WKCR's Honky Tonkin' program celebrated its 10th anniversary last week with a marathon live performance featuring many of the great players who've guested in NYC's only live-radio country music show. Fran Leadon was there and took a bunch of photos, which you can see in the Ponkiesburg group on Flickr. Check them out, and thanks Fran for taking them! Join the group while you're there, and contribute any photos you might have.
Del is not nearly as famous as she should be. You could pile every well-known living blues guitarist on one side of a balance scale, and put her on the other, and they'd all have to be scraped off the ceiling.
She's a complete master of traditional fingerstyle guitar, but takes it to all sorts of places that the originators of that style -- Blind Blake, Gary Davis, etc -- never dreamed of. Last night, along with clarinetist Craig Flury, she played hot 20s jazz, two calypso numbers, several mind-bending original tunes, and old tunes for which she wrote new lyrics because she thought the original words were stupid.
She's a virtuoso, playing sophisticated jazz fingerings with all sorts of counterrhythms and moving bass lines, all at lightning speed, relaxed and smiling the whole time, or raising an eyebrow at her guitar as if it had considered talking back to her. Her lead playing is mostly beyond my comprehension; if I could play rhythm backing the way she does I'd be happy. Very happy.
Here she is doing a classic blues, and here she is doing a duet with Steve James, a ragtime tribute to many great guitarists including her hero Memphis Minnie.
Friday night Kate Giampetruzzi and Tone Johansen did a second great show in a week. Kate's originals, and Tone's originals and old country classics, are a fantastic combination. They were playing with great bands -- Alice Bierhorst and Walt Wells were the rhythm section for both, while Bob Hofnar and Charlie Burnham complemented Tone and Paul Cabri and yours truly played with Kate. Hopefully there will be many more shows to come! Lots more photos by guest photographer Catherine Keeter.
Read more below, or see the complete set of photos.
For some inexplicable reason I haven't seen Liz's band before, but they're outstanding, sounding like a more countrified Roulette Sisters. Her singing just keeps getting better and she's put together a great band that works well together. Mike Pasternak sang a couple as well, and shared solo duties with Bruno Bruzzese on fiddle and Jane Galla on dobro (and sass, according to Liz). And Brett Ladin took too few solos while holding it all together on rhythm along with the inimitable Walt Wells on bass.
The Y'All Stars followed with two great sets of harmonies, blazing playing, and jokes about an alleged pre-show rehearsal. But if it happened, it didn't put them off their game at all. Ben and Diane tore the place up as usual, Charles and Fran gave us the their beautiful harmonies on songs ranging from heartbreaking to depressing, even managing to get the sequence of suicides right in "Katie Dear." Diane sang a few and Nancy Polstein came out from behind the snare for a duet with Fran.
