Flutter in the Ether: Podcast!

Click to hear Flutterbox open and close the May 6th edition of THE KGB RADIO HOUR with your hosts, and Janine's, now also Neill's, friends, Mark Jacobson and Larry "Ratso" Sloman.

This entertaining pair beam smart, smarm free podcasts out of the KBG Bar on E. 4th Street roughly, literally, every month. Mark came to fame in Janine's life as the coach of her son's basketball team, a job he performed with 110% rumpled style and authority, but his calling is as a writer (currently, at New York magazine) interviewing icons, gangsters and saints of all stripes. He's been at this for years and remembers details.

Ratso was maybe the first editor of High Times, the dream job of countless millions. Larry's working with Tyson on the fighter's autobiography now. You should read his book on Houdini. The magician was a spy, you know.

The sound equipment on hand at the KBG falls somewhere between lo-fi and no-fi, but so what? Neill figured out a way for us to be heard despite the odds and the teeming rain 3 feet from the microphone. At the top, you'll hear the hosts wondering where "that sound" is coming from. Fans will recognize that sound ("In my head?" Ratso wonders) as a loop Neill is building, in this case for "The Robin Sings." At show's end we play "Safety Last"; the crowd, having heard "Robin" was authentically shocked at the tempo. Fun to see the surprise on their faces: That's radio, folks!

Some of Ratso's songwriter friends from Brooklyn are on the show, as are Mike Daly of The Daily News and Tom Robbins of The Village Voice. There are also phone-ins with Cong. Anthony Weiner (who had not yet dropped out of the Mayoral race) and the best Mike Bloomberg impersonator anyone could imagine. Jaw dropping. Are you as sickened by the Bloomberg "campaign" as we are?

Enjoy the show.

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?