John Prine and R.B. Morris
8 p.m. April 1 at the Singletary Center for the Arts, 405 Rose St. $49.50, $59.50. (859) 257-4929, Singletarytickets.com.
John Prine isn't exactly a feverish conversationalist onstage. After all, his 40-plus years of recording and performing are based on the premise that his plainspoken but poetic songs would speak for themselves — which, of course they do.
But sometimes, snippets of dialogue used as song intros help illuminate the very human source of Prine's music.
On last year's concert recording In Person and On Stage, for example, Prine introduces the title tune to 1999's In Spite of Ourselves, which he performs as a wide-eyed duet alongside Iris DeMent, with a bit of a back story. It seems he was filming a "straight-to-Blockbuster movie" with Billy Bob Thornton when Prine was asked to write a song that could be played under the closing credits. Prine confessed in the intro that his acting career consists of exactly two movies.
"I played the same character in both of them: I was the brother-in-law with low self-esteem," he said. "So if you're writing a script or something and you've got that character, just call on me. I know how to do it."
The film with Thornton, 2001's Daddy and Them, had Prine and the actor playing brothers, and Andy Griffith as their father. "That would make me Opie's stepbrother, ... which I don't mind, especially at Thanksgiving."
We mention this ahead of Prine's return Friday night to the Singletary Center for the Arts — his first appearance at the venue since a June 1990 double-bill performance with Arlo Guthrie — as a reminder of the homespun inspiration that goes into Prine's songs.
Sometimes the results are unavoidably comical, as in Dear Abby or the rollicking Spanish Pipedream. In other instances, Prine masks worldly wisdom with folk-friendly whimsy, as in the summery Fish and Whistle. But at his best, the human detail turns inward and the music becomes stark and sobering, as in the drug-addled war veteran lament Sam Stone or the stark old-age requiem Hello in There.
It all makes up Prine at his best, and it will all be on brilliant display Friday.
The Felice Brothers and Diamond Doves
9 p.m. April 2 at Buster's Billiards & Backroom, 899 Manchester St. $15. (859) 368-8871. Bustersbb.com.
There is no end to the peculiarities that surround the Felice Brothers album Celebration, Florida.
Musically, it upholds the same sense of haunted tradition that has made this troupe from New York's Catskill Mountains sound like a direct descendent of The Band. There are loads of wiry harmonies full of rootsy tarnish and folkish intuition, and dance attitudes that fall somewhere between rural Cajun romps and dancehall polkas.
But the themes and stylistic devices coloring the devilish songs of Celebration, Florida (due out May 10), are what floor you. For starters, there is the children's chorus urging calm on the album-opening Fire at the Pageant. Later, a turn-of-the-last-century waltz bleeds into the brassy car-chase frenzy of Honda Civic, a tune definitely not designed as a commercial jingle. Especially fun are the noir-style twists fueling the Band of Horses-meets-Band of Heathens haze of Dallas and the jagged, de-glammed boxing saga Cus's Catskill Gym, with its ominous refrain, "Stay away from Don King."
It all adds up to a suitably scrappy and noticeably dark new saga for the Felice Brothers, who advance to the big room at Buster's this weekend after playing smaller stages at Cosmic Charlie's and the Christ the King Oktoberfest, where it famously carried on after the event's stage electricity fizzled. The band will celebrate Celebration, Florida and past album Yonder Is the Clock on Saturday, with Diamond Doves opening.
Brock by the Numbers
Lexington-bred violinist Zach Brock has backed the bass of Stanley Clarke, complimented the Gypsy guitar music of Frank Vignola and resurrected beastly fusion with New York's Mahavishnu Project. Now living in New York, Brock will return to Natasha's Bistro & Bar, 112 Esplanade, on Friday night to showcase a more individual jazz temperament with his trio, The Magic Number. The latter just happens to double as the title of his newest album.
Brock, bassist Matt Wigton and drummer Frederick Kennedy debuted the music of The Magic Number here last fall. It remains a beaut of an album, with beefy percussive turns that play off Brock's lyrically playful violin leads and vocal colors on Yeah Yeah Yeah, and gorgeous acoustic tones and semi-rockish foundation that drive Man of the Light. (9 p.m. $15, $8 for students. (859) 259-2754. Beetnik.com.)
Sierra and Pokey
When she performed at Rupp Arena as part of the Great High Mountain Tour in 2004, Sierra Hull was a novice.
A budding mandolinist, she was surrounded onstage by the likes of Alison Krauss, Ralph Stanley, Ollabelle, Norman and Nancy Blake, and a supporting cast of the finest acoustic string stylists in or out of bluegrass.
Hull was 12 years old.
Flash forward to today. On her new album, Daybreak, Hull, 19, is giving every indication of being the most versed female artist to take on bluegrass since the breakthroughs of Krauss and Rhonda Vincent. Comparisons to the former are inevitable, given that longtime Krauss sidekick Barry Bales co-produced Daybreak with Hull. Vocally, though, Hull balances Krauss's grassy delicacy with Vincent's more assertive lyricism.
Hull will perform tunes from Daybreak at Monday's taping of WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour at The Kentucky Theatre, 214 East Main Street.
Also on the program is the St. Louis-based swing, ragtime and country blues brigade Pokey LaFarge and the South City Three. LaFarge and company will stick around for a show Tuesday at the Green Lantern, 497 West Third Street. (8:30 p.m. $5. (859) 252-9539.)
