The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Kevin Gordon, Hot Club of Cowtown coming to town
Cracker to play at FTC’s StageOne
NEW HAVEN — We may be headed into the dog days of summer, but there’s lots of good music coming to town — including some fine shows at Cafe Nine with Louisiana songwriter Kevin Gordon today and western swingers Hot Club of Cowtown on Wednesday.
Gordon, a first-rate musical storyteller, will headline “The Sunday Buzz” Matinee from Cygnus Radio today. Showtime is 4 p.m. Dave Hogan opens. Tickets are $10 in advance at cafenine.com or $12 at the door. Cafe Nine is at 250 State St.
Gordon’s last release, “Long Gone Time,” rose to No. 26 on the Americana Radio Chart and has received critical praise from American Songwriter, Pop Matters, Offbeat and others. Gordon also has been featured on NPR’s World Cafe and Folk Alley, performing live on each.
His bluesy songs have been covered by heavy hitters ranging from Levon Helm and Keith Richards to Irma Thomas and Todd Snider.
Gordon’s new album, “Tilt & Shine,” is due out Friday on Crowville Media.
On Wednesday, Hot Club of Cowtown brings its unique blend of western swing and Gypsy jazz to Cafe Nine. Showtime is 8:30 p.m. Admission is $25 in advance at cafenine.com, or $30 at the door.
Hailing from Austin, Texas, Hot Club of Cowtown owes just as much of its sound to the Gypsy jazz music of Django Reinhart and obscure European folk music as to the western swing for
which it perhaps is best known.
“Our band is fiddle, guitar and bass, and they can do anything together,” says Elana James, the band’s fiddler and vocalist, in a blurb on the Cafe Nine website. “We’ve always played a combination of hot jazz and western swing, but it’s been really a joy to finally distill part of our essence and serve up a record that is purely jazzy.”
She was referring to the Hot Club of Cowtown’s seventh and latest studio album, “Rendezvous in Rhythm.”
In addition to the aforementioned Cafe Nine shows, Cracker will swing by Fairfield Theatre Company’s StageOne today for a fullband show of dusty, sharptongued Americana rock.
(That’s opposed to the dueling duos and brief, endof-show trio we got a couple of years ago when Cracker’s David Lowery and Johnny Hickman — joined by Greg Lisher, guitarist for Lowery’s other band, Camper Van Beethoven — did a strippeddown show of both bands’ music at FTC.)
Showtime is 7:45 p.m. Tickets are $32, available in advance at fairfield theatre.org.