Music Friday Live | Music Junkie Press

ARI’s creative duality promises a game changing talent with Tunnel Vision.

July 8, 2016

(Los Angeles) The past doesn’t define you, nor does it make you who you are. These are the words and the definitive core of the musician/artist/provocateur ARI, whose past is complex and painful but also exultant. Regardless of bygone fears and refuges, she will not let her past tunnel vision either her life or her music. Instead, she uses it to inform it. The result is not just music, but a music/artform that makes her one of the most interesting performers on the music scene today. With a voice that ranges from childlike to ancient crone, a music structure that elides format boundaries and yet stays engrossing and entertaining, and a visual presentation both on stage and in video that is a performance art in itself, ARI is at once alien and comfortably familiar as she emerges with the promise of being a game changer. Toronto-born LA-based ARI (a stage name she took as part of her public career) studied psychology in college and was a competitive figure skater. She had no [Read More]

Buika at Walt Disney Hall: a fairy-tale night in a magical music palace

April 2, 2016

(Los Angeles). The Walt Disney Hall can be an intimidating venue for artists. For the artist, standing on a stage crowned by the Manuel Gonzales pipe organ and facing over 2200 fans arrayed in Frank Geary’s shining chrome building requires not only soaring talent, but centered courage combined with humility. Buika gave the sold-out Hall all that and more on Saturday night in her pairing with LA’s beloved American Latin Music band, La Santa Cecelia – a profound experience but almost too much of a good thing. But all thoughts of excess disappeared when Buika’s voice rose from the stage into one of the best acoustical environments in the nation, if not the world, Her singing, her lyrics, her laughter and her conversation with the enraptured audience were supernatural, vibrating every square inch of air and every soul in the building. There is a reason Buika is known as “fearless”; she can weaponize her fiery voice to deliver messages of humanity thwarted and demands for justice. But she can also stand and [Read More]

An interview with El Dusty: pioneering tejano soul and south Texas sound.

March 11, 2016

(Los Angeles) Corpus Christi Texas, down on the Gulf of Mexico doesn’t get the kind of attention Austin gets for culture and music. I pay attention to Corpus Christi because I was born there and I know it is a lively music scene and fertile ground for American Latin Music fusion. Leading the creative charge in Corpus is El Dusty, born Dusty Oliveira, who blends classic tejano, Mexican cumbia and norteño music with today’s sounds and technologies. A native of Corpus Christi, he is a self–taught producer, mixer, musician who stands out not only in beats and house and rap, but as an influence across the board. He took a few minutes off from his many projects to talk with us. Patrick. Are you “El Dusty” or “Dusty”? Dusty. Just “Dusty”. I put the “El” there because I wanted to have some flash, but I couldn’t think of something fancy like Grandmaster or Mixmaster something I just used my name and it works. Patrick. What is the special quality of the [Read More]

Evan Taylor Jones’ The Sunray Sessions: rock, blues and one of today’s best voices. By Patrick O’Heffernan

February 18, 2016

(Los Angeles) Once in a while I indulge myself in the music I grew up with, what many people call “good old fashioned rock and roll”, which includes early standards from Bill Halley to blues rock classics from Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Stevie Ray Vaughan and the Rolling Stones. Evan Taylor Jones should be on that list. He has taken that “good old fashioned rock and roll” and updated it to the 21st Century with high energy, funky blues and a voice that evokes everyone from Sinatra to Ray Charles. His new EP, The Sunray Sessions, recorded at the Sunray Recording Studios in Casselberry, Florida, pushes all my musical happy buttons and I suspect will push the happy buttons of many, many people around the world. The six songs on the EP, including a stirring cover of the Queens of the Stone Age song “Smooth “Sailing”, move with a dynamic energy and pure vocal ability that is irresistible – you must hit replay. The Sunray Sessions songs reach into your DNA, rearrange your genes [Read More]

A conversation with Doña Oxford, Queen of Boogie-woogie and Goddess of Soul. By Patrick O’Heffernan

February 17, 2016

Dona Oxford was excited. Oxford is known for being excited about her music, but this time she was excited because she had just introduced me to Ray Kurzweil at the NAMM 2016 Kurzweil electric keyboard booth where, the day before, Stevie Wonder had shown up, sat down at the keyboard Oxford had just vacated and started to play for the assembled crowd. But she was even more excited about the fact that later in evening she would be playing for Wonder at the Kurzweil Private party. “He touched my sweat on the keys! Stevie Wonder touched my sweat on the keys,’ she exclaimed, “and now I will be playing for him”. But that is a common story for Oxford, known to her legions of fans as the Queen of Boogie-woogie and the Princess of Soul. Many, many greats have asked her to play for them on stage, in the recording studio and on tour. Her keyboard chops (she also plays drums), her energy, her voice and her songwriting have been recognized over and over [Read More]

Halo Circus embraces the future of American rock with Say It Loud at the Troubadour

December 17, 2015

Patrick O’Heffernan (Hollywood) Allison Iraheta and Matthew Hager wanted to “say it loud” Monday night at the Troubadour and they did…they let LA and the country know that Halo Circus had fully emerged as a headlining leader in the explosive world of bilingual, disruptive, mission-driven rock music. The Say It Loud event produced by Halo Circus’ bassist Hager and co-sponsored by LA’s Gypset Magazine pulled together American Latin Music guitarist David Garza, Fishbone’s Angelo Moore and his new underground funk punk ghetto quartet N-fidelikah, Heliotrope, legendary producer KC Porter and his Cruzanderos, flamenco guitarist Victory Mori and, of course, the incomparable Halo Circus. It all worked; not only was it loud, it was transformative. From first notes struck by Tokyo-born Mori to the last twang of third generation Mexican-American David Garza’s electric guitar, Say It Loud changed the way we think about music – and entertained the hell out of us. Following the example of bands like Las Cafeteras, Halo Circus bassist and the evening’s organizer Matthew Hagen designed a democratic mashup of [Read More]

Latinos Rock, EastLos rules. Las Cafeteras comes home. By Patrick O’Heffernan

December 16, 2015

(Los Angeles) The US Census predicts that by 2020 one out of every three North Americans will be Latino. Ground zero for this demographic earthquake is East Los Angeles – EastLos to locals – a bubbling cauldron of musical creativity and political energy that is emerging as a national force by fusing American Latin Music and the movement for social justice. The power and joy of that fusion was on full display Saturday night at LA’s venerable El Rey Theater as the native East LA band, Las Cafeteras, took the stage, accompanied by an international mix of musicians and dancers who rocked, sang, danced and delivered political messages for over four hours. Las Cafeteras headlined and curated the evening which celebrated their return home after two tours that took them away for most of the year. They pulled together the innovative energy of Mariachi Manchester, Making Movies, two dance troupes – one modern and one folkloric – and the comedian Filipe Esparza, all of which was filmed by a PBS camera crew for [Read More]