Our exciting travels continue in Europe this spring and summer. We're playing 2 shows coming up in Barcelona with some amazing bands (see below). We have some other shows in the Netherlands and France that we'll be announcing very soon.
We're back from a whirlwind trip to the amazing Ecuador Jazz Festival 2014 where we kicked off the festival at the Teatro Sucre in the historic center of Quito. The trip and the crowd were amazing. It was a seated theater, but midway through the first song, tail feathers lifted and started to shake until the last note.
Up next: we're supporting a ridiculously amazing and talented set of musicians at Carnegie Hall in just two short weeks, playing some of Paul Simon's hits (as well as obscurities) with legends such as Allen Toussaint, Sam Moore, Judy Collins, Bob Mould, John Doe (of X), Angelique Kidjo, Mike Gordon (Phish) and Bettye LaVette and others.
After that, Primavera Festival in Barcelona in May, followed by a three week run as part of the Daptone Super Soul Revue at some of the top festivals in Europe including Jazz Fest Wien, North Sea Jazz Festival, Rock Werchter, Vienna Jazz Festival, Jazz à Vienne, Eurockeennes, and many others. Stay tuned.
We've been asked to serve as the house band for the Paul Simon Tribute at Carnegie Hall, NYC on March 31, 2014. The concert is a benefit organized by Michael Dorf of NYC's City Winery benefiting groups who do critical work promoting and developing musical training and audience opportunities for youth around New York City. These groups include: The American Symphony Orchestra's Music Notes, Church Street School for Music & Art, Young Audiences New York, FIKS (Fixing Instruments for Kids in Schools), Little Kids Rock, and The Center for Arts Education.
The list of performers and collaborators is pretty amazing, from rock to folk to soul, punk and funk. Each of the performers will be performing a Paul Simon piece from his 57+ year career. We'll be backing some but not all of the performers for the concert, so it should be interesting, fun, and adventurous as is the case any time we step outside of our typical musical environment. The list of confirmed performers includes: Josh Ritter, Joe Henry, Bob Mould, Ben Sollee, Dan Wilson, Bettye LaVette, Joy Williams, Brett Dennen, Madeleine Peyroux & Jon Herington, Allen Toussaint, Judy Collins, Isobel Campell & Andy Cabic, Antibalas, and others to be announced.
If you can't make it to Carnegie Hall, there's also a warm-up concert the night before (on March 30) at City Winery with some, but not all of the performers from the Carnegie performance the following night.
.