Jun
5th
Thu
5th
Rockwood 6/4
Last night at Rockwood was tremendous…..star-studded from top to bottom. John Manion released his newest CD, Fireworks In The Rain. John has a great ‘out’ following, and there was precious little sitting room from the middle of the set on. John performs very good original songwriter-based material, with a flair for the theatrical to a degree. He mentioned how, on one earlier album, he created a CD where each song represented a different genre. He would do basically a comedy song from that collection. Had a John was assisted on one song by fellow Nashville songwriter Morry Campbell. I wondered to myself where Ed Mannix might have been in the audience…as I didn’t see him. Haven’t heard from him, in fact, in many a moon. He runs OutMusic.Beyondo, the project led by Eric Biondo, was radically different than his usual loud in-your-face style. He performed ‘Beyondo lite” with backups on guitar and trumpet, and no less a trumpeter/multi-instrumentalist than the great Michael Leonhart (more on him later). Eric had a few tongue-in-cheek lines in each song, and had one song that was basically a pick-up-line. ‘my name is eric’ done in a sing-songish voice.
Michael Leonhart led a group of vocalist and horns plus a beatboxer while on piano and the occasional quirky prop or toy to accentuate his voice or the piano itself. Included in the vocal choir was wife Jamie Leonhart, and Deidre Rodman Struck of The Lascivious Biddies. Much like what you’d hear on Michael’s CD, there were many toys, many approaches to the vocally driven music complete with wonderfully imaginative titles. All the songs were recorded in hotel rooms, thus the CD title Hotel Music.
Pianist Cassandra Kubinski performed with partner-in-crime/producer/guitarist James Adamo. Cassandra would take to vox sans piano for a few tunes, singing in her notable theatrical way. She has such a way of hitting the high notes and keeping her audiences enthralled.
The Paper Raincoat are the superhuman songwriting of Amber Rubarth and Alex Wong (late of The Animators). For this gig they were joined by superb pianist/songwriter Vienna Teng. Amber and Vienna shared piano duties. Amber and Alex traded off on the glockenspiel. Alex and Amber used their own guitars. Very good chemistry between the 3, whom I suspect have toured for a few months by now. After the gig I received the Paper Raincoat EP and also Amber’s new CD, New Green Lines. I did not get the chance to speak with Vienna, but there’ll be a chance for that again I’m sure. Amber mentioned in the show a sort of concept where there are various characters and the EP contains the storyboard; the website promises more info.
Pictorial evidence of all the above is forthcoming on my Facebook profile.