It’s no secret that New Haven is a great place to hear live music pretty much all the time, whether you like bigger-name shows at College Street, the rarified air of a performance at Woolsey Hall, a basement show, an outdoor concert on the Green, or a club that’s still sticky and sweaty after midnight. One of the real pleasures of reporting on the arts in town is that it is part of our job to experience all of that, often. We see a side of New Haven that doesn’t come out as much during the day, a city that knows how to relax, how to party, and how to create of a real community of music.
In going over the shows we’ve seen this year, we had too many to choose from. If we’d put this list together on a different day, we might have completely different choices. Hawkins Jazz Collective at their long-running spot on the Owl Shop’s Calendar? Phat Astronaut’s anniversary show at Pacific Standard Tavern? The Lost Bayou Ramblers making everybody two-step all night at Cafe Nine? Yes, yes, and yes.
But in the end, we had to pick something, and the list below exemplifies how New Haven’s music really reflects the city, its hardships, its politics, and the life that bursts from every corner to show up on its stages, pretty much every night of the week.
Brian Slattery’s Picks
The Mdou Moctar show in September at Lyric Hall stands out as maybe the most fun I had at a show this year. Part of the reason is personal: I love African music of all varieties, and love that New Haven is the kind of town that will support touring African bands, whether it’s the legendary Thomas Mapfumo from Zimbabwe, Krar Collective from Ethiopia, or Tal National from Niger (who are returning to Cafe Nine in February). Mdou Moctar, is a Tuareg guitarist also from Niger, following in the mode of contemporaries Tinariwen in expanding the sound of the music. The Mountain Movers performed a terrific opening set, and then ceded the stage to Moctar and his trio, who tore the roof off the place, and I was in heaven. Just as important, though, was that the show was sold out, the hall at capacity. Among the audience were seemingly a dozen bands represented in part or in full. We danced to every song and screamed in between them, and I was reminded all over again why I play music, and why it continues to be such a pleasure to write about it in New Haven.
The year started off right, however, with a show at Cafe Nine that featured soul artists Greg Sherrod and Paul Bryant Hudson. I had gone to the show because I wanted to catch Sherrod (who is playing at Cafe Nine next month), who I knew would be a dynamic, engaging performer with a hot band to back him up. Sherrod did not disappoint. But that show also marked the first time I heard Paul Bryant Hudson perform, and it was a revelation — here, a New Haven-based artist that was taking all the soul music before him, right through D’Angelo, and really making it his own. He and his band played with intense feeling and beauty, and I’ve been hooked ever since. (Full review here.)
Ceschi (Julio Ramos) has been combining hip hop, rock, folk, electronica, and God knows what else into a heady musical stew for decades now (he started young), and his 2015 album Broken Bone Ballads was on heavy rotation for me personally for months when it was released in April 15. Every now and then I get to play with him and Anonymous, Inc., the band he’s in with his brother David Ramos and keyboardist Max Heath. When he performs, Ceschi is an explosion of energy. He ranges across the room like he ranges across genres. So I jump at the chance to jump on board.
In August, Ceschi signed up to be one of a couple bands to play on the steps of First and Summerfield Methodist Church on the corner of Elm and College, in support of Marco Reyes, a Meriden resident seeking sanctuary there from deportation. The night was full of music and purpose, but really crystalized with Ceschi’s own performance, delivered mostly in Spanish and essentially unamplified to the crowd that had gathered on the street corner to listen. None of the technical limitations mattered. The performance was a cry from the heart for a little more humanity around here, and it got heard. (Full review here.)
Wadada Leo Smith is a nationally acclaimed composer and trumpeter who just happens to live in town. When he’s not playing concerts and festivals all over the country, or showing up on the cover of DownBeat, he tends to play at Firehouse 12, another gem in New Haven as a place to hear some of the best jazz and experimental music around. As part of Smith’s weekend-long Create Festival (which he is holding again here in April), he gave two concerts at Firehouse 12. A moment stands in my mind when drummer Pheeroan akLaff launched into a monstrous, slow beat. But it wasn’t slow enough for Smith. He shook his head and just started chanting the tempo he wanted. “Uh! Uh!” A long pause. “Uh! Uh!” Smiling, akLaff slowed it down, and the music around it turned into the heaviest thing I heard all year. It was gorgeous and moving, and a stunning display of what music can do when you let the audience see the strings to get it right. (Full review here.)
But in the end, going out to hear live music is about having fun, and lots of it. Just this month, a Monday night (!) at Cafe Nine delivered with a triple bill of Weakened Friends, Roz and the Rice Cakes, and the New Haven-based Quiet Giant. Weakened Friends gave us a blistering set of rock, while Roz and the Rice Cakes got spacey and electronic. Quiet Giant — a trio of Danielle Capalbo on guitar and vocals, Mark Almodovar on bass, and Jared Thompson on drums — represented New Haven with Capalbo’s originals, full of dynamics and emotion. True to the band’s name, the musicians could drop to a whisper or fill the club and beyond with their sound. It was the beginning to a night of great music. And a lot of people showed up. “Monday night,” Roz Raskin of the Rice Cakes said as she admired the health of the crowd from the stage. “New Haven, doing it right.” (Full review here.)
Karen Ponzio’s Picks
The Kindred Queer show in May, celebrating the release of the band’s long-awaited EP Child, epitomized the New Haven scene for me this year. As I wrote in the article, this event “exemplified both the variety and vibrancy of the music and musicians that the city has to offer and showed what can happen when they all come together to mark a special occasion.” On a bill that included City Streets, Country Roads with its keyboard and brass-punctuated hard rock and Dr. Caterwaul’s Cadre of Clairvoyant Claptraps’ cumbria dedicated set, Kindred Queer offered the entirety of their EP along with other lush and lovely pieces that held a capacity crowd at Cafe Nine captive and vibrated with love and friendship, including special guests and singalongs. Similar events occurred throughout the year in New Haven — including the Phat Astronaut’s one-year anniversary show as well as Liz Dellinger’s homecoming show — that kept the warm and welcoming vibe of the scene pulsing. (Full review here.)
“Should We Talk About the Government,” one of the first of numerous fundraisers held by local musicians this year, also epitomized 2017 for a different reason: It was a year that artists made their beliefs known, not just through their music, but through the causes they played the music for. Held at Best Video in January (with funds going to Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and IRIS), the “group therapy session,” as organizer Nancy Tatsapaugh put it, became a night of expression and moving meditations on the current state of the country through the lens of musicians who offered two tunes each, one cover and one original. From Jeff Cedrone’s and Tommy Hogan’s stunning instrumental cover of Peter Gabriel’s “Biko,” to Lys Guillorn’s profound and passionate original written after reading Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus,” to Happy Ending’s rousing version of CCR’s “Fortunate Son” that had both the crowd and the floor moving, the event set the tone for the numerous events throughout the year that gave so many local artists an opportunity to come together for the music, the causes, and each other. (Full review here.)
Paul Bass’s Picks
Cafe Nine brought out extra chairs for the Baby Boomer crowd when Boomer banjo great Tony Trischka came to town in July with a pack of young “Roman Kings” to deliver an entire show devoted to renditions of Bob Dylan songs. They did Dylan proud: Like Dylan in his own concerts, they reached deep into the playbook for variety and unpredictability (including gems like “Time Passes Slowly” and “Meet Me In The Morning”) and reimagined the songs for a live audience right now, rather than faithfully recreating the original recordings. I think we would have all loved the show even if we had had to stand on our wobbly knees. (Full review here.)
The Sunday before the inauguration of President He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, it was possible to feel some hope and fire without forgetting the ominous days ahead. Larry Kirwan made that possible in a visit to Cafe Nine. He summoned the anthemic spirit of resistance from dark eras past, from the political Irish-resistance-informed punk band he once led called Black 47. And he had everyone shouting along. A cameo by New Haven’s Beehive Queen, Christine Ohlman, sealed the deal, as she joined Kirwan on a duet of “Hard Times” — both naming the renewed challenge and rising to it. (Full review here.)