Following up the set she laid down in 2019, Erin Rae returns this month with her second Lagniappe Session. Comprised of live, single mic takes cut at a rehearsal before performing at the Newport Folk Festival, the following four recordings find Rae reflecting on the music of her childhood, the wisdom of a young Kathy Heideman, and the aching blues of Karen Dalton.
Category: Lagniappe Sessions
The Lagniappe Sessions :: Vetiver
Hardly a stranger to this exercise, in 2008 Vetiver’s Andy Cabic released Thing of The Past, a lovingly curated collection of covers paying tribute to a grip of his favorite songs. For this installment of the Lagniappe Sessions, Cabic takes on a favorite from Scottish folk iconoclast Bert Jansch, along with the first track off Pete Dello & Friends’ 1971 long-player, Into Your Ears.
The Lagniappe Sessions :: Hayden Thorpe
On the heels of his sophomore lp, Thorpe’s session comes off like an extension of that collection via a pair of seemingly disparate covers. First up is an aching take on George Michael’s 1996 pop ballad, “Jesus To A Child”, buttressed by a minimalist reinterpretation of Bill Withers’ 1972 folk-funk anthem, “Use Me”.
The Lagniappe Sessions :: Wednesday
Countrygaze outfit Wednesday cover Gary Stewart, Roger Miller’s “Lock, Stock, And Teardrops,” and offer a loose and heavy one for all the “Cooley Heads” in the house with Drive-By Truckers’ “Women Without Whiskey.”
The Lagniappe Sessions :: Monde UFO
Monde UFO—the LA-based duo of Ray Monde and Kris Chau—put out one of our favorite records last year with 7171, a vibrant collection of free jazz and bossa nova inflected low-key psychedelia. For their inaugural Lagniappe Session, the duo covers three selections from Fugazi, meeting the seminal post-hardcore band’s skeletal manifestos with their own woozy bedroom-pop prescription.
The Lagniappe Sessions :: Garcia Peoples (Second Session)
Garcia Peoples have been on the move. Since we last rendezvoused with the band they have expanded to a sextet performing live feats that are leaving audiences in puddles of their own diethylamide daydreams. If that wasn’t enough they still found time to cut a new album, Dodging Dues, with Mr. Auxiliary himself – Matt Sweeney – resulting in a tighter and more concise record that still goes hard on the choogle. For their second Lagniappe Session the group tackles a trio of artists whose influences orbit this new album and beyond.
The Lagniappe Sessions :: Elijah Wolf
Elijah Wolf kicks off the Lagniappe Sessions for 2022. Recorded alone in his Brooklyn apartment at the end of last year, before digitally landing in Los Angeles, London and upstate New York for additional accompaniment, the four covers find the folk artist tapping into 70s stalwarts and contemporaries, alike.
The Lagniappe Sessions :: Philip Frobos
For his third Lagniappe Session (counting two with OMNI), Frobos digs into Lou Reed’s Berlin, along with the ’77 Lust For Life gem, “Tonight”, via Iggy Pop’s hyper-creative stint in the city.
The Lagniappe Sessions :: Kit Sebastian
Shot out of a hyper-creative canon, Kit Sebastian (Kit Martin and Merve Erdem) landed with a formidable debut in 2019’s Mantra Moderne. Its audience held tightly to the album’s global sprawl, advocating for more ears to agree and more music to arrive. The duo’s follow-up, Melodi, answers those calls and then some. Intercontinental instrumentation is back – traversing sounds from the Cold War-era Balkans to rural South America – replete with Erdem’s versatile, multilingual voice. Delightfully dancy, impressively intricate. Melodi’s momentum delivers a confident band for their first Lagniappe Session with Martin and Erdem reimagining Turkish pop sensation Sezen Aksu and (no-introduction-needed) avant Londoners, Stereloab.
The Lagniappe Sessions :: Le Ren
For her debut Lagniappe Session, Le Ren’s Lauren Spears digs in on her roots—tackling country and bluegrass popular songs, the pioneering Hazel Dickens, and the forward-thinking feminism of Kitty Wells—and weaves them her own: a warm, gentle tapestry with threads growing ever new.
The Lagniappe Sessions :: Liam Kazar
In our recent piece on Liam Kazar’s Due North, we noted that the Kansas City/Chicago polymath was “justifiably confident no matter the subject or style,” as the lp highlights both his croonerisms and lyrical word play. In choosing the following three tunes for his first Lagniappe Session, Kazar leans a bit more into the croon but not at the expense of variety.
The Lagniappe Sessions :: Cochemea
Cochemea’s latest, Vol. 11 Baca Sewa, plays like a cosmic funk and spiritual jazz ancestral trip through time. For his first ever Lagniappe Session, Cochemea interprets Big Star’s “Kanga Roo” and Irakere’s “Danza Nañigo.”
The Lagniappe Sessions :: Myriam Gendron
For her first Lagniappe Session, Gendron sets her sights on the overlooked songwriter Billy Edd Wheeler, seventies Eno at his most hypnotic, a deep cut and long-standing favorite from her Montreal compatriot Leonard Cohen, and an unintentionally timely tribute to the recently departed Michael Chapman.
The Lagniappe Sessions :: Cactus Lee
Cactus Lee’s Kevin Dehan has been keeping busy. Following the release of four long-players in the span of some eighteen months, his honky-tonk horizons are set next on the live set, Live from Dry Creek Café, in tribute to the band’s beloved Austin haunt. Rowdy, and soaked in pedal steel and Lone Stars, it shines selections from the band’s patented Texas Music in perhaps its purest form yet. We recently caught Dehan for a gorgeous full-band set at the Brooklyn-based jukebox joint Skinny Dennis, and it is with those players—Jon Catfish DeLorme on pedal steel, Russell Hymowitz on bass, and Adam Amram on drums—that he laid down his inaugural Lagniappe Session.
The Lagniappe Sessions :: Uncivilized | All Chico Hamilton Set
All Chico Hamilton set. The NYC based collective interprets five tunes from the jazz drummer’s 1965 album, El Chico. A record that bandleader Tom Csatari describes as “effortless music with pulse and an eye towards the unknown”, he and his group suffuse the selections here with the same liberated and exuberantly searching ethos.