Flutter In The Zeitgeist

Imitation is the sincerest form of fluttery!

Janine in The New Yorker

We have a fan at The New Yorker! Nice mention for Janine's solo show coming up. Click on the headline for the link. Scroll down to just beneath Mr. Reed's picture, and there Janine is, mentioned in the same breath as Andy Statman. Janine tried very hard to get Mr. S. to play at St. Ann's years ago, but his religion just didn't allow it. In any case, he is a genius of two instruments and if you can't catch Janine, catch Andy!

Coming Soon to Le Poisson Rouge! Sat April 25

Boho Supremo John Kruth, sweet, string-playing veteran of many a Hal Willner project and prodigious music biographer in his own right (Sun Ra, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Townes Van Zandt) was in truth the man who gave Flutterbox its start, with his invitation to me to sing a John Lennon song at the Bowery Poetry Club on the 25th anniversary of his apotheosis. I asked Neill to join me, he suggested I try on his arrangement of "In My Life," and in the length of time it took to sing and play the song a band was born. Johnny the K been an F-box enthusiast from, literally, day one and he's asked us both to open for and participate in his multi-artist shindig marking 40 years since the release of "Nashville Skyline" (a number that refuses to seem real to me) at Le Poisson Rouge, the swank new club in the old Village Gate on Bleecker Street.

Flutterbox opens at 7 with a 40 minute set. Then Neill will have his way with "Peggy Day," no doubt correcting the cocaine-addled tempo of yore. Me, "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" or "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You" with Sam Parton of Be Good Tanyas fame. All will be revealed in the fullness of rehearsal time. We haven't played Manhattan since Joe's Pub in November and we hope to see you out there.

More Juliet Rose!

Hats off to beautiful 10-year-old JULIET ROSE SCHLEFER of the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, who sang "More And Less" with me at Barbes on April Fool's Night. The girl's a one-take natural and she can also snag a dragonfly out of the air with the greatest of ease. She'll be singing Britten's "Requiem" with the New York Philharmonic this spring. Someday we'll say we knew her when.

New Pix & Gigs

Here are some new photos, taken by our man in Pittsfield, Alan P. (for Pittsfield?) Hayes, at Joe's Pub back in November. Thanks Alan! I don't know what I was thinking with that Rebecca of Sunnybjork Farm outfit, nor, for that matter, Neill with that pajama shirt. But we played great, and the sound in the room and onstage was great, and Robin Holcomb was great, as were Tony Scherr and Doug Wieselman, who accompanied her.



Wheezy, as I call him, played such a beautiful clarinet solo on Whoops Wrong Daisy, I do believe I saw tiny tears of joy forming in Neill's eyes.




Anyway, to steal a line from the writer Terry O'Reilly, whom I interviewed the other week for the new Mabou Mines website (for which I am the writer), Flutterbox has gigs "lined up like hurricanes off the Florida coast," including a major Manhattan show, an opening set before John Kruth's multi-artist shindig marking the 40th anniversary of "Nashville Skyline" (to which we'll also contribute) at Le Poisson Rouge, or, as the musicians have taken to calling it, the Poison Fish, on April 25 and a select few songs about Death and Taxes as part of Emily Rubin's roving song and story series, "Dirty Laundry: The City Cycle," at the Ave A Laundromat on April 15th.

It all starts April Fool's Night at Barbes. Always hoping to see you....

Shot at Joe's Pub

Check out this dressing room door sign. Nice. Neill took this picture, which is why it is in focus. I may have taken the other, which is not; we don't remember. Did you take it?

Rust In Post

Neill's Mom believes there should be a Pulitzer Prize for headline writers, such is her admiration for their craft. You can bet she was pretty happy to see the New York Post steal one from her young'un. Because those guys are GOOD.