Tag: Buckman Performing Arts Center

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Kaki King: Six Strings and the Truth

Kaki King (Photo: Sham Hinchey & Marzia Messina)

Is there any instrument more beguiling than a guitar? Some may scoff at the idea, given its role in 1,001 rock cliches, and yet the guitar itself transcends cultural markers if one can see it afresh. Jimi Hendrix undoubtedly did so, and so have others, but none have reimagined it quite like Kaki King.

The Atlanta native has made a career out of it since 2002, developing a percussive style drawing on flamenco, open tunings, and traditional Russian approaches — and getting a nod from Rolling Stone magazine as one of “The New Guitar Gods” in 2006, the only woman and youngest artist to make the list. This Friday, she’s bringing a show to the Buckman Performing Arts Center that pushes her inventive approach even further. “For me, this show will be a way to see, yet again, what the guitar can do,” she says. “How can it touch us in a different way as musicians, as audience members? Instead of holding it and playing it traditionally, what can be done if it’s on a stand or if there are many of them?”

She’s not kidding about that last point: The show she’ll be premiering with fellow guitarist Tamar Eisenman, titled SEI (Italian for “six”), will feature 16 guitars, all configured in different ways. That’s more than she’s used in any previous show, yet playing multiple instruments is not entirely foreign to her. “The core idea began with a song called ‘Frame’ on my second album,” she explains. “If you listen carefully, there are only four chords in that song, coming from four different guitars that are tuned differently. And I just played them in different patterns, one after the other, and it somehow made an entire song. It’s actually quite difficult for me to travel with four guitars, so I only performed it a couple of times, but I always had this idea of many, many guitars on stage, and people moving around them. The way you have to move in order to play the music can be a beautiful kind of choreography.”

King’s latest album, Modern Yesterdays, features the song “Sei sei,” which was originally planned as a collaboration with the Israel-born Eisenman, a songwriter and guitar virtuoso in her own right. “The full show is a very expanded version of what you hear in that song,” King says. “The first performance of that song was in February 2020. It was right before quarantine. Tamar was pregnant, and we filmed the concert. Two days later, I went into the studio to start making the album, and Tamar was supposed to come and perform part of ‘Sei’ with me, so we could have this dual guitar stuff. But because of Covid and because of her pregnancy, we thought, ‘Okay, maybe this is not the best idea,’ and I just did that recording on my own.”

Still, King’s drive to continue the collaboration was still there. “Tamar is much more of a songwriter and a far better soloist. All the solos in the show, she takes. I’m terrible at soloing, so we complement each other. SEI would not exist without Tamar. She pushed me: ‘Let’s do it! Let’s keep going!’” But beyond being a way to continue working with Eisenman, the show has also been a chance for King to bring her performances back down to the basics, after many years of exploring multimedia presentations and treating her guitar with effects and enhancements.

“I just wanted to play music with a friend in a different kind of way without the heaviness of media and production. And it turned into this show,” says King. “I think of it as an antidote to working with a lot of computers, a lot of media, a lot of lighting. This was a much more organic and acoustic thing. It’s just myself, my friend Tamar, and our guitars — 16 of them. What you see is just as important as what you hear. We mirror each other; we explore different kinds of relationships: antagonism, hatred, love, motherhood. It will be a sort of dance.”

Kaki King’s SEI, featuring Tamar Eisenman, premieres at Buckman Performing Arts Center at St. Mary’s School, Friday, November 5th, 8 p.m., $40.

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The Blind Boys of Alabama: A Gospel Institution for Over 80 Years

The Blind Boys of Alabama (Photo by Jim Herrington)

The Blind Boys of Alabama, who still feature an original member from their earliest days in the 1930s, are a national treasure. Now known for crossing musical boundaries with their interpretations of everything from traditional gospel favorites to contemporary spiritual material by songwriters such as Prince and Tom Waits, they have appeared on recordings with artists as diverse as Lou Reed, Peter Gabriel, Bonnie Raitt, Willie Nelson, Aaron Neville, Susan Tedeschi, Ben Harper, Patty Griffin, and Taj Mahal. But it’s as a group in their own right that they really shine.

Memphians will have a chance to hear them shine on Monday, October 25, at the Buckman Performing & Fine Arts Center. Attending that, or listening to their albums, is worth more than any list of the honors, Grammy awards, and White House appearances in their track record, and one reason is their astute use of producers who’ve kept their band arrangements simple and organic.

I had the honor of speaking with singer Jimmy Carter, who was a youngster at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Deaf and Blind in Talladega, Alabama, when the group got started, and eventually became an official member of the group. We spoke about the remarkable consistency of their sound over decades of records.

Memphis Flyer: Gospel has gone in so many directions since the ’70s and ’80s, but you’ve always found good producers who stay true to your roots.

Jimmy Carter: That’s right. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t have them. We collaborate with many, many secular artists, but they have to know that we are a gospel group, we sing nothing but gospel songs. If they can’t meet that qualification, we just turn the other way. But like you say, we’ve had some good producers, and they’ve really done a magnificent job for the Blind Boys.

Booker T. Jones produced one of your albums.

Oh yeah, that was in 1992. I remember the album. Yeah, Booker T., he’s a very good friend of ours. I think we were in California. I remember we did an a cappella song, “Deep River.” I remember that well. I think we were nominated for a Grammy that year. That a cappella stuff will really blow you away!

The last album you released was Almost Home, which also had some great producers.

Yeah, I think we ended up with around four! They all got it. Yeah, they sure did.

Some of those tracks were done at Fame Recording Studio.

Oh yeah, in Muscle Shoals, that’s right. We’ve worked there before. It’s a great studio. It’s known nationwide.

You sang “Let My Mother Live” on that album. It seems very autobiographical. Did you write that?

No, Marc Cohn and John Leventhal wrote that song. I co-wrote it. I had a little something to do with it, but they wrote the song. It’s based on my life and it’s pretty accurate. I used to pray to God that he would let my mother live till I got grown. And he not only let her live, he let her live until she was 103 years old!

She must have been living right.

Evidently she was!

She must have been extremely proud to see how far you took your gift of music.

Yes, she was very proud. She didn’t visit much, but when we came to Birmingham she would always come out.

Did she have any idea that you would become so devoted to music when you started at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Deaf and Blind?

No, no. None whatsoever. As a matter of fact, none of us did when we started out. We weren’t looking for no accolades or nothing like that. We just wanted to get out and sing gospel music. And when we started out, we had nothing but an old hollow box guitar. That’s all we had. As time went on, we got drums, bass, guitar, and all that stuff.

I know you didn’t officially join the Blind Boys of Alabama until the ’80s. But you were at the same school from very early on?

Yes, I met them at the school. I was singing with them at that time, too, while they were in school. But when they left school in 1944, my mother told me that she wasn’t going to let me go. I was too young. So she sent me back to school.

That must have been hard for you to accept.

It was! I wanted to go with them, but she wouldn’t let me go. [laughs]

But you did go on to sing with other groups.

Oh yeah. I left school. I didn’t leave Alabama, but I left Birmingham. I was born and raised in Birmingham. That’s where I am now! But when I left school, I went to Mobile, Alabama, and I got hooked up with some guys I knew down there. And from there I went to another little city in Georgia, Columbus. That’s where the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi found me. I was privileged to sing with them for about 15 years.

Both groups were known as The Five Blind Boys. Did the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi and the Five Blind Boys of Alabama have a similar approach?

Yes, we were very similar.

It must be bittersweet now that Clarence Fountain and others from the original group have passed away.

Yeah. I’m the only one singing now, the only one that’s left. So it is kind of bittersweet. But I’m glad that I’m able to carry on the name. God is still good to me. And I was very fortunate, because everyone who’s in the group now is a good singer, and a good listener.

Good musicianship and good listening go hand in hand.

Yes! So when I step down and pass the torch, I think I can pass it on in good faith.

Do you have a personal favorite of all the songs you sing?

I have a couple, but our signature song is “Amazing Grace.” We do that every night. We’ll be doing that in Memphis, too. We’ve been there many, many times. I love the good soul food there. So I’m looking forward to going somewhere and getting me a good meal when I get there.

The Blind Boys of Alabama perform at the Buckman Performing & Fine Arts Center on Monday, October 25, 7 p.m. $45

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Swedish Jam Factory Brings Music and Tap Dance Show to Buckman

Swedish Jam Factory — formerly Swedish Gun Factory — will make its debut theatrical performance in Memphis at Buckman Performing Arts Center at St. Mary’s Episcopal School this weekend.

The duo, which consists of Thomas Bergstig and Isaac Middleton, tap dances while singing and playing musical instruments.

They formed the group four years ago, but this is the first time they’ve performed their more-than-hour-long show in a theatrical setting in Memphis, Middleton says.

Carla McDonald

He and Bergstig sing and play several instruments, including guitar, piano, banjo, and mandolin, and employ a range of musical styles from classical to punk rock while they’re tapping.

In 2016, they released an album, Chris Raines, which features their original music.

Describing the Buckman show, Middleton says, “The numbers are basically an accumulation of all of the material that we have made over the last four years.”

The show will feature their original material as well as covers, which range from The Beatles to the Norwegian band A-ha. They also will perform movie and Broadway standards. And classical pieces, Middleton says. “Taking a nod to certain composers like Mozart and Beethoven.”

Bergstig, a native of Stockholm, Sweden, got into musical theater when he was 21. He and some friends formed a tap dancing group called JEERK. Like Swedish Jam Factory, the members of JEERK played musical instruments while they danced.

In 2009, JEERK got a gig in Branson, Missouri. Bergstig stayed after he met Memphis singer Alexis Grace at the Andy Williams Theater. He eventually moved to Memphis, where he and Grace were married. Bergstig taught tap dancing and, later, he became Playhouse on the Square’s music director.

Middleton, who was born in Harlan, Kentucky, but grew up in Chihuahua, Mexico, became fascinated with tap dancing when he was 15 after seeing the movie Singin’ in the Rain.

He moved to Memphis in 2016 to appear in the Playhouse on the Square production of Kiss Me Kate.

After meeting Bergstig on a friend’s porch, the two began writing music and developing tap dance routines, Middleton says. Swedish Gun Factory was formed shortly after.

They wanted a name people would strongly react to. A “Swedish gun factory” was something that wouldn’t exist, Bergstig says. “Coming from a country where people don’t have guns, we do not have such a thing as mass shootings,” he says. “Of course, every now and then the shooting happens. It’s nothing like in America.”

In 2017, Bergstig and Grace moved to Los Angeles, but Bergstig and Middleton continued to perform in Swedish Gun Factory. Middleton moved to Los Angeles in 2018.

The duo appeared on Sweden’s Got Talent, a Swedish show similar to America’s Got Talent, in 2017. “Through that we got some steam going,” Middleton says.

About two years ago, they substituted “Jam” for “Gun” because of “the political climate surrounding gun violence,” Middleton says. “‘Jam’ felt like a good way to go. It best encompasses, more or less, what we do.”

Asked their long-term goal for the band, Bergstig says, “Las Vegas would be perfect, but it doesn’t have to be an ultimate goal. It could definitely be something that would be worth aiming at. I think we both are open to what might happen. I would love to do Broadway.”

“I definitely see us going that route,” Middleton says. “It’s funny ’cause we’ve been making all these short-term goals, but I don’t think I’ve even thought about long-term goals.”

Swedish Jam Factory will perform Friday, January 31st, at Buckman Performing Arts Center at 60 Perkins Ext. Tickets are $28.

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Across the Borderline: Gaby Moreno at the Buckman

Music crosses borders more easily than bodies do. That’s why the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” grooves to a Cuban beat, why The Beatles’ early records are chock-full of covers of songs by Motown and Sun Studio artists. “It’s a cliché, but music really is the universal language,” says Guatemalan-born singer-songwriter Gaby Moreno on a recent phone call. We spoke in advance of her concert at the Buckman Performing Arts Center at St. Mary’s, Friday, January 17th.

She would know. The genre-bending performer can sing in four languages — English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese — and her music is tinged with the sounds of blues, jazz, soul, and R&B. Though Moreno is quick to point out that her singing in French is just phonetic — she doesn’t speak the language — she is nonetheless a poster child for the many ways music acts as a bridge.

When she was a child, Moreno’s parents took her to New York to see Broadway musicals and opera. While she was there, she discovered the blues. “That changed everything for me,” Moreno says. She heard Koko Taylor’s “Wang Dang Doodle” and, she says, “I just went down the rabbit hole after that.” Now, years later, music has continued to be a catalyst for connections for Moreno. On her most recent album, 2019’s ¡Spangled!, Moreno collaborated with famed arranger and composer Van Dyke Parks and with Jackson Browne on the album’s opener, a cover of Ry Cooder’s “Across the Borderline.”

Moreno agrees when I suggest that, in 2019, opening an album with “Across the Borderline,” a song co-written by Memphis’ Jim Dickinson, is making an indisputably concrete statement: “Oh, yes. Absolutely. We completely wanted to make that statement,” she says. “That’s a song that [Van Dyke Parks] introduced to me. I hadn’t heard it before, and he actually played on that song that was recorded in the 1980s for the movie The Border with Jack Nicholson. It’s a song written by Ry Cooder and John Hiatt and Jim Dickinson. It’s just such a beautiful song. It’s heartbreaking, and it really speaks to the times that we are living in. I thought it would be a good statement to make, especially because I’m an immigrant and it’s a topic that concerns me.” She adds, “It’s something that, for me, will never completely go away. … I definitely feel a sense of responsibility, especially being Guatemalan.

“I want to be a voice for those who do not have one. And be a voice of hope, really. That’s all I want to do.”

On ¡Spangled!, Moreno is indubitably a voice for hope. Her voice, brimming over with warmth and strength, is lifted up by Parks’ lush arrangements. The album is a cornucopia of sounds and influences, tonally an example of what can be achieved through a mixture of diverse ideas. On “The Immigrants,” Moreno sings “America, remember Ellis Island. We all came here to take the plunge.” The lyrics are bolstered by triumphant instrumentation, giving the song a hopeful air.

“I’m so honored to have worked with him,” Moreno says of Parks, her collaborator on ¡Spangled!, who has worked with Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, Joanna Newsom, U2, Rufus Wainwright, and others. “We found each other. We met about 11 years ago in L.A. through mutual friends, musicians. We were both part of this small, intimate concert. We talked about the love that we have for music from Latin America, and just kind of naturally he asked me to send him something.

“Then he sent me ideas; I sent him mine. And we ended up with this collection of 10 songs. But this was like 10 years ago. I’ve been saying that this record has been 10 years in the making.”

The decade-in-the-making collaboration with Parks — and with Jackson Browne, who sings on “Across the Borderline” — was made possible, in part, by connections Moreno made while living in L.A. “When I was living in Guatemala, I got offered a record contract, and the label was in Los Angeles, and that’s why I gravitated toward that city,” Moreno explains. “But I was always thinking of New York for some reason. I really loved musicals.” Still, Moreno explains, “I love being [in L.A.]; I think it’s the right place for me to be, not just because of the music that I do, but also the community that thrives there. It’s one that I’m so blessed to be a part of.”

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When I ask Moreno how she decides in what language to sing, she makes it clear it’s more a natural impulse than an intellectual decision. “It’s just whatever comes to my head immediately. If there’s a lyric that comes to me in Spanish, then I’ll know the rest of the song will be in Spanish,” Moreno explains. “Having said that, I have written songs that are in Spanglish — so I’ll start a verse in English, and then I’ll just throw another verse in Spanish in there. I’ve been doing that more and more lately, and I find that a bit amusing,” she continues. “I am a huge fan of French music and Portuguese music — and just music in general,” Moreno continues. “I don’t care if they’re singing to me in whatever language. If the music speaks to me, that’s everything.”

And Moreno certainly has an ongoing dialogue with the music. It speaks to her, and her music, over the course of six albums and in a multitude of styles, continues to speak to listeners. “At first, it took me a little bit to find my own voice and find my sound, but I feel like at the end it’s just good music. I don’t like to have all these labels,” Moreno says. “Whether it’s blues, jazz, soul or folk, Americana, country, in a way they are all kind of related. I’ve had fun playing with all of them and seeing the possibility.

“I’ve been singing since I was 7 years old. That’s been my main thing,” Moreno remembers. “But when I picked up a guitar, I knew that I could write my own things, that I could accompany myself live. That was very liberating, and I loved it. I just love having that instrument as a tool for my songwriting,” Moreno says. “And also I really enjoy performing live with it.”

She’ll get a chance to Friday, when the lush arrangements of ¡Spangled! are reimagined for a more intimate, though still lively performance by her four-piece band. Moreno’s touring band, with whom she’s performed for some time, includes bass, drums, and two guitars, with one of those guitars played by Moreno. She says that though the band will touch on ¡Spangled!, much of the performance will be from 2016’s Illusión, an album with a more-stripped down quartet sound steeped in blues and jazz. “Pale Bright Lights,” a swing jazz meets honky-tonk jam, seems especially well-suited to performance as a four-piece band.

Strictly speaking, the upcoming concert at the Buckman won’t be Moreno’s first time singing in Memphis, though it will be her first official concert here. “I was invited to sing at St. Jude Children’s Hospital. It was just an acoustic concert,” Moreno says of her first time in the Bluff City, several years ago. This Friday’s concert, though, will mark the first performance with her full band in Memphis. “You’ll get the full show,” she says.

An Evening with Gaby Moreno at the Buckman Performing Arts Center at St. Mary’s, Friday, January 17th, 8 p.m. $35