Neighbor News
Sept. 27, Sat. : YELLOWCAKE + CUERVO JONES + COMIC TALES OF TRAGIC HEARTBREAK @ THE WAY STATION
The Way Station, 683 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn, NY. waystationbk.com. All events are a strongly suggested $5 donation.
8pm – Yellowcake
Genre: Latin/funk/soul
For fans of: Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, Alice Russell, Jamiroquai, Ceu, Orgone, Lake Street Dive
Diversity is the key ingredient to the Yellowcake sound. With music that transcends culture, style and language, this NYC band is putting a global pulse on the city’s music scene. Yellowcake officially formed in 2009 and today is a group of individuals who share a passion for creating original music that draws on their different backgrounds and musical influences. From the cross-genre melding of Latin rhythms with funk grooves to the group’s unique combination of musicians, you never know what you might see, hear, or feel at a Yellowcake show. Come vibe.
www.facebook.com/eatyellowcake
www.yellowcakemusic.com
https://www.youtube.com/user/YellowcakeMusic
9pm – Cuervo Jones
Who is Cuervo Jones?
Combining catchy melodies, driving rhythms, and powerful guitar, this dance punk power trio exploded on NYC scene in 2013. Pulling from the best of their favorite bands: the Ramones, Arctic Monkeys, and the Strokes, Cuervo Jones will be in your head long after the last cymbal crash and barre chord have faded out into the night.
http://cuervojones.bandcamp.com/
10pm – Comic Tales of Tragic Heartbreak
You must not try to make love definite. It is the divine accident of life.”
So said Sherwood Anderson in his great book, Winesburg, Ohio. Comic Tales of Tragic Heartbreak knows all about accidents. Of birth. Of place and strange times. Of music heard through screen windows in summer, of lonely faces in discos while blizzards raged outside in the Northern night.
What’s a young criminal to do? Read every book he can get his hands on, obsess over record club 45s, play the theme song to MASH over and over on a rented trumpet, lose a thousand fistfights till he finally wins one. Ride a stolen bike, a bus, a train, get out.
Years later, redemption at last. Robert Whaley is just about where he should be. Compared to everyone from David Byrne to Leonard Cohen, he’s been welcoming audiences into a private world of enchantment and debauchery, and oh the influences are clear: Anderson (words and emotions), Fossee (dance and controlled hysteria), poetry (Artaud and
O’Hara).
Whaley had a lot of practice riding the line between rock n’ roll, performance art, and stand up comedy as the front man for The Niagaras, a legendary force of Manhattan’s live music scene of 80s and 90s, when a wild front man could dance on bar tops and swing from the
rafters without getting banned, except for when he was:
“Lunacy? Spectacle? And music too??”- Rene Chun, New York Times
No wonder the attraction included a “celebrity” following – everyone from Ethan Hawke to
Kevin Spacey to Gwyneth Paltrow to the good people in Anthrax.
As a songwriter, Whaley has covered a lot of ground and has shown range through a number of outlets. He cowrote and recorded the original score for the feature film, Joe the King, starring Val Kilmer, and has also written for the stage –his rock musical Wrong Way Up ran off-Broadway at NYC’s Zipper Theater. He is currently working with playwright Matthew Freeman on a musical adaptation of the great 1908 novel, Buried Alive – now titled Selling Sacred Objects.
Meat Market Lullaby, the second album from Comic Tales of Tragic Heartbreak, reflects an obsession with pre-1974 soul, filled with nuance and tender bitter sweetness. Jazz pianist Mara Rosenbloom sets the tone with her loose/attacking, touch on grand piano and Rhodes. Pete O’Connell lends a sophisticated sense of drive and counterpoint as both bassist and co-arranger. Whaley’s long-time collaborator, lead guitarist and singer, Tony Grimaldi, shines with masterful harmonies and chunky guitar lines. Chris Schultz, percussionist with Blue Man Group, shimmers, cascades and of course, rocks.
Recorded live in the studio with a minimum of overdubs, a maximum of misfit charm, and this: “Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apples.” (Sherwood Anderson, again.)
www.comictalesoftragicheartbreak.com
