COVERAGE OF BOTTLEROCK NAPA VALLEY 2013

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Our little city of Napa just shot the moon with a world-class, five day, three stage, 60+ band rock festival, May 8-12. Here are my six articles published in the Napa Valley Register – first a preview piece on the veteran rockers of the festival featuring an interview with Richard Thompson, then five daily diaries. In aggregate, I hope the diaries convey a sense of what it was like to be there.

 

Richard Thompson

The veteran rockers of BottleRock – When BottleRock Napa Valley co-founders Bob Vogt and Gabe Meyers chose the line-up for this week’s music festival, they didn’t conduct a market survey or attempt to balance genres or speculate on audience demographics. “We basically just picked the bands we liked,” Vogt said…

Richard Thompson

macklemore serape

BottleRock Diary, Day One – Stepping into BottleRock on day one, an hour or so before the main gate opens to the waiting crowd, it feels a bit like an enormous emerging circus. There are midways and tents, scaffolding and trailers, hundreds of workers-builders, movers, security people in bright yellow smocks, managers of one kind or another donning bright blue polos and headsets…

Ben Haggerty (Macklemore)

 

RT PRESSER

 BottleRock Diary, Day Two – “I know it’s impossible, I’m thinking.” But walking into BottleRock on day two, there’s a band playing that sure sounds like the Grateful Dead, especially the voice of the lead guitar — countrified, improvisational, noodling Jerry-like. The band is Moonalice, the guitarist Barry Sless. They’re on the monstrous WillPower Stage, which is now in full operation along with everything else at the festival. Day one was great, but preamble…

Richard Thompson Press Conference

 

Brittany Howard

BottleRock Diary, Day Three – BottleRock Napa Valley goes beyond simply crowded on Day 3. The attendance estimate doesn’t really convey how it looks and feels, but for the sake of completeness, festival officials are saying 30,000. Looking back at the crowd from the photo pit just before The Shins take the big WillPower Stage, “sea of souls” comes to mind…

Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes

 

BottleRock Diary, Day Four – It’s mid–afternoon on BottleRock day four and I’m lucky enough to be sitting about 10 feet from the Carolina Chocolate Drops. The traditional string band is patiently taking questions in the festival’s press room…

CCD

 

 

 

Dom Flemons of Carolina Chocolate Drops

 

BottleRock Diary, Day Five – It’s a few minutes before 10 and I’m walking north on Juarez toward First Street. Behind me, the Zac Brown Band is playing what might be the last song of BottleRock. The amazing sound system at the WillPower Stage drives it through the crowd, out the exit, and down the street with little loss of fidelity…

Jackson Browne

Jackson Browne

 

Big Stage at BR

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THE ARLO GUTHRIE INTERVIEW – ARLO ON WOODY

arlowoody

 

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to talk with Arlo Guthrie about the life and work of his father. This generated a feature story in the Napa Valley Register. Here is an extended excerpt from that interview:

 

 

DK: Would you talk about the name of your current tour, “Here Comes the Kid.”

AG: For my entire life, I have remained Woody Guthrie’s kid. I have come to love it, even though at first, it was a little odd getting used to. At this point, I felt the celebration of his 100th birthday that started in July and will continue through May was an opportunity for me to do more of his songs than I would normally be able to do in the current climate of my shows. I thought it would be fun to give the tour a name that let people, in some way, know that there was a relationship, aside from the obvious biological one, and I thought that was a humorous way of dealing with it.

DK: It’s sort of musically fully embracing the kid-ness, yes?

AG: I didn’t want to do one of these tribute shows. I didn’t want to fully try to incorporate his life and his work into one night. I think that it would be crazy, especially because there are a lot of people who also have come to love some of the things that I’ve written over the years as well. I was trying to find a way to incorporate both in the name of the tour that would be short and simple to remember. We didn’t used to name tours, you know. This is relatively new, during the last eight to ten years, when the venues decided that we need to tell people what’s different from the last time you were here. We started naming the tours, and I’ve had a humorous time with that. They were looking for a name for this one and I just figured it would be good to acknowledge the relationship so that people could expect to hear some of my dad’s material, but also do some of my own as well.

DK: I saw your last tour in Napa, which was the family band. I don’t remember exactly what you called the tour, but it was you and the family members. How different is the experience for you subjectively, playing solo. This is going to be a solo tour, right?

AG: Right, this is a solo tour. If that one was within the last two years, it was the “Guthrie Family Rides Again.” That was because we had a “Family Legacy” tour that we did about four or five years ago, where everybody could contribute, not only to singing the songs of the entire family, but including some of their own, because all of my kids and grandkids at this point have begun creating their own material.  I thought it would be fun for the audience to hear how the ideas have moved through the generations, as well as hear the original songs that my father had written. The obvious difference is that if I’m doing a show with a lot of people on stage, when you have 14 people on the stage, you don’t have the time yourself.  No one has the time to fully do their own stuff, and so I felt more like a ringleader or a circus maestro, you know.

DK: I’m presuming that there’s more flexibility solo because playing with the band really requires structure in a set list, more than the freedom that you would have performing by yourself. Is that true?

AG: It is true, although it may be a moot point.  At this point in time, the show that I’m doing is fairly concrete, with some exceptions that I can obviously play with, but I like the show the way it is. It’s been distilled from the experience of doing it since last July, and I think it gives a fairly complete picture of the kinds of songs that are still relevant, that he wrote 70, 80 years ago.  It’s hard. There’s no way to squeeze it all into one night no matter what you do. It’s really a matter of picking and choosing, and having the songs make sense, one to the other, so that it’s not just some hodgepodge of material. 

I like the shows to have a flow that is surprising in its depth, and I think that’s the show that has been distilled so far. I like it that way, so I’m not likely to change it from night to night, with exceptions, depending on, you know, there may be songs about particular places that I’m playing on the tour, and so I will include something local, if he wrote something about it. By and large, the tour is fairly stable. The songs, the set list is fairly stable at this point.

DK: I don’t normally ask artists about other artists, to take the time to talk about other artists, but in this case, because the tour is dedicated, in a sense, to the centennial of your father, I’d like to ask you some questions about Woody. Is that okay?

AG: Oh, sure, of course.

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VINNY

VINNY

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THE PAUL REISER INTERVIEW

Paul Reiser Web

 

 

I had the opportunity to interview Paul Reiser for my feature story in the Napa Valley Register. Here’s an extended excerpt of our conversation:

 

 

 

 

DK: Were you funny as a child, the class clown?

PR: As a kid I just liked to get laughs. The only way to get them was to be in a play. There was no such thing as a stand-up comic in sixth grade, so you’ve got to be in the play. In college it was never the serious theater, it was the dormitory theatre, not the theater department where they’d be doing Ibsen or Chekhov, it was doing silly musical comedies and how many laughs can we get in.

DK: How did you get started in stand-up comedy?

PR: I always loved stand-up, and I was a fan. When guys my age were going to rock concerts, I was going to see Robert Klein in the Village, or George Carlin. There was a small select group of us guys who were into stand-up. I never knew how to do it, but the timing was such that when I was in college the clubs started to emerge – Catch A Rising Star, The Improv – places where you could learn your craft. That was an access point into that world. Once I knew that, I said okay, I’m going to just start going to those clubs. Not with any great plan in mind, but this seems fun, you get to stay out late and meet girls. This is good. And one thing led to another, and suddenly you’re a stand-up.

You’d put together five minutes and audition and the great holy grail was the bartender, or somebody who was in charge said yeah, you’re okay, you can come back tomorrow. You can now officially start hanging out for free. Great, I’ve achieved. I made the cut-off. And then you start doing it, and your five minutes becomes ten minutes, and you sort of grow and learn about the gigs that are available and you start doing local gigs.

DK: After many years of success you left stand-up comedy for movies and television for almost two decades. What brought you back to it?

PR: Well, I stopped doing it right about the time Mad About You started (1992). So it was a good long time ‘til I picked it up again. It was really a lark. I had done a charity event and had such a good time and thought, oh my goodness, I forgot how much fun that can be. So it was exactly returning to the way it was thirty years earlier. I started from the beginning, started from scratch, wrote five minutes and called the clubs. At least I had a little reputation, so when I called the clubs they said sure, I’d come up and do ten minutes. About a year later I said, you know what, I think I’m ready. Let’s see who’s out there. So I’ve been doing theaters and a lot of comedy clubs. I’ve been having a ball. It’s really been fun this time around, even more so than I remember.

DK: In the early days, were you always looking toward a career in TV or the movies?

PR: There were guys who only did stand-up as a stepping stone to something else, and as soon as they got a TV show or something, that was it. I was never really one of those guys. I never presumed that it would necessarily lead to anything, and I was in no hurry to move on. I always loved it. And for good or for bad, I don’t think you ever master it. It’s kind of comforting to see that there’s no short cut. It’s exactly as it was thirty years ago. The only way to get better is to do it every night, to do it as often as you can. And sure enough, every night some parts work better and some parts you say hmm, that didn’t work as well. And it’s a moving target, it’s really an endless puzzle of getting things to work.

Having been away from it for so long, there’s a different vibe to it this time. It feels like getting together with old friends. The people who come to see me at this point, they know me. It’s not ‘let’s go to a club and see who they have this week.’ It’s ‘we know this guy.’ And I’ve always been doing the same sort of stuff. Mad About You grew out of my stand-up, and my books grew out of my stand-up, so it’s not like it’s ‘Oh, this is nothing at all like I pictured.’ There’s sort of a through-line over the years, so when people come it really feels like we’re old friends who haven’t seen each other in a while and it’s been very fun.

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BOTTLEROCK – THE NAPA MUSIC SCENE GOES HUGE

In October I wrote about the emerging music scene in Downtown Napa, the growth of three venues staging 400-500 live performances a year across the spectrum of rock, pop, country, folk, blues and jazz. Now our little musical mecca is about to go seriously big – a five day, 60+ band, multi-stage rock festival featuring headliners like Kings of Leon, The Black Keys, Further, Jackson Browne, Train, Jane’s Addiction, The Black Crowes, and dozens more.

BottleRock Napa Valley is the brain child of Napans Bob Vogt and Gabriel Meyers, both of whom were instrumental, along with prime mover George Altamura, in the stunning restoraton of the Uptown Theater. Meyers credits the emergence of the Uptown with setting the stage for BottleRock. “The genesis of BottleRock springs from the great live entertainment gift that is the Uptown Theater,” Meyers said in a recent Napa Valley Register interview.

“The long-awaited downtown Napa renaissance has inspired us to bring an eclectic and broad group of world-class music and performers to our hometown,” Meyers added. “The Napa Valley has set such a high standard  for wine food and hospitality that we feel that the time is right to add a world-class music festival to the mix.”

The main venue for the five-day festival (May 8-12) will be the 26 acre Napa Valley Expo site, home of the Napa County Fair. Three outdoor stages, positioned to minimize noise and light in the surrounding neighborhoods, will accomodate simultaneous performances. According to Napa city spokesman, Barry Martin, as many as 35,000 people a day could  attend. In addition to the Expo, smaller performances will be held at the Uptown Theater and other venues. The full schedule is published on the BottleRock website.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The festival will put traffic control, parking, security, lodging, and food services to a test unlike anything our city has experienced. Napa Police Captain Steve Potter said that “we are working with them to try and work out a parking and traffic and security plan, but it is very early in the planning stages and we have not received all of the information yet.”

Local lodging – over 5,000 accommodations – is rapidly filling up at a pace that the hotels, motels, and bed and breakfasts have never experienced. Michael Palmer, the general manager of the Meritage Resort said that this is by far the biggest thing that he’s seen in his five years in Napa. “What will happen is that there’s not going to be anywhere for anybody to stay,” he said. “People will have to stay in Fairfield, Vacaville, Vallejo and Sonoma.”

Get ready, Napa. This is going to be something.

 

 

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GUNS AND KIDS, CONTINUED – PEDIATRICIAN POWER

Parents of Sandy Hook Elementary massacre victims hold hands during a press conference on the one-month anniversary of the elementary school massacre.
Photo by John Moore/Getty Images

“Guns kill kids. In 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2,694 children and teens in the United States died because of a firearm. Another 15,578 children and teens were injured. Every 30 minutes, a child is killed or injured by a gun. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the largest organization of pediatricians, recommends that conversations about guns and gun safety start during a prenatal visit and be repeated every year as part of anticipatory guidance. Those conversations start with a question: “Do you own a gun?”  Pediatrician Helena Rho

In Florida, three pediatricians have successfully restrained (so far) Governor Rick Scott’s gag order prohibiting a physician from asking questions about gun ownership in a patient’s home. Read Dr. Rho’s article in Slate.

 

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THE SHAWN COLVIN INTERVIEW

 

 

 

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of interviewing Shawn Colvin for my feature story in the Napa Valley Register. Here’s an extended excerpt:

 

 

 

 

 

DK: You’re embarking on a solo tour. Is that a very different experience on stage for you?

SC: It’s pretty different. Playing alone for me is looser. I don’t have to stay in tune with anybody, so as long as I’m in relative tune with myself, I’m fine. I don’t have to follow a certain setlist, I can jump around. I can talk more to the audience and be more intimate and just be more connected with them. When I’m playing with other musicians I’m focused on them a lot. But it’s great, I love playing with other musicians. I love that input and that inspiration.

DK: Is performing on your own your natural state?

SC: Yeah, absolutely. It always has been. It’s just something I feel comfortable with, and I think I’m good at it. It’s just what I aspired to. It seemed like my heroes were at their essence guitar players and singers and songwriters. That’s just the truest form of what I have to give as an artist.”

DK: You have a history of recording with extraordinary musicians. How does that happen – is it the producer, or are you making the choices?

SC: Generally it’s a combination of both, though I have to say that in this last record (“All Fall Down,” 2012) I was also working on the book, and I trust Buddy (producer Buddy Miller) a hundred percent, and he said ‘I really hear something. I hear a band for you and I know who it is.’ And I said, ‘Go for it.’ So he hired (guitarist Bill) Frissel, (bassist Viktor) Krauss and (drummer Brian) Blade. We recorded in Nashville and the folks that are on the record are generally mutual friends of ours, but Buddy calls and people come. And Jakob Dylan just happened to be in town. I saw him at my hotel, and I could really hear his voice on that song, so he came in too.

DK: Your acoustic guitar style is considered rather unique. How would you describe it?

SC: I’ve been influenced by some wonderful guitar players and the style’s an amalgamation of different people I’ve emulated – Joni Mitchell, Richard Thompson, Paul Simon, John Hiatt, the Kingston Trio (she laughs), the Beatles. If I could define my style in one word, it would be ‘percussive.’ That’s about as close as I can come about what is not unique necessarily, but what’s recognizable. The beat is there and that was a direct influence of Joni Mitchell, who had the technique of putting her wrist and her fingernails against the strings. That’s not quite how I was able to achieve it. I kind of use the side of my hand, but I was trying to emulate her percussiveness that really started me out that way. That and playing solo in so many clubs where no one listened – I thought if I could make the guitar interesting then maybe I’ll stand a better chance of making these people listen.

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MAKING THE CASE THAT THE PROFIT MOTIVE IS HARMFUL TO U.S. HEALTH CARE

My 2007 novel, Standard of Care, dramatized the conflict between profits and the well-being of patients through the journey of conscience of one physician executive. In last week’s New York Times, Editorial Board member Eduardo Porter spelled out factually why the profit motive is a fundamental liability, medically and economically, to the U.S. health care system. An excerpt:

 

“Our reliance on private enterprise to provide the most essential services stems, in part, from a more narrow understanding of our collective responsibility to provide social goods. Private American health care has stood out for decades among industrial nations, where public universal coverage has long been considered a right of citizenship. But our faith in private solutions also draws on an ingrained belief that big government serves too many disparate objectives and must cater to too many conflicting interests to deliver services fairly and effectively.

Our trust appears undeserved, however. Our track record suggests that handing over responsibility for social goals to private enterprise is providing us with social goods of lower quality, distributed more inequitably and at a higher cost than if government delivered or paid for them directly.”

Read the full article.

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LISA KRISTINE’S STUNNING HUMANITARIAN PHOTOGRAPHY

Kofi, photographed by Lisa Kristine. He was enslaved in Ghana and is free today.

Anyone who visits us in the wine country will tell you that we will not let them return home without visiting Lisa Kristine’s gallery. Hiding in plain sight, just down the street from the Sebastiani Theater on the Sonoma Square, is a permanent photographic exhibition that leaves our visitors, to a person, stunned by Kristine’s images of indigenous peoples around the world. Her most recent project is the epic documentation of worldwide 21st century slavery. Check out Meredith May’s excellent article and photo gallery in today’s San Francisco Chronicle.

 

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STEVE EARLE IS A BUSY MAN…

 

From my feature story in today’s Napa Valley Register:

These days, the 57-year-old self-described “hardcore troubadour” may be more likely to be recognized as an actor than as a musician. With roles in two HBO hit series, The Wire and Treme, Earle has become a familiar face to TV viewers. Over five seasons of The Wire, he played Walon, who, like Earle himself, is a recovering drug addict.

In a recent public radio interview, Earle spoke about his acting on “The Wire.” “A lot of people say that it’s the best show that’s ever been on television,” he said. “I learned a lot from doing it, and it’s brought a few people to my music that never listened before.

“David Simon (the executive producer and head writer) wrote the part for me, and it required zero acting,” Earle added. “I had to really suck not to get it. Harley, the character on Treme, is a musician but different from me and requires some acting. Walon’s a redneck recovering addict — that requires no acting.”

Read the full story…

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