In many ways, it can be tough to reconcile the very institution of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band itself with the individual talents of the men who play in it. It's a collective that has been the ambassador of New Orleans jazz for a half century - an indelible fixture of the city, and indeed, of jazz itself. It's easy to get caught up in the idea of the band and the mystique that surrounds it, and not recognize each individual (many of whom are part of an unbroken bloodline of 'Nawlins musicians) for their personal talents and accolades. Even walking into the beautifully intimate and acoustically flawless Three Stages theatre on Friday evening and seeing the "Preservation Hall Jazz Band

Just moments after Wilco’s enigmatic guitarist Nels Cline had peeled the paint off the walls inside UC Davis' Mondavi Center with a little psychedelic freakout on "Impossible Germany," front man Jeff Tweedy pulled out the line of the night: "You know, something just occurred to me - the guy yelling 'Free Bird!' might help explain the pepper spray incident." Ohhh, too soon? Tweedy asked that too, amidst the smattering of "ohhh's" and groans that were peppered (zing!) in with the laughter and the applause - although there seemed to be a resounding agreement that a little aerosol Tabasco to the face would be an appropriate response for a guy who apparently still thinks it's cool or funny t

Ben Jaffe couldn’t quite remember the name of “that big record store” he visited the last time Preservation Hall Jazz Band visited Sacramento, rehearsing for the jazz ballet suite “Ma Maison,” performed at the Mondavi Center back in November. He did remember that it was “right downtown,” and it occupied a large corner. Not hard to determine that we were discussing The Beat. “When you walk into places like that, its like, ‘thank you, Lord!’” Jaffe emphatically proclaimed. “You need human interaction - in society we’ve become more and more isolated,” he said, ruminating on the eternal feud between the comforting smell of a house of vinyl and the ever-increasing prominence of MP3s. “Even t

Rock journs dream about interviewing guys that have the mystique of Jeff Tweedy. So why not try and steal a few hundred seconds on the phone with one of rock's most intriguing (living) front men? Because it would have been met with about the same response I repeatedly got in my pre-teen years when sending those letters with requests for a dinner date to Jennifer Love Hewitt, c/o Producers of "Party of Five." Crickets. In principle, Jeff Tweedy wouldn't be the kind of guy to scoff or turn his nose up at anyone who wanted an interview - that's not his style. There is no visible penthouse or caviar in his songwriting, his performance persona, or in the man himself - it's pretty much all ba

Call it "15 for '12." Since Sac Press announced 12 can't miss concerts for 2012, the calendar has gone slightly bonkers with a trio of exciting announcements for the coming months, and there's no way we can leave them off the list. As many of you may have heard already in this morning's announcement, the haymaker of this list is The Black Keys, bucking the perceived trend of "big name acts passing over Sacramento." Their rise over the last couple of year has been meteoric, circumventing pop trends by injecting blood-in-the-mud blues rock into the mainstream in a way that has arguably never been done before - you'd probably have to go back to the heyday of Zeppelin. Songs like the beer-swi