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Sunday Street series

Ray Bonneville
On Sunday, April 15 at 5 p.m. WUSB-FM, The Greater Port Jefferson-Northern Brookhaven Arts Council, sundaystreet.org and the Long Island Museum will welcome singer-songwriter Ray Bonneville, performing live on the stage of the Carriage Museum’s Gillespie Room in Stony Brook.  

With a style that sometimes draws comparisons to JJ Cale and Daniel Lanois, this blues-influenced, New Orleans-inspired “song and groove man” holds dual U.S. and Canadian citizenship. He says he “found his grove” when he moved to New Orleans after serving in Vietnam as a Marine, earning a pilot’s license, and moving to Alaska, then Seattle, and Paris. Ray‘s songs involve gritty narratives inspired by a lifetime of hard-won knowledge set against his soulful guitar and harmonica playing.
Ray has earned many accolades, including a Juno (the Canadian equivalent of a Grammy). His post-Katrina ode, “I Am the Big Easy” received the International Folk Alliance’s 2009 Song of the Year Award, and in 2012 Bonneville won the solo/duet category in the Blues Foundation’s International Blues Challenge. His songs have been recorded by many other artists, among them Slaid Cleaves and Ellis Paul.
Ray will perform songs from a new album as well as fan favorites from his previous six releases. (www.raybonneville.com).
Tickets are $25 per person and may be purchased at the door. Please call the museum at (631) 751-0066 the day of the show to confirm ticket availability. Museum exhibitions close at 5 p.m. and are not included with concert tickets.
The Sunday Street Concert Series is presented by WUSB-FM, sundaystreet.org, the Greater Port Jefferson-Northern Brookhaven Arts Council and the Long Island Museum.
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About Sunday Street
The Sunday Street Series began in 2004 at The University Cafe at Stony Brook University, when Charlie Backfish, host of the long-running weekly radio program Sunday Street on WUSB-FM, began presenting concerts with many of the singer/songwriters featured on the program. In its first decade, the series presented 172 concerts with musicians from all over the world performing in an intimate venue. In 2015 the series moved from the University Café to the nearby Long Island Museum, where musicians may take advantage of the museum’s Steinway Boston Grand piano. For more information and a complete concert schedule visit www.sundaystreet.org

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About the Long Island Museum

Located at 1200 Route 25A in Stony Brook, the Long Island Museum is a Smithsonian Affiliate dedicated to enhancing the lives of adults and children with an understanding of Long Island’s rich history and diverse cultures. Regular exhibition hours (unless otherwise noted), are Thursday through Saturday,10 a.m. – 5 p.m. and Sunday, noon – 5 p.m.  For more information about programs and exhibitions, please call 631-751-0066 or visit the museum website at www.longislandmuseum.org.

Mose Allison
Evening will honor the music of longtime Smithtown resident

By Kevin Redding

Mose Allison. Photo by Michael Wilson

A reporter once asked the late jazz and blues pianist and singer Mose Allison — regarded among musicians like Bonnie Raitt, Leon Russell, Pete Townshend and Van Morrison as “one of the finest songwriters in 20th century blues” — why he wasn’t more famous.

“Mose, you were a social critic before Bob Dylan, satirical long before Randy Newman and rude before Mick Jagger,” the reporter said. “How come you’re not a big star?” Allison, who was born in Mississippi and moved from New York City to Smithtown in the mid-1960s to raise a family and spent much of his time walking in the local woods and swimming in the Long Island Sound, responded: “Just lucky, I guess.”

On Saturday, March 24, The Long Island Museum, in partnership with WUSB-FM’s Sunday Street Concert Series and the Greater Port Jefferson-Northern Brookhaven Arts Council, will give the 2006 Long Island Music Hall of Fame inductee his proper due with The Word From Mose: A Celebration of the Music of Mose Allison, a tribute concert in the Carriage Museum’s Gillespie Room at 7 p.m.

Jack Licitra

The concert, following the tradition of other Sunday Street Series shows organized by Charlie Backfish, Stony Brook University history lecturer and host of the university’s weekly radio program “Sunday Street,” will feature local and outside musicians, who will strum and sing through decades of Allison’s breakthrough material, including his more well-known tracks “Your Mind Is on Vacation,” “Everybody’s Crying Mercy” and “I Don’t Worry About a Thing.”

Allison, who died Nov. 15, 2016, just four days before turning 89, was a four-time Grammy nominee and frequent collaborator with jazz greats Zoot Sims and Stan Getz whose songs spanned more than 30 albums — The Rolling Stones, Diana Krall, The Who, The Pixies and Elvis Costello are among those who have recorded Allison’s songs.

Pete Kennedy

The lineup includes “Sunday Street” regular and New York-based singer-songwriter Pete Kennedy; Pat Wictor, electric and slide guitarist of the group Brother Sun; Jack Licitra, a Sayville-based keyboardist and guitarist as well as the founder of the music-teaching studio South Bay Arts in Bayport; and Abbie Gardner, an acclaimed Dobro player who has toured for many years as part of the trio Red Molly. Some members of Allison’s family, including his daughter and singer-songwriter Amy Allison, will also be in attendance.

The evening will also include a screening of a short BBC documentary on Allison called “Ever Since the World Ended,” featuring interviews with Costello, Morrison, Raitt and Loudon Wainwright III and footage of Allison performing.

“Not only is he such an important artist, Mose Allison was someone who lived in this area for many decades and we thought it was time to do something like this for him,” Backfish said of the decision to honor the musician. “When he wasn’t on tour, which was quite often, he would be back in the area and playing shows at the Staller Center at Stony Brook University or jazz clubs in Port Jefferson.”

Pat Wictor. Photo by John Mazlish

Backfish said he also had the opportunity to interview Allison on his radio program many years ago. “He had such an incredibly rich catalog in so many ways and these artists are going to get together and play both well-known songs of his and the deep tracks,” he said. “I would hope that if people aren’t aware of Mose, they’ll suddenly find someone they will check out and listen to, and for those who know him, this will be a great way to celebrate his music and listen to artists reinterpret his songs.”

Wictor, a longtime Allison fan who, with his band, recorded a version of “Everybody’s Crying Mercy,” said Backfish approached him to participate in the concert for his “affinity” for the man’s work. “I love Mose partly because he cannot be categorized easily,” Wictor said. “He sort of mixed jazz and blues, and social commentary, in a way that nobody else did. And I like his sense of humor in his lyrics, which were always a little sardonic and mischievous. He comes across as a person that doesn’t suffer fools gladly and that’s always enjoyable to me. The songs themselves are very musically interesting, too — blues-based but they always have a unique musical and lyrical quality unlike anything else.”

Abbie Gardner

Kennedy said Allison was unusual among jazz musicians in his time because he wrote a lot of songs with lyrics, while others primarily stuck to instrumental compositions. “Allison actually wrote songs that he sang and that’s what we’re focusing on during the concert,” said Kennedy, who noted that he’s had a lot of fun examining Allison’s songs more closely and learning them in anticipation of the show. “His songs sound totally modern to me now, even the old ones from the 1950s and ’60s. The writing is really clever, really humorous and had a little bit of social commentary to it, but not in a negative way.”

Licitra, too, expressed his excitement over his involvement, calling Allison’s music “the thinking man’s blues.” “I’m really looking forward to giving people a taste of his style of intellectualism and humor,” he said. “And for me, this is all about the group of performers on the bill. I’m a big fan of all of them and so I’m excited about playing with them and seeing how they each interpret Mose’s [work].”

The jazz legend’s son John Allison, who grew up in Smithtown, said while his father was a true “musician’s musician” and beloved in many artist’s circles, he was as low profile as could be at home. “There he was, living in Smithtown, so unassuming that even our neighbors, for 15 years, didn’t know what he did until they saw him on TV with Bonnie Raitt for a PBS concert at Wolf Trap,” John Allison said, laughing. “He just wanted to do his thing. He read books and played music. I’d come home from high school and he’d be listening to some weird Chinese, classical music and just laughing and loving it … [and] sometimes he did tai chi in the living room.”

The Long Island Museum is located at 1200 Route 25A, Stony Brook. Advance tickets to the tribute show are $25 through Friday, March 23 at www.sundaystreet.org with tickets at the door for $30 (cash only). Beer, wine and cider will be available for purchase. For more information, please call 631-751-0066.

Sloan Wainwright. Photo courtesy of LIM

Save the date! On Sunday, Jan. 21 at 3 p.m. the Long Island Museum, 1200 Route 25A, Stony Brook will welcome Sloan Wainwright, performing live in the Carriage Museum’s Gillespie Room as part of the Sunday Street Music Series presented by WUSB-FM radio and the Greater Port Jefferson-Northern Brookhaven Arts Council.

The singer/songwriter is at ease in a variety of American musical styles — pop, folk, jazz and blues — all held together by the melodious tone of her rich contralto. Her family tree (brother and folk music luminary Loudon Wainwright, nephew Rufus Wainwright, nieces Martha Wainwright and Lucy Wainwright Roche) reads like a who’s who of contemporary folk music.

Wainwright’s incredible gift is not only her unique songwriting ability but also her dramatically voiced rendition of original songs. Wainwright brings original songs from a new album, “Bright Side of a Rainy Day,” to this performance, along with her interpretations of songs by Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and others. She will be accompanied by her longtime guitarist and collaborator Stephen Murphy for this performance.

Advance sale tickets are $25 online through Friday, Jan. 19 with tickets at the door for $30 (cash only). Please call the museum at 631-751-0066 the day of the show to confirm ticket availability.

Beaucoup Blue, from left, David and Adrian Mowry. Photo from Charles Backfish

Coinciding with the Midnight Rum: Long Island and Prohibition exhibition on view at The Long Island Museum, the Sunday Street Series, joined by the Long Island Blues Society, will welcome Beaucoup Blue in concert on Sunday, July 9 at 7 p.m. Join them for a very special evening of great blues as well as some great brews for your enjoyment provided by The Port Jeff Brewing Company. Wine will also be available.

Beaucoup Blue is the father and son Philadelphia-based duo of David and Adrian Mowry. Although blues is a staple of their repertoire, they also cite musical influences from folk, soul, R&B, jazz, country and bluegrass. A handsome range of instruments, including 6- and 12-string guitars, slide guitar, and dobro and their two soulful voices blend together like only family members can. You’ll hear their original compositions but also blues classics. They have recently released their fourth CD, “Elixer.”

Bob Westcott will open the show. An accomplished finger-style guitarist, Westcott promises to share some songs from the Prohibition Era with the audience including Clayton McMichen’s 1930 classic, “The Prohibition Blues.”

Advance sale tickets are $20 at www.sundaystreet.org through Friday, July 7, with tickets at the door for $25 (cash only). For more information, call 631-751-0066.

The Kennedys will return for their ninth Dylan birthday celebration on May 21. Photo by Jeremy Lebled

By Kevin Redding

The times may be a changin’ but the songs of Bob Dylan continue to be sung. On Sunday, May 21, in celebration of the Nobel Laureate’s 76th birthday, The Long Island Museum, in partnership with WUSB-FM’s Sunday Street Concert Series and the Greater Port Jefferson-Northern Brookhaven Arts Council, will host the 12th annual Dylan tribute concert in the Carriage Museum’s Gillespie Room at 7 p.m.

Several local and outside musicians — including concert staples Pete and Maura Kennedy, whose covers include guitars, sitars and ukuleles, Rod MacDonald of the revered tribute band Big Brass Bed, and Russ Seeger of Levon Helm’s Last Hombres, who will perform Dylan deep tracks like “Foot of Pride” — will strum and sing through decades of material, from 1965’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” to 1997’s “Love Sick.”

Much of the setlist will feature songs from two touchstone albums celebrating anniversaries this year — 1967’s “John Wesley Harding,” Dylan’s return to his acoustic roots after three albums of going electric, turns 50, and 1997’s “Time Out of Mind,” his Grammy-Award-winning comeback album, turns 20.

“Every year the show takes on a different dimension … it’s always different and never stale,” said Charlie Backfish, host of the long-running, weekly Stony Brook University radio program “Sunday Street” from which the series stemmed. “We have unique interpretations of Dylan’s songs and we don’t just do the greatest hits; we really go through the catalog and try to play songs you don’t hear often, making it very different than the usual Dylan tribute show.”

Speaking of deep tracks, Seeger is expected to perform “Foot of Pride,” a song Dylan wrote and recorded in 1983 but never released on an album.

Backfish said he chose Dylan as the focus of the tribute concert because of the singer-songwriter’s incredibly prolific career. “He has been at home in a variety of different musical settings over the years, starting out in a folk direction and moving toward rock and then into a country sound and then in a gospel direction later in his career — he’s moved in fascinating ways, his songs are incredible and it [really] opens up the possibilities of using the lyrics and melodies and taking them in different directions and there’s a lot of room to move with Dylan songs. It’s terribly interesting and it’s quite a rich catalog we have to go with,” he said.

The Sunday Street Series started in 2004 at the University Cafe at Stony Brook University when Backfish put on concerts featuring the singer-songwriters he’d interviewed and played on his radio program. In 2014, he was in need of a different venue to host the concerts and turned to The Long Island Museum, which took it over a year later.

“We were wanting to do a singer-songwriter concert series at the museum when Charlie approached us,” Neil Watson, the museum’s executive director, said. Since Backfish came aboard, the museum has hosted more than 20 concerts featuring an ever-changing roster of artists. “It’s activated our performance space on a regular basis like nothing can. People who would never have come to the museum are now being introduced to it in a different way.”

Watson, who noted “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” as his favorite Dylan song, said he was thrilled to be hosting this particular event.

“This concert series sells out very fast and I think it’s because Dylan’s music has touched so many people for different reasons,” Watson said. “What these musicians do with the material is critical and when you hear their interpretations of his songs, they take on a new life. The [concert] captures the spirit of Bob Dylan. It will be a rollicking good time.”

The Long Island Museum is located at 1200 Route 25A, Stony Brook. Tickets may be purchased in advance at www.sundaystreet.org through Friday, May 19 for $30. If available, tickets may be purchased at the door for $35 (cash only). Please call the museum at 631-751-0066 the day of the show to confirm ticket availability.