KSUT Four Corners Public Radio’s Blog

The Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College welcomes a big, double bill, Wednesday night as Joan Osborne and The Holmes Brothers take the stage.

Osborne is on the road with the Holmes Brothers, revered as the undisputed masters of blues-based American roots music. In a career that spans more than 15 years, Joan Osborne has proven to be an artistically restless and consistently enthralling performer. In 2002, she cemented her reputation as a top tier soul singer with a turn in the acclaimed documentary film “Standing in the Shadows of Motown,” followed by a tour with legendary Motown backing band The Funk Brothers.

In 2003, Osborne toured with the Dixie Chicks and then surprised and wowed audiences touring throughout America for two years as the lead singer for The Dead. In 2007, she graced the stage of the Grand Ole Opry.

Osborne loves to sing and perform a variety of genres, but she came back to her soulful rock roots on “Little Wild One,” her fall 2008 release that reunited her Grammy All-Star team of Rick Chertoff and Rob Hyman and Eric Bazilian of The Hooters. The team originally worked together on Osborne’s breakthrough, debut album “Relish,” which sold five million copies worldwide and yielded the smash hit “One Of Us,” along with six Grammy nominations.

In writing songs for “Little Wild One,” Osborne fell under the spell of two of New York’s most beloved poets.

“The album’s opening track, ‘Hallelujah in the City,’ is a riff on the idea of the city as a spiritual place,” said Osborne in a press release. “This idea comes up in Walt Whitman’s and Alan Ginsberg’s poetry, the concept that the shared bond of humanity of all the citizens, all their interactions, adds up to a unique environment of the soul.”

Since their debut on Rounder in 1989, The Holmes Brothers have worked virtually non-stop. The spine-tingling harmonies, boundless energy and telepathic musicianship of The Holmes Brothers (bassist/vocalist Sherman Holmes, guitarist/pianist/vocalist Wendell Holmes, drummer/vocalist Popsy Dixon) mix Saturday night roadhouse rock with the gospel fervor and harmonies of a Sunday church service.

“Entertainment Weekly” writes, “The Holmes Brothers are juke-joint vets with a brazenly borderless view of American music.”

Rooted in blues and gospel, The Holmes Brothers’ sound is all their own. They’ve recorded with Van Morrison, Peter Gabriel, Odetta, Phoebe Snow, Willie Nelson, Rosanne Cash, Levon Helm and Joan Osborne, and have performed throughout the world. They won the coveted Blues Music Award from the Memphis-based Blues Foundation for Band of the Year in 2005.

Writes Osborne on her MySpace blog, “I am having such a tremendously wonderful time touring with The Holmes Brothers … Along the way, I have gotten the blessing to once again collaborate with the Holmes Brothers. After recording the song “Those Memories Of You” on their last record, ‘State of Grace,’ I will be producing their next album… I am never disappointed whenever we work together.”

Tickets for Joan Osborne and The Holmes Brothers are available on the web at www.durangoconcerts.com or by calling 247.7657.

Allen Toussaint, revered as one of America’s greatest musical treasures, takes the stage at the Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College Wednesday night.
Singer, pianist, songwriter, arranger and producer, Toussaint has been making records for more than 40 years. His massive influence on American music reaches deep into the idioms of rhythm and blues, pop, country, musical theater, blues and jazz.

According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, into which he was inducted in 1998, his greatest contribution was not allowing New Orleans old-school R&B traditions to die out by keeping pace with developments in the rapidly evolving worlds of soul and funk. In addition, he brought the New Orleans sound to the national stage, and it remains a vital and ongoing part of our musical heritage to this day.

Today Toussaint has hundreds of hits to his name. He penned the 1966 Lee Dorsey classic “Working in a Coal Mine” and produced Dr. John’s 1973 hit “Right Place, Wrong Time” and 1975’s “Lady Marmalade” by the vocal trio Labelle. His songs “Java” and “Southern Night” have both been credited and cited for more than 2 million airings. At the 2009 Grammy Awards, his recent collaboration with Elvis Costello, “The River in Reverse” was nominated for pop/vocal album of the year, and he received the Recording Academy Trustees Award.

In August 2009, Toussaint was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame at The Mother-in-Law Lounge, named for the late Ernie K-Doe’s ‘60s hit “Mother-In-Law,” written by Toussaint. The club had been destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, but has been rebuilt and stands as a living monument of Big Easy musical history.
Toussaint has joked in his live shows that he’d spent his life in the studio until “a booking agent by the name of Katrina” put him on the road. According to the “Boston Herald” of a recent performance, “… he proved the road is where he belongs.”

Tickets are available through the box office at 247-7657 and online durangoconcerts.com.