Tag: The Green Room

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Join us in The Green Room at Crosstown Arts for a special performance by The Love Light Orchestra.

The Love Light Orchestra celebrates the Memphis big band blues-style found on the 1950s and ’60s singles of Bobby “Blue” Bland, B.B. King and Herman ”Junior” Parker. The band of seasoned Memphis musicians derives their name from Bland’s 1961 hit “Turn On Your Love Light.” Their sound is completed with the soulful voice of bluesman John Nemeth.

Tickets: $10
Doors at 7:30 pm | Show at 8 pm

In addition to dipping into the catalogs of Buddy Ace, Freddie King, and Percy Mayfield, the band demonstrates their deftness with uptown blues via the solid originals “Singing For My Supper, “Lonesome and High,” and the Ray Charles-inspired opener “See Why I Love You.” Casual fans of Memphis music might only recognize their cover of Al Green’s iconic “Love and Happiness,” but it’s reset here as a shuffle, building upon riffs that horn player, Marc Franklin, says were inspired by Charles Mingus’ “Fables of Faubus.”

The Love Light Orchestra’s overall sound, says Franklin, was inspired by Joe Scott whose work Franklin discovered after he was hired to play with Bland in the early ‘90s. “The first time I heard his work, it sounded like Ellington, but more down-home with extended harmonics that you don’t necessarily hear on blues or soul records. It’s a jazz thing, throwing extra notes into the chords—at Stax they didn’t do 6th chords.”

Grammy-winning producer/engineer Matt Ross-Spang cut the record live at the tiny DKDC bar in Memphis, and recalls “it was more or less done after we cut it. This music is really supposed to be heard live, to be in the room to feel the horns, and it turned out magically — lightning in a bottle twelve times in just a couple hours.” — Scott Baretta, former editor of Living Blues

Join us in The Green Room at Crosstown Arts for a special performance by The Knights of Jazz with Paul McKinney.

Tickets: $10
Doors at 7 pm | Show at 7:30 pm

Paul McKinney’s smooth jazz approach hints at legends like Miles Davis, George Duke, and Kirk Whalum.

“Paul’s Memphis, Tennessee, roots lend a spiritual blues-iness that quickly draws you in. You will feel something when Brother Paul plays that trumpet. You don’t have to waste time analyzing it technically, harmonically, arrangements, production, blablablah. It’s all good, trust me. But do yourself a favor and close your eyes and listen to Brother Paul play that horn. There’s a message in it,” — Kirk Whalum

Paul’s first solo project single, “Cecelia,” is receiving rave reviews from across the country, and upon hearing the track, Henry Nelson (Executive Director/Carpenter Arts Garden) had this to say: “I got goose pimples when this piece started the first time and grew teary when the trumpet kicked in. I had Miles Davis memories and felt joyful at the introduction of the sax as the snare and bass tickled. It is a perfect mix!”

“The fruit don’t fall too far from the tree. This fruit’s tree is someone I worked with, learned so much from in my developing years, a piano playing genius, his father Kurl McKinney. So yeah, you’re getting the benefit and taste of some of Memphis greatest fruit in your ear hole in Paul McKinney,” — David Porter, National Songwriters Hall of Fame

The Knights of Jazz are a collection of some of Memphis’ finest and most versatile musicians. Their concept involves creating music that is fun and entertaining, yet has value and spirituality underneath it.

Join us in The Green Room at Crosstown Arts for special performance by Mighty Souls Brass Band.

Tickets: $10
Doors 7pm | Performance 7:30pm

Mighty Souls Brass Band, a Memphis‐based rotating collective of composer‐players versed in a multitude of musical traditions, isn’t a soul band, nor is it a funk band, a marching band, or a swing band. And yet, depending on where you catch them live, you’ll hear all of those influences and more from around the globe.

For proof, check the band’s debut album — Lift Up!, on Blue Barrel Records — largely recorded live, to catch the infectious synergy of the group. You’ll hear all of these influences, but you’ll also hear the writing and arrangement talents of MSBB’s members, who themselves composed ten of the album’s dozen tracks. This vigorously creative impulse to weave something new from the threads of various traditions is what makes Mighty Souls Brass Band a unique act even among brass ensembles. This is a band that knows where its roots lie, but also where its branches are reaching, far out into the world, a world that seems invariably to express its deepest spiritual desires and celebrations through music.

Mighty Souls Brass Band is a group attuned to that desire, that celebratory spirit. It’s a music that swings, that soars, that swoons — all of which is suggested by that profound, that humble, that most human of words: “Soul.”

For their penultimate album on Stax Records, Booker T. & the MGs stretched the boundaries of the Memphis Sound, tackling the Beatles’ masterpiece LP, Abbey Road. Using the newfound artistic freedom granted since Stax had split with Atlantic Records, this is the band’s most complex and adventurous recording, perfectly timed for the rise of FM radio and music that need not fit on one side of a 45.

The group also debuted a new look for Joel Brodsky’s iconic album cover, trading in their matching mohair suits and manicured coiffes for bell-bottoms, fringe jackets, and scruffy beards.

Joining series host Dr. Charles Hughes (Rhodes College) will be members of the MDs, a Memphis-based Booker T. & the MGs tribute band that performed the entire McLemore Avenue album at the Stax Museum in 2017.  This October, the band rearranged another Beatles classic, Revolver, for a capacity Crosstown Arts crowd.

Free and open to the public

Join us in The Green Room for a performance by Memphis-based jazz group, L.A.P.D.

Tickets: $10
Doors at 7 pm | Show at 7:30 pm

Comprised of four hard-working musicians from Memphis, L.A.P.D. respects the city’s rich musical heritage while forging new ground, all in the name of the groove.

L.A.P.D. is Logan Hanna on guitar, Arthur Edmaiston on saxophone, Patrick Fusco on organ, and Danny Banks on drums and cymbals.

The deep swing and tough grooves played by this band of professionals was honed through years of logging late nights in clubs and on tours around the globe. So much attention has been given to the study of the music recorded in the 1960s (sometimes referred to as “soul jazz”) that listeners will wonder if they have been transported back in time.

L.A.P.D. presents music that harkens back to an era when there was always a Hammond organ in the nightclub and everyone came to have a good time. The beautifully complex instrumental tones and their authentic rhythmic feel for the organ-fueled soul jazz music of yesteryear will make you want to shout!

The eclectic repertoire consists of titles spanning several generations of music with all of it delivered in the classic organ quartet style made famous by Jack McDuff, Lonnie Smith, Lou Donaldson, and Big John Patton.

What sets L.A.P.D. apart is the arranging and composing skills of Patrick and Logan. Several original compositions are present in the band’s book as well as sly arrangements of familiar classic and modern rock radio staples. If you have ever wondered what the melodies of Jimi Hendrix and Soundgarden might sound like filtered through a greasy saxophone, then L.A.P.D. has that and more in store for you.