Running for Home “flake” – Allison Crowe – Hot Jazz Club Muenster

Another artifact of Allison Crowe’s latest concert tour – and another off-kilter bootleg.

A friend in London kindly gave me the first of Marianne Faithfull’s autobiographies – and I completed reading it on the flight from the UK to Canada.  In some stream of consciousness this video flows with the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics of which Faithfull is a Professor.

“Running for Home” is a song penned by Canada’s Matthew Good and Dave Genn. Allison Crowe’s notably performed it since 1999 – in band and solo shows. She’s included it in her live repertoire this Spring and in the trove of concert videos from Freiburg there’s upcoming a full performance.

Here, now, from the pulsing joint that’s Hot Jazz Club Muenster is a CCTV feed that’s viewed by an overflow crowd. NB when the camera shifts to looking at the guitar-stand and unoccupied stage area, that’s about half of legendary Road/Tour Manager Axel Dollheiser – sitting at the ready to help Allison switch from piano to guitar songs.

Famous Blue Raincoat "flake"

After enjoying “The Ballad of Geeshie and Elvie” in The New York Times Magazine, I’m encouraged to post more, and more, and then some – even if it be just a flake of Allison Crowe’s life, or, in this instance, a flake of her most recent concert tour: http://youtu.be/vGT3HRWKjF4

      

John Jeremiah Sullivan’s NYT mag essay tracking early blues recording artists L.V. Thomas and Lillie Mae ‘Geetchie’ Wiley and cultural field-worker Robert “Mack” McCormick is a reminder that we enrich the world by sharing: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/13/magazine/blues.html 

 

Here from beautiful Lindenpark Potsdam, Germany (and a decidedly off-kilter camera-style), is the opening of Allison Crowe’s performance of the Leonard Cohen classic “Famous Blue Raincoat”.

 

For a full recording of this song seek out “Famous Blue Raincoat - Allison Crowe - Teatro del Sale, Florence – live” @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=or2iHTA9X9A Two different verasions – solo and choral – are heard on her “Heavy Graces” album @ http://music.allisoncrowe.com/album/heavy-graces 

My Funny Valentine

On her most recent European tour, Allison Crowe's concert venues included several classic jazz joints.

 

Crowe, who started playing piano at age five, first sang publicly around that same time - belting out the Jazz Era-hit "Ja-Da Ja-Da (Jing Jing Jing)".

 

Making music her life full-time since age 16, the artist, now 32, is one of the great singers and musicians in popular music on-stage and on record this century. While she's known as a singular writer and performer of rock, folk, pop, Newfoundland, Celtic, and other sounds - her roots in jazz go deep, and she now includes some favourite standards in her many-hued repertoire.

Here, at Germany's Jazzhaus Freiburg, Allison Crowe sings Rogers & Hart's "My Funny Valentine" - accompanied by the always delightful Billie Woods on guitar.

 

Discerning culture blog Muruch says: “I never thought anyone could match, let alone surpass, the great Etta James on this song, but Allison’s gut-busting high notes take the melody to a whole 'nother level…”

http://www.muruch.com/2014/06/allison-crowe-my-funny-valentine-live-video.html

Allison Crowe video from Europe tour

In an courtyard tonight in Haarlem, Holland – there’s finally internet connection enough to upload a video from Allison Crowe’s “Heavy Graces” tour! Plenty more images – and, with any luck, more video – from the latest chapter in the musical story of one of the modern greats:

Musician Allison Crowe performs her song "Disease" -- before a rocking audience at Germany's Jazzhaus Freiburg on Muttertag -- Mother's Day -- 2014. This tune and Crowe's wildly impassioned performances have drawn her comparison in Europe to innovative Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky -- and the famed German singer-songwriter ("Liedermacher"), composer, author, and actor, Konstantin Wecker.

This hand-captured video is, obviously, lo-fi in sound+ -- still, it captures some of the excitement of this night -- representative of Crowe's triumphant May 2014 "Heavy Graces" tour of Germany and Italy. The Canadian artist enraptured audiences who called her back for two or three encores each night.

At Jazzhaus - Allison Crowe takes to a stage that's hosted: Miles Davis, Lionel Hampton, Art Blakey, Bill Evans, Sun Ra, Don Cherry, Archie Shepp, BB King, Jimmy Cliff, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Dianne Reeves, Maceo Parker, Betty Carter, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Billy Cobham, Terry Callier, John Mayall, Spencer Davis, Nigel Kennedy und mehr greats.

Vielen dank! Grazie mille! Thank you, everyone!

Allison Crowe Drives to New Lands: “Heavy Graces” Tour on Deck

She comes from a land of ice and snow. Some years more-so than others. And, like such phenomena, Allison Crowe’s preternatural talent, and her peerless body of music, is marked by a pure, crystalline, uniqueness.

"How can someone so small and young have such a big voice and write such heavy duty songs?,” legendary West-coast Canada musician and publisher Barry Newman found himself wondering upon discovering a teen-aged Crowe on a Vancouver Island stage in the year 2000. For a cover feature in Cosmic Debris, (the magazine he founded), Newman observed: “The inflections in her piano stylings were so mature too... there was a blues edge in there."

"The first thing you notice about Allison Crowe is her voice. Rich and dark, it seems to come from a place most singers can only dream of accessing. Then there are the songs. Filled with raw passion and accompanied by eloquent piano playing," notes Clodagh O'Connell, (The Courier, Rolling Stone+), in a maiden review of Crowe’s voyage to new lands.

Cultural critic for The Times Colonist newspaper in Victoria, BC, Adrian Chamberlain, also caught the artist in her early concert rounds: “(Listening to) Crowe is akin to sipping the richest of brandies.” The writer, himself a funk soul musician, explained: “Crowe's singing is tremendously powerful; almost operatic. When she digs into a sustained note, as she so often does, the voice is huge, rounded, with a dark timbre.”

The amazing sound crossed the main. Before long UK music maven Dave Henderson, (MOJO, Q and Kerrang!+), was tipping MOJO mag’s audience to this siren from o’er the sea: "Once famously described as possessing a style akin to 'Elton John meets Edith Piaf', the Canadian singer-songwriter Allison Crowe is renowned for her ability to blend control and melodrama."

Moving deeper into this century, the musician’s voice is ever more complex – striking on its own and, most frequently, accompanied by 88 hammers of the gods in the hands of a virtuoso. "You really have to see Allison Crowe live. The way she splits those notes, it's like light through a prism - all the colours of a song," says Canadian radio and television veteran Rick Dennis.

Eight years back, Crowe migrated from her island birth-place of Nanaimo, BC, on the Pacific Ocean, to Corner Brook, nestled on another lovely isle, Newfoundland – near the Viking Trail on Atlantic shores. Acoustic guitar, fiddle and tin-whistle now figure alongside voice and piano in her musical palette – creating rock, folk, jazz, roots, country, Celtic and more thrills. Her newest recording, (released globally April 28), is an addictive variant of a centuries-old song of the seacoast, “Tarry Trousers”.

“Weirdly typical” is how BC dean of Canuck rock writers, Tom Harrison, describes a new album from Allison Crowe – and that legend is key to any map of her course. She presents bi-coastal “Tidings” concerts each Christmas season in her homeland. These past two years Crowe’s focused on: recording (four acclaimed albums – “Tidings Concert”, “Newfoundland Vinyl”, “Heavy Graces”, and “Songbook”); dance (performing songs of Leonard Cohen on-stage with Canada’s brilliant Royal Winnipeg Ballet); theatre (musically directing Theatre Newfoundland and Labrador’s rollicking hit show, “Newfoundland Vinyl”); and film projects - one recording riveting in the trailer for a major indie motion picture (“The Pardon”), and cameoing, pretty much as herself, in “Man of Steel”- a #1 box-office Superman movie among the decade’s biggest Hollywood blockbusters.

Steering well clear of the corporate record industry’s shallows, Crowe’s integrity is as steadfast as her sound is remarkable – a double-helix of traits akin to the DNA of previous generations’ mavericks. “I’m a big Johnny Cash fan. And I’m a big Allison Crowe fan. So the combination to me seemed like an awesome opportunity if we could make it happen,” explains “Man of Steel” Director Zack Snyder. “Allison and I had talked about trying to get some of her music in one of my movies whenever we could – and I thought, well, if I just put her in the film then there’s no way that it won’t work. So, that’s where you get Allison from.”

Allison Crowe's "Heavy Graces" Tour reaches Europe this May  

For her next act, Allison Crowe returns to the international concert stage this May – with eight concerts upcoming in Europe: Bernau (03.05); Frankfurt (07.05); Freiburg (11.05); Neunkirchen (13.05); Inning (15.05); Florence (17.05); Münster (20.05); and Potsdam (22.05). The opening concert on this “Heavy Graces” tour quickly sold out – Ausverkaft! Full event calendar @ http://allisoncrowe.com/tour.html

For most of these dates, Crowe’s joined by special guest artist, and super-simpatico tour partner, Billie Woods http://www.facebook.com/billiewoodsmusic  Woods’ distinctive vocal and nylon-string guitar style is rooted in Canada's Pacific Northwest and infused with the warmth and vitality of cultural rhythms of Brazil. From home-base on Salt Spring Island, BC, in “Canada’s banana belt”, she’s blended a life of passions - principally music and photography.

Crowe’s Road/Stage manager, Axel Dollheiser, hails from Bavaria and Salt Spring. popTrip Entertainment, (currently moving headquarters from Berlin, Germany to Toronto, Canada), is booking agent.

Toronto-based author and visual artist Lorette C. Luzajic concludes: “Not everyone can bring down the divine, not everyone can be vast and mythological or bring the gifts of the gods into a winter’s night. But Allison Crowe channels the spirit each and every time."

Some words about Allison Crowe from around the world @ http://www.allisoncrowe.com/pressquotes.html 

Allison Crowe Europe Tournee - May 2014

Rock and roll!! Enriched by almost two years of focus on recording, film and theatre productions at home in Canada, Allison Crowe and the A-team, guided by the legendary road-meister Axel Dollheiser, resume international concert touring this Spring.

First up – May 2014 brings a return to some favourite venues in Germany and Italy, alongside wunderbar new music rooms:

03.05 - Siebenklang Musikfestspiele - Bernau bei Berlin
07.05 - Jazzlokal Mampf – Frankfurt
11.05 - Jazzhaus – Freiburg im Breisgau
13.05 - Stumm'sche Reithalle – Nuenkirchen (Saar)
15.05 - Inninger Spectacel – Inning am Ammersee
17.05 - Teatro del Sale - Florence
20.05 - Hot Jazz Club – Münster
22.05 - Lindenpark – Potsdam

Most dates feature Allison with very special guest Billie Woods also performing a set.

The tour-opening show is already sold out - Ausverkauft! Full details as they come together are found @ http://www.facebook.com/AllisonCroweMusic/events  and  http://allisoncrowe.com/tour.html

Bringing Allison’s live performance home for us all – experience soon a series of music videos coming to facebook, Vimeo, YouTube +

Here’s a screen cap from Newfoundland-based film-maker Peter Buckle’s documentary footage - psychedelicized by Vimeo’s “Amoeba” enhancer.