Joe's Pub Announces Gary Lucas & Gods and Monsters And More

Joe's Pub at The Public Theater debuted in October 1998 and has quickly became one of New York City's most celebrated and in-demand showcase venues for live music and performance. With its genre-blind booking and vast diversity of interests, the stage at Joe's Pub gives voice to a world of varied and stellar artists.

MAY 24-27

URSA MINOR: SHOWFACE CD RELEASE

Tuesday, May 24 at 7:30 PM; $15

"One we keep coming back to, finding something new each time." - Time Out New York

"Bold and original" - All Music Guide

"Ethereal yet concise... strong melodies... Storm cloud through a picture window" -Village Voice

Ursa Minor can take the Violent Femmes' sweet little ballad "Please Do Not Go" and turn it into a smoldering reggae slowjam, somewhere between Blondie's version of "The Tide is High" and Patti Smith's "Birdland." Singer Michelle Casillas and her band can wring every drop of feeling out of a song, whether it's loud or lowdown, sweet or seething.

"Their first album, Silent Moving Picture, leans more on vintage electric pianos and the members' considerable jazz backgrounds. (It also made them label mates with Sonic Youth and Blonde Redhead.) This Spring will see the release of their followup, Showface. The sound is often bigger, louder, more pugnacious; the album's emotional range is almost schizophrenic: this is the sound of a band playing whatever turns them on at the time. Live, they combine peerless musicianship with Casillas' unnervingly direct, captivating delivery." - James Rickman, Beaconpass.com

Ursa Minor's long awaited new release, Showface, was produced by Tony Scherr, with Ursa Minor and Teddy Kumpel. The album features Michelle Casillas on vocals & guitar, Rob Jost (Imogen Heap, Bjork) on bass, Robert DiPietro (Norah Jones, Josh Rouse) on drums, and Tony Scherr (Sexmob, Feist, Bill Frisell) on guitars. Plus very special guests TBA. www.ursaminor.info

TRACY BONHAM

Tuesday, May 24 at 9:30 PM; $17

Masts Of Manhatta, Tracy Bonham's first full-length album in five years, was released on July 13th by Engine Room Recordings. Produced by Bonham, the album was mixed by Tchad Blake (Tom Waits, Los Lobos, Lisa Germano) and features the Brooklyn-based Smokey's Roundup, a trio led by guitarist Smokey Hormel (Tom Waits, Beck, Norah Jones), as the backing band.

Masts Of Manhatta is deeply rooted in the places where Bonham resides and recorded the album - Brooklyn and Woodstock, NY. It reflects two circular journeys: one leading Bonham away from music only to return to it, renewed, and a second - her trek from city to country and back, creating a loop as she responds to the inexorable pull of the two disparate ways of life.

Tracy Bonham has continued to make great music and play all over the world for over a decade, although most may know her from her hit single Mother Mother which garnered two Grammy nominations and an MTV Video Award nomination in 1997. With a new record on deck (release TBA) in which Smokey's Roundup plays as backing band (Smokeyhormel.com), Bonham softens the edges yet remains as honest and raw as ever. Maintaining her lyrical humor with an ever evolving musical maturity, she uses her talents as a multi-instrumentalist on stage and in the studio.

DIANA JONES

Wednesday, May 25 at 7:30 PM; $12

Diana Jones returns to Joe's Pub with High Atmosphere, the latest album in a remarkable career arc which hits with the force of a revelation, further deepening an unprecedented body of work that began in 2006 with My Remembrance of You and continued with 2009's Better Times Will Come.

On her new release, out April 5, 2011 on Proper American Records and recorded entirely live with simpatico musicians (including Jim Lauderdale) at Quad studios in Nashville, this single-minded artist continues to hew to an austere, plainspoken aesthetic, yet its timelessly homespun frameworks are embedded with distinctly topical subject matter. As Bill Friskics-Warren pointed out in his New York Times profile, Jones "approaches the mountain-ballad tradition not as a curiosity or antique but as a renewable vernacular that's just as capable of speaking to the human condition now as it was 80 years ago."

"The songs I write," says Jones, who has a second career as a portrait artist, "are informed by my experiences within a certain time frame, so they become a sort of world within themselves. For this new record, I was on the road a lot, trying to catch up to myself and the things that were happening in my life. This was very different from my previous experiences. For example, I wrote most of the songs on My Remembrance of You in a cabin in Massachusetts by myself. Then I was mining really old things, focusing on the traditional, whereas these songs happened to me as life happened to me."

The central metaphor of the title song, which opens the album, was triggered by the most literal of experiences. "I had come home to Nashville from a tour in Texas on the night the big flood happened," Jones recalls. "When I got to the airport in Dallas, CNN was showing news footage of the Cumberland River overflowing, and it was two blocks away from my house. Luckily, my flight did manage to come in, and we took a circuitous route to my house; all the streets were blocked off - it was very dramatic. I live in a shotgun shack that was built in 1900 on top of a hill, and I suddenly realized what an incredible gift it was to be on that hill, because people lost instruments, cars, all kinds of things, and my house was absolutely dry. It was then that it occurred to me to write ‘High Atmosphere,' along with the fact that I was writing so many songs on planes - I'd spent the last year in the high atmosphere. That's what was different about this project: It was about being on planes, about coming home and not knowing what you'll find."

Jones got the title from an old Rounder LP that her co-producer Ketch Secor (Old Crow Medicine Show) had given to her; it was called High Atmosphere, and the title song was a banjo instrumental, but the phrase resonated, and she subsequently made the connection.

Jones' back-story is itself as full of cathartic moments, ironic twists and intricate connections as her narratives. During her childhood and adolescence, she felt an almost mystical, seemingly inexplicable attraction to rural Southern music, while growing up in the Northeast with no art nor music in her home, the adopted daughter of a chemical engineer. It wasn't until her late 20s, when she located her birth family in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains in east Tennessee, that Jones' deep affinity for Anglo-Celtic traditional music began to make sense.

Specifically, it was hanging out with her grandfather, Robert Lee Maranville, that brought on her life-changing epiphany. "He was a guitar player from Knoxville, Tennessee, who played with Chet Atkins in the early days," Jones explained in 2009. "He told me that if he had died, his one regret would have been never to have known the granddaughter who was given away. He took me driving 'round the Appalachians, reintroducing me to where I came from. And whenever these old-time country tunes came on the radio, he'd be singing along - he knew all the words. This ancient mountain music was completely in his blood and, I suddenly came to realize, in mine, too."

It was then that Jones - who'd recorded a pair of well-crafted contemporary singer/songwriter albums during the second half of the '90s - decided to start anew, armed with her birthright and a newfound sense of purpose. When Maranville died in 2000, she holed up in a cabin in the woods of Massachusetts and wrote the songs that wound up, six years and many filled notebooks later, on My Remembrance of You, which she fittingly dedicated to his memory.

The album earned Jones a nomination as Best Emerging Artist at the Folk Alliance Awards, leading to tours with Richard Thompson and Mary Gauthier, appearances at folk festivals on both sides of the Atlantic, and covers of her songs by Gretchen Peters and Joan Baez. "There's some kind of channeling from some other lifetime going on," Baez marveled. "I don't know the answer to these things, but all I can think of is that it must come from some mysterious part of her soul."

Jones views her connection to this tradition, and her place in it, as "that simple and that complex. If I try to look from the outside at how my life's panned out, it seems strange even to me. I grew up on the East Coast, and I didn't know my life would take that turn. When I came to the South and I met my family, it started to unfold for me, which took a while. And then I found my own voice through my grandfather; his kindness and the time he spent with me led me to something that was authentic for me - that I didn't even know was in there. And once I started writing these songs, it wasn't like I thought about them; they came through in what felt like a channeled sort of way, as if they'd come from somewhere else."

While the cover portraits on her last two albums reveal Jones at her most serious, she appears on the cover of the new record with hand over heart and eyes closed in a smile of apparent contentment. That image "speaks to the internal process of writing for me," she offers. "That the High Atmosphere is as internal as it is up there in the sky. Maybe even a spiritual place. That's the place I write from."

OUR HIT PARADE STARRING BRIDGET EVERETT, KENNY MELLMAN AND NEAL MEDLYN
Wednesday, May 25 at 9:30 PM; $20
Our Hit Parade is a live top-ten countdown show created by Tony nominee and Obie winner Kenny Mellman (Kiki & Herb), carnal chanteuse Bridget Everett (At Least It's Pink at Ars Nova), pop song opera impresario Neal Medlyn (Neal Medlyn's Unpronounceable Symbol at P.S. 122), producer and MTV cameraman Brendan Kennedy, and writers Ada Calhoun and Peter Schjeldahl. The show is inspired by the musical sketch series "Your Hit Parade" that ran on radio and then television from 1935 to 1959. On that show, cast members performed the week's most popular songs as comically literal skits. In this show, the hosts and special guest stars from the local performance scene present their renditions of current popular hits live on stage!

RONDI CHARLESTON

Thursday, May 26 at 7:30 PM; $20
"...one of those rare artists for whom a song's meaning is as important as its melody. Her personal, thought-provoking originals slow the heartbeat and raise the senses with a documentarian's acuity." Downbeat

Singer/Songwriter Rondi Charleston with Special Featured Guest, SNL's James Genus and an All Star Band with Dave Stryker - g; Lynne Arriale - p; Brandon McCune - keys; Ed Howard - b; anthony Pinciotti - d; and Mayra Casales - perc.

Experience the breathtaking ingenuity and exquisite vocals that have audiences and critics raving! Singer/songwriter Rondi Charleston's intoxicating blend of Pop Classics, Standards, and magically transcendent originals make time stand still on her newest release, Who Knows Where The Time Goes. http://www.rondicharleston.com/

WYATT: ALBUM RELEASE

Friday, May 27 at 7:30 PM; $12 in advance / $15 at the door

"Oh, Wyatt. Wyatt is cool. Wyatt is like this guy who has magical powers, but is totally comfortable with it. And also he is a good dresser, and dances amazingly well." So says a newly indoctrinated SXSW fan.

WYATT is (also) the new project of celebrated NYC singer/songwriter Maddy Wyatt. What began as the solo effort of Miss Wyatt has morphed into a collaborative adventure with brothers Paul and Alex Wyatt, bassist Zach Lane, and keyboardist Dana Haynes. Leaked tracks from their debut EP have already snagged Maddy a Top 10 Finalist slot at 2010's Lillith Fair NYC Talent Search, a spot at last summer's Rocky Mountain Folks Festival, and kudos from the likes of Time Out New York, who says "her lack of pretension and simple melodies are reminiscent of Mirah." WYATT aims to make you move your bod and sing along. The songs on this debut, out May 24th, are the closest yet they've come. Vive la WYATT!

SHELLS: BANKER BY DAY...DIVA BY NIGHT

Thursdays, April 28 & May 26 at 9:30 PM; $20

"Heartbreakingly real and hilariously relatable...Written with sharp detail and wit"- Time Out New York

"SHELLS draws a loyal audience, eager to yell out some advice" - The New York Times

"SHELLS is a true original that must be seen to be believed." -The New York Post

"A more pathetic Carrie Bradshaw for your laughing pleasure"- The Village Voice

Michelle "Shells" Hoffman is ready to shed her 9-to-5 facade and prove she has what it takes to become an international pop sensation. Performing elaborate, original numbers ranging in style from Lady Gaga to Radiohead, this Carrie Bradshaw wannabe challenges the audience with her audacious, bold style. When matters of her personal life are brought up, the show takes an unexpected turn. Armed with a glass of Shiraz and a penchant for drunk-dialing, Shells leaves audience members laughing deliriously, saying: "I know her," or worse, "I am her!" www.iamshells.com

GARY LUCAS & GODS AND MONSTERS

Friday, May 27 at 9:30 PM; $17

Gods and Monsters is an avant-rock supergroup / jamband playing intense psychedelic rock. Featuring guitarist extraordinaire and Grammy-nominated songwriter Gary Lucas (Captain Beefheart, Jeff Buckley) on guitars and vocals; Billy Ficca (Television) on drums; Ernie Brooks (Modern Lovers) on bass and vocals; Jason Candler (Hungry March Band) on alto sax; and Joe Hendel (Latest Show on Earth), trombone and keyboards. Jerry Harrison (Talking Heads) occasionally joins the group live on stage and in the studio on keyboards, and has performed with the band in Russia, Holland, NYC, Oberlin College, and at SXSW in Austin Texas. A hit producer (Live, OAR), Jerry Harrison has just finished producing Gods and Monsters new studio album. You can preview tracks at Gary's MySpace site and at the Gods and Monsters MySpace site.

Gary Lucas put the first version of Gods and Monsters together in 1989 as an all-instrumental aggregation, who made their debut at the Welcome Back to Brooklyn Festival in Prospect Park.

Envisioning a loose collective of instrumental (and later vocal) provocateurs along the lines of groups like Material and The Golden Palominos, Lucas dubbed his band of merry pranksters Gods and Monsters from a line of dialogue in the 1932 horror film classic "The Bride of Frankenstein" (mad scientist Ernest Thesiger toasts the equally mad Dr. Frankenstein (Colin Clive): "To a new world of GODS AND MONSTERS!" - a line of dialogue that Gary sampled and played during these early shows). The group then featured two bassists, Paul Now and Jared Nickerson, and drum ace Tony "Thunder" Smith (Jeff Beck, Lou Reed, Nina Hagen).

Realizing that despite the positive response he received he would need to develop his songwriting in order to expand his audience beyond the rock / jazz / experimental / instrumental crowd, Lucas began writing his own twisted brand of art-pop songs and bringing in male and female singers (and even a rapper and scratcher!) to augment his live shows.

The results can be heard on two albums he recorded for Enemy Records, 1992's Gods and Monsters ("4 stars," Rolling Stone) and 1994's Bad Boys of the Arctic ("Lucas reinvents Led Zeppelin III," Guitar Player), reissued as the compilations Operators are Standing By (Knitting Factory) and Level the Playing Field (Last Call).

Among the talented members who have passed through the ranks of Gods and Monsters are singers Rolo McGinty (Woodentops), Matthew Sweet, drummer Keith LeBlanc, Sonya Cohen, Mary Margaret O'Hara, Dina Emerson, Richard Barone (The Bongos), Jeff Buckley, and longtime drummer Jonathan Kane.

The title song of Jeff Buckley's album "Grace" and the first track "Mojo Pin" were both co-written by Gary Lucas who also played on both tracks. Both were originally in the Gods and Monsters songbook of 1991-92. "Grace" was recently named the #1 Modern Classic Album in MOJO magazine over albums by U2, Radiohead, and others.

COLE ESCOLA

Fridays, May 20 & 27 at 11:30 PM; $15

Cole Escola, acclaimed for his inspired musical performances in Joe's Pub's recurring smash Our Hit Parade and Casserole Live, the live performance component of his hit television series, Jeffery & Cole Casserole, makes his eagerly anticipated solo debut. With Cole's broad showmanship and sweetheart charm, his act will hearken back to a time when the great ladies of stage and screen dazzled the crowds in smoky rooms all over town. An exciting bill of standards, showtunes, Motown and original material brought to life by Cole's decidedly fresh perspective and raw energy under the direction of Ben Rimalower (Leslie Kritzer is Patti LuPone at Les Mouches) and featuring a band led by Bistro Award winner Ray Fellman.

TICKETS
Online at joespub.com

Phone 212-967-7555,

In Person At the Public Theater Box Office (1 PM to 6 PM), or at the Joe's Pub Box Office from (6 PM to 10 PM) both located at 425 Lafayette Street, NYC

For table reservations please call 212-539-8778. Purchase of tickets does NOT guarantee a table reservation; you must call to reserve seats. Seating, as well as standing-room, is available only on a first-come, first-served basis for all shows without a dinner reservation. Two drink or $12 food minimum per person is standard.