The Levin Brothers at Caffe Lena; Tuesday, May 27, 2025

“Some nights we don’t play it that well,” Pete Levin mused after the Levin Brothers romped through Lenny White’s horror-movie bebop “Wolfsbane” at Caffe Lena Tuesday.

The Levin Brorthers – From left, Pete Levin; Jeff Siegel (behind mic stand), Pat LaBarbara, Tony Levin

They played it all well, belying Pete’s modest mock worry, introducing Erik Satie’s elegant “Gymnopedie No. 1,” that the band’s experiments with others’ music meant they’d become “just a cover band.” Right, “just a cover band” that launched from quiet solo piano into Paul Simon’s “Scarborough Fair” earlier. They’d celebrated the ballad’s pure, familiar prettiness, then bopped into a bustling B-section that energetically took the tune apart and reassembled it as LaBarbara’s electronic wind instrument brought it home.

Pat LaBarbara

The quartet – keyboardist Pete Levin, bassist-brother Tony, tenor saxophonist-EWI player Pat LaBarbara and drummer Jeff Siegel – delighted the Caffe full of musicians and mostly-boomer fans, often re-inventing “covers.”

They didn’t start that way. Their original opener “Out of Darkness” wandered between fusion and bossa with Tony plucking a five-stringed electric upright bass in close sync with Siegel under solos from LaBarbara’s EWI and Pete’s piano-sounding synthesizer. A repeating, circular vamp set Siegel loose.

Below, Tony Levin

Pete Levin

Pete’s synthesizer mostly emulated a piano but beefed up to a menacing organ sound in “Wolfsbane” – as Tony left his electric upright for a five-string bass guitar – and resonated with a Fender-Rhodes-like ring in Wayne Shorter’s lovely “Fall.” LaBarbara switched to tenor first in “Dream Steps,” an original bebop based, he said, on “You Fell Out of a Dream.” He said this came from a 40s film starring Lana Turner, whose entrance to nightclubs thereafter detoured jazz bands from whatever they were playing to greet her with “Dream.” Mock-cranky, LaBarbara complained bands don’t do that when he comes in. Such self-deprecation marked many intros, especially Pete’s, but their playing blew away any need for it.

Below, Pat LaBarbara

Three songs in, they were in full flight, but after “Dream Steps,” they flew higher in a swinging, spunky – well, yeah – cover of Steely Dan’s “Aja” that Pete called an experiment. Like “Scarborough Fair,” this flowed in familiar fashion through its wistful main melody before diving off the map, this time via bebop tenor sax, abrupt tempo shifts and an all-in coda with a repeating riff by LaBarbara and the Levins as Siegel drummed wild.

“Brothers Take a Ride” recalled a California tour (before Siegel replaced drummer Joe LaBarbara) with bristling, jagged cadences where Pete seemed to lose his way for a moment, cueing (Pat) LaBarbara’s tenor to the rescue before a second and more successful chorus. Here Tony and LaBarbara echoed riffs in harmony.

Things got pretty in Satie’s “Gymnopedie,” a slow reverie whose sweetly delicate melody charmed the place before – as in “Fair” and “Aja” – experimental forays outside. They did the reverse in “Wolfsbane,” a horror movie mood leavened (Levin’ed?) by LaBarbara’s tenor quote of “Softly As In a Morning Sunrise” but revved again by Tony’s propulsive bass guitar.

Jeff Siegel

In “another pretty one” (like “Gymnopedie”) as Pete promised, the sweetly tuneful original “Fade to Blue” rode a cozy Pete piano vamp that LaBarbara used as launching pad for bold explorations. Then they punched up the energy in “Bringing It Down to the Bass,” alternatively “Bringing It Down to Laid-Back Lee,” echo of an earlier title for this original. They made maximum fun of this cheerfully self-confident freeway funk number.

LaBarbara stayed upbeat, starring in “Good News” which they’d recorded with Brazilian percussionist Emilio Martins. Sounding more straight-ahead than Brazilian, this featured Tony donning finger extensions to percussive effect as Pete used electric piano sounds for a modern mood. 

He emulated a clavinet in “Gimme Some Scratch” from their self-named first album (2014), suave and swinging on short riffs and a stop-and-go cadence.

They left unplayed a planned encore of “Icarus” but nobody seemed to feel short-changed.

Afterward, as fans clustered in the lobby where both Levins met and greeted, LaBarbara and Siegel greeted Don McCormack, patron saint of Saratoga jazz, and his family. At the table next to mine, the two band members then sat flanking Hal Miller, smiling as the Albany percussionist and archivist told old jazz stories.

From the first, Willie Nile has welded messages of compelling moral force onto high-impact, stripped-down rock and roll. “The Great Yellow Light,” his 21st album, may be his most powerful, passionate and compassionate collection.

Willie Nile has rocked at the highest international-star levels since 1980 when his debut album hit, backed by Patti Smith’s band. Within weeks, the Buffalo-born but very New York City rocker was opening shows for The Who, by Pete Townshend’s request, drawn by Nile’s irresistible amalgam of musical and moral force. The next May, Nile played UAlbany’s freebie MayFest on campus, singing most of that first album, plus “Radiation,” a blistering attack on deadly corporate nuclear carelessness that may have cost him that first record deal. 

Some of his power comes from sheer sonic muscle: chainsaw guitars over insistent drumbeats. But most of it is simply him: a yearning or declamatory voice exerting the moral force of fiery conviction. He means what he sings, at a bone-deep level.

Since his 1980 area debut, Nile has played everywhere hereabouts, from cozy clubs to SPAC’s wide stage. Opening solo for the Roches at UAlbany’s Page Hall in a band-less period between record deals, he went on without an introduction and slew the place, prompting a fan to holler, “Who ARE you?” By now, especially after many shows at WAMC’s (sadly, soon to close) The Linda, everybody knows.

Willie Nile at The Linda. Michael Hochanadel photo

Now, when those whom Nobel Prize-winning economist/columnist Paul Krugman calls “sadistic zombies” in a befouled White House attack and threaten musicians Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift and Beyonce, we need Nile’s new album of truth, of free expression from a brave moral conscience.

Old friends, Nile and Springsteen sing on each other’s shows, and they show more courage than a passive Capitol-full of Congressional cowards, and cowed, over-cautious corporate media.

Play this one loud; it’s tuneful enough to sing along, righteous enough to inspire.

“Wild Wild World” kicks off “The Yellow Light” with a list of troubles Nile hopefully transmutes into a rousing call to action. Nile has said it’s “a call out to our better angels.” He has explained, “Even though the history of America is riddled with pain and injustice and the divisions between us are greater than ever, I refuse to give in. I know we can do better than this.”

Next, in “We Are, We Are,” he offers a consoling assurance that we indeed can do better: “They can’t stop us any more.” Later, “Wake Up America” urges courage in the fight with those Krugman calls “sadistic zombies.”

Even the love songs proclaim strength and hope. In “Electrify Me,” Nile calls for mutual inspiration and energy, not just with a lover, but also across his community. The title track romances a powerful woman “with wonder in her eyes and thunder in her heart.” A few tracks later, the heartfelt slow ballad “Fall on Me” offers an all-purpose helping hand.

Before the calls to action that close the album comes that lovesong respite, plus the pipes-spiced “An Irish Lullabye” and the autobiographical “Tryin’ to Make a Living in the USA” – a fun-rocking, rollicking knock on the music business.

Then Nile lets his indignation rev up again in the call-to-action “Wake Up America,” insisting that we MUST do better. In the stately waltz-time album-closer “Washington’s Day,” Nile inspires with the invitation to be, and work, together.

The credits list impressive guests swirling around Nile’s band of Johnny Pisano, bass; Jon Weber, drums; and Jimi Bones, guitar. Steve Earle (at Universal Preservation Hall this Thursday, June 5) and Paul Brady guest at the mic, Rob Hyman and Eric Bazilian (the Hooters, for whom he opened recently), Larry Kirwan, Fred Parcells and Chris Byrne (Black 47) and Waddy Wachtel (every southern Cali rocker) and David Mansfield (Rolling Thunder Revue) play simple parts. Nile’s longtime producer Stewart Lerman once again achieves a honed, high-energy primal rock sound that relies mostly on guitar power although Nile plays piano some, as on “What Color Is Love.”

All this skill is focused in fine-tuned unity behind a small man with a giant message of alarm balanced with hope in action. The music rocks to exhilarating effect, mostly, but with quieter interludes, notably “Irish,” to catch our breath. Nile’s voice croons quietly or rises in rousing calls to action; compelling and inviting, either way.

Memphis soul from a family band

Southern Avenue plays Lark Hall Friday, two days before “Family” hits – the fourth album of the family band; built on the Staples Singers blueprint of three singing sisters and a guitar guy.

In the Staples, that guy was Pops Staples, father of the singing sisters. In Southern Avenue, it’s Israeli-born singer-guitarist Ori Naftaly who came to Memphis in 2013 for the International Blues Challenge where he saw Tierinii Jackson sing. “I saw my entire future flash in front of me,” Naftaly has said. 

Two years later, they were a band, and married. They completed Southern Avenue by adding Jackson’s sisters; drummer-singer-songwriter Tikyra (T.K.) Jackson and singer-percussionist-violinist-vocalist Ava Jackson. 

They named themselves after the Memphis street that passes the funky-soul Stax Records label, musical home of Booker T. and the MGs, Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett and other 60s and 70s stars. Southern Avenue’s passionate power glide soul sound was a natural as first Memphis band to for the revived label, releasing their self-named debut album in 2017. They won the Blues Music Award for Best Emerging Artist the next year, when their follow up “Keep On” (2019) earned a Grammy nomination. Los Lobos saxophonist and keyboard player Steve Berlin produced their next release, “Be The Love You Want” (2021).

Few bands manage to sound both familiar and fresh, but that’s Southern Avenue’s sweet spot; and the secret is soul. You can hear it, top to bottom, because the voice and guitar grab you first. Up top, Tierinii Jackson’s voice has a light, fleet sound, while Naftaly’s guitar chimes in various bluesy ways, a slide glide here, a staccato single-note run there, hefty chords under a vocal chorus. Down below, beats pump and push under the arrangements, unified and powerful.

And the harmonies; does anyone sing together better than siblings? This “Family” album celebrates that closest of connections. Best of all is their authentic, organic feel.

Last summer when they toured with Willie Nelson’s Outlaw Music Festival, Nelson wore a Southern Avenue T-shirt onstage and brought them back out after their earlier set to guest with him on the last three songs of the all-star show.

For fans of my vintage (early boomer), this new music feels like the Stax soul we loved growing up: all funk energy, punch and passion. For us, It’s “Oh, THAT sound!” For younger listeners who may have learned what soul sounds like through Lake Street Dive, Black Pumas, Leon Bridges or the current parade of single-named newcomers, this is stronger stuff, and sweeter.

“Family” hits on Monday as their debut on Chicago blues label Alligator Records, featuring 14 original songs. In addition to the core four – singer Tierinii Jackson, guitarist Ari Naftali, singer-drummer Tikyra Jackson and singer, percussionist and violinist Ava Jackson – they imported studio talent: keyboardist Jeremy Powell and bassists Blake Rhea and Luther Dickinson (North Mississippi All-Stars). 

When they introduce the new songs onstage at Lark Hall on Friday, they’ll be ready after three hometown shows this week.

Southern Avenue plays Friday, May 23 at Lark Hall (351 Hudson Ave. Albany) with special guest Ky McClinton. 8 p.m. $35.93, $24.40 518-599-5804 www.larkhallalbany.com

Bettye LaVette at Caffe Lena, Saturday, May 17, 2025

When traditional Japanese potters repair a broken pot, they pour molten gold into the cracks. 

When Bettye LaVette’s voice cracked onstage at Caffe Lena Saturday, it burnished the lyric with the pure gold soul sound of deep feeling.

Singers either have pretty voices or they don’t; Bettye LaVette knows she doesn’t and said hers was more James Brown than Doris Day. She called her 85-minute song recital “not really a show.” No band, no dance moves. She sat, mostly, and cast an intimate spell, of “coming over to my house.” In song intros she noted “I have so many lies to tell you” – but she and the songs rang true. No band, maybe, but Alan Hill accompanied her beautifully on either the Caffe’s venerable upright piano or an electric keyboard. Seldom soloing, he ranged in well-made, minimalist backgrounds from funky soul to fervent Gospel to broken-heart blues. He calmly rolled along as she changed up the set list.

Alan Hill, left; and Bettye LaVette

Tiny, trim, she leaned on grandson/road manager Randall’s arm to mount and leave the stage. Up there, though, she ruled.

LaVette started with “Things Have Changed” by another non-pretty-voiced singer (and returned to Dylan’s songbook later with “Emotionally Yours.”) She packed room-filling drama, brassy dynamic intensity and Dylan’s own trademark ambiguous regret and resignation into “Changed.” Then, when when her voice cracked and quavered in Angelo Badalamenti’s complex “I Hold No Grudge,” it only heightened its poignancy, without sounding at all contrived or theatrical. 

The same emotional directness marked, or elevated, Sharon Robinson’s “One More Song” which she noted proudly is on “Blackbirds,” her 2020 album of all women-written songs. (“I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise” [2025] is another. But we digress.) When she rhymed “call it quits” with “that’s it,” she might have been delivering a death sentence.

Slowing down “I Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” tugged the Kenny Rogers/First Edition hit from novelty-song superficiality into something mature and meaningful.

In other words, she made very good indeed on her claim to be a song interpreter whom songwriters trust. Everything was a Bettye LaVette song, claimed mainly by slowing the tempo to accentuate dynamics and punch up the drama. LaVette’s acknowledgement that she can’t write lyrics may inspire her reverence for them, and how she sings them with full clarity and punch from the first note.

Praising (the under-rated) Randall Bramlett’s writing, LaVette gave his “The Meantime” a wistful, yearning but complex reading. Half-joking that she recorded (Canadian) “Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” to get airplay across the border from Detroit, she was all business, and fervor,, tossing the high notes high and muscling up a stop and go coda.

These songs flowed like a sampler, showing off her skills and sound, but she shaped the show, late, into a somber arc of loneliness and loss, aging and awareness of the end approaching. Even a spry “Eleanor Rigby” – her lightest delivery and tempo, Hill’s hottest playing – painted a sad picture. And LaVette does sad very very well.

Elton John’s “Talking Old Soldiers” proved that, although some singers trust the lyrics to deliver a song’s emotion, LaVette instead uses all of her own feeling to carry the words; adding immeasurably to their power. She doesn’t over-sing, though she brought the fire works to many tunes Saturday. She put so much of her hard-won wisdom into others’ writing that she transformed everything.

That wisdom has more than a little bitterness about show business, and this emerged in some introductions. She mused, for example, that “One More Song” marked her fifth career, as defined by a sequence of record deals gone bad. In years of radio silence between albums, she sang for a scanty living in tiny Detroit clubs. She may not have been widely heard in the show-biz mainstream, but she maintained her performing power. 

Only “Before The Money Came (Battle of Bettye LaVette)” actually used LaVette’s own words. Producer Patterson Hood (Drive-By Truckers) eavesdropped on LaVette’s daily phone calls from the studio to her mother and assembled the lyric. (A generation before, LaVette had recorded with Hood’s father David and the Muscle Shoals “Swampers” studio aces.) 

In “Money,” she wailed her frustration with the music business that had marginalized her for decades, achieving a dignified resolution as she stood for the first time and sang her way off-stage, through the crowd and out the door, to a general awed tumult.

She let the applause build and simmer before returning to sing, all alone, on the lip of the stage, Sinead O’Connor’s fervent hymn of resignation “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got.”

Some singers have pretty voices, some don’t – but few can summon the deep confiding candor, the range from desperation to outrage and back to peace that Bettye LaVette invited her fans at Caffe Lena to feel with her Saturday, like coming over to her house.

SONGS

Things Have Changed (Dylan)

I Hold No Grudge (Badalamenti)

One More Song (Robinson)

“I Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” (Newbury)

In The Meantime (Bramlett)

Heart of Gold (Young)

Emotionally Yours (Dylan)

Streets of Philadelphia (Springsteen)

Eleanor Rigby (Lennon-McCartney)

Talking Old Soldiers (Elton John)

Yesterday Is Here (Tom Waits)

Before the Money Came (Battle of Bettye LaVette) (LaVette and Hood)

I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got (Sinead O’Connor)

RIGHT-SIZING

Before Saturday, I saw Bettye LaVette sing for 1,000 in Troy Savings Bank Music Hall and 5,000 at Jazz Fest in New Orleans. Caffe Lena holds 120, but it felt just right for LaVette’s music to fill – a boundless, brave talent made intimate and welcoming without downsizing its intensity.

In the coming months, the Music Hall will close for renovations, as will The Egg (two rooms; 400 seats, and 900 seats), and the Spa Little Theater in Saratoga Springs (500). But even before this shuffle, Caffe Lena right-sized shows – even a New Orleans-style brass band last fall – by cramming more musicians than you might think would fit onto its cozy stage and by live-streaming. The coming months will show how artists, presenters and audiences adapt. For now, fans will recall the Caffe was where they saw Bettye LaVette sing, just as she acknowledged the room as where Bob Dylan once sang.