response 26 of 73:

Nov 19 15:12 UTC 1998

On January 14th, at 8:00, Cry, Cry, Cry, formed by Dar Williams and Richard
Shindell and Lucy Kaplanski will be performing, with Cliff Eberhardt
opening.  Tickets are $20, and will be going on sale most likely the day
after THanksgiving....(or shortly thereafter....just depends on ticketmaster
and the holliday).

I'll be there with bells and whistles and lots of people in tow. :)

response 28 of 73:

Oct 21 20:36 UTC 1999

Reviving this fossil item....
 
There are a few shows of interest in early November:
 
November 2: Rickie Lee Jones.  I can't remember who here was interested in 
   hunting down an old Rickie Lee Jones EP.  Downside: tix are $30, which 
   is skyrocket high for the Ark.  I won't be there, but I'm mentioning 
   it for whoever was interested.
 
November 3: Del McCoury.  With the death of Bill Monroe, it seems that 
   the mantle of "Keeper of the old -fashioned Bluegrass Flame" has 
   passed to Del McCoury.  I've enjoyed his band on recordings.

November 4: Battlefield Band.  A grizzled veteran band of Scottish
   folk revivalists, with some contemporary instrumentation.  I've seen 
   them maybe a half-dozen times over the decades.  Last time I saw them 
   they were performing mostly new material, having retired their 80s
   material.  I hope to be there, they've been lots of fun over the years.

response 30 of 73:

Oct 21 21:03 UTC 1999

The online Ark schedule is :  http://www.a2ark.org
It requires a Version 3 browser and refuses to work with lynx.

response 32 of 73:

Oct 22 02:15 UTC 1999

I'll be going to the Rickie Lee Jones show. She's awesome. It's not an
Ark show; it's a Prism Productions show at the Ark. Thus the high price.

response 34 of 73:

Oct 29 05:24 UTC 1999

November 21: Susana Baca, who some of you know from David Byrne's compilation
"The Soul of Black Peru."

response 36 of 73:

Feb 2 20:45 UTC 2000

OK, after a long dry spell we have an Ark show I'm enthusiastic about:
The Mollys, Tuesday Feb. 8.  And unfortunately this conflicts with 
the Grexpedition to see Dr. Strangelove...   Anyway, the Mollys did a 
free show at the Ark about four years ago and it was a ton of fun.
The band is fronted by an Irish-American woman and a Mexican-American
woman, and they bounce back and forth between Irish and Tex-Mex, with
loads of accordion.
 
The Mollys have a web page at: http://www.azstarnet.com/~sorenso/
There are some sound clips in there but I have not tried them out.

response 38 of 73:

Feb 9 06:30 UTC 2000

((... and I got a whopping all-day sinus headache and didn't get to 
the Mollys show after all.  Rats, phooey, whine whine.))

response 40 of 73:

Mar 29 15:54 UTC 2000

The Ark sounds like a live music venue that just closed down here in
Gainesville, FL. It was called the Covered Dish, and it was -great-. Really
a wide variety of artists came through there, from national acts like the
Allman Brothers and The Dirty Dozen Brass Band to lesser know nationally
touring acts like Medeski Martin and Wood and the String Cheese Incident to
regional bands to Unkle Funkle, a cajun funk blues band, who i occasionally
sit in with (the guys in the band live down the street from me and i've been
friends with them for 3 years). 

The owner of the Covered Dish, after over 20 years of bringing wonderful live
music to Gainesville, decided to get out of the club owner buisness. He tried
for 2 years to get someone to buy it who would continue the live music
tradition, to no avail. It will soon reopen with a new owner not as a live
music venue, but as a top 40 dance club. Very sad.

response 42 of 73:

Mar 30 04:41 UTC 2000

I'm carrying around too many unreviewed shows in my head.  I had better
empty one out to make some room.

Irene Ferrara & Oliver Schroer, "Take A Chance Tuesdays," March 28 2000:
  
Ferrara sang much more than I was expecting, almost entirely in 
Spanish.  She's spent quite a few years in America, so her English 
was as good as yours, if heavily accented.  She did a couple of 
songs in English, including one on the little "quattro?" 
four-string ukelele-like thing which she claimed was heavily 
influenced by hip-hop, where she did the percussive bits 
vocally.  
 
Her guitar style was fairly basic, and since I didn't understand
the Spanish language songs I felt I was missing quite a bit.
 
At the end of her set she brought out fiddler Oliver Schroer to 
fill out the sound some more.  On the last track they both turned
their string instruments into percussion instruments, slapping away
at the soundboxes.
 
Oliver Schroer turns out not to be the Celtic fiddler I was 
expecting, at least not this week.  He seems to be somewhere out
near the intersection of New Acoustic Music, Aaron Copland and 
Robyn Holcomb, perhaps?  On his opening track, he laid down a 
Cajun-influenced melody line on his digital recorder, and then 
he put it into a loop and played variations against it.  
He used that trick a number of times, to good effect.
Another piece was an impressionistic tone poem about his 
childhood near a river in rural Canada, with some sounds 
suggesting bug noises.  His encore was titled "The Frank
Zappa Reel," though I don't know Zappa's work well enough to 
tell if it really deserves that name.
 
The new recording he was flogging, "O2," is a 2-cd set of 
solo violin music, presumably electronically enhanced as the 
concert was.  I'll review that later, I hope.

I couldn't describe anything Schroer played as Celtic music, 
so it's probably just as well that none of the  Celtic music
fans I tried to get to this show turned up.   But I really
enjoyed the evening, both the music and Schroer's dry 
Canadian banter with the audience, and I'll be happy to pay
for a ticket the next time he's in town.

response 44 of 73:

Aug 6 06:22 UTC 2000

Some upcoming Ark shows which are mildly tempting to me:  I'm not 
enthusiastically endorsing them but I might turn up, and some of you 
like the Celtic stuff.
 
wednesday, august 9:  Carreg Lafar.  They have a web page at 
  http://www.carreglafar.co.uk  and they seem to be a group of 
  acoustic mostly-traditionalists from Wales.  The reviews they have 
  put up on the web page sound promising.

friday, august 11:  They used to just be The Paperboys, but now they are 
  going to be Tom Landa And The Paperboys.  Celtic folk-rock from Vancouver;
  they were pleasant enough when I saw them a couple years ago, and 
  they might appeal to the Great Big Sea fans.  Items I have read about 
  them recently report they are now mixing in a Spaish element in their
  sound.  ???    

tuesday, august 15: Lunasa.  I know nothing about this band except what's 
  in the Ark calendar.  Bass player Trevor Hutchinson has been spectacular
  when I have seen him  play behind Sharon Shannon, so I could go to this 
  show for him alone.  This is an all-instrumental group.

wednesday, august 23:  The Mollys.   I have loved this band for years.
  They were fronted by an Irish-American woman and a Mexican-American
  woman, and they played Celtic Tex-Mex and it was brilliant.  However, 
  earlier this year the Hispanic woman (Catherine Zavala) left the 
  band, so I don't know what to expect for this show.
 
thursday, august 31: The Del McCoury Band.  With the passing of Bill Monroe, 
  Del McCoury has become the senior statesman of bluegrass music.

There's *even more* Irish music scheduled in August.  I remember when the 
Ark would go into semi-hibernation in August, but this year the schedule is 
packed.  http://www.a2ark.org

response 46 of 73:

Aug 6 17:41 UTC 2000

Altan seems to tour every year.  Don't know about 
Lucinda.
I don't have any hard news.

response 48 of 73:

Aug 9 18:01 UTC 2000

For happyboy: there is an official Altan web site at http://www.altan.ie
The tour schedule is under the "live" link.  You might use the 
"contact the band" e-mail address and ask to receive tour schedules.

Right now they are in Europe; they were over for some big Canadian 
folk festivals, and a show at the Hollywood Bowl, in July.
Altan may be getting too popular to be booked at the Ark any more,
I'm not sure.

There's also a http://www.lucindawilliams.net   but it seems to 
overemphasize flash and underemphasize working with one-year-old 
copies of Netscape; there is a link for tour info but it doesn't work
for me.