For somebody who doesn’t exist, Arch Stanton gets around.

Nobody in the Arch Stanton Quartet is named Arch Stanton. A phony name in Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western classic “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” it’s engraved on a fake tombstone criminals placed in a cemetery to mark where robbery loot is buried.

There’s nothing buried about the guys in this band; prominent veteran players Terry Gordon, trumpet and flugelhorn; Roger Noyes, guitar; Chris Macchia, bass; and Jim Ketterer, drums. In 16 years together they’ve created so much original music they play few standards. “We choose less-than-standard standards,” says Gordon. “We do our own version of Bob Dylan’s ‘Gotta Serve Somebody.’”

They base their original music, most in the post-bop tradition, on both pop culture – their name, for example – and their own travels. Their second album ”Blues for Soli” (2014) features a suite of music from a tour of Egypt; their debut ”Along For the Ride” hit in 2012. They recently received an Albany County Arts & Culture Advisory Council grant to produce music inspired by Paul Bowles’ novel “The Sheltering Sky.”

The Arch Stanton Quartet – From left, Terry Gordon, James Ketterer, Chris Macchia, Roger Noyes. Photo supplied

Their resumes read like a who’s who of area jazz, Americana and alt-rock crews: Gordon with Alex Torres and his Latin Orchestra, Brass-O-Mania, Soul Provider, Joey Thomas Big Band, Empire Jazz Orchestra, Keith Pray’s Big Soul Ensemble and his own Terry Gordon Quintet (which played Jazz on Jay last year); Noyes with Rusticator, Red Haired Strangers, Grainbelt, Dan Johnson and The Expert Sidemen, Jazz Caravan and Rebel Darling; Macchia with Dennis Jacobs, Lily of the Valley, Alex Jornov Band, Rivergrass, Broken Heartstrings, Good Time Machine, Laura Leigh Band and Kurt Herman; and Ketterer with Jazz Caravan, Alan Thomson Trio, Giant Steps Quartet, Nova/Antiqua, Tern Rounders and Triple Play.

All are highly trained: Gordon at Houghton College and Mansfield University; Noyes with Ian MacDougall, then Tim Olsen at Union College; Macchia with jazz stars John Menegon, Mark Dziuba, Vinnie Martucci, Jeff Siegel, Teri Roiger and John Esposito; and Ketterer with Robert Meade, Rich Phillips, Gary France and Richard Albagli. 

Only Gordon, whose mother was a church organist, and Ketterer, both of whose parents made music, come from musical families. But all started performing in high school. 

Gordon played first in the Clubmen, a small big band, on New Year’s Eve at the Bolivar Country Club in Little Genessee for $40. Noyes played instrumental rock in high school, then at mid-90s college frat parties. “We were paid $200 a guy,” he recalls, “not much different from today’s pay.” Macchia’s first gig was with the Fertile Crescent at the Right Track Inn in Freeport. “I think I made close to $20.” Ketterer played first with a country and western band near the back stretch at the Saratoga harness track in 1979. “I don’t recall the name of the place, but it was similar to Bob’s Country Bunker in “‘The Blues Brothers,’” he recalled. The film showed this as rowdy dive bar with chicken wire shielding the stage to protect the musicians from flying beer bottles.

These days, they play classier gigs as seasoned performers who’ve toured internationally and create their own repertoire. “We have nearly 30 originals,” Gordon explains, “including a suite of music inspired by the band’s State Department tour of Egypt and another inspired by the great American novel ‘Invisible Man.’”

They also play standards in post-bop, Latin or free-jazz styles. Playing true to the melody, as Gordon says, “We attempt to occupy the tune with our own sense of atmosphere and mood, staying open to pushing them in different directions.” He adds, “There is tremendous freedom in playing with the musicians in the Arch Stanton Quartet.”

Jazz on Jay free concerts are noon to 1:30 p.m. at Jay Square, the new park space opposite Schenectady City Hall. The rain site is Robb Alley at Proctors, 432 State St. Seating is provided indoors at Robb Alley, but patrons are invited to bring their own seating and refreshments to Jay Square.

Jazz on Jay is presented by the ElectriCity Arts and Entertainment District and sponsored by the New York State Council on the Arts, a Schenectady County Legislature Arts & Culture Grant, Downtown Schenectady Improvement Corporation, The Schenectady Foundation, Price Chopper/Market 32, MVP Health Care, Schenectady County, Schenectady City Hall, and Proctors Collaborative. This blog is a series media sponsor.

The Arch Stanton Quartet also performs Sept. 16 at (7-9 p.m.) at the Lark Street Tavern in Albany and Sept. 27 at 9 Maple Ave. (9 p.m.-midnight) in Saratoga Springs.

Who but Terrance Simien can lead a conga line grinning through the rain?

Terrance Simien

Sunday at Music Haven, the zydeco singer and accordionist did what he always does, as he’s done in many shows here. He gave great fun by visibly having so much of it himself.

Zydeco may have come from one small point on the globe; bayou country west of New Orleans. Simien spins it all over the world and across musical styles through the power of joy among virtuosos.

Acting on his simple mission statement – “help you feel it right” – in ambitiously complex ways, he expanded the common definition of zydeco from Creole accordion dance music to include soul, rock, pop and folk. Behind him, an all-aces band played with jazz band precision.

They started down home, inviting folks onto the dance floor with zippy two-steps. Then they reached into mainstream folk-rock in the exuberant “500 Miles” before flying back to the bayou with “Creole Mardi Gras Run.” Alternating zydeco dance numbers with zydeco-fied everything else was their path through 90 dynamic minutes onstage.

Tie together all the Mardi Gras beads Simien tossed into the crowd and they’d likely reach Proctors, the rain site downtown. Proctors proved unnecessary as staying in the park despite the dodgy, rapidly changing forecast proved the right choice. As evening turned windy and wet at times, few left and those who stayed kept dancing, or chair-dancing.

Since reggae and zydeco are distant cousins across the Caribbean, “500 Miles” worked well as a cross-styles hybrid. Then when Simien lit into Bob Marley’s “No Woman No Cry,” DJ Sir Walford was the first among many springing up in delight. Here and elsewhere, Simien proved a great soul singer, using nuance to delineate feeling. A singer armed with an accordion, Simien and keyboardist Danny Williams played like one mind with four hands, riffs wrapping riffs.

Terrance Simien, left; and Danny Williams, keyboards

Noting he’d collaborated with Randy Newman on the first zydeco song among Disney works, soundtrack of the “Tiana’s Bayou Adventure” ride, they played “Gonna Take You There” with non-cartoon-y commitment. From this zydeco tune, they sprang back into the mainstream with The Band’s “I Shall Be Released,” Simien going all Sam Cooke on the chorus. I don’t know if the next uptempo dance tune was “Zydeco Boogaloo,” but it was surely A zydeco boogaloo. 

Addressing “Love the One You’re With” to “my hippies” who filled the dance floor among everybody else, Simien injected another rock chestnut right inside, the Rolling Stones “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” before wrapping “Love” around it as coda. In between, the band copped grooves from Sly and Stevie, making it all fit.

Stan Chambers, above; Ian Molinaro-Thompson, below

Here’s let’s give the band some, starting with its versatile beat masters. Bassist Stan Chambers played busy and relentless, right on the pulse set by drummer Ian Molinaro-Thompson. Trumpeter Emanuel Mitchell and tenor saxophonist Noah Boshra blended well as a section or soloed hot or subtle. Putting aside their brass when Simien cued them into the rhythm section, Mitchell smacked a tambourine and Boshra scratched a frottoir (metal rub-board) with bent spoons.  

Emanuel Mitchell, above; Noah Boshra, below

Mardi Gras chants gave this expanded rhythm section plenty to do behind Simien calling “Mighty Cooti Fiyo,” “Indian Red” and more before settling into “Iko Iko” at full force. Leading Mitchell and Boshra strutting down through the crowd, Simien lit into – what else? – “When the Saints Go Marching In” on returning to the stage. Afterward, urging peace and love, they left. As encore, they played and sang The Band’s classic “The Weight” in soulful authenticity. Here Simien raised his hand in a slow wave that also raised the crowd’s voices with him.

Keith Pray’s Mohawk Brass Band – From left: Pray, alto saxophone; Ben O’Shea, trombone; Chad Ploss (behind O’Shea), drums; Steve Lambert, trumpet; and Adam Streeter (behind Lambert), Sousaphone

The show began with an earlier parade, from near the Ben & Jerry’s scoop stand and all around the crowd to the stage, by saxophonist Keith Pray’s Mohawk Brass Band. Trumpeter Steve Lambert, trombonist Ben O’Shea, Sousaphonist Adam Streeter and Pray himself, playing alto, all also play in Pray’s Big Soul Ensemble (only drummer Chad Ploss doesn’t), so they know how to lock a groove and solo all over it.

From left: Ben O’Shea, Adam Streeter, Chad Ploss, Steve Lambert, Keith Pray

Marching around or standing still onstage, they honored New Orleans brass band traditions in song choices, arrangements with round-robin solos or both. They paid tribute to the Rebirth and Hot 8 brass bands, turned “I’ll Fly Away” into a Sousaphone showcase and easily navigated the reggae/Second Line changes of the Hot 8’s “Rastafunk.”

Photo Gallery

Terrance Simien cues applause for his Grammy

Danny Williams

Review WAMC’s “Hudson River Sampler” Goes on the Road in Music Haven Concert Recorded for Future Broadcast

Wanda Fischer marked 43 years as host of WAMC’s “Hudson River Sampler” with folksinging friends at Music Haven Saturday. Celebrating folk’s durability, and Fischer’s, fell on Woodstock weekend, 66 years after the festival that forever changed pop music: It was never so diverse thereafter, but more profitable. Most in Saturday’s crowd fit the coulda-been-there boomer demo.

Music Haven maestro Mona Golub briefly introduced the evening, which otherwise belonged to WAMC. The regional NPR station’s On the Road chief Peter Hughes, producer and sometime morning host Sarah LaDuke and Fischer herself ran the show whose traditional Music Haven intermission raffle benefited the station. They and some performers noted NPR and affiliates are under threat, losing federal support. Many urged support of the station and its work, and the music they played demonstrated its importance as a community builder and catalyst while Music Haven and Golub earned major love and respect for hosting it.

Fischer (at right) and LaDuke sang the first number, duetting shyly but well enough on “Five Hundred Miles” with headliner Joe Jencks playing acoustic guitar. 

Michael Jerling

North country troubadour Michael Jerling opened with well-honed, low-key charm, skilled and straightforward guitar picking and easy-going vocals. After a naturalist’s observation of his forested home in “Blue Heartland,” he paid witty, affectionate tribute to Merle Haggard, inspiration for “In Lieu of Flowers” about honoring the departed with love for those still here. 

His musician wife Teresina Huxtable had chided, “You’re not going to play that in front of people, are you?” on first hearing “Personal Appearance.” But sing it, he did, to amusing effect. He sang he’s short for his weight and he’d look like a boiled ham with ears if he shaved his head.

“Fish Trout Lake” nostalgically recalled family vacations before his self-improvement promise “Starting Tomorrow” tickled the funny bone like “Personal Appearances.”

Kate McDonnell and Jimmy Woodul

Kate McDonnell played guitar upside down and backwards, as Fischer noted in her intro. Her percussive thumb strums hit hard under treble lead runs by guitarist Jimmy Woodul, who played last Sunday at Music Haven in Reese Fulmer’s Carriage House Band opening for SteelDrivers. He also harmonized Saturday with McDonnell’s beautiful voice; singing blended as well as their playing.

Unstated socio-political trouble lurked in the shadows behind “Pretty Good Day” and “No Ordinary Time,” both positing simple pleasures and human connection as antidotes to fear and division. In “Trapeze,” she sketched the difficulties of music as career, a cautionary tale about running away to the circus of any art. “Step Right Up” also cautioned: “you’re the next what might have been.” “Oh, Mercy” was both a slam on George Bush as “the boy-king…the sequel” and a singalong call to action.

After intermission and the raffle of folk-related prizes, Dan Berggren first saluted the forever wild Adirondacks and the people who appreciate and nurture rather than exploit this delicate/rugged land and its creatures. “Whippoorwill Blues” lamented threats to that place and that ethos before extolling noble hard work in “Big Beams.” 

Dan Berggren

Berggren explained the folk process of recycling old melodies with new words, transforming “Wayfaring Stranger” into a call for peace and justice and “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know You” from sentimental adios to a singalong call to action: “Hold on and keep moving forward” – toward peace and justice.

His persuasive lyrics packed Tom Paxton-like righteous moral clarity packaged in cozy melodies, but could have used more of Seeger’s humor.

Joe Jencks

Joe Jencks started where modern protest folk did, in conversation with Pete Seeger. Adapting Seeger’s 1955 testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee into lyrics, Jencks sang a defense of the First Amendment rather than the Fifth which a hostile interrogator accused Seeger of using, as if guilty of something. Seeger never named names, as some frightened coerced witnesses did, and stressed his right to sing for anyone. He was never prosecuted; the inquisition simply died of neglect or embarrassment, as ICE now also should.

Maybe history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes as Jencks implied, dropping a verse of “If I Had a Hammer” into his Seeger quotes song.

A dual US and Irish citizen, Jencks praised South Africa’s pluralism before hailing his ancestors’ immigration here in the homeland-sentimental waltz “Rose of Tralee.” Praising his grandfather Felix Kilbride’s courage in coming here via Ellis Island, he recounted the horrifying/preposterous recent arrest of Hopi tribal people in Arizona for failing to produce green cards – all by way of setting up the pro-immigration “Lady of the Harbor,” Lady Liberty. Many fans knew Jencks’s words and sang along, and did so again in “Bells of Freedom.” Jencks reached back to the Lomax 1939 recordings in Rayford prison as source for his “Take this Hammer,” a tool of hope and defiance.

The finale; from left: Sarah LaDuke, Wanda Fischer, Michael Jerling, Kate McDonnell, Dan Berggren and Joe Jencks

The full cast came on to join Jencks and sing “Get Together,” the Dino Valente (born Chet Powers) hit for the Youngbloods – changing the words a bit to sing “Smile on each other.” (The Youngbloods’ hit arrived in 1969, the Woodstock year, and they sang it at their last-ever show Aug. 5, 1972 at the late lamented Lenox Music Inn. But we digress.)

Wanda Fischer beams in the finale

The whole thing was sweet, inspiring and well-performed, but the staging seemed awkward. A seemingly permanent mic placement positioned the performers in odd places, as if their stage blocking in the finale determined where they’d stand whenever they played. They also performed oddly down-stage when greater closeness to the audience, physically, would have enhanced their connection in communicating sentiments all seemed to share.

Joe Jencks touts his Sept. 20 Eighth Step show during the raffle, with Sarah LaDuke, behind Jencks, and Wanda Fischer

Wanda Fischer introduces Dan Berggren

Fans file out of Music Haven afterward; over the pastel-lit treed hill, a baseball game was underway at Central Park’s A Diamond.

Friday night at SPAC was almost, almost too much: Wide-screen nature-zen National Geographic visuals over the Philadelphia Orchestra and lyric soprano Renee Fleming. Star of opera, Broadway and everything else she’s tried, she sang songwriters’ lyrics or poets’ words. Her voice and elegant presence plus glorious images overhead all but eclipsed the Philadelphians in the touring version of “Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene” that won a Grammy. 

She explained that in this Covid project, she and Philadelphia Orchestra Musical Director Yannick Nezet-Seguin reached from quarantine to embrace a world then out of reach. Friday, images re-opened that once-closed earth. This beautiful blend of sights and sounds that comprised the concert’s first half also had a point; as did the initially disjunct but increasingly cohesive second half whose visuals were of the performers.

At first “Voice of Nature” overwhelmed, from aerial splendor far aloft in auroras, clouds and stars to tiny plant and animal organisms. The flow of visual images was seamless, mostly, with more lap-dissolves than hard cuts in the editing. The sounds were segmented; 10 sung and spoken pieces with orchestral accompaniment. Soaring sequoias, sparse desert scapes, waters serene or stormy, creatures tiny or titanic, spread their wings, played in the waves. Sometimes images and lyrics matched; words we heard described scenes we saw. But they didn’t have to; meanings more often fit metaphorically than literally.

The music ranged from Handel to Bjork; the first words expressed awe at towering forests, its last words mourned “Red Mountains Sometimes Cry.” Conductor Robert Moody elicited the distinctive character of each accompanying orchestral episode while also preserving a unity that never felt forced.

If the images were romantic, the orchestral sounds were maybe more so, in the impressionist style of Debussy, Ravel or Vaughn Williams. Fleming’s voice – she may be our most modestly self-effacing and unarguably great vocal artist in range, sheer sound and affect – bridged the visual and the verbal. 

Gradually, both began to express alarm at environmental damage and the distress of natural systems beset by fire and flood, glaciers calving icebergs – all linked implicitly to industrial pollution.

Even before this beauty-under-threat oratorio began, Fleming had directed the audience to kiosks uphill from the amphitheater, promoting programs and organizations mobilized to protect the environment.

It was all too gorgeous to feel didactic; it implied rather than insisted, and the closing credits onscreen highlighted the work of close allies to Fleming and Nezet-Seguin in creating the piece and promoting its cause.

After those credits, as a first-half encore, Burt Bacharach’s romantic pop classic “What the World Needs Now Is Love Sweet Love,” urged love as antidote to disaster.

The second half began in a slightly jarring generic feel; Wagner’s “Prelude to Die Meistersinger” that might have introduced a “greatest hits” run of familiar classical war-horses. Visuals over this opener and throughout the second half showed orchestra players onscreen. 

Fleming’s return gave shape and intent as a unified statement unfolded, song by song.

Arias of Leoncavallo and Puccini followed before Gould’s “An American Salute,” variations on “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” that spanned simple jingoism into parody and back again. 

Then the music Broadway composer John Kander wrote for Fleming to sing “A Letter from Sullivan Ballou,” a compelling piece Ken Burns used in “The Civil War,” told the heartbreaking story of a soldier going into battle. Conveying to his wife his feelings focused by the risk of death, he proclaimed his deep, devoted and hopeful love for her. In plainspoken candor, his words conveyed the sentiments of a tender heart. And he expressed his willingness to forfeit his future with her and their sons to defend his country. Within a week, the letter writer was killed in the Civil War’s first major battle.

Now, sadly as true patriotism, devotion to truth and principle and self-sacrifice in defending them are derided as woke by amoral leaders who value nothing beyond power-mad ego and greed, the simple nobility of these sentiments shone like the sun in the National Geographic videos. Ballou’s words spoke for themselves; Fleming sang them to breathtakingly poignant effect.

She then lightened the mood in a show-tunes run, two John Kander Broadway-ish numbers culminating in the comforting word “Always;” the stirring “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” then the hilariously self-deprecating “Diva,” a delicious bit of show-biz brassy flash turned inside out with humor. 

Here, Fleming proved she could sing the phone book to powerful and entertaining effect, and bring the laughs at the same time.

A generous encore began with the breezy romance of “I Could Have Danced All Night” before Leonard Cohen’s dependably exalting “Hallelujah.” Arguably no one has sung it better than Fleming on Friday, melody and words wrapping the evening in a velvety elegance as audience voices rose around Fleming’s in a chorus of everybody.

Review: The Evidence at Jazz on Jay, Thursday. August. 14, 2025

Sure, jazz musicians Eliane Elias, Woody Herman and Astrud Gilberto recorded the Doors’ “Light My Fire;” so did singers Al Green, Jose Feliciano and Trini Lopez, plus countless others. 

With all these cover versions out there, the straightforward version that jazz-blues trio The Evidence performed as set-closer Thursday at Jazz on Jay steamrolled past any sense of transgression because they had already blues’ed up or jazz-ified vintage pop ballads, jump-blues, soul numbers and Tin Pan Alley selections from the Great American Songbook.

In a pre-concert written interview for the program bio handed out Thursday, The Evidence keyboardist, singer and trumpeter Rob Aronstein noted, “I’m really a blues player, so (those styles) tend to show that influence pretty heavily.” Arguably guitarist Mike Derrico and drummer Andy Hearn played in more conventionally jazz styles that would have placated any purists in the musical border patrol because the thing swung, the familiar tunes worked and it was all good fun – entertaining rather than ground-breaking.

The Evidence, from left: Rob Aronstein, keyboard, vocals and trumpet; Andy Hearn, drums; Mike Derrico, guitar

The spunky instrumental blues groove “Honky Tonk” earned its title, a smoky shuffle that opened the 90-minute set with happy riff energy. The next two, both classics, featured Aronstein’s vocals, accurate and solid: a spry “Straighten Up and Fly Right” and a hot-weather-languid “Summertime.” 

Rob Aronstein, above and below

A Derrico instrumental “Catz’s Bossa” was all tropical groove and aggressive guitar, though Aronstein’s piano held its own. Then they did “That’s the Time I Feel Like Making Love to You” as an instrumental, showcasing crisp unified playing with solos springing up amid the flow. Aronstein played firm bass lines with his left hand, adroit melodies and chords with his right, while Derrico finger-picked both chords and single-note runs with pleasing tone, good taste and skillful touch. Hearn fit well between keys and guitar, low-key and economical. The Evidence most often plays as a duo; he did a fine job of making it a trio.

Mike Derrico, above; and Andy Hearn, below

In “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out,” Derrico’s accompaniment for Aronstein’s keyboard and vocal showed off more snazzy electronic effects than his plainspoken solo, clear sign of a honed and confident trio approach. But he brought the fire to his original “Catz’s Blues;” then Aronstein similarly cut loose at the keyboard in the jump-blues antique “Choo-Choo Ch-Boogie.” 

Rob Aronstein plays pocket trumpet

Noting the next number was new for them, Aronstein swung the band into a funk shuffle the setlist ID’ed as “April.” Hearn sat out the next number; a trumpet and guitar duet on “The Nearness of You.” Muting the bell with his hand, then playing open, Aronstein sounded both sincere and a bit shaky here, answering a fan’s query about his instrument by explaining the compact pocket trumpet is “a standard trumpet but wound tighter – like me!”

As with the earlier “Feel Like Making Love,” they transformed “You Better Shop Around” into a stop-and-go instrumental shuffle before three vocal antiques: “Sunny” with terrific Derrico guitar; “Fly Me to the Moon,” refreshed with bustling tempo shifts and “This Masquerade” with Aronstein’s only foray into skat-singing all day.

Then, “Light My Fire;” although Aronstein nixed the familiar Ray Manzarek organ solo, Derrico did recreate, briefly, Robbie Krieger’s similarly patented staccato guitar runs.

Next Thursday, Jazz on Jay continues with the Arch Stanton Quartet, although nobody in the band is named Arch Stanton…  

The Evidence at Jazz on Jay

Preview: Terrance Simien & The Zydeco Experience with Special Guest Keith Pray’s Mohawk Brass Band, Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025

 Terrance Simien excitedly ushered me into his band’s dressing room trailer on a years-ago Thursday at Alive at Five.

We’d met before, in phone interviews and backstage hangs; but this was special. He had something he wanted to share.

Simien grabbed up a miniature Anvil case – you know the kind, those stout, metal-cornered bullet-proof protectors of instruments and amps. Popping it open with a smile wide as its opening, he pulled forth a glistening, heavy model of an antique gramophone, a talisman bright with honor.

The first; well, the only, Grammy award I ever held in my hands.

It was also the the first-ever Grammy Award for Best Zydeco or Cajun Music Album the Academy ever awarded, in 2008. Renaming it the Best Regional Roots Music Album Award in 2014 didn’t stop Simien. He won that, too.

Not that he needed the affirmation, much as he enjoyed showing it off and sharing it around.

Terrance Simien at Cohoes Music Hall 2019, with Grammy

Simien started his decades-long career by echoing his heroes and mentors on tribute albums honoring zydeco pioneers Clifton Chenier, John Delafose, Boozoo Chavis, Rockin Dopsie and Rockin’ Sidney. In addition to heartfelt tributes to these close-to-home (Louisiana) influences, he has increasingly looked beyond zydeco for inspiration, to Art “Poppa Funk” Neville, Sam Cooke, Bob Dylan, Earth Wind and Fire and the Commodores.

In other words, he dove into the funk, simmered with soul, bantered around with the Bard’s lyrics and harmonized with every tradition he ambitiously explored.

Simien is mostly seen grinning or singing or both behind an accordion, which a witty Albany musician who played one himself calls “musical luggage.” He also sings in the finest voice in zydeco and entertains with wild, engaging gusto. Even Simien’s toes get into the act. Without missing a note at the squeezebox or the mic he can kick Mardi Gras beats far from the stage to happy fans.

Tossing beads at Cohoes Music Hall

He started his first band while still in high school, and his Mallet Playboys (Mallet, LA is his hometown) grew into the Zydeco Experience, paralleling his evolving ambition. He was 19 when he answered Paul Simon’s call to play on “Graceland” – arguably earning a bite of Simon’s Album of the Year Grammy. 

Stirring soul, funk and singer-songwriter innovations into a thick zydeco gumbo, Simien  has cooked up over time a traditional-contemporary recipe. His peers find this mix so compelling that jam-band stalwarts the Dave Matthews Band, New Orleans funk masters the Neville Brothers and other major box office stars have asked him to open their shows. 
 
Singing and playing accordion, Simien leads The Zydeco Experience. He played his first area show in Proctors former Mardi Gras Festival and has also played here in Washington Park in Music Haven impresario Mona Golub’s previous free concert program, also at the former College of St. Rose’s Massry Center among doubtless others. At the Massry, longtime fans Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield – yeah, Ben and Jerry – turned up to campaign for Bernie Sanders and dance barefoot alongside the barefooted Simien.

At Jazz Fest in New Orleans, he plays the big stages and I’ve seen him foot-fling Mardi Gras beads deep into happy crowds.

When he played the Cohoes Music Hall in 2019, he invited openers Professor Louie onstage with his Zydeco Experience band.

Terrance Simien at the Cohoes Music Hall 2019; Simien center, in hat; Danny Williams at right

This versatile veteran band pumps traditional waltzes and two-steps; rocking everything and pouring on rich funk, jazz and soul spice. The Experience’s secret weapon is tiny keyboard titan and singer Danny Williams, Simien’s bandmate for 30-plus years. Bassist Stan Chambers has been aboard for 15-plus years while drummer Ian Molinaro-Thompson, trumpeter Michael Christie and saxophonist Noah Boshra are newer additions.

Saxophonist, organist, educator and bandleader Keith Pray opens Sunday. He formed the Mohawk Brass Band in 2011, leading its evolution from a mentorship program for Schenectady middle- and high-schoolers into a professional ensemble playing traditional New Orleans brass band music: Steve Lambert, trumpet; Keith Pray, saxophone; Ben O’Shea, trombone; Adam Streeter, tuba; and Chad Ploss, drums.

Terrance Simien at The Merch Table

Depending on who’s counting, he’s made nine or 11 albums, enough to crowd the merch table. Some favorites:

“The Dockside Sessions” (2001) has three Bob Dylan songs and the Grateful Dead’s “Franklin’s Tower.”

“The Tribute Sessions” (2001) includes not only Rockin’ Sidney’s straight zydeco swamp-pop classic “My Toot Toot” but also “Waiting in Vain,” one of Bob Marley’s best songs, “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” by the Carter Family and “It Makes No Difference.” This one takes real nerve for any singer to tackle since the late, great Rick Danko made this one of The Band’s most plaintive tunes ever, on their debut “Music From Big Pink.”

“There’s Room for Us All” (1993) similarly includes “I Shall be Released,” another Dylan classic that Manuel sang wonderfully, achingly on “Music from Big Pink.”

Positively Beadhead (1999) uncorks “Jolie Blonde,” the “Cajun national anthem,” plus Hedy West’s “500 Miles,” a longtime onstage favorite; also “Mardi Gras in the Country.” Simien explained this over the phone years ago: On Mardi Gras day, country kids roam farm to farm in cars or on horseback; residents feed them and everybody dances with the lady of the house. The late Anthony Bourdain filmed this high-alcohol-content ramble in “Cajun Mardi Gras” – Season 11, episode 7 of “Parts Unknown.”

By the 2000s, Simien was recording most of his albums live at Jazz Fest, which shows his energies shifting from studio to stage.

Terrance Simien at Jazz Fest in New Orleans 2015

His “Live! Worldwide” won Best Zydeco or Cajun Music Album in 2008, and “Dockside Sessions” won Best Regional Roots Music Album in 2014.

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Preview: The Evidence at Jazz on Jay, Thursday, Aug. 14, 2025

“Without the blues, you have no jazz,” said Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine).

With the Evidence on Thursday at Jazz on Jay, we’ll hear both.

The Evidence is Robert Aronstein, keys and vocals; Mike Derrico, guitar and vocals, and Andy Hearn, drums and vocals. They formed six years ago after playing mostly in blues bands.

The Evidence – Shown here as a duo: Robert Aronstein, left; and Mike Derrico. Photo supplied

Both Aronstein and Hearn played in the Charlie Smith Blues Band; Aronstein also played in the Big Block Blues Band and the Alan Payette Band. Derrico has played several styles, with Americana troubadour Rees Shad, jazz pianist Cole Broderick, the Ushers (Dennis McCafferty’s rock band), Good For The Soul (blues, R&B) and the Out Of Control Rhythm and Blues Band. And Hearn’s resume is stacked with guitarists: bluesmen Tas Cru and Matt Mirabile, plus jazz man Joe Finn.

All have recorded albums, Aronstein on his own “Play This” (now sold out); with the Charlie Smith Blues Band on “Hardly Ever Blue” and “Stepping Down Blues Lane,” which also features Hearn. Derrico has recorded with Cole Broderick, Rees Shad, and the Ushers.

Aronstein cites Dave Brubeck, Chuck Berry, the Beatles and Jerry Lee Lewis as inspirations and credits his pianist mother, high school teacher Jay Singer and the late great area jazz piano goddess Lee Shaw as teachers.

Like many area performing musicians, Aronstein also teaches, at Oneida Middle School. He studied music and recording technology, and voice, at the former College of St. Rose; and also studied at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He has also worked in instrument repair and providing technical support for recordings and live musical events. And he plays flute and flugelhorn, in addition to piano.

When Aronstein engineered the sound for A Place for Jazz in its former home at the Unitarian Universalist Society of Schenectady, he led his middle school jazz combo, playing at intermission. The great Canadian trumpeter-singer Bria Skonberg heard them and was so impressed she invited them onto the main stage to play several songs with her.

Thursday, the Evidence play original Derrico instrumentals, also instrumental interpretations of pop and rock standards, jump blues and swing tunes with vocals, American Songbook classics and blues standards. These include “Katz Bossa” (Derrico), “Take Five” (Brubeck) and classics “Sunny,” “Summertime,” “Choo Choo Ch’Boogie,” “House Of The Rising Sun” (creatively rearranged), “The Nearness Of You,” the Cars’ “Let The Good Times Roll” (with groove and improvisations), and “This Masquerade” (the George Benson hit written by Leon Russell).

“I find tunes that appeal to me vocally or with some instrumental hook I like and then find a groove that may or may not be what people are used to hearing,” says Aronstein. 

“I’m really a blues player, so my jazz and American Songbook standards tend to show that influence pretty heavily.”

Jazz on Jay free concerts are noon to 1:30 p.m. at Jay Square, the new park space opposite Schenectady City Hall. The rain site is Robb Alley at Proctors, 432 State St. Seating is provided indoors at Robb Alley, but patrons are invited to bring their own seating and refreshments to Jay Square.

Jazz on Jay is presented by the ElectriCity Arts and Entertainment District and sponsored by the New York State Council on the Arts, a Schenectady County Legislature Arts & Culture Grant, Downtown Schenectady Improvement Corporation, The Schenectady Foundation, Price Chopper/Market 32, MVP Health Care, Schenectady County, Schenectady City Hall, and Proctors Collaborative. This blog is a series media sponsor.

Looking down the calendar, Aronstein plays solo at The Wishing Well Thursdays through Saturdays.

The Evidence plays Aug, 19 noon to 1 p.m. at Jim DiNapoli Park in Albany, and Sept.  20 3 p.m. at Schenectady’s PorchFest in the GE Realty plot.

Review: SteelDrivers, and Reese Fulmer and the Carriage House Band, Sunday, Aug. 10 at Music Haven

As young bluegrass players Billy Strings, Sierra Hull and Molly Tuttle, focus widening attention on this venerable style, the SteelDrivers made their point Sunday at Music Haven without reaching into the Bill Monroe songbook at all; they write their own.

When Vassar Clements dubbed his band Hillbilly Jazz, he described bluegrass in binary-but-combined terms. Sunday at Music Haven, the headlining SteelDrivers worked from the polished, jewel-like side of that comparison; country music on acoustic instruments. Openers Reese Fulmer and the Carriage House Band played looser, more spontaneously. If the name SteelDrivers suggests inexorable locomotive force, Fulmer’s crew felt cozy, organic.

More important than any differences, though, was how both bands made music mostly of menace, mayhem and mortality, threatening retribution down here, hoping for redemption up there. As singer Matt Dame sang in a piercing wail in “I’m On My Way” late in the SteelDrivers’ 80-minute set, their music vibrates “between the bars and the Bible.” Check the set list for titles lamenting/praising various sorts of sin.

They explained where in that space their songs fit, and also did the commercial country thing, tracing tunes back to albums; easily forgivable as they celebrate 20 years onstage and on the charts. Managing to cruise past the departure of former lead singer Chris Stapleton into solo stardom attests to the sturdy materials of their sound. 

SteelDrivers, from left: Richard Bailey, banjo; Brent Truitt, mandolin; Tammy Rogers, fiddle and vocals; Mike Fleming, bass and vocals; Matt Dame, guitar and lead vocals

Mike Fleming’s understated bass firmly supported the treble zip up top: Dame’s strummed Martin acoustic six-string and piercing lighthouse-through-the-fog voice, Tammy Rogers’s fiddle (arguably the jazziest facet of their sound), Brent Truitt’s pedal-to-the-metal mandolin and Richard Bailey’s wry banjo, mostly as understated as Fleming’s bass. Fleming, Rogers and Dame harmonized from stage left.

Tammy Rogers, left; Mike Fleming, and Matt Dame

They opened warning at a spry mid-tempo that no one can outrun the grim reaper, then sped up to complain to an absent lover, then to warn hell awaits, a long way down. Noting most of their songs tell of jail, drinking or killing people, they efficiently got their one happy song out of the way. In the happy yearn of “I Choose You,” Dame pointed into the wings to an unseen love.

Then, back to incarceration, alcohol and grim death; and the dire has seldom seemed so delicious.

Matt Dame

Dame waved off conversation with a neighbor at the bar asserting he’s just here for the booze and cigarettes. Later, he gloried in “Guitars and Whiskey”– guns and knives complete that checklist. If “Midnight Train to Memphis” evokes happy images of travel, banjoist Bailey wryly wrecked that notion, noting the substantial difference between jail and prison. 

Songs paired nicely; the (relatively) happy “At the River” setting up the cautionary “The River Knows,” for example. The latter’s intro ominously noted, “It was justified, and he deserved it.”

Richard Bailey

Bailey’s banjo, subdued, mostly, erupted into snazzy Scruggs rolls in “Heaven Sent,” the Stapleton and Kevin Welch-penned hit. Otherwise, the riff fireworks flowed from Truitt’s mandolin or Rogers’s fiddle. Their expert picking never completely eclipsed such hard-hitting lyrics as the revenge-for-abusive-parenting anger of “Burnin’ The Woodshed Down.” But they did frame harrowing tales in lovely sounds, precise as bluegrass must be. They followed its conventions, Dame stretching the last syllable of most lyric lines, for example, but they sounded original nonetheless.

Brent Truitt

Mike Fleming

Tammy Rogers

Reese Fulmer, guitar, center; and the Carriage House Band, from left: Jimi Woodul, guitar; Dylan Perillo, bass; Chris Bloniarz, octave mandolin; Connor Dunn, tenor saxophone. Reese Fulmer, below

Like many area ensembles, Fulmer’s Carriage House Band boasts an elastic membership but creates a smooth sound anyway. Also like many area ensembles, it features he-plays-with-everybody bassist Dylan Perrillo; always a plus. “Elastic” also describes Connor Dunn’s surprising tenor saxophone. Some brassy evidence of jazz, right there; and it really worked. More traditional: Jimi Woodul’s acoustic guitar and Chris Bloniarz’s octave mandolin; also the acoustic guitar Fulmer strummed at the mic. Playing flowed smooth when they all cooked a groove. In between: skilled solos.

Dylan Perillo

Jimi Woodul

Desire, doom, destiny, dread and death powered most songs, Fulmer going sweet or gravelly as the fates behind the words demanded. In his first two tunes Sunday, Fulmer proclaimed “I Was Born to Die” and “I lay my body down” in “3am;” the former an impressive harmony vocal showcase, the latter a propulsive groove like the cozy acoustic power-glide of “Workingman’s Dead.” And that’s a compliment.

Chris Bloniarz, octave mandolin; Connor Dunn, tenor saxophone, below

Spry sounds often belied somber themes. As Fulmer sang in a dirge-y tune dedicated to friends who’d just lost their father, “If your soul should leave your body, I hope you find comfort in a song.” Such redemption songs moved mostly slowly, to let the words take hold. And they did.

SteelDrivers Set List (courtesy of friend/reader JD)

Outrun

When You Don’t

Long Way Down

I Choose You

Booze & Cigarettes

Midnight Train

Guitars and Whiskey

At The River

The River Knows

Heaven Sent

Woodshed

Banjo Tune (actually, this was Blue Side of the Mountain)

On My Way

Where the Rainbows Never Die (Encore)

Yes, they gave us some redemption at the end, at encore time. Rainbows wasn’t on the set list, but they called an audible to let us down easy.

Bonus Borrowed Historical Notes

Courtesy of Flame Tree Pro publication whose explanation below offers ample evidence that proves Clements rode the right railroad; and I quote:

“When Vassar Clements formed a band called Hillbilly Jazz in 1975, Bill Monroe’s former fiddler pulled the cover off the hidden connection between country music and jazz. The two genres had more in common than most people thought.

“After all, Jimmie Rodgers recorded with Louis Armstrong early in their careers; jazz legend Charlie Christian debuted on Bob Wills’ radio show; Les Paul (then known as Rhubarb Red) was a country guitarist before he became a jazz and pop hero; steel guitarist Wesley ‘Speedy’ West earned his nickname for his blistering jazz-like solos; top Nashville session guitarist Hank Garland moonlighted as a jazzer; Miles Davis titled one of his songs ‘Willie Nelson’; and Nelson made a jazz record with guitarist Jackie King.”

Preview: A Special Evening with Jon Batiste and the Philadelphia Orchestra Friday, Aug. 22 

American music’s reigning renaissance man, Jon Batiste seems a natural to perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra Friday, Aug. 22. After all, his newest (and 8th) album puts a jazz spin on Beethoven in “Beethoven Blues (Batiste Piano Series Vol. 1).”

The pianist, guitarist, singer, composer and bandleader seems in firm but playful control of a boundless future. He sees no boundaries between past, present and what he’ll do next; or among musical styles – although he arguably personifies one rich tradition in particular.

Jon Batiste. Photo supplied

Batiste comes by his talent both genetically, as scion of a sprawling New Orleans musical family, and through tireless work.

Search “Batiste music” and a dozen relatives pop up including Batiste’s bassist father Michael who toured with Jackie Wilson and Isaac Hayes and united six brothers in the Batiste Brothers Band, and uncles including busy drummer Russell Jr. and composer arranger Harold who worked with Sam Cooke, Sonny and Cher, Dr. John and others.

In high-speed, ambitious catch-up with his intrepid family, Batiste attended the Skidmore Jazz Institute where he met his future wife Suleika Jaouad. He next appeared here in Cassandra Wilson’s band at The Egg, the skinny Juilliard kid at the piano. He led the Dap-Kings at the former Freihofer’s Saratoga Jazz Festival in 2018, courageously and ably filling in for the irreplaceable Sharon Jones (RIP, 2016). When Covid shut down the festival, Batiste performed online in an indefatigable solo representation, full of gutsy hope.

Maybe best known as leader of Stephen Colbert’s Late Show Band from 2015 to 2022, he and Jaouad were the subject of the aptly titled “American Symphony.” They showed us both trouble, her bouts with cancer, and triumph: her recovery and Batiste’s debut performance of his first symphony. Candidly intimate, the documentary won an Oscar nomination. 

Friends since their early teens, they became a couple when Batiste brought his band to play in her hospital room during cancer treatment; a moment she described in her journal as “when the saints came marching in.”

They’ve since done book tours together. After writing for the New York Times, Vogue, Glamour, NPR’s “All Things Considered” and Women’s Health, her memoir “Between Two Kingdoms” recounts her struggle with leukemia. Her second published work, “The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life,” extolls the sense of creative play that children enjoy but which only fortunate, focused artists carry into later creative life.

Living that life, Batiste has won seven Grammys (22 nominations) for his seven prior albums.

His eighth album will form the first set of his show when he returns to Saratoga Performing Arts Center on Friday, Aug. 22

First, he and his versatile band will perform new songs from his “Big Money” album; then he’ll play with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Who knows what music will flow from that stage?

Show time is 7:30 p.m. Information and tickets at http://www.spac.org. 518-584-9330

Review: The band Heard’s dance-y globe-spinning world-jazz went straight to the feet of fans who formed an impromptu chorus line at Jazz on Jay Thursday.

Felix Nelson showed the way, physically; but all seven Heard musicians made melodies and beats that organized the energy.

Felix Nelson, left, with fan-dancers

When keyboardist-leader Elizabeth Woodbury Kasius ironically asked “Who thinks this is jazz?” the answer was complicated. It was certainly jazz since everybody improvised. Saxophonist Laura Andrea Leguia and Kasius ran chord changes in small-combo jazz style, most straightforwardly in Frank Foster’s “Simone,” their only standard tune Thursday. But it was also West African, Brazilian, and South African with imported melodies and lyrics that got the same ingenious, energetic explorations as “Simone.” 

Heard, from left: Elizabeth Woodbury Kasius, keyboard, melodica and vocals; Felix Nelson, dancer, vocals and percussion; Laura Andrea Leguia, saxophones and vocals; Kweku Kwakye, percussion and vocals; Zorkie Nelson, percussion and vocals; Brian Melick, drums; Bobby Kendall, bass

Elizabeth Woodbury Kasius, keyboard foreground, with, from left: Felix Nelson, Kweku Kwakye, Brian Melick (behind Kasius), Laura Andrea Leguia and Bobby Kendall

Kasius later noted that every band is a rhythm section, and Heard proved that time and again, with Brian Melick, drum kit; Zorkie Nelson, mainly congas; Felix Nelson and Kweku Kwakye various shakers, and busy bassist Bobby Kendall.

Bobby Kendall

Kasius also said she’s learned over time to take Kendall’s advice on complex rhythms: Don’t count it out, just play it. This gave the music a happy sense of free expression; you know: jazz.

“Market Song” started as beats, a groove that surged strong from top to bottom – from a busy clatter of shakers and snare drum up high down to low electric bass runs. Over all that rhythm surfed a happy bustle of melody from Leguia’s soprano sax and Kasius’s melodica. Then Kasius shifted to keyboard and added her voice to those of Zorkie and Felix Nelson across the stage alongside guest percussionist-singer Kweku Kwakye, all three Ghanian born.

Laura Andrea Leguia

Zorkie Nelson, left; and Felix Nelson

Kasius announced they’d jam “fusion-y” in the slower “Flyway,” but she didn’t announce Felix would jump out front to dance, an energizing surprise. Leguia shifted to tenor saxophone in the Latin-y “O Feche” as Kasius spun the globe to quote California funk-band War’s “Low Rider” in her melodica solo.

“Simone” got a midsummer-mellow ride, a tribute to Kasius’s late saxophonist friend/mentor Claire Daly who played Jazz on Jay some seasons ago. Zorkie Nelson’s talking drum break added west African flavor.

In the upbeat Ghanian “Gota,” Felix jumped out front to dance; and this time had no trouble recruiting fellow dancers in a line. Or COURSE Steve Nover was up there.

Brian Melick

Citing Abdullah Ibrahim’s inspiring show at The Egg last year, Kasius introduced the South African pianist’s “Maraba Blue” with echoes of slow funk and fractured waltz time that all added up to a jaunty reggae-like groove.

Fela Kuti’s similarly propulsive “Opposite People” was all centrifugal force in repeating cycles of solo and groove, Leguia’s tenor just spectacular in this episodic flight.

Swirls of Montreal snow inspired “Cotes des Nieges,” and its easy-flowing groove came decorated in swirls of soprano sax and keyboard. A nice subtle touch: The beat started out subdued, almost subliminal, but then grew in fun force. 

Equally lighthearted but with more assertive riffing, the Brazilian “Coco Na Roda” cast the rhythm as the star; Melick’s drum kit and Zorkie Nelson’s congas going places together. The beat ruled also in “Happy Place,” Kasius adopting a kalimba-like percussive attack rather than the more sustained notes and chords she used elsewhere. Leguia’s soprano sax solo sparkled especially bright here, inventive and flowing fine. Four-part harmonies carried the melody when Leguia wasn’t lighting it up or Kasius’s melodica re-inventing it. Felix Nelson lit it up, too, springing high, legs spread and touching his toes.

His father Zorkie’s tender mother’s tribute “Mama Bukom” closed in audience-participation unanimity, Kasius bringing the crowd into a clapping chorus as Leguia’s tenor sculpted the melody until all the instruments went quiet and only voices and clapping hands made happy sounds. 

Peter Hughes of WAMC

Before Heard started, WAMC’s On the Road producer Peter Hughes told the crowd they (and the band) were being recorded for later broadcast in the PBS station’s new remote presentation program. This seemed a busy engineering job for Nathan Schied with a forest of microphones onstage among a music-store’s worth of percussion instruments.

WAMC Engineer Nathan Schied, forground; and bassist Bobby Kendall

Jazz on Jay continues Thursday, Aug. 14 with the blues-jazz trio the Evidence.

Heard Song List

They changed things up, versus the printed-out lists onstage; a good sign as it meant the band was tuned in to the audience and delivering what worked.

Market Song

Flyway

O Feche

Simone

Gota

Maraba Blue

Opposite People

Cotes des Neiges

Coco Na Roda

Happy Place

Mama Bukom

Kweku Kwakye, left; and Laura Andrea Leguia

Steve Nover, left; and Felix Nelson with fan-dancers

Elizabeth Woodbury Kasius foreground, joins the rhythm section