The Crystal Ballroom - 1332 W. Burnside
Tue, April 1, 2014 - Doors 7pm / Show 8pm / All Ages
$25 Adv / $30 Door
Posted by Matt
Host of "Subterranea"
Tue 10-11pm / Thu 11pm-Midnight
facebook/SubterraneaPDX | @subterranea
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Not onstage, not in interviews. Her life and music are as exposed, raw and real as it gets.
As of 2010, after four critically-acclaimed albums, she was still living with her mother in the projects of Far Rockaway, Queens. Although leaving at times to sing on the David Letterman Show, or to open for Prince in Paris or tour nationwide playing with people like Lou Reed, David Byrne and Rufus Wainwright.
And before that, she was a guard on Riker’s Island, where she sang so sweetly that the prisoners wouldn’t go into their cells until she did sing to them. And after that they did whatever she wanted. Her voice brought order. One might poetically say that she brought soul to a soulless place. In fact it was the prisoners who encouraged her to get out of there and sing her way to a better place. “You’re too nice to be in here,” they told her.
(Although Riker’s Island is officially a “jail” not a “prison” - more penalty box than penitentiary. It’s guys doing one year or less, who can at least keep looking forward to getting out, going home. And it also holds guys awaiting trial who couldn’t raise the cash to make bail. Those guys might going to a worse place, depending on their future jury.)
Sharon Jones - "This Land is Your Land"
Sharon Jones’ stage-1 pancreatic cancer recently went into remission. She took 2013 off for aggressive surgery – removal of a tumor from her bile duct, removal of her gallbladder and 12” of small intestine - and intense chemotherapy, complete with a valve installed in her neck for easy access so the poisons could save her.
Earlier this year in support of her new album, “Give the People What They Want,” she boldly and defiantly shot a music video for the song “Stranger to my Happiness.” In the video, still bald from the chemo, she sings out soul at what appears to be a welcome back party - and happiness clearly ain’t no stranger to the room.
Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings - "Stranger to My Happiness"
“Give the People What They Want” is the fifth album for Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings. Previous albums include “Dap Dippin'” (2002), “Naturally” (2005), “100 Days, 100 Nights” (2007) and “I Learned the Hard Way” (2010).
A strong theme emerges looking through past press on Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings. It’s their sense of mission. To spread the word, to let people know soul music is still alive and growing, evolving. They’re a ten-piece touring band proving it every time they board the bus to the next gig. Full horn section, backup singers. Real-deal Motown stuff.
Jones recently told Matt Singer at the Willamette Week, “I have a goal to pursue. Since they left me here, and I’m able to do my music, my goal is to make the music industry realize there is soul music around today. If you look at the award shows, there’s no award for soul music. They say soul music left in the ’60s and ’70s. Soul music needs to be recognized by the music industry - even if they don’t want to give me an award.”
Gabriel Roth (aka Bosco Mann), bass player for the Dap-Kings and co-founder of Dap Records (along with tenor sax player Neal Sugarman) penned this creed in the liner notes for their 2005 album, “Naturally” – “Somewhere between banging on logs and the invention of M.I.D.I. technology we have made a terrible wrong turn. We must have ridden right past our stop. We should have stepped down off the train at that moment when rhythm and harmony and technology all culminated to a single Otis Redding whine. That moment of the truest, most genuine expression of what it means to be human.”
It’s been a two-pronged approach for the band, raising that awareness. The Dap-Kings as an entity have recorded legendary soul icon Al Green on his Grammy-winning Blue Note release, “Lay It Down,” with Public Enemy beatmaster/producer Hank Shocklee on the soundtrack of the feature film, “American Gangster,” and of course, they sent Amy Winehouse into superstardom laying down the neo-soul on her 2006 Grammy-winning album “Back to Black.”
And bringing it back to the Music Where You Live… be aware that the soul revolution has blossomed here in Portland as well, with our own Brownish Black, guaranteed to knock your socks off.
Brownish Black - "Footsteps"
