel Chili Beans Eyewear Michelob Ultra

LA Weekly Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf Mambo Cotton On Australia.com Loaded Boards Rum & Humble Spaceland Laemmle Santa Monica Daily Press

Drum Workshop Uber Barefoot Wine Sabian

WSR Creative Bagavagabonds Heal the Bay Del Frisco's Grille Mariasol City of Santa Monica Pacific Park of Santa Monica Studio 16 City TV Whole Foods Buy Local Santa Monica For more information, visit

www.SantaMonicaPier.org

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Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue

A taste of NOLA Genre-bending Trombone Shorty brings his ‘Supafunkrock’ to the Pier S

ince the release of their Grammy®-nominated 2010 debut album, “Backatown,” Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue have grown creatively while winning hordes of new fans performing nonstop on five continents.

Their latest album, “For True,” offers substantive proof of their explosive growth, further refining the signature sound Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews has dubbed “Supafunkrock.”

Get a dose of what he has to offer Thursday, Aug. 29 at the Santa Monica Pier’s Twilight Concert Series.

“There was excitement from everywhere,” says Andrews of the experience on the road and how it fed into the creation of their latest release. “We did over 200 shows in the last year and a half, and every night we allowed the music to take us over. Musically and creatively, we wanted to shoot for some different things.”

The band stirs together old-school jazz, funk and soul, laced with hard-rock power chords and hip-hop beats, and they’ve added some tangy new ingredients on “For True” as they keep pushing the envelope, exploring new musical territory.

“We never sat down and really thought about concepts and what we wanted our music to sound like,” Andrews explains.

“It’s just that, over the years, we allowed each one of the band members to bring their influences and taste in music into our music. Anything we hear or are influenced by, it naturally comes out in what we’re trying to do. It’s just our sound, and it happened naturally.”

Andrews hails from the Tremé neighborhood in New Orleans’ Sixth Ward, getting his nickname at 4 years old when he was observed by his older brother James marching in a street parade wielding a trombone twice as long as the kid was high. Andrews started early, learning how to play drums

and what he remembers as “the world’s smallest trumpet” at the age of 3. By the time he reached 6, this prodigy was playing trumpet and trombone in a jazz band led by his older brother James, himself a trumpet player of local renown who has been called “Satchmo of the Ghetto.”

Not long afterward, Andrews formed his own band with some other musically inclined kids from Tremé. Since he has garnered much praise from critics and fellow musicians.

“Trombone Shorty is so ready for his close-up,” The New York Times reviewer Nate Chinen wrote, describing the young virtuoso as “a native prodigy destined for breakout success.”

The San Francisco Chronicle’s Joel Selvin hailed him as “New Orleans’ brightest new star in a generation.” Rolling Stone’s Will Hermes raved that “‘Backatown’ is both deeply rooted and culturally omnivorous.” And the Washington Post’s Mike Joyce described one live performance as “a near-deafening, funk-charged blast of percussion, brass, reeds and guitar distortion that might have knocked the crowd sideways had there been any room to move.”

Andrews wrote or co-wrote all 14 tracks on the new album, including collaborating with the legendary Lamont Dozier on “Encore,” while this time playing as much trumpet as trombone, as well as organ, drums, piano, keys, synth bass and percussion. Indeed, he played every part on the swaying, Latin-tinged “Unc.” He’s also come into his own as a singer, honoring the hallowed legacy of the great soul men of the 1960s and ‘70s.

Like its predecessor, the new album turns on a rare combination of virtuosity and high-energy, party-down intensity.

Collaboration helped bring out the creativity.

“On the last record, we just basically did it with my band,” Andrews points out, “but we’ve got a lot of New Orleans peo-

ple on this new record — the music just called for it. [T]hese are all people that helped me grow in my career and teach me different things. And Fifth Ward Weebie, who’s one of the lead voices in the bounce community, we’re like brothers. I’m excited to have those people on there, because they bring a taste of where I come from and where I’m going.”

The album also bears the fruit of more recent relationships.

Lenny Kravitz (who plays bass on “Roses”), has the longest-standing bond with Andrews, discovering the then-teenage prodigy in 2005 and taking him on tour with his band. Calling Andrews “a genius player,” Kravitz says, “He’s got nothing but personality, he plays his ass off and he’s a beautiful human being.”

His relationship with Jeff Beck (check out his blistering solo on “Do to Me”) has blossomed since the guitar legend came to Andrews’ late-night post-jazz fest show at Tipitina’s in 2010.

“I was completely blown away,” Beck says of his Tip’s epiphany in Mojo magazine’s “The Best Thing I’ve Heard All Year” special feature. “The crowd went wild. Troy and his band have just supported me on some U.K. dates. A sensational group of musicians. Trombone Shorty is one to watch.”

“I’m fans of all those people,” says Andrews. “It’s not like I reached out to them because I needed some big names on the record. I’m really interested in their music and their talents. So for me it’s a dream come true to work with some of my favorite artists. Whatever they need me to do, I’ll be there.”

Don’t be fooled. This isn’t just hype. Trombone Shorty is an innovative musician with many more years of inspiring music to share with the world.

For more information on Trombone Shorty, visit www.tromboneshorty.com/tour — Verve Music Group

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WATCHING THE SHOW from the beach tonight?

Don't forget to recycle your glass bottles and aluminum cans.

2411 Delaware Avenue in Santa Monica

(310) 453-9677

Twilight Concerts insider’s guide Tickets

Smoking

No tickets necessary, this is pure free summer fun (remember that?) all thanks to our partners and sponsors who have brought us another season of awesome free concerts at the beach. Make sure to show them some love.

Don’t even think about it, it’s a 100-year-old wooden Pier, and we really like it.

Pets Dogs are welcome, but must be on a leash.

Time 7 p.m. — 10 p.m., but those in the know stake out a good spot early.

Parking Parking is available in the 1550 Pacific Coast Highway Lot next to the Santa Monica Pier on a first-come, first-served basis. Those wanting to avoid long waits should try one of the municipal lots around Second Street and Colorado Avenue or grab the ParkMe app for live data of parking availability and prices.

Go technology!

Weather & attire It never gets too cold, but sometimes it gets a little chilly once the sun goes down. So bring something or head up to the Pier Tent on the deck to grab this year’s limited-edition sweatshirt or T-shirt!

Seating Seating is not provided, so feel free to bring your own chairs, blankets, etc ...

Food & drinks Bike & skateboard valet Park your wheels at the free bike and skateboard valet located next to the beach bike path just south of the Pier.

There are plenty of great food and beverage options on the deck and at the various restaurants on the Pier. Most even have to-go options perfect for munching during the show. As a reminder, alcohol consumption is not permitted in public spaces, but there are several full-service bars in the area.

Friends & family

The Concert Garden

Bring them, the more the merrier. You will not regret it. This is one epic summer tradition.

There is a 21-and-over Concert Garden featuring Barefoot Wines, an assortment of cocktails and non-alcoholic beverages.

Do not miss this view.

First aid/lost & found If you need first aid or assistance, please visit the Pier Tent or flag down a security officer. If it is an emergency, please call 911.

E-mail list & special offers Sign up at TwilightSeries.org for special announcements, offers and invites.

MICHIGAN 24TH

Santa Monica Recycling Center

CLOVERFIELD

Aluminum Plastic Glass Bi-Metal Newspaper CardboardWhite/Color/Computer Paper Copper & Brass X DELAWARE AVE. 10 WEST

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Life’s a circus Cirque du Soleil shares a long history with the Pier B

y the time the sun rose over Santa Monica Bay, the waves had already begun to swell and crash against the huge wooden pilings of the Santa Monica Pier. The winter storm locals anticipated came on Jan. 27, 1983 and took much of the structure with it, scattering large planks of wood and scraps of metal across the beach to the south.

During the years that followed, attendance at the pier dropped dramatically. The City Council had to find a way to let the public know the Pier was still open for business.

“And that’s how we got our Twilight Dance Series, which began in 1985,” said Jim Harris, historian and deputy director of Santa Monica Pier Corporation.

The dance series was only part of the city’s long-term plan. It also needed a big act to attract residents and tourists to the beach.

“The Pier was the first location for Cirque du Soleil’s traveling show,” Harris said. “It was already established in Canada … and they decided they would go ahead and create a touring show. And so the very first stop on the very first touring show was here at the Santa Monica Pier.”

The show opened on Oct. 30, 1987 and became a regular in the Pier’s entertainment rotation.

“It worked out for both parties,” Harris said.

“The circus got a great location at the beach and the Pier was able to draw visitors who really weren’t coming to the Pier at all at that time.”

Cirque already had a presence in Los Angeles at the time. Two months before its Santa Monica debut, the circus came to the Los Angeles Festival of the Arts where after financial difficulties it found instant success.

Cirque du Soleil returns to the Santa Monica Pier with “Totem” Jan. 17, 2014 through March 16. The residence marks Cirque’s 30th anniversary and a key milestone in the company’s history.

“Santa Monica at the Pier must be probably one of our most, if not the most, iconic sites that we have in the world,” Cirque du Soleil spokeswoman Renée-Claude Ménard told us. “Just the simple fact of playing on the beach close to the ocean, which is something that is also dear to our founder, Guy Laliberté.

Water plays a key role in his life. It has always been like his good luck charm.”

Each show that Cirque produces is unique to the venue housing it. Santa Monica’s big top on the beach is a much more intimate performance space when compared to the show in Las Vegas, with its giant rotating stage some 40-60 feet from the audience, Ménard said.

Close proximity gives Santa Monica attendees the sense that they are a part of the show.

“It’s much more, I would say, human-centric and less dependent on technology,” Ménard said. “(Though) with Totem you probably have the most technological appeal of all the bigtop shows because of the projection element, which is quite unique in Totem and also some

of the scenic elements are quite sophisticated for a touring show.”

For a time, it seemed as if though Cirque du Soleil wouldn’t ever return to Santa Monica. From 1999 to 2009, because of technical and logistical difficulties — namely traffic — the brightly colored big top that filled Santa Monica’s ocean skyline every one to two years was nowhere to be found.

“The whole Pier and beach front and downtown has grown and has changed and is busy,” said beach administrator Judith Meister. “Cirque has worked well with the city to be able to retain its ability to come here and people love it.”

Meister has worked for the city since Cirque’s beginnings here when she was Pier manager. Now she handles the license agreements for events at Santa Monica’s beach parking lots and overseas coordination with other city departments. She worked with Cirque to help bring it back from its 10-year hiatus.

“We have this long history, so it’s easy in terms of the logistics and there’s a lot of familiarity on the part of police and fire and the rest of the city in dealing with Cirque,” Meister said. “I think that’s just a result of a long-term relationship and their willingness to be a good partner.”

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2013 Twilight Concert Series

Gardens & Villa

Sept. 5

Gardens & Villa and Mr. Little Jeans Gardens & Villa is the project of five college friends from Santa Barbara, formed following the collapse of a noisier post-punk band and a hitch-hiking journey up the West Coast.

Members Chris Lynch, Adam Rasmussen, Levi Hayden and Shane McKillop began playing in earnest as Gardens & Villa in 2008. The name is pulled from the location of their house on Villa Street, and the property’s lovely garden to which they tend. The music they make is very much connected to the coastal city they call home — the stoney bike rides, dance parties and a scene free of judgment. For two weeks in the summer of 2010, the band camped behind visionary and now-labelmate Richard Swift’s Oregon studio. No shower, no kitchen, but all the magic you could ask for. After taking a band oath to always play all parts live — a la Talking Heads’ “Stop Making Sense” — the band added member Dusty Ineman to supremely execute the live incarnation of the band.

Mr. Little Jeans

Mr. Little Jeans

Meet Mr. Little Jeans, a.k.a. Monica Birkenes. She is small and Norwegian and she makes music that will leave you reeling.

Her pop dances left of center, a curious thing of equal parts organic magic and buzzing electricity. She has worked hard to get to this

place, traveled far to find it. On some unmarked pasture between St. Vincent’s prettiest moments and Debby Harry’s wilder inclinations, she stands fronting an army of bright ideas and sharp sounds, a shipbuilder’s daughter with a voice that could part a sea.

Monica grew up in the middle of the woods in a seaside town called Grimstad. Her dad built catamarans and her mum was a secretary whose love for music was infectious. They didn’t have much money, but put their daughter through years of piano and voice lessons which she’d attend wearing her mother’s oversized outfits from another era. There were four black cats called Missy, and some neighbors who killed a man, but otherwise it was all Nancy Drew, dancing through the trees, and singing to mum’s records.

Her first instrument has always been her voice. Monica sang in the church choir at 5, then around town wherever and whenever her mum saw fit: malls, old folks’ homes, theaters, even on local television once or twice. At 10, she recorded a cassette of children’s classics and shopped it around to gas stations mainly.

By 15, she was singing in bars, clearly underage but backed by a band of boys in their 20s. She focused on music in high school, then relocated to London to study drama.

A year later, Monica was on her own in England, having left college to chase singing leads gleaned from the “wanted” pages.

Mostly she spent an endless string of years as a terrible waitress and, after an exploratory trip to

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Jimmy Cliff

LINE-UP FROM PAGE 10 Los Angeles, a couple more years sofa-surfing, country-hopping, and racking up credit card debt as she wrote with different producers — Peter Moren (Peter Bjorn & John), John Hill (Santigold) — and shaped her sound into that of the inimitable Mr. Little Jeans we now know.

Sept. 12

Jimmy Cliff with The Delirians “I got one more shot at the goal/Straight from my soul/I’m in control,” sings reggae legend Jimmy Cliff on “One More,” the lead track from “Rebirth” the new Universal Music Enterprises album from the Grammy-winning musician, actor, singer, songwriter, producer and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, produced by punk icon Tim Armstrong, of Rancid and Operation Ivy fame.

The release, his first studio album in seven years, is the next step in their collaboration on last year’s “Sacred Fire” EP, an effort Rolling Stone called Cliff’s “best music in decades ... [his] tenor still soars.” With the groundbreaking 1972 film “The Harder They Come” celebrating its 40th anniversary, Cliff — who starred in the movie and contributed the title cut, “You Can Get It If You Really Want,” “Many Rivers to Cross” and “Sitting in Limbo” to the soundtrack — is still going strong in a career that has spanned almost 50 years and includes his native Jamaica’s highest honor, the Order of Merit.

In the autobiographical “Reggae Music,” Cliff recounts going to see famed Jamaican producer Leslie Kong in 1962 to convince him to work with him, releasing Cliff’s first hit, “Hurricane Hattie,” when he was just 14.

“Jimmy is one of my musical heroes and I’ve been responding to his music my entire life,” said Armstrong, who had never met Cliff before, but was once recommended to him by mutual friend Joe Strummer of The Clash.

Gathering Armstrong’s studio band, the Engine Room (bassist/percussionist J Bonner, drum/percussionist Scott Abels, organ/percussionist Dan Boer and piano/lead guitarist Kevin Bivona), the first song they tackled was a cover of Rancid’s “Ruby Soho,” a ska- tinged number from the band’s 1995 album “... And Out Came the Wolves” about a musician having to tell his lover he’s headed for the road.

“I had no idea it was one of Tim’s songs, but I liked it and could identify with the sentiments,” said Cliff. “I never really had the opportunity to hear his music, but it was a great thing how we hit if off in the studio.”

They also worked on a cover of The Clash’s “The Guns of Brixton,” a song about the growing tension in Brixton at the time.

Ironically, Strummer’s last session ever was with Cliff on “Over the Border,” a song from Jimmy’s 2004 album, “Black Magic.” It was at that time Joe talked up Armstrong as someone who might make a good collaborator for him.

“It was inspiring working with Tim because even the sound of the album feels like we went back to the ‘60s and ‘70s,” said Cliff. “I had forgotten about a lot of the sounds and the instruments we used then, and we brought that all back.”

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Headliner Nick Waterhouse capped a retro night on the Pier

Picture post

M

ixing the old with the new, Nick Waterhouse capped a night of retro R&B sounds during last week’s Twilight Concert Series show.

Boogaloo Assassins opened the festivities with their old school take on the boogaloo craze that swept East Harlem during the mid to late 1960s.

This week brings Trombone Shorty all the way from New Orleans. You just may learn what “Supafunkrock” is all about.

photo courtesy Michael Yanow

Nick Waterhouse

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photo courtesy Michael Yanow

photo courtesy Brandon Wise

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Boogaloo Assassins

photo courtesy Michael Yanow

Surly | Linus | Biria Virtue | Phat Cycles Schwinn | Nirve Purefix | Haro Free Agent | Litespeed Stromer | E-motion

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