Organizational Meeting

Tuesday, February 7th
7:30 p.m.

Lafayette Brewing Company
622 Main Street
Lafayette, Indiana

Friends of Bob live music co-op
presents

Thursday, February 9, 2012
7:30 p.m.

Nellie McKay
I Want to Live!

Duncan Hall
619 Ferry Street
Lafayette, Indiana

All Ages Show!

Tickets are on sale now!
$20 advance/$25 (day of show)

Available at:
Von's Records, JL Records, and McGuire Music

Advance tickets by mail are $21
Send your check to:
Friends of Bob
PO Box 59
Battle Ground, IN 47920
Please provide your name, address, phone #, and e-mail address.

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Download a poster
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The New Yorker:
Nellie Mckay “I Want to Live!”
June 28th, 2011
June 30: Nellie McKay continues to expand her creative vision with her latest offering, “I Want to Live!,” a dreamlike musical reconstruction of the 1958 Susan Hayward film about the death-row inmate Barbara Graham. Part B movie, part seedy cabaret act, part existential meditation, and all musical exploration, McKay and an excellent band mix some original tunes, some period tunes, and some wildly anachronistic ones—Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” and Lennon’s “I’m So Tired” are particularly effective—to create a brilliant piece of theater.
And here the New York Times:
Bringing Out the Bad Girl for Some Tough Times  
March 24, 2011
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
“Fresh out of reform school — Barbara Graham,” announced a booming voice to open Nellie McKay’s new show, “I Want to Live!,” on Tuesday evening at Feinstein’s at Loews Regency. Wearing a copper-colored dress whose tarnished glitter suggested crushed Christmas ornaments and flashing a bright artificial smile, Ms. McKay, bounced onto the stage like an animated package of pretty poison.
The show that followed was a brilliant, zany film-noir musical biography of Barbara Graham, a convicted murderer who was the third woman to die in the gas chamber in California (at San Quentin) in 1955. In the 1958 movie “I Want to Live!” Graham was played by Susan Hayward, whose performance won her an Academy Award for best actress.
Ms. McKay is, if anything, the opposite of Hayward, whose screen alter egos tended to be embattled, humorless victims, weighed down by heavy psychological baggage. With her curly blond hair, light sinuous voice, and sunshiny aura Ms. McKay is closer to Shirley Temple. Physically she seems typecast to play a not-so-innocent Little Red Riding Hood who might carry a pearl-handled dagger in her basket of goodies.
“I Want to Live!” combines Ms. McKay’s virtually unlimited gifts as a singer, songwriter, actress, pianist, ukulele player, mimic, satirist and comedian into a show that is much deeper than its surface might suggest. Directly or indirectly, the songs, which come from here and there and include three originals, address America’s post-crash economic woes with references to crime and the Great Depression.
In the most lighthearted way they evoke a heartless environment of social injustice in which people who fall through the cracks are invisible to everyone else. In the most pointed satiric shot Ms. McKay blithely carols Irving Berlin’s “Isn’t This a Lovely Day” while her drummer, Ben Bynum, ostentatiously simulates shooting heroin while she pretends not to notice.
A fragment of the Bobby McFerrin hit, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” is heard twice. The sensibility that emerges is that of a champion of the underdog who editorializes through insinuation and juxtaposition.
Backing Ms. McKay is an excellent “hipster” quartet that softens Louis Jordan’s exuberant jive style into a slinkier pop-jazz sound, its subtlety exemplified by the tenor saxophonist Tivon Pennicott’s barely audible tonal brush strokes. Rounding out the group are Alexi David on bass and Cary Park on guitar.
The show’s final one-two punch is its death and resurrection coupling of “Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life,” sung Jeanette MacDonald style, with a growled rendition of the Tom Waits song “Straight to the Top.” In a matter of minutes Ms. McKay transports you from heaven into hell. Or is the other way around? She makes both worlds irresistibly seductive.

Friends of Bob live music co-op
presents

Friday, March 2, 2012
8:00 p.m.

Joy Kills Sorrow

Duncan Hall
619 Ferry Street
Lafayette, Indiana

Tickets go on sale Feburary 12th
$11 advance/$12 (day of show)

Joy Kills Sorrow’s sound is born from the best of two worlds. They start with a base of time-honored timbres and techniques, yet fashion original songs and arrangements that reflect a love of indie-rock and new folk. They take their name from the 1930s radio station WJKS, Where Joy Kills Sorrow, a studio where the Monroe Brothers played; and are armed with formidable talent -- a Winfield fingerpicking champion guitarist, a John Lennon Songwriting Contest winning composer, and the haunting voice of Emma Beaton, a young performer of the year at the Canadian Folk Music Awards. Sweet, full of swagger, and thoroughly fresh, they're honing a new territory in acoustic string band music.

“True ensemble playing – the sublimation of egos to a sound that’s beyond individuals – as on this album, is exhilarating.  This is the second release by Boston-based Joy Kills Sorrow, the first with a significantly new line-up. They were mesmerizing in their eponymous first recording, but here JKS has found its voice – a band voice. Their name comes from the ’30s radio station where the Monroe Brothers performed (WJKS – Where Joy Kills Sorrow) – and that’s cool. They play guitar, banjo, mandolin and bass – and that’s cool, too. But the coolest thing of all is that they tell the truth. This is fresh stuff. Americana is rife with posers, but JKS is the real thing – talented musicians and singers giving it all they’ve got. Darkness Sure Becomes This City is more of a hologram than a CD – an exquisitely recorded and sequenced set that kept my interest from the first riff of the guitar on “Kill My Sorrow” to the last sexy downbeat of “You Make Me Feel Drunk.” Bassist (and a superb one) Bridget Kearney wrote 5 of the 11 songs – thoughtful, unpretentious lyrics, with a kind of casual force. “Thinking of You and Such” is a highlight. Lead singer Emma Beaton has an intimate style but with startling power – perfect for the material. One of my desert island songs is here – Dave Keenan and Nova Devonie’s “We Will Have Our Day” – and Emma sings it with the stark defiance it calls for. Matthew Arcara is a 2006 Winfield National Flatpicking Guitar Champion; Wesley Corbett is a Fleck-inflected banjoist with killer chops; and Jacob Jolliff on mandolin creates the appropriate rhythm groove and adds distinct, lyrical fills. Mostly, though, they know how to play together and that’s a rare thing. If I was putting on a music festival, this is the first band I would hire.

Friends of Bob live music co-op
presents

Friday, April 13, 2012
8:00 p.m.

Tannahill Weavers

Duncan Hall
619 Ferry Street
Lafayette, Indiana

"…the most pastoral and graceful band in contemporary Celtic music is the Tannahill Weavers. …as close to perfect as it gets in an imperfect world "  Sing Out!

"…world class musicians with passion and a healthy sense of fun, keeping alive and making accessible the very heart of the tradition itself." Mojo Magazine (UK)

"The finest purveyors of Scottish music in the kingdom."  Toronto Globe and Mail

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