Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings

Friday News and Notes

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Friday Cheers

Lots of fun stuff to check in about:

  • CD Monday update: New Lions & the Not-Good Night is a gift that keeps giving and giving. Even more in love with it than I was before. The band is heading out on tour today — get a taste of what those shows will be like here, and join the band in figuring out what their tour hashtag will be (current frontrunner is #thisisandisnotTOURture2016).
  • One Week One Band did Punch Brothers this week! I  read a fair amount of it, but I’m planning to go back through and make sure I saw everything. Might be my favorite OWOB week since I started following along. Really thorough.
  • Y’all see the Lincoln commercial where Sharon Jones covers “Midnight Rider”? It’s fantastic. You even get a little Matthew McConaughey at the end.
  • It was so rewarding following along on social media as Sleepwalkers played Red Rocks two nights this week. This may be the most excited I’ve been for shows that I wasn’t even going to. The pictures are breathtaking — hit up their Twitter account to check a few out. Prepare for goosebumps.
  • I dunno about you, but I’m fixin’ to hop on that there Bonnaroo live stream a fair amount this weekend. I wrote a thing a while back about about how much I love festival live streams. As a substitute for being able to co-locate and do all of the things at all of the times, they’re pretty snazzy.
  • Another song from the new Avers album hit the interweb! It’s called “Santa Anna” and I’m enjoying it very much. Listen over at USA Today’s FTW site. Speaking of FTW, they came out with a list of the 16 best songs of the first half of 2016 and Clair Morgan’s “Rogue Island” is ranked #5, between Chance the Rapper and ANOHNI. How cool is that?!?
  • No gig tonight, but I feel compelled to share with the world that, at last Friday’s gig, I got to say — all in seriousness — the following sentence into a microphone: “This one’s for the dude in the bouncy castle who requested Skynyrd.”
  • Tonight’s might be the season’s most anticipated Friday Cheers show — Kurt Vile and Richmond’s fast-rising phenom, Lucy Dacus — and I will most assuredly be there. Might even bring my copy of No Burden in hopes that Dacus will sign it. I did just that with my copy of Phil Cook’s Southland Mission album and, while I definitely felt like a nerd doing so, it was well worth it. Also bears mentioning that the National has a crazy run of shows coming up: Death Cab for Cutie tonight, M83 on Sunday, Fitz & the Tantrums on Tuesday, Violent Femmes on Wednesday… not too shabby. And the Broadberry has Lucius on Wednesday. Lots of good stuff to see.

See y’all at Cheers!

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings

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I Learned the Hard Way

There are a zillion reasons to go to a concert. Maybe your favorite band is coming to town and you can’t stand the thought of missing it, or maybe you’re curious how a group’s sample-driven electro-pop sounds live. Or maybe your friend grabbed an extra ticket because “Dude no one else wants to go and you still owe me for the time I was wingman and that girl’s friend puked couscous all over my Ed Hardy T! LEBANESE AND FERRIS WHEELS DON’T MIX BRO!!” Whether it’s about the people we go with or the music we experience once we’re there, I think concert goers are all looking for a the same thing — a connection — and good lord did I ever find one this past Friday when I saw Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. My friends Tex and Clay raved about her when they saw her last, and since they were out of town and couldn’t make it, I spent half the show thanking them via text for recommending her. She was dazzling. She wore a sparkling black and white dress and danced non-stop, in spite of the 90-plus-degree heat, but what stood out most wasn’t her bottomless energy or her spectacular voice, it was how she made it feel like she was singing directly to you. She pulled people on stage, sang happy birthday to a lucky fan and every once in a while, looked out and blinked her eyes flirtatiously, knocking us off our feet and drawing us closer simultaneously. She pulled us in even further by sharing the story behind each of the group’s soul songs, complete with a moral to apply to everyday life. My favorite was “Window Shopping,” which is about only having eyes for one person [insert sexy blinking here]. Preview it below, and grab their album I Learned the Hard Way here. And if you ever have the chance to see Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, don’t forget your dancing shoes! I’m serious — she might pull you on stage, and you’re gonna need them to keep up.