Tedeschi Trucks Band
The Tedeschi Trucks Band is like a large-format guitar-centric orchestra of jammy, bluesy Southern rock and soul. Led by the husband-and-wife duo of Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi, the TTB released a live album last year, which showcases the band’s impressive capabilities and wide-ranging aesthetic.
They do a slow-burn Southern soul interpretation of Leonard Cohen’s classic “Bird On A Wire” and then also slide into a fluid and ornate version of the Beatles “Within You, Without You,” one of the tunes that George Harrison wrote on sitar.
Tedeschi and Trucks take those slippery sitar lines, bends and drones and adapt them admirably for guitar. They have a back catalog of their own originals to draw from as well.
Getting a dozen musicians to play tightly together and to still be nimble enough to allow for improvisation and freedom is a feat the TTB pulls off. Trucks is a guitarist whose tone sings and shines. He cuts through glassy sound that sometimes evokes Peter Green of early Fleetwood Mac. Expect a nice balance of guitar heroics and heavy-groove group playing.
See the Tedeschi Trucks Band play at Xfinity Theatre, 61 Savitt Way, Hartford, on Friday, July 6, at 8 p.m. $15 and up. livenation.com.
Steely Dan And The Doobie Brothers
When Walter Becker died last year, it would have been reasonable to assume that Steely Dan, of which he was sort of the quieter half, might call it quits. But the band, fronted by Donald Fagen, is out touring again. If Fagen had his way, these tours might be billed differently, to acknowledge the absence of Becker.
The Steely Dan duo were the ultimate proto-hipsters. Formed when Becker and Fagen were students at Bard College, the band not only took its name from a freakish William Burroughs reference, its also slyly quoted jazz riffs and played a variety of virtuosic high-gloss soft-pop fusion that basically defined the sound of the ‘70s. Dissipation never sounded so polished. The studio chops were impeccable, and the songs had a high level of harmonic and lyrical sophistication. Plus there was a wry humor to it all.
It were like one part Hall & Oates and one part Frank Zappa, two extremes that didn’t always blend in the middle. But the contrasts and ironies were always part of Steely Dan’s appeal. There are loads of jam bands today essentially emulating what Steely Dan was doing 40 years ago. Fellow 1970s radio staples the Doobie Brothers will perform, too.
Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers perform at Mohegan Sun Arena, 1 Mohegan Sun Blvd., Uncasville, on Sunday, July 8, at 7:30 p.m. $49 and up.860-226-7711 and mohegansun.com.
Jay Critch
Rapper Jay Critch sounds thoroughly steeped in the Migos mode of hip-hop, with songs that are based on clipped vocal exclamations, bird-like chirps, the warped bend and swoop of auto-tuned vocals, spongy backing tracks and a triplet flow. Some of his tracks, like “Pardon Me,” are made up almost entirely of skittering beats and rapping with shouted interjections and reverb.
The Brooklyn rapper has been making music since he was in sixth grade. Smoking weed, showing off jewelry, bragging about the sexual attention of random women, cash, handfuls of grams — these are the details that flesh out Critch’s songs. “I stack it up like the Waffle House,” he raps on “Did It Again,” the track that first started getting a lot of attention for Critch, who still hasn’t released a debut record, though he’s collaborated extensively with Rich the Kid. His sound shifts with each new release, but he represents a kind of fusion of the Atlanta aesthetic with a slightly more New York-centric approach.
See Jay Critch at The Dome @ Toyota Presents Oakdale Theater, 95 S. Turnpike Road, Wallingford, on Saturday, July 7, at 8 p.m. $55 and up. 203-265-1501, livenation.com.
Uli Jon Roth
German guitarist Uli Jon Roth was a member of the Scorpions. And you might recognize his screaming and soaring guitar tone from that band. As a solo artist, Uli Jon Roth’s playing is epic and heroic, unafraid of bombast and ecstatic shredding. His sound can have a stratospheric dog-whistle pitch, but he also plays with a liquid quicksilver speed.
Roth is clearly a devotee of Jimi Hendrix, having covered songs by the guitar giant, playing note-for-note replications of some iconic solos. Roth is also thematically inclined toward the heavens, with songs like “We’ll Burn the Sky,” “Fly to the Rainbow,” and “Sun in My Hand.”
If you like your heavy metal on the Wagnerian side, Uli Jon Roth is here to summon the gods. His guitars — which he commissioned to be built — are pretty far out in terms of gadgetry, with extra frets, pickups and knobs that allow Roth to manipulate looping, gain and other tricks without pedals.
Uli Jon Roth performs at Infinity Hall, 32 Front St., Hartford, on Sunday, July 8, at 8 p.m.$24.65 – $49. 866-666-6306 and infinityhall.com.
Jason Palmer Quartet Featuring Donny McCaslin
Trumpeter, composer, bandleader and educator Jason Palmer has played with an impressive list of figures from the world of jazz and beyond, including Roy Haynes, Lee Konitz, Herbie Hancock, Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Common and Ravi Coltrane. Palmer teaches at the Berklee School of Music and leads the house band and weekly gig at venerable Boston club Wally’s Jazz Cafe.
He likes new and interesting combinations. Palmer’s most recent studio release, from 2016, is called “Beauty N’ Numbers: The Sudoku Suite,” and the music plays with permutations and patterns in much the same way that those addictive puzzles do. The titles on that record are arranged in a similarly playful acrostic fashion sending a light-hearted message about how tinkering with numbers can calm the mind. The music, like on “Obsessive,” sometimes takes terse, clipped statements and tumbles them in a variety of directions, like hard bop conceived on a Rubik’s Cube.
Palmer’s bands tend to balance combustive drive with cerebral rumination. (Connecticut saxophone plays on Palmer’s recent live recordings from Wally’s.) At this Hartford performance, Palmer’s band will feature wide-ranging saxophonist Donny McCaslin, who’s played with artists as diverse as the Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra, Mark Kozelek and David Bowie.
The Jason Palmer Quartet featuring Donny McCaslin kicks off the Hartford Jazz Society’s 2018 Paul Brown Monday Night Jazz series with opener Michael Palin and the Other Orchestra at Bushnell Park, in downtown Hartford, on Monday, July 9, first act starts at 6 p.m. This concert is free.
Erin Rae
Nashville singer Erin Rae’s record “Putting On Airs” came out in early June. It’s captivating from the start. Fans of Aimee Mann and Angel Olsen will want to pay attention to this artist. Bobbie Gentry, Dusty Springfield and Karen Carpenter might come to mind, too.
These songs and the production blend touches of classic ‘60s pop, indie rock, and country. A wispy sadness floats through this music. Rae sings with a sweetness and restraint, and the music often matches her approach, but every once in awhile, like on “Like the First Time,” a scratchy rawness comes to the surface. Rae sings with a high pure and delicate voice occasionally rippled with a slight vibrato. There are flute-like mellotron keyboard sounds on that record that sound carefully wedded to Rae’s voice. The record is atmospheric and almost ambient in places, like on the haunting closer “Pretend.”
Rae’s music is lush and country-flavored, but complex and sombre, too. One says this a lot about shows at Cafe Nine these days, but this is a rare chance to see an artist in an intimate and up-close setting who’s almost certain to be playing much bigger venues soon.
See Erin Rae at Cafe Nine, 250 State St., New Haven, on Monday, July 9, at 8 p.m. Free with RSVP, $5 at the door. 203-789-8281 or cafenine.com
Poor Man’s Whiskey
Northern California bluegrass/Americana/jam band Poor Man’s Whiskey came to a lot of people’s attention with “Dark Side of the Moonshine,” its 2009 string band take on the classic Pink Floyd album. But the band does more than just hopped-up banjo-and-mandolin interpretations of familiar rock, though the band does plenty of that, too.
Its latest record, “Juniper Mountain,” came out in the spring of this year, and finds the band periodically upping the Southern-rock aspect of their sound, with muscular bluesy riffs propelling songs like “High on the Mountain.” Elsewhere, like on “Broke Down in San Francisco,” PMW plays slow and lonely country-tinged folk rock that makes a connection to troubadours like Townes van Zandt. This is a band that can sing about the related pleasures of wandering and a sense of home.
For this show Poor Man’s Whiskey will be performing the music of the Band Wednesday, July 11 at Fairfield Theater Company’s Stage One, 70 Sanford St., Fairfield, 7:45 p.m., $28. 203-259-1036 or fairfieldtheatre.org.
