Check out this great backstage footage of PHJB's rehearsal and subsequent performance of "Some Cold Rainy Day" with Cory Chisel at this year's Newport Folk Festival!
Showing posts with label cory chisel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cory chisel. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
"PRESERVATION" In American Songwriter
Preservation Hall
Tribute Album Boasts All-Star CastBy Matt Popkin on February 18th, 2010
1500 grammar school kids are up in the aisles dancing and stomping their feet. When the music stops, they beg and plead for one more song, just one more song, please! The type of music that’s got them so worked up? Not hip-hop. Not rock. Why, it’s not even a little bit Top 40.
It’s…jazz?
If you’re surprised by the kids’ response to music that’s older than their grandparents, maybe you shouldn’t be. Ben Jaffe sure isn’t.
“That’s what I think is so great about New Orleans music. Over all these decades, it’s still entertaining.”
Not only is Jaffe the owner of Preservation Hall, the famed jazz club, but he’s also the tuba player in the legendary house band, which has played such notable venues—grammar schools excluded—as Saturday Night Live and Carnegie Hall. Oh, and Jaffe grew up hanging around the historic venue, which isn’t surprising considering his father and mother were the ones who founded it.
So when he says that the new Preservation Hall benefit album is “spectacular,” you can probably take him at his word. “I don’t think we could’ve made a better album,” said Jaffe. “It was that way because everyone did the album for the right reasons.”
“Everyone” includes artists such as Tom Waits, Steve Earle, Louis Armstrong and Merle Haggard, who all contributed to the nineteen-track album full of jazz staples that’s being released February 16th. All the songs were recorded with the house band and at Preservation Hall, which is located right off Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. The jazz club takes a no-frills approach—there’s no dance floor or food or drink served inside—and puts the focus squarely on the music, drawing standing-room only crowds most of the nights it’s open.
However, just a few years ago, there was some doubt as to if the crowds would ever return. When Hurricane Katrina hit in August of 2005, Preservation Hall was severely damaged and stayed closed for months before its triumphant reopening on its 45th anniversary in April of 2006. When asked about what New Orleans was like post-hurricane, Jaffe says, “I had this fear of the scene coming back differently and not having the people there who gave it its color...”
Monday, January 11, 2010
"PRESERVATION" Preview #8: Appearing with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band - MR. CORY CHISEL
February 16, 2010 - PRESERVATION: an album benefiting Preservation Hall & The Preservation Hall Music Outreach Program hits the streets! (Best Mardi Gras Ever?) While we wait with baited breath, we share with you these previews of the 19 amazing tracks and special guests that make this latest offering from the Preservation Hall Jazz Band so very special. In this installment...
CORY CHISEL
Like many artists before him, Cory Chisel first connected with the power of song – and the spellbinding possibilities of live performance – through the music he heard in church. The gospel’s rich vernacular of loss and redemption also informed his innate poetic sense and lyrical range. “For most of my life,” he says, “my dad was a Baptist minister, so I learned a lot about being a showman, and I learned a lot about music. Many of the hymns from church still are the most beautiful songs I know. I'm thankful for growing up where stories and the pursuit of happiness were on everybody's mind. I think I’m still trying to achieve the same euphoria I felt at a very young age, when I would be completely t aken over by these rhythms and these sounds and these stories.”
An equally potent influence on Chisel’s worldview and wellspring ofmusical storytelling is the American heartland from which he hails. Based in Appleton, WI, where he’s lived for almost twenty years. His family’s roots, on both sides, reach about 500 miles north and west to Babbitt, Minnesota and neighboring Ely, beside the pristine Boundary Waters, the largest wilderness preserve east of the Rockies. The vast, open spaces and clear, deep lakes of the wild north are ingrained in Chisel’s songs, which sound as if they come to him as naturally as breathing.
In an upbringing where he was largely sheltered from pop music, Chisel’s fluency with music comes in great measure from always having played it with his family, for as long as he can remember. One of his grandfathers had nine brothers and, he notes, “they’re all great guitar players, and half of them play harmonica too.” He also cites his Uncle Roger, a blues musician – whose epic record collection exposed him to Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Robert Johnson, Johnny Cash, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan and countless others – as a chief source of inspiration. “He was a musical force,” says Cory. “I always felt like I possessed something similar, that I understood the exorcism I saw him receiving through music.”
PHOTOS OF CORY CHISEL @ PRESERVATION HALL BY ERIKA GOLDRING
THE SONG:
"Some Cold Rainy Day"
(Traditional)
Cory Chisel - lead vocals
Adriel Harris - backing vocals
Mark Braud - trumpet
Rickie Monie - piano
Ben Jaffe - tuba
Clint Maedgen - slapstick / tambourine
Cory Chisel appears courtesy of Black Seal
CORY CHISEL
Like many artists before him, Cory Chisel first connected with the power of song – and the spellbinding possibilities of live performance – through the music he heard in church. The gospel’s rich vernacular of loss and redemption also informed his innate poetic sense and lyrical range. “For most of my life,” he says, “my dad was a Baptist minister, so I learned a lot about being a showman, and I learned a lot about music. Many of the hymns from church still are the most beautiful songs I know. I'm thankful for growing up where stories and the pursuit of happiness were on everybody's mind. I think I’m still trying to achieve the same euphoria I felt at a very young age, when I would be completely t aken over by these rhythms and these sounds and these stories.” An equally potent influence on Chisel’s worldview and wellspring ofmusical storytelling is the American heartland from which he hails. Based in Appleton, WI, where he’s lived for almost twenty years. His family’s roots, on both sides, reach about 500 miles north and west to Babbitt, Minnesota and neighboring Ely, beside the pristine Boundary Waters, the largest wilderness preserve east of the Rockies. The vast, open spaces and clear, deep lakes of the wild north are ingrained in Chisel’s songs, which sound as if they come to him as naturally as breathing.
In an upbringing where he was largely sheltered from pop music, Chisel’s fluency with music comes in great measure from always having played it with his family, for as long as he can remember. One of his grandfathers had nine brothers and, he notes, “they’re all great guitar players, and half of them play harmonica too.” He also cites his Uncle Roger, a blues musician – whose epic record collection exposed him to Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Robert Johnson, Johnny Cash, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan and countless others – as a chief source of inspiration. “He was a musical force,” says Cory. “I always felt like I possessed something similar, that I understood the exorcism I saw him receiving through music.”PHOTOS OF CORY CHISEL @ PRESERVATION HALL BY ERIKA GOLDRINGTHE SONG:
"Some Cold Rainy Day"
(Traditional)
Cory Chisel - lead vocals
Adriel Harris - backing vocals
Mark Braud - trumpet
Rickie Monie - piano
Ben Jaffe - tuba
Clint Maedgen - slapstick / tambourine
Cory Chisel appears courtesy of Black Seal
As Performed by The Georgia Cotton Pickers in 1930:
"Born Again," by Cory Chisel:
CORY CHISEL - OFFICIAL WEBSITE
"Born Again," by Cory Chisel:
CORY CHISEL - OFFICIAL WEBSITE
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