Decade of Difference

St. Vincents’ Grammy winning album Daddy’s Home is just another step in a varied  career that has included music, acting and screenplay writing. Born in Oklahoma, Annie Clark – who performs as St. Vincent grew up in Texas with her mother after her parents divorced.

For three years she attended Berklee College in Boston but left after feeling the school focused too intently on the aesthetics of music rather than the resulting product. After returning to Texas from Boston, Clark bounced around a variety of performing groups before landing in Sufjan Stevens touring band in 2006.

She took on the moniker ‘St. Vincent’ with her first full-length album in 2007, drawing the name from a Nick Cave song. The record Marry Me drew positive reviews and she followed it with a year and a half of touring.

St, Vincent has now won three Grammys, beginning with 2015’s Best Alternative Rock Album for her St. Vincent.  This year was a repeat of the same award for the new Daddy’s Home record. She says the album was inspired by her father’s recent release from prison following a decade-long stint for his part in a multi-million dollar stock scheme.

Speaking about her father’s reaction to the win, Clark says: “My dad was thrilled. He introduced himself as ‘Daddy’ from Daddy’s Home which is not anything I thought one would brag about.”

Angelique Kidjo established her place as a fixture in the world music scene with a chart-topping album in 1991 with Logozo. The album still ranks amongst the best dance albums of all time.

Kidjo was born and raised in Benin, where she began performing in her Mother’s theater group and singing by the age of six. A successful album as a teen led to the artist touring throughout Africa, but political troubles in Benin forced Kidjo to relocate to Paris, where she studied music.

Singing with the jazz rock band Pili Pili, she became one of the most popular singers in Paris, and that is where Chris Blackwell heard her, leading to the recordinging of the 1991 chart-topper.

Angelique Kidjo relied on modern technology and electronics for her first three international albums before returning to her roots in the mid 90s, when she returned to Benin to record the country’s traditional musicians and singers.

She followed this with a trilogy that explored the roots of African American music, including hip-hop, soul and jazz.In 2007 Kidjo won her first Grammy with Djin Djin, an album that paired her with a wide range of popular singers from around the world.

Mother Nature, released in 2021 is Angelique Kidjo’s first album of all original material in seven years. Featuring collaborations with a new generation of world music artists, the album won this years Grammy in the Best World Music Album category.

Stevie Wonder’s incredible career began when he signed his first recording contract as an eleven year old. Wonder has been blind essentially from birth, making his musical accomplishments even more challenging. After his family moved to Detroit, Wonder sang in the church choir and learned piano, drums and harmonica by the age of nine. Motown’s Berry Gordy signed him after an audition and his first hit came when he was 12.  The 12 Year Old Genius was a live recording and the instrumental Fingertips Pt. 2 topped the Pop and R&B charts propelling the album to become Motown’s first number 1.

Wonder stepped away from recording to briefly study classical piano at the Michigan School for the Blind. His return was initially uneven leading Motown to question the  staying power of Wonder. By the mid 60s Wonder was back on track with several R&B and Pop hits while also joining the songwriting team at Motown co-writing the Smokey Robinson and the Miracles hit Tears of a Clown. At this point, Stevie Wonders’ interest in socially conscious music was emerging but Motown maintained control over what Wonder could and could not release.

The 1970s were Wonders’ greatest years. Starting with 1973s’ Innervisions Stevie Wonder won Album of the Year Grammys for three consecutive releases.  In 1979 he was one of the first artists to use the Melodian – an early  music sampler on an album. Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants was also his first digital recording and his use of digital recording technology influenced many following musicians.

The 1980s brought even greater sales success. Wonder collaborated on a number 1 hit with Paul McCartney while having multiple number ones on his own. He was in a featured duet with Bruce Springsteen on the 1986 benefit single We Are the World and contributed his signature harmonica work to hits from Elton John and the Eurythmics.

Over his long career Stevie Wonder has sold more than 100 million records while collecting 22 Grammys and gaining induction into the R&B, Rock and Roll and Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Bonding over a shared love of punk and African music, Vampire Weekend formed in 2006 while the bandmates were students at Columbia University. The band continued after graduation with their first album coming when the two primary members were working full time, one as a middle school English teacher.

Leveraging the early power of promotion through blogs and the internet, Vampire Weekend soon were able to quit their day jobs. Their fourth single release came in 2008 and Rolling Stone placed it on their Top 100 list for the year. From that start Vampire Weekend proceeded to do something no other indie rock band had done – see consecutive release debut at #1 with 2012’s Contra and 2013’s Modern Vampires of the City.

Vampire Weekend released their third album Modern Vampires of the City in 2013 and began a long tour in support of the new record. The fourth record took much longer than their previous work – about six years. During that time, one band member left the group while still continuing to collaborate on songwriting and the group took a two year hiatus from performances. The fourth album debuted at number 1 and won a second Grammy for the group.

Now three years after the release, Vampire Weekends says they are almost ready to release a new record, having spent much of their COVID downtime writing and recording. No specific release date or details have been mentioned.

John McCauley started Deer Tick as a solo project while still in high school. Growing up in Rhode Island, McCauley taught himself drums, guitar, piano and pedal steel. He began writing and performing in high school, and continued after graduation, touring the country.

While primarily a solo performer, he would on occasion add a drummer or use a small group to support his songs. Recording was strictly a homegrown affair on self released CD-Rs. Through 2007, McCauley was the only official member of Deer Tick. Finally interested in having a permanent band, McCauley turned the project into a group in 2007.

Deer Tick quickly released five albums over the next six years.

Deer Tick continued their quirky album release cycle by pausing for four years with no new material. The band toured during that time, but apparently saved up their material for one big release – delivering two albums in 2017.

Two years later Deer Tick released Mayonnaise, a record they describe as a companion to the two 2017 releases. It included some reworked material from those albums, covers that they often played live and some original content.

Calexico traces their musical roots to the friendship between Joey Burns and John Convertino, who met at the University of California, Irvine. Moving to Arizona, the pair worked as a rhythm section on several independent recordings before forming the band. Named after a town near the US-Mexico border, the music of Calexico connects the folk and alt country music of America with Latin musical styles from cumbia to mariachi.

Burns and Convertino spent years working as session musicians prior to Calexico, a practice they continued during the early years of the band. Calexico also established a connection with fans by marketing their early records exclusively through merchandise sales at performances. Their reputation as a live band grew through tours with Pavement and Lambchop plus a full schedule of festival appearances.

Calexico has always been known for their atmospheric records that seek to establish a mood or a sense of place. The pattern was established on 1997’s The Black Light which was a turning point in Calexico’s career. It introduced new elements – mariachi trumpets, Latin rhythms and pedal steel guitar – to their dusty desert sound, creating the hybrid that would become their signature.

The group’s tenth record El Mirador continues this tradition. Named after a border town, the album channels the bands love of the southwest to produce their most danceable record by continuing on their fusion of traditional southwestern musical styles with an alt-country influence. Joey Burns says “El Mirador is dedicated to family, friends and community. The pandemic highlighted all the ways we need each other, and music happens to be my way of building bridges and encouraging inclusiveness and positivity. That comes along with sadness and melancholy, but music sparks change and movement.”.

The Sex Pistols released one studio album. 1977’s Never Mind the Bullocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols reached number 1 in the UK and set a standard for punk rock. The origins of the group go back to a London band called The Stand, which claimed to be playing with instruments they had stolen.

John Lydon, or Johnny Rotten was added to the group after he was spotted in a Pink Floyd t-shirt that he had modified to add ‘I Hate’. Lydon describes the formation of the band like this “Early Seventies Britain was a very depressing place. It was completely run-down, there was trash on the streets, total unemployment—just about everybody was on strike. Everybody was brought up with an education system that told you point blank that if you came from the wrong side of the tracks…then you had no hope in hell and no career prospects at all. Out of that came pretentious moi and the Sex Pistols and then a whole bunch of copycat wankers after us”.

The Sex Pistols behavior and music brought them attention. Anarchy in the UK was one of the first punk singles, and presented a strong political opinion in the music. A last minute live TV interview, in place of Queen resulted in a profane exchange between host Bill Grundy and Steve Jones after Grundy made inappropriate comments to Siouxsie Sue.

Their following Anarchy Tour brought protests throughout the UK resulting in only seven of the twenty shows scheduled to actually occur.. The self described ‘ultimate Sex Pistols fan’ Sid Vicious joined the group in 1977. Already a notorious UK punk drummer, Vicious quickly spiraled out of control while with the group.

Meeting new girlfriend Nancy Spungen introduced Vicious to heroin, an addiction that killed him in 1979 after his arrest for allegedly murdering Spungen.

Django Django traces their origins back several years  before the band was formed in 2008 to when most of the band members met one another at the Edinburgh School of Art. Playing their first shows in East London, the band quickly drew comparisons to folktronica pioneers The Beta band. Prior to their first full length record in 2012, the band released several singles that fused electronica with a seemingly random mix of sounds including sirens, bells and clapping.

When the first self titled album appeared in 2012 it captured a Mercury Prize nomination and reached the top 40 on the UK album charts. Both New Music Express and Rolling Stone included the record on their best of the year lists. Multiple songs found their way into video games, leading to a much more successful record than the band expected. Drummer and producer David MacLean says they really only thought they would sell a few hundred copies.

Django Django’s fourth album came last year with Glowing in the Dark. Recorded entirely pre-pandemic, the record’s sci-fi escapism theme turned out to be totally appropriate, offering listeners who were cooped up at home a chance to be somewhere else for 45 minutes.

This year the group announced a re-issue of their debut album on its tenth anniversary. Guitarist Vincent Neff says that “it will  always be a special one to us. It reminds us of recording in Dave’s bedroom, playing at small club nights up and down the UK and taking in all the new music that was being made in East London at that time. When we released it, we had no idea what would happen, but it ended up being the start of a crazy journey for us.”

The new version will release on May 27th.

Dick Dale was an influential figure in early rock by introducing a new style called ‘surf guitar’. Dale upped the reverb on his electric guitar, and used Middle Eastern scales to bring a whole new sound to rock and roll.

Dale’s father was Lebanese, and he introduced his son to his native music. After the family relocated from Massachusetts to California, Dale took up surfing. A meeting with Leo Fender got Dale the chance to try out Fenders new guitar model, the Stratocaster. Dale says he wanted to try and play it ‘as loud as possible’, and then he also wanted to recreate the rumble sounds he heard while surfing.

After releasing Let’s Go Trippin’ in 1961 – a song considered to be the first surf rock song – Dale continued with ‘Misirlou’, a reworking of a traditional Middle Eastern song. This would become his signature song.

It was Quentin Tarrentino’s use of Misirlou in the movie ‘Pulp Fiction’ that brought Dick Dale back into the spotlight. Two new albums would follow along with touring in front of a new generation audience. Dick Dale suffered from several illnesses over the years, and said he continued touring into his 80’s because of his medical expenses.

Dick Dale, the ‘King of Surf Guitar’, died in 2019.

Donna the Buffalo has built a hard core group of loyal fans over their 30 plus year career through near constant touring. Forming in 1989 in New York state the group originally intended their name to be ‘Dawn of the Buffalo’, but when that was misheard as Donna the Buffalo, they just stuck with the altered version.

Tara Nevins and Jeb Puryear are the only original members remaining in the band, and Taras says “We were Americana before Americana was Americana. Jeb and I are the two original members of the band, and we met playing old-time fiddle, old-time Appalachian music. Sure, we grew up listening to some mainstream music and all that,” Nevins says. “But, really, [the] kind of music that sent this whole thing off in the direction that defines us the most is … old-time fiddle music.”

What has changed for Donna the Buffalo over their three plus decades of performing? For one they have a large, devoted following and secondly, Tara Nevins believes that they are now much better at what they do, citing the fact that the band is much more at ease with one another now versus anytime in their past.

Along the way the band has created their own music festival. The Grassroots Festival began as a small benefit show in the band’s hometown of Trumansburg, NY but has now grown to a multi day event drawing over 15,000 attendees. The concept of this festival of music and dance was so successful that the band hosts multiple events each year in different locations, including Virginia.