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The subdudes
Saturday · Madison Theater
Once upon a drier time, being from New Orleans was just plain cool, but in the post-Katrina world, calling the Big Easy home is a windswept badge of courage even if your life was largely untouched by the devastation. The musical response to Katrina has been overwhelming, particularly among the city’s native and adopted sons and daughters, and some would note that the speed and intensity with which it was delivered was more effective than the government that has been charged with serving and protecting us all.
The latest musical tribute to the resilience and fortitude of the people of New Orleans comes from the subdudes, a homegrown quintet that has been plying their diversely swinging brand of Soul, R&B, Blues, Gospel, Country and rootsy Rock for much of the past two decades. The subdudes’ dark tribute to the survivors of Katrina is “Poor Man’s Paradise,” the first single from their new album, Street Symphony, a strong set of songs examining the band’s deeply held political and social beliefs.
The ‘dudes began in 1987 as a side project from the more raucous Continental Drifters which featured Tommy Malone, John Magnie, Johnny Ray Allen and Jimmy Messa. After complaints that the Drifters were too loud, they reconvened with the idea of being “more subdued,” and the subdudes were born. The addition of drummer Steve Amedee solidified both the lineup and the sound, and the quintet quickly became a New Orleans favorite. Then they relocated to Fort Collins, Col., signed a deal with Atlantic and recorded their self-titled debut in 1989.
After 1991’s Lucky and an aborted session with famed producer Glyn Johns, the ‘dudes were dropped from Atlantic, then picked up by Windham Hill imprint High Street, which released 1994’s Annunciation, an album that included a handful of the Johns’ recordings. After 1996’s Primitive Streak, perhaps the ‘dudes’ most popular album to date, the band decided to call it a day — Malone and Allen were working a side gig called Tiny Town and everyone decided it was time for a break.
Six years later, after a number of one-off Mardi Gras/Jazzfest reunions, the original members’ new bands merged to become a sextet they called the Dudes. Within a year, they had scaled back to a quintet and returned to being known as the subdudes, which led to bigger gigs and a new contract with Back Porch, Virgin’s rootsy imprint. Street Symphony is the band’s third album for Back Porch (following 2004’s excellent Miracle Mule and 2006’s presciently titled Behind the Levee, written and recorded before the devastation of Katrina) and proof that the subdudes’ hearts still beat a mighty rhythm that was born in Nawlins. (Brian Baker)
Dar Williams
Sunday · The Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center
Truth be told, Dar Williams never wanted to be a singer/songwriter because she never wanted to be on stage. Although she took guitar lessons at age 9 and began writing songs at 11, she found her passion for theater stronger than her desire for making music and eventually studied theater and religion at Wesleyan University. After college Williams moved to Boston, scored a gig as stage manager for the city’s Opera Company and rediscovered her love of songwriting, which she practiced in her free time. After recording a pair of demo tapes in the early ’90s, Williams began trying to break into the notoriously tight Boston Folk scene, where she overcame her crippling stage fright by playing open mics and coffeehouses.
In 1993, Williams recorded and self-released her debut album, The Honesty Room, filled with the detailed narrative songwriting that would be the hallmark of her subsequent recordings (the album was re-released by indie Waterbug in 1994). In 1996, Williams released her Razor & Tie debut, Mortal City, which earned her a flood of great reviews and an opening slot with Joan Baez, who was so taken with Williams’ songs that she subsequently covered a number of them. The success of Mortal City led R&T to re-release Honesty Room a second time, which was followed by the astonishing End of the Summer in 1996. Summer cemented Williams’ reputation as an indie Folk star and became a smash on Folk and college radio. The following year saw Williams join forces with fellow singer/songwriters Richard Shindell and Lucy Kaplansky to create Cry Cry Cry, a vocal harmony group formed as an homage to the trio’s favorite Folk songwriters.
In the past seven years, Williams has released a string of brilliant studio albums — 2000’s The Green World, 2003’s The Beauty of the Rain and 2005’s powerful My Better Self (featuring her fabulous covers of Neil Young’s “Everybody Knows This is Nowhere and Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb”) and a highly regarded live album, 2001’s Out There Live. In addition to her extensive charity work to benefit environmental and prisoners’-rights groups, the multi-talented Williams has co-authored a guide to finding natural food stores on the road titled The Tofu Tollbooth, and wrote two tween novels, 2004’s Amalee (published the year she and her husband welcomed their newborn son) and its 2006 sequel, Lights, Camera, Amalee.
Last month marked another first for Williams with the release of Live at Bearsville Theater, her first concert DVD, which features her solo and with a backing band, as well as a brand new song, “The Easy Way.” To hear a single Dar Williams song is to be touched deeply by an enormously gifted songwriter and that’s the stuff that lifelong fanhood is made of. (Brian Baker)
This article appears in Sep 5-11, 2007.
