Catch a Stray Cats founding member on solo tour in Frankfort
Lee Rocker
7:30 p.m. May 11 at the Grand Theatre, 308 St. Clair St. in Frankfort. $25-$40. 502-352-7469. grandtheatrefrankfort.org.
A world class Rocker and a real cool Cat — that’s who you will find Friday evening at the Grand in Frankfort with the return of roots-savvy bassist and founding Stray Cats member Lee Rocker.
This year, the New York-born Rocker is doing double duty. The Frankfort show will be among his final dates, for now, with the bassist’s expert quartet, whose scholarly command of roots music is chronicled on the new concert album “The Low Road.” Following a June 8 concert in Modesto, Calif., Rocker will shift gears, skip over to Spain and begin a summer-long reunion tour with the Stray Cats that marks the band’s 40th anniversary. That run will coincide with the release of the aptly titled “40,” a record Rocker and fellow Cats Brian Setzer and Slim Jim Phantom cut last fall in Nashville following their first North American concerts in over a decade.
But dwelling too much on the reactivated Stray Cats detracts from the matter at hand — the rockabilly, blues and jazz-informed romps Rocker creates on his own. The latter half of a 25 year solo career that followed the initial dissolve of the Stray Cats has given us a sterling record of predominantly original material in 2007’s “Black Cat Bone” (which brought Rocker to Lexington in early 2008 to play an abbreviated set for the WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour); an elemental take on staples by the Beatles, the Kinks and even Eddie Rabbit on 2011’s “The Cover Sessions”; and a worldly, supremely confident roots music overview in 2012’s “Night Train to Memphis.”
“I do my best work, put it out there and let the chips fall,” Rocker told me in an interview prior to the 2008 WoodSongs appearance. “My history with the Stray Cats I’m real proud of. I love the guys. We made great records, yet there are probably some people out there for whom it is difficult to look beyond that. But I’ve also seen fantastic growth out there for what I’ve done with my own band. There’s still a lot of enthusiasm. I’m overjoyed by it.”
California Guitar Trio/Montreal Guitar Trio
8 p.m. May 10 at Headliners Music Hall, 1386 Lexington Rd. in Louisville. $25. 502-584-8088. headlinerslouisville.com.
The weather has become more inviting and the Derby has past, so a recommended road trip show is in order.
I’ve been blabbering on about the joys of the California Guitar Trio and its blend of technical virtuosity and stylistic daring ever since it first played Lexington at the old Dame location on East Main over 15 years ago. While there is no Central Kentucky show scheduled by Paul Richards, Bert Lams and Hideyo Moriya anytime soon (they usually stop by on annual basis), the three are making a Friday night visit to Headliners Music Hall in Louisville. They’re bringing some special friends along, too — the equally audacious Montreal Guitar Trio, with whom the CGT has formed a strong touring alliance over the years.
There are distinctions between the two trios. The CGT sticks exclusively to instrumental music played on three acoustic guitars. The MGT mirrors that approach with augmentation. Sebastien Dufour doubles on the lute-like, Andean-rooted charango, Glenn Levesque occasionally adds in vocals and Marc Morin also serves as a bassist.
What the two groups do share is a generous love of genre-hopping. On its new and beautifully recorded album “In a Landscape,” the six guitarists cleanly navigate the lyrical reflection within the title tune, an update of a 1948 piano piece by John Cage, a similarly reserved reading of Radiohead’s “Weird Fishes” and a playful ensemble take on the dramatically cyclical designs of Penguin Café Orchestra’s “Perpetuum Mobile.”
All of that compliments four stately original works highlighted by Dufour’s dizzying “Magneto” and Moriya’s textured, King Crimson-esque “Fortune Island.”
The trios tour together frequently but have only played together once previously in Kentucky. They teamed for an April 2015 performance here at the now-defunct Natasha’s Bistro. Consider their Friday return ample reason for hitting the road.
Letters of Acceptance/ The Nativity Singers/Quitting
10 p.m. May 10 at the Green Lantern, 497 W. 3rd. $5. lettersofacceptance.org.
It’s round two, of sorts, this weekend for Letters of Acceptance, the quartet that teams a pair of Louisville-area pop stylists (Clint Newman and John Norris) with two esteemed Lexington pros (Tim Welch and Scott Whiddon).
Playing regularly since the fall of 2018 with the release an inventive, pop-infused EP (although the alliance of Newman and Norris is more extensive), the band returns on Friday to the Green Lantern with a second EP in tow.
Care for a preview? Then head to Letters of Acceptance’s website for a free listen to/download of “Lexington Nights,” a tune with a crisp reverence for vintage Kinks but a guitar charge that sounds more in line with King Crimson.
Two other Lexington troupes, The Nativity Singers and Quitting, complete the bill.