Author: William Kennedy

Comedy Goes to the Dogs

Popular Vegas pet performers come to the Hult Center

Performing Arts
Gregory Popovich

As any owner of a house cat knows, it’s difficult to get cats to do anything — much less perform for an audience. But award-winning performer Gregory Popovich of The Popovich Comedy Pet Theater thinks he knows the secret: “You cannot push a cat to do something,” says Popovich, whose act has been voted Las Vegas’ Best New Family Show.  “As a trainer I have to see what [the cats] like to do and then create tricks” based on the natural habits of the animal. Continue reading →

Kind of Blue

Blues Control finds inspiration through jam sessions

Music

New York City-based experimental duo Blues Control is made up of Russ Waterhouse and Lea Cho. Cho is a classically trained pianist. Waterhouse, a self-taught musician, started playing guitar and keyboards, and he began experimenting with home recording in high school. As a teen, he was a fan of Miles Davis’ electric era and free jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman. After attending college in New York City, Waterhouse says, “I had access to a lot of different kinds of music.” He played in indie rock bands, dabbled in the city’s noise-art scene and got into hip hop. Continue reading →

Bay Bridge Boogie Woogie

Music

If you didn’t know Quinn Deveaux was from San Francisco (which he is), you might guess the retro-flavored songwriter hailed from The Big Easy. Track one off Late Night Drive — the first of two records the popular Bay Area musician is releasing this November — is “Bff,” a New Orleans-style piano tune recalling the legendary musician Allen Toussaint’s slow-rollin’ and gin-soaked simplicity.  Continue reading →

Troy Boys

Music

Stalwart Eugene live act Medium Troy has been undergoing some changes. “We used to be a big band, sometimes as many as 11 people on stage,” says JoJo Ferreira. JoJo and his brother, Jesse Ferreira, form the core of the group. “We had tours where half the band would bail and we’d be stuck without a drummer playing four-hour sets at a taco bar in Medford.” Jo Jo Ferreira continues, “We’d just drink a whole keg on stage and pretend like we didn’t suck. It was a really fun shit show.”  Continue reading →

A Very Gentle Gentleman

Music

Just when many proclaim “Last of!” or “Never again!” along comes a chap like Rufus Wainwright, the sort of entertainer some say “they just don’t make anymore.” Sir Elton John, for one, calls him “the greatest songwriter on the planet.”  Continue reading →

Short Complete Thoughts

Music

Molly Hamilton and her songwriting partner Robert Earl Thomas of Widowspeak spent a lot of time on the road after releasing the critically acclaimed Almanac earlier this year. “We were stuck in a car a lot,” Hamilton says. “I was mostly writing down lyrics and ideas for new things, just to get them out of my system.” Continue reading →

Caving In

Music

Consider for a moment the acoustics of a cave: vast and echoing but also claustrophobic and airless — a small drip of water reverberating to the ceiling and from the walls. Now, consider the acoustics of the band Cave and you have the latter. The Chicago-based, frequently instrumental group is celebrating the release of Threace, out Oct. 15 on uber-hip record label Drag City.  Continue reading →

Langhorne’s Law

Music

Veteran songwriter Sean Scolnick, aka Langhorne Slim, says people are looking to get messy. “People want to dance,” he says. “People want to be freaks.” The Nashville-based musician feels this goes a long way to explain the recent chart-topping revival of “roots” music like The Avett Brothers and Mumford & Sons. “People want to strip things back,” Slim concludes.  Continue reading →

Zedd’s (Not) Dead, Baby

Music

Of all the white-hot techno DJs and producers, few are more molten right now than Anton Zaslavski, better known as Zedd. Zedd’s single “Clarity” (featuring London-based female vocalist Foxes) is arguably the “it” single of 2013: a big, weepy ballad mixed with epic, fist-pumping, club-thumping beats.  Continue reading →

The Odds Are Even

Music

Don’t call The Evens a side project. “It’s a band,” insists Ian MacKaye, the musician behind some of the most iconic projects in American punk and hardcore music: Minor Threat, Fugazi and founding Dischord Records. After over three decades in the business, the reluctant legend’s passion for music hasn’t waned a bit. “Music is holy,” MacKaye says. Over the years MacKaye has championed a DIY ethos. “I’ve become a poster child,” he says, “but I just did my work.” Continue reading →