Jeff Kazor has been producing a new record for Kenny Feinstein(of the Water Tower Bucket Boys) involving performances by several of The Crooked Jades including Lisa Berman singing harmonies and playing slide, Erik Pearson on dobro, guitars and flutes, and Charlie Rose on bass. This ambitious project is a totally acoustic reconstruction of My Bloody Valentine’s seminal “Loveless” album from 1991 with absolutely no digital processing. One of the big challenges in keeping true to the album’s essence has been inventing an acoustic process that creates the ethereal blanket of swirling distortion behind those beautiful vocals and poppy melodies. http://www.kennyfeinstein.com/
news
New Crooked Jades Album
Ideas continue to evolve beneath the surface of all the collaborations. We’re looking forward to more pre-production in the coming winter months and are exploring all possibilities for financial support to get us back in the studio.
We hope to see you on the 17th! Drop us a line on our Facebook page – we’d love to hear from you.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Crooked-Jades/130718520313665
http://www.myspace.com/crookedjades
West coast premiere of “Bright Land” at ODC New Theatre in San Francisco April 28, 29, 30 & May 1, 2011!
CROOKED JADES… Go Boldly where no old-time string band has gone before…. We are still in the afterglow of the world premiere of “Bright Land” at the Joyce Theater in New York (August 2010). It was gratifying beyond our wildest dreams to be greeted with passionate, receptive, intelligent and enthusiastic audiences that filled the house to the brim every single night. You humbled us with your dedication and keen observation, and reminded us that these moments where we are all together are what the months of sweat and tears are for. We hope you’ll check out our photos in our Facebook gallery, especially in the Bright Land photo gallery, plus hundreds hundreds more on Flickr and read quotes and reviews from the show. You can also download a Bright Land desktop wallpaper by clicking onto Kate Weare Company site. www.kateweare.com/brightland.html
We’re looking forward to welcoming back east coast musicians Charlie Rose and Rose Sinclair to join us for the two weeks of intense rehearsal with the dancers before the west coast premiere, and to working with the amazing Bruce Kaphan once again to record the “Bright Land” soundtrack. This soundtrack will be available later in the year.
Finally, The Crooked Jades are thrilled to debut our collaboration with the critically acclaimed modern dance group Kate Weare Company at the Joyce Theatre in New York City in August!
Our May residency at ODC with Kate Weare and Company was just an amazing experience all around, culminating in a raucous showing at SF’s Noe Valley Ministry on May 22. See our photo montage (complete with music) here (by the fabulous Mike Melnyk) or click here to learn more about Kate Weare Company. We hope to see you! Joyce Show Information and Ticket Purchase >
San Francisco Old-Time Music Meets New York Modern Dance with Kate Weare Dance Company
The Crooked Jades continue to explore new frontiers as they begin an exciting collaboration with the critically acclaimed New York modern dance group Kate Weare Company, www.kateweare.com, which will be previewed in its formative stages at Noe Valley Ministry on May 22 as one highlight in an entire evening of hypnotic old-time music. The Crooked Jades lineup presents founders Jeff Kazor (guitar, vocals) and Lisa Berman (slide guitar, banjo, vocals) joined by Erik Pearson (banjo, ukulele, harmonium), Rose Sinclair (banjo, harmonium, slide guitar), Elise Engelberg (fiddle) and Genessa Kealoha (bass).
The dance, entitled “Bright Land”, features a quintet of dancers and explores the cyclical nature of human experience with piercing, powerful choreography and fiery, soulful live music. Premiering in its entirety at New York’s Joyce Theatre in August and then will be performed as part of the grand opening of the new ODC performance venue in 2011, the collaboration tackles the emotional undertakings—kinship, belief, suffering, love—that shape us in our lifetimes and repeat in cycles through the ages.
Well Deserved Rest & Renovation, Reunion and Recording
Jeff has been taking a break from touring, staying home to renovate his house and enjoy his young son while ruminating on future music plans. These include The Crooked Jades annual Northwest Tour in August with the current lineup (San Francisco, Arcata, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles and Winnemmucca NV) and reuniting with original Crooked Jades vocalist Lisa Berman to record a duo album in late Winter 2010.
Crooked Jades Documentary Work in Progress
Jim Swenson and Doug Williford have been filming The Crooked Jades for the last 5 years and have put together a short preliminary version of a documentary film (work in progress) which will be previewed on San Francisco Cable Access Channel 29 on Tuesday 3/3 at 9:30PM and Saturday 3/7 at 8PM. It may also be used as filler overnight and in the mornings. accessf.org/guide/schedule Please check it out if you live in San Francisco or tell your friends who live here. We’re looking forward to greater viewing access in the future with the final project. What we’ve seen so far is artful and insightful and gives a good overview of the band evolution (all three generations are featured) with plenty of live performances filmed at The Freight and Salvage in Berkeley and Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco as well as an up to date interview with Jeff Kazor filmed in January of this year. Let us know what you think! A final cut should be ready in time for the documentary festival circuit in 2010.
fRoots Cover Story
The Crooked Jades are honored to be featured on the cover of the Jan/Feb 2009 double issue of the prestigious UK magazine fRoots devoted to the new Americana:
- Devon Sproule
- Carolina Chocolate Drops
- The Crooked Jades
- Rupa & The April Fishes
- Corey Harris
- Seasick Steve
- The Pine Leaf Boys
- Lissa Schneckenburger
Shining Darkness glowingly reviewed by fRoots editor Ian Anderson: “’Americana’ seems to be pretty much off the boil and resting, worn as a flag of convenience by too many chancers and exhausted by fringe rockers whose connection to the roots was as thin as their originality. The Crooked Jades are something else though. Grounded in tradition, old-time string band music and mountain blues but with open horizons that take them, subtly, to other parts of the planet, they have a haunting spookiness, an organic pulse, and most importantly a clear vision… Instrumentally they’re truly inspiring, getting original textures out of conventional stringband instruments and mixing them with (in this context) oddities like bass ukulele, harmonium, mbira, cello and Vietnamese jaw harp and bau zither. Vocally, they have that lonesome white blues sound which has its ancestry in Dock Boggs and the Carters but again they take it somewhere else…a consistently startling and addictive album.”