Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy offers up four sidelong pieces recorded live in Los Angeles over the past few years. Here, we get to eavesdrop on Parker, bassist Anna Buttterss, drummer Jay Bellerose and saxophonist Josh Johnson in full freedom flight. It’s an uncommonly intimate live recording — the players seem to be extremely at ease in this small club setting.
Songs Belong to Everyone Who Can Sing Along :: Craig Finn on Always Been
The cover of Craig Finn’s latest solo album, Always Been, directly nods to Randy Newman’s 1977 lp Little Criminals. Shot in the same location, on the West 7th Street overpass over the I-110, it presents The Hold Steady frontman posed exactly as Newman is on his classic album. And like Newman’s songbook, Always Been is filled with character studies, a cast of people who aren’t quite sure what to make of their lives and the directions they’ve taken. It also arrives with a book of short stories, Lousy With Ghosts. Finn joins us to discuss the expansive universe he’s created.