When I reached Melanie by phone recently, she told me she’d always had that gravelly voice that would make her famous. The one-name singer emerged from the Woodstock festival and captured the spirit of the 1960’s. Growing up in New York City, she had eclectic musical taste. “I loved Billie Holiday when I was 12,” […]
Music Feature
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Pre-epiphany
A year into its current lineup, Rochester rock band Oh Manitou is preparing for a breakthrough
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Connie Deming takes flight
Connie Deming is like a warm smile personified. It’s a smile that lingers just this side of laughter. And although Deming is on a press junket for her beautiful new CD, “Fly,” she doesn’t stay focused on herself, her music, or her life. She’d rather talk about her son, David, who is autistic. Deming credits […]
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Kinky Friedman rises once again
Kinky Friedman is a prolific and profane man in black with his fingers knuckle-deep in all sorts of pies. He is a sharp-tongued, satirical troubadour. He has run for office (including Governor of Texas in 2006, where he received 12.6 percent of the vote). He writes crime novels in the hardboiled pulp tradition of Chandler, […]
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Miller and The Other Sinners breaks the blues’ rules
David Miller’s blues is about letting go and being let go. He was always active in music, leading bands in high school and playing in church, but it was never his main focus. Then, four years back, he was fired. “In 2013,” Miller says, “when the company I worked for was bought out and my […]
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Can’t shut Flogging Molly down
Beyond the tunes, success in the music industry often hinges on an excellent live show. And no band has toured as hard or has consistently poured its heart out onstage as Flogging Molly. What began in 1997 as a Los Angeles bar band has become an Irish-American cultural institution. Flogging Molly broke out with its […]
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Bred in the bone
Joe Fiedler never meant to play the trombone, but that hasn’t stopped him from becoming one of the most in-demand players on the New York scene. Growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1960’s and 70’s, his home life wasn’t particularly musical. His father mostly listened to singers like Roger Miller, but Fiedler’s ears perked up […]
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The mind of a musician
Rochester songwriters give a peek inside their process and reveal what’s at the heart of a song
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Tart Vandelay takes its music just shy of infinity
Love precedes Tart Vandelay as it leaves a chaotically smooth pastel wash in its wake. With jazzy guitar and looped female vocals that stop just shy of infinity, Tart Vandelay is mesmerizing in its stunning, deceptive simplicity. At the heart of this Rochester band is guitarist Marty LoFaso and vocalist, ukulele player, and loop wrangler […]
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Space Grazer shouts at the universe
When you’re in a hard rock band and the holy trinity of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll has lost its glitter and appeal, what do you do? What do you sing about? The name of this heavy outfit is Space Grazer, and the band has solved that problem by writing songs about space and […]
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Finding musical freedom in the abstract
Joe Clark is free. The experimental guitarist is unfettered and unchained by conventional music norms. By elevating the atmosphere and making it paramount, he is, in a sense, turning the music inside out. What comes out is a wash of texture and sound that is both soothing and unnerving; it’s the sound of naptime on […]
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The Dirty Pennies is keeping the blues relevant
Even The Dirty Pennies gets the blues. The Rochester trio is part of a nouveaux approach that’s gonna keep those blues alive and relevant. Often the genre gets steam-rolled by who plays it and how it’s being played, but not with The Dirty Pennies. It’s simple: the band is primitive with a mean gutbucket guitar […]
