For the past five summers John Cruz has been coming to the Vineyard to sing on the schooner Alabama for three nights in August. The day after one of the cruises this year, John talked about his work, his music, his life and deep connections to the Vineyard. “The two things I love most to do are making music and cooking,” he said while preparing a lunch of striped bass for friends in the ramshackle red farmhouse across from Alley’s General Store in West Tisbury.
He has sung Tears of a Clown, Tracks of My Tears, Cruisin’ and his other hits thousands and thousands of times — as he did once again Thursday night in Oak Bluffs — but Smokey Robinson insists they’re as new and fresh to him as ever.
This Sunday, August 25, Robby Krieger, formerly the guitar player for the Doors, performs at Dreamland in Oak Bluffs. The show begins at 9 p.m. Donavon Frankenreiter plays tonight, August 23, at 8 p.m.
The Felice Brothers — yes, there are brothers in the band — hit Flatbread on Saturday, August 24, at 9 p.m. and G Love (remember the Special Sauce?) plays on Sept. 6.
Tuesdays at Twilight winds down with a concert featuring Sally and Ben Taylor and friends at the Grange Hall on State Road in West Tisbury on Tuesday, August 27. The concert marks the end of the series, which benefits the West Tisbury Library Foundation. The foundation is raising funds for the capital campaign for the West Tisbury Library.
Forty years ago Dr. Karl Skoreki trained in nephrology in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. During his time there, he noticed that many members of the same family were contracting kidney disease, a condition that was poorly understood at the time. During his career Dr. Skorecki continued to study genetic predisposition to the disease. He and other researchers have since determined that the illness, which can devolve into kidney failure, disproportionately affects African Americans, who are four to five times more likely to contract the disease and to die from its effects.
It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing. That was just one of the lessons imparted by Pulitzer Prize–winning jazz trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis during Friday’s Jazz for Young People program, held at the regional high school Performing Arts Center.
Livingston Taylor concerts are many things, all of them wonderful, but most they are events that break down the barriers between performer and listener. As he said in a past interview with the Gazette, the audience is the boss.
“You need them, they don’t need you,” he admitted, giving some insight into both his humility on stage and his appreciation. He says a show should feel more like a conversation with the audience.
Willy Mason is sitting on a barstool in a London pub, smoking a cigarette and considering the last decade. He takes a pull on his beer and thinks about what all the buzz — tours with Radiohead, collaborations with the Chemical Brothers and duets with KT Tunstall and Rosanne Cash — has really meant to the young bard now closing in on 30.
A heavy Latin beat echoes through the woods in Vineyard Haven. On the top floor of a garage a young man hunches over his flashing DJ controller. Colorful waveforms trawl across a computer screen and two powerful speakers fill the room with bone-shaking bass drum and silky smooth melodies. The musical tension builds and in a flurry of knob-twisting and button-smashing, 23-year-old Vaughn Russillo once again becomes DJ Euphony.
Mr. Russillo grew up on the Vineyard and got his start making hip hop beats with a pair of turntables and an extensive collection of vinyl records.
Danny (Kootch) Kortchmar returns to the Vineyard this Tuesday, August 6, to Dreamland in Oak Bluffs.
The return of Kootch brings him back to his roots. You could say he began his music career here on the Vineyard, jamming at parties and on the beach. James Taylor played alongside Kootch when they were in the band Flying Machine.