The McBride connection helped Wolf land a deal with a major independent record label, the nationally distributed Mack Avenue Records. McBride not only played bass on the resulting album, Warren Wolf, and produced the sessions, but also climbed the long staircase at An Die Musik to play Wolf’s hometown record-release party Saturday night.

So there was McBride—in his black suit, bald-domed head, and goatee—thumping out the muscular push-and-pull rhythm to Wolf’s composition, “427 Mass. Ave.,” the funky blues that kicks off both of his albums—the new one as well as 2008’s Raw. Wolf, looking dapper in a gray blazer over a black T-shirt, hammered the keys of his vibraphone with two blue-felt mallets, sometimes reinforcing McBride’s thump, sometimes pushing back against it. These rhythms enjoyed the physicality of popular dance music but never its predictability. Later, when Wolf ushered in his lovely ballad composition, “How I Feel at This Given Moment,” with an unaccompanied intro, one could see as well as hear how his mallets slowed down to sketch the romantic melody over a bass line and then sped up to mark the chord changes in brisk arpeggios.

Chick Corea originally wrote “Senor Mouse” as a duet between his piano and Gary Burton’s vibes, and that’s how Wolf began it, engaging Maryland pianist Alex Brown in an unaccompanied, conversational give-and-take. When the rest of the quintet joined them, Wolf shifted the dialogue to soprano saxophonist Tim Green, his musical foil since the fifth grade. The Jule Styne standard “Just in Time” was also treated as an unaccompanied duet, this time between Wolf and McBride. Here especially one could see the strong fingers and hear the rich tone that make McBride one of the best upright bassists in jazz. In all three of these dialogues, one could hear how each statement shaped the response, which quickly became a new declaration demanding a new answer.

Jerry Leiber

Jerry Leiber, who was born and raised in Baltimore before becoming one of the greatest lyricists in rock ‘n ‘roll history, died of cardio-pulmonary failure in Los Angeles Monday. He was 78. Leiber’s lyrics, almost always set to music by his longtime partner Mike Stoller, were recorded by Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones, T-Bone Walker, Johnny Cash, Muddy Waters, Neil Young, the Drifters, the Coasters, Los Lobos, Little Richard, Peggy Lee, Tina Turner, Jimi Hendrix, Merle Haggard, and many more.

Yet Leiber almost never sang his own lyrics in public. He thought the whole concept of the singer/songwriter was a foolish one. Some people are good singers and some people are good songwriters, he maintained; very rarely is anyone both. He wasn’t bashful about his own talent as a lyricist; he knew he was very good. But he also had no illusions about his singing voice.

“I think Dylan is a kind of contemporary street poet,” Leiber told me in 1996. “He was as a monumental force in pop music. I’m just not as excited by what he did as I am by Memphis Slim or Muddy Waters. I’m not so interested in a voice that works around an idea–I’m happier to hear a voice that is thrilling.

“When Dylan came along, it was suggested that I should do the same,” he added. “It would have been the way to go, but I didn’t approve of that. I didn’t want to go up there and sound like what I sound like and have Jimmy Witherspoon coming up behind me and burn me down to my socks. I was much happier getting a great singer to record my songs, because if you make a great record it lives forever, if you make an adequate record, it lasts for maybe a season.”

So Leiber and Stoller stayed behind the scenes as songwriters and producers, giving up a greater fame to make greater records. Dylan, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Smokey Robinson, Chuck Berry, Ray Davies, Curtis Mayfield, and Randy Newman (a Leiber protégé) are better known as lyricists because they made records under their own names, but their satiric wit, linguistic dexterity, and wild imagery aren’t all that different from Leiber’s. Like Dylan, Simon, and Newman, Leiber was a Jewish kid who fell in love with African-American music. Unlike them, he did it in Baltimore.

“On a real subliminal level,” Leiber added in 1996, “there’s a connection between black music and Hebraic music. If you listen to Ray Charles and a chazen in a synagogue, you’ll hear some amazing similarities. You’ll ask, `Are they from the same shetl?’

“I made a lot of deliveries in the black neighborhood,” he said of his mother’s West Baltimore grocery store, “and I’d often be invited into these smoky, mysterious houses. I’d be told to sit down and eat, and I developed a taste for pig’s feet, pork shoulder, greens, yams, and all that Southern food that I still love today. The radio might be on, and somebody would be playing something funky on a guitar or saxophone. I heard Meade Lux Lewis playing boogie-woogie piano, I heard Josh White singing folk blues, I heard Big Joe Turner belting out big-band blues, and I loved it all.”

There’s a scene in the film where Chaplin’s character, the Lone Prospector, has made a New Year’s Eve date with his beloved Georgia. He has lavishly decorated his Yukon cabin with garlands and presents, but when his date doesn’t show up, his head slumps on the table in despair as the candles burn down to nubs. For Georgia, wearing a slinky sequin dress, has already forgotten the date and is spending the evening in the Monte Carlo Dance Hall with the handsome cad, Jack Cameron.

She fires off pistols at midnight and then joins the rest of the revelers in “Auld Lang Syne.” This is a silent film, however, so we don’t actually hear the miners and dance-hall girls singing. What we hear is the BSO playing the old Scottish air with sumptuous strings and horns. The sound is so robust that within it we hear not only the obvious pledge of camaraderie, but also the undercurrent of regret over missed opportunities. And it’s that undercurrent, made thrilling by the deep-throated cellos, that connects Georgia and the Lone Prospector at that moment in a way no recorded soundtrack ever could.

As the lights went down before the concert began, the nearly square screen hanging above the percussion section seemed too small and the light from the musicians’ stands and the green exit lights in the balcony seemed distracting. But as soon as the black screen opened its round iris on a long line of single-file miners marching through Chilkoot Pass and the orchestra swelled with heroic music, all reservations evaporated. When a fierce blizzard traps the Lone Prospector, Big Jim McKay, and Black Larsen in a rickety mountainside cabin, the musicians provided Chaplin’s version of Beethovian storm music: swirling gusts of woodwinds and blinding snows of violins.

One could see Marin Alsop, the conductor, glancing up at the screen to make sure the music was synchronized with the action, and she kept the BSO right on track. There were some sound effects—woodblocks when the Lone Prospector hiccups after drinking kerosene from a canteen, snare shots to echo gun shots. There were lively dance tunes for the dance hall scenes and for the scene where the Lone Prospector explodes with joy after Georgia accepts a date; he literally dances on the walls and destroys a pillow as the music grows delirious as well. Delirious is how I felt as well.

It was the equivalent of a jazz festival; the starting times were staggered in a way that the energetic jazz fan could see most of those seven shows. Of course, the city’s media, crippled by budget cuts, paid scant attention. If there were any buzz at all, it was for the “Celestial Septet” show presided over by Cline, the groundbreaking guitarist who was well known in avant-garde jazz circles even before he joined the art-rock band Wilco. Despite its name, the Nels Cline Singers is an all-instrumental trio and in 2008 they collaborated with the Rova Saxophone Quartet on the Celestial Septet album, and Sunday’s show was the last stop on a short East Coast tour to play that music live.

Cline was self-effacing enough to stand in the back row with his regular bandmates—drummer Scott Amendola and bassist Trevor Dunn—and to let the four horn players take the front row. Cline is so tall, however, that no normal mortal is going to block his view, and the beanpole guitarist with the thatched brown hair and gray shirt soon became the show’s focal point. He sounded a bit like the rock-guitar soloist that he sometimes is—playing high-pitched 16th-note runs with overdriven tone—but unlike most rock guitarists he didn’t feel bound by standard blues or pop changes and went skidding all over the harmonic map. And when he started stomping on foot pedals, he sounded like a one-man sci-fi movie soundtrack, creating the beeps and whirrs of an approaching alien spaceship. Periodically he would play an interesting phrase, sample it, loop it and then distort it even further by twisting knobs.

But it wasn’t all noise for noise’s sake. Cline has his lyrical, melodic moments as well, and the four saxophonists liked to mix in gorgeous two, three, and four-part harmony in with their Albert Ayler-like squalling. On the evening’s longest piece, tenor saxophonist Larry Ochs’ 35-minute “Whose to Know,” the cacophonous crescendo one expected upon hearing the dedication to Ayler didn’t come for 25 minutes. Instead the piece built slowly but elegantly as each musician played quick, darting phrases that resolved on a whole note and then faded to silence. Sometimes these phrases were played alone, sometimes in unison, sometimes in overlapping fugues, but the pattern of noise bursts and quiet was entrancing.

The evening ended with Cline’s own composition, “The Buried Quilt,” similarly alternated between rampaging attack and quiet duets. Eventually, the four horn players walked off stage to let Cline’s trio work itself into a frenzy. But when Cline created a feedback loop that sent out echoing sounds like waves, the four Rova members, all playing soprano or sopranino saxophones, mimicked those echoes with breathy toots as they strolled through the audience.

It will be a long while before Baltimore has another jazz weekend like this one, but March does offer several highlights. The Windup Space hosts the Novo: Instrumental Music Festival March 1-5, including a March 3 show with steel guitarist Susan Alcorn making a rare appearance as a bandleader. The Baltimore Chamber Jazz Society hosts the Houston Person Quartet March 27. An Die Musik hosts the Eric Deutsch Quartet March 4, former Baltimore saxophonist T.K. Blue March 18, and a solo concert by Lafayette Gilchrist March 19.

It was a fascinating transition, for the pianist gained a lot but also sacrificed a lot. Jenkins and Reynolds are masters of funk-jazz—always varying but never losing the groove—and they reinforced the hip-hop/go-go strain in Gilchrist’s music that makes him so original. Formanek, by contrast, is a former New York avant-gardist and current ECM bandleader, while Kennedy is perhaps Baltimore’s best mainstream jazz drummer. Instead of reinforcing the groove, the new rhythm section complicates it, tying knots that Gilchrist has to unravel on the fly. As a result, he plays more like he does with David Murray’s Black Saint Quartet than he has on his own albums.

But Gilchrist can’t resist the allure of a horn choir for long. After three extended tunes with the Inside Out trio at the Creative Alliance on Saturday, he called out three guests: clarinetist John Dierker (from the New Volcanoes), trombonist Steve Swell (from New York), and tenor saxophonist Whit Williams (Gilchrist’s first major mentor in Baltimore). The bandleader welcomed the horns with “All In,” which, he said, he had written “in the spirit of the great Harlem stride masters.” It did have a pre-bop sensibility that nicely framed the Lester Young-like sweetness of Williams’ playing.

Next up was the premiere of a three-part suite “written specifically for this ensemble.” It opened with “The Fast Con,” the kind of modern jazz composition that Formanek favors—brimming with notated materials for improvisation and cued segues. It began with Gilchrist introducing a handful of catchy riffs over understated backing before pushing the sextet to attack those themes aggressively. Two thunderous drum crescendos finally climaxed in a screaming clarinet solo. “Simmering” began with the restraint promised by its title, but it too built to a wild finish, boiling over in a clarinet/drums/bass trio before cooling off with a jaunty piano coda. The suite concluded with “Step Lightly,” a succession of irresistible soul-jazz figures—as tuneful as they were snappy—introduced by the piano and then picked up by the horns.

The sextet sounded under-rehearsed and played with some tentativeness that will be erased with more performances. And there certainly should be more performances, for this lineup has stimulated some of the best writing Gilchrist has yet come up with.

Adding to the challenge confronting Stapleton’s replacement, Gary Nichols, was the fact that the movie and the second studio album, Reckless, were both released more than six months after the newcomer had joined the group. Even fans who loved the albums had no idea what Nichols sounded like. So when he took the Rams Head stage in his dark blue pullover, his boyish face hidden behind dark bangs and a sort of beard, he had a lot to prove.

He didn’t sound like Stapleton, but who could match that bottomless rasp? Nichols did, however, have that Southern R&B testifying. And he preserved the basic concept of the SteelDrivers: a bluesy singer belting out hillbilly roadhouse numbers with a new-grass band. He didn’t sound much like Howlin’ Wolf, but he did resemble Dave Prater of Sam and Dave, a sweeter soul singer able to harmonize more easily. Providing the Sam Moore high parts in those harmonies was the SteelDrivers’ founding fiddler, Tammy Rogers. When she and Nichols converged on the stage’s single vocal mic, sometimes joined by bassist Mike Fleming, they attacked the melody as if they were trying to bite it.

The band performed most of the songs from its 2008 studio debut, The SteelDrivers, and its 2010 follow-up, Reckless. Black-hatted Mike Henderson, who co-wrote most of those songs with Stapleton, reinforced the blues with sliding notes from a resonator guitar or pushed the rhythm forward with choppy chords from a mandolin. Richard Bailey, the banjoist, wisely emphasized melodic parts rather than sheer speed, often contracting his percussive phrases against the fiddle’s sustained cries.

Whether it was older songs such as “Drinkin’ Dark Whiskey” or newer songs such as “Guitars, Whiskey, Guns and Knives,” the new lineup earned the respect of the most skeptical in the crowd. The SteelDrivers are still in the running to become a crucial factor in the history of bluegrass.

The Bill and Helen Murray Jazz Residency has proven itself a major addition to the Maryland jazz community. Twice a year the program brings in an established jazz musician—not a star necessarily, but someone who has earned the respect of critics and other musicians—for a week-long residency at Towson University. Past guests have included Ralph Alessi, John Hollenbeck, and Towson alumni Ellery Eskelin and Drew Gress.

This residency is good not only for the Towson students, who benefit from a week’s worth of workshops, but also for local jazz fans, who get to hear two concerts—one with the guest artist’s regular band and one with the students. This semester, the resident musician is drummer Gerald Cleaver, who was born and raised in Detroit and now lives in New York but has strong Maryland ties thanks to his membership in Michael Formanek’s quartet. Formanek, who teaches at Peabody and lives in Towson, returned the favor Saturday night by anchoring an all-star quintet when the Gerald Cleaver Group kicked off the week-long residency with a show at Towson University’s Center for the Arts.

The concert began with a 50-minute suite of four Cleaver compositions, often pitting the furious aggression of Formanek’s upright bass and Andrew Bishop’s tenor sax against the calming, sustained notes of Dave Ballou’s cornet and Jean Carla Rodea’s soprano voice. Rodea’s wordless vocals functioned like a third horn, one with resonant tone and sure pitch. She led the transition into the suite’s second tune, “Little Black Bell,” her soothing lines reinforced by Ballou’s muted trumpet but challenged by Bishop’s chattering soprano sax and Formanek’s clattering bass. Holding these juxtapositions together was Cleaver’s drumming, controlled rolls and patterns that linked the tense understatement of Ballou’s playing with the rambunctious overstatement of Bishop’s. The suite’s final piece, “Hover,” climaxed with Cleaver’s unaccompanied drum solo, which triggered electronic chirping from a nearby laptop.

After this long suite filled with freewheeling improvisation, the evening shifted to three structured, rewarding compositions: Cleaver’s easygoing swing number “22 Minutes,” his uptempo post-bop romp “Going Home,” and Ornette Coleman’s “What Reason Could I Give,” the only piece that allowed Rodea to sing actual lyrics.

All events are open to the public; the workshops are free, but the concerts are ticketed. For more information, e-mail dballou@towson.edu. The next Bill and Helen Murray Jazz Residency features Drew Gress May 9-13, 2011.

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Infamous Stringdusters

By the time Trampled by Turtles played “Wait So Long,” the first song on its breakthrough album Palomino, and the final song of its set Saturday night, the wooden floorboards of the 8×10 were reverberating from the stomping, clogging, pogo-dancing sold-out crowd. And the youthful quintet from Duluth, Minn., had sparked this reaction with nothing but mandolin, fiddle, banjo, acoustic guitar, acoustic bass, and voice. It was the clearest evidence yet that the new-wave string-band movement has won a devoted audience in Maryland.

Trampled By Turtles may have been playing bluegrass instruments, but this wasn’t a bluegrass band. This was a bunch of punk-rockers who had swapped the cumbersome baggage of amplifiers and drum kits for the portability and intimacy of hollow, wooden instruments, easy to play on a street corner or in a friend’s living room. Erik Berry, though, was still playing choppy power chords, even if he’s playing them on a mandolin, and Dave Carroll was banging on his banjo as if it were a snare drum. No wonder they sent an adrenaline rush through the room.

Dave Simonett brought a handsome tenor to the music, but his lyrics were a bit generic, and this band was all about the rhythm section. When fiddler Ryan Young and strap-on bassist Tim Saxhaug jumped on the train that Berry and Carroll were driving through songs such as “Stranger” or “Help You,” there was no resisting their momentum.

After an intermission, the Infamous Stringdusters came out to play the headlining set. If Trampled by Turtles is a punk band that’s picked up bluegrass instruments, the Infamous Stringdusters are actual bluegrass musicians with jazz ambitions. The headliners were actually much better musicians than the opening act—able to improvise inventively on tricky chord changes—but they never developed the same rhythmic charge and thus never sparked the same reaction.

Instead the music was more subtle. Though the Stringdusters occasionally returned to their sources with a song like Flatt and Scruggs’ “I’ll Stay Around,” the set was dominated by tunes such as “No More To Leave You Behind” and “Starry Night,” which ran through a couple of verses and choruses and then let the pickers go to jam on the changes. Instead of showing off how fast they could play, the musicians took their time to twist the melodies into something new and fascinating.

Especially impressive were acoustic guitarist Andy Falco and banjoist Chris Pandolfi. The band also boasted three lead singers—fiddler Jeremy Garrett, bassist Travis Book and dobroist Andy Hall—but, unfortunately, the weakest of the three, Garrett, sang the bulk of the leads.

So Wilson retreated to his original instrument—boogie-woogie piano. On the evening’s second number, “The Bosco Stomp,” he gave the old Cajun standard a rollicking blues feel, not only with his ivory-tickling fills but also with his bellowing baritone. When Wilson belted out “Let the Good Times Roll” or “Girls in Short Dresses” in Cajun French, he backed up his vocal shouts with syncopated piano-pounding. It was as if Jerry Lee Lewis had joined the Balfa Brothers, and it gave the Savoy Family Band a different sound than the Pine Leaf Boys, the Savoy-Doucet Band, or any other Cajun band in South Louisiana.

When Wilson’s mother Ann took over the lead vocals, as she often did, the emphasis shifted to the lilting romanticism of her soprano. Whether she was crooning a slow blues such as David Greeley’s “Marie Mouri” (which she has recorded as a duet with Linda Ronstadt), a spirited two-step  (“Jolie Bassette”), or a sweet waltz (“Marie”), the black-banged singer in the pleated skirt made it all sound effortless.

Eventually Wilson left the piano and picked up the violin to join his brother Joel for a mini-set of twin-fiddle tunes. The two siblings, who learned their craft at their parents’ Saturday-morning Cajun jam sessions at the Savoy Music Center in Eunice, La., have been playing together so long that they blend seamlessly on old numbers such as “Mamou Two Step” and “La Valse d’Eva.”

Joel, a founding member of the Red Stick Ramblers, now runs Valcour Records, the most interesting Cajun record label around. Last month the label released new titles from the Pine Leaf Boys, Cedric Watson, and Dennis McGee. Earlier this year Ann Savoy and Her Sleepless Knights (featuring Baltimore guitarist Tom Mitchell) released their new swing album Black Coffee. The four members of the Savoy Family have so many projects going that it’s a rare occasion when they can coordinate their schedules to tour together. When they do, it’s a treat not to be missed.

At the center of the CD is Naseem Khuri, the group’s lead singer and acoustic guitarist; his smart lyrics and, just as importantly, his catchy melodies form the axle that Kingsley Flood turns on. The album takes its title from a line in its best song, “Cathedral Walls,” the prayer of a poor man who finds that neither revolution nor religion have had much impact on his living conditions. The picture is sharply drawn, and the refrain is so fetching that you want to sing along.

At the Golden West Café, those lyrics got buried in a sound mix that favored the drums and electric guitar. Standing tall in a dark-brown porkpie hat, the unshaven Khuri sang the verses energetically but unintelligibly; his words cut through only on the hooky chorus. Trumpeter/percussionist Chris Barrett and bassist Nick Balkin were the only other holdovers from the record, but they were joined by fiddler Jenee Morgan, guitarist George Hall, and drummer Steve Lord. The trumpet and fiddle gave the music the welcome feel of a 19th-century village band, not unlike Low Anthem, but these touches were often lost beneath the rock’n'roll thrash, especially on the uptempo cow-punk tunes such as “Back in the Back,” “Roll of the Dice,” and “Devil’s Arms,” all from the new disc.

The band was better off when it adopted more of a bouncy jug-band approach where they played fewer notes less frantically. This brought out Khuri’s humor on songs like “Stoops Cats” and “Cul de Sac.” “Little Too Old” proved that this wry approach could work even when dealing with looming mortality, a theme that was even more striking on the yet-unreleased number, “Quiet, Quiet Ground.” With their strong songs and imaginative arrangements, this is a band to watch. They just need to calm down onstage and trust the songs to carry more of the weight.

That’s a curious definition of art, and it understates the achievement of Adams’ extraordinary work to describe it as a didactic warning against nuclear weapons. The symphony is at its best when it evokes the struggle between what we could do and what we should do. We could cut down all the trees in our backyard, but should we? We could design a financial derivative that will make us rich at the expense of many others, but should we? We could design a weapon of mass destruction, but should we?

Physicist Robert Oppenheimer faced the latter question in 1945, and Adams captures his dilemma by respecting both halves of his choice. Yes, such a weapon’s destructiveness would be horrifying, but the secrets of the atom were just sitting there, a wonderful puzzle waiting to be solved—and why shouldn’t he do it before someone else did?

Doctor Atomic was originally an opera, with Peter Sellars adding words from scientific reports and John Donne’s poetry to Adams’ music. The composer later distilled that music to a 25-minute symphony, and it works better without the footnote-like words. The symphony is a series of contrasts—between turbulent passages that suggest a vision of what the weapon might do and quieter passages that suggest a late-night struggle of conscience. Pushing and pulling at that conscience are the barking voice of General Leslie Groves, commanding Oppenheimer to move forward, and the keening voice of the American-Indian maid Pasquelita, begging the scientist to hold back. The symphony works only because each side of the argument is equally persuasive.

Alsop was much better at conducting the work than explaining it. The turbulent sections pitted the strings, seeming to buzz with static electricity, against the thundering brass and percussion. The decision sections were just as tense, though much quieter, thanks to the nicely understated use of unresolved chords and counterpoint. Even without text, the roles of Groves, Oppenheimer, and Pasquelita were brought to life with sharp definition by trombonist John Vance, trumpeter Andrew Balio, and horn player Philip Munds respectively.

For all its American themes and modern touches (the prominent percussion section and the dissonant accents), the Doctor Atomic symphony still uses the instrumentation and structures of European art music. A similar cross-cultural collision took place in 1892 when Czech composer Antonin Dvorak came to the United States for an extended stay and decided to compose a symphony inspired on the nation’s industrial revolution and African-American folk songs. The resulting work, From a New World, has been popular since it premiered in 1893, but its motifs are as often East European as North American.

Again Alsop allowed both sides of a conversation to have their say. She had the woodwinds clearly state the opening phrase from the old spiritual, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” before they veered off on a tangent of European inspiration. She coaxed a gorgeous English horn solo from Jane Marvine in the second, slow movement. But Alsop also gave the spirited dance melody in the third movement its essential Bohemian identity. And she pulled all these elements together in a rousing, slam-bang finish that represented not only America’s gung-ho spirit in the 1893 but also the BSO’s muscular cohesion in 2010.

Between the two symphonies was Mendelssohn’s violin concerto, about as European a piece of music as one can imagine. Unlike many concertos, this one is mostly a soloist’s vehicle, with the orchestra relegated to a supporting role. Fortunately, Alsop had invited a terrific violinist, 25-year-old Stefan Jackiw, as the soloist. He handled the concerto’s fast and showy parts with aplomb, projecting confidently and never straining. But he was most impressive on the slower passages, where he gave the impression of singing through his instrument. Dressed all in black with his knees always bent a bit, Jackiw would round off juicy melodic phrases and allow them to tail off into an intimate stage whisper, almost as if sighing with regret.

When Gaslight Anthem took the stage at Rams Head Live Tuesday night, it jumped right into a quickened attack of pumping quarter notes, as if it was the early Ramones. Ben Horowitz’s drums, Alex Levine’s bass, and Brian Fallon’s guitar—even Fallon’s staccato lead vocals—all acted as the same hammer banging on the same nail. “So the ambulance came,” Fallon shouted right on the beat; “They took your pulse and packed up your things,” and the crowd of twentysomethings shouted right along with him—not only on the chorus but on the verses as well.

But it wasn’t exactly the Ramones, for Fallon’s lyrics and melody had Springsteenish touches. In the midst of an apparent drug overdose, the singer can’t resist a longing for Elvis Presley and Southern melodic accents. And second guitarist Alex Rosamilia, as he would all night, stood apart from band’s onrushing roar, adding high-pitched, chiming guitar figures as a counterpoint to Fallon’s lower-pitched riffing. Not for nothing did Rosamilia have an old Hall and Oates LP propped up on his amp.

The Ramones’ template is absolutely thrilling when distilled to a three-minute single, but the sameness of the approach dissipates the impact over the length of a 50-minute album or a 90-minute live set. Gaslight Anthem is still working out how to resolve that problem. The obvious solution is to emphasize its Springsteen influence a bit more so it balances out the bias toward the Ramones and gives the band a sound that resembles neither role model.

The Gaslight Anthem succeeds brilliantly on American Slang, one of the year’s best rock ‘n’ roll albums. The band had less success at the Rams Head, where it relied too heavily on its weaker 2008 disc The ’59 Sound, and was defeated by a muddy mix that negated two of its greatest strengths: Fallon’s lyrics and Rosamilia’s guitar figures. Too much of the night was devoted to fast, hard garage-rockers from The ’59 Sound, full of garbled vocals and sound-alike chord progressions.

When the band turned to its newer record, though, its inner R&B came out on songs such as “The Diamond Church Street Choir” and “The Queen of Lower Chelsea.” On these, the band learned to vary the dynamics and momentum enough to let the mixed feelings of Fallon’s mature songwriting shine through. On “Bring It On,” the singer can’t decide what to do with a wife who’s “tired of these vows,” whether to let her go or fight to get her back. So he does both, challenging her “cool” boyfriend’s claims and daring her to “give me the children you don’t want to raise.”

And on the new album’s title track, an unapologetic rock ‘n’ roll anthem, Rosamilia’s bell-ringing guitar figure had audience members bouncing with fists above their heads, as Fallon’s hoarse, clarion wailing declared, “The fortunes came for the richer men/ while we’re left with the gallows. . . . Here’s where we died that time last year/ and here’s where the angels and devils meet.” Here’s where the poets and punks meet.

There’s a reason Cedric Watson calls his band Bijou Creole: He wants to free zydeco music from its current straitjacket that permits nothing but a 2/4 stomp by returning to an earlier version of South Louisiana black music known as Creole (or “la la” or “zodico”). The Houston native and Lafayette resident wants the freedom to play his fiddle as well as his button accordion, to play waltzes as well as two steps, and to play with the fluidity of Caribbean syncopation that influenced Creole music so much and contemporary zydeco so little.

Watson is the right man for the job. He first gained out-of-state attention as the fiddler for the Pine Leaf Boys, ostensibly a Cajun band but a group that could and did play Creole and zydeco just as deftly. Watson’s desire to play more accordion led him to leave the Pine Leaf Boys amicably and form Bijou Creole in 2008. He brought that band to Catonsville Sunday night for a dance at the Knights of Columbus and demonstrated the widely varied pleasures of Creole music.

A short, slender man in a black T-shirt and a wispy beard, Watson manipulated his double-row button accordion to pump out not just rhythmic riffs but also lyrical fills. His tight, unfussy band knocked out the push-and-pull of the swamp rhythms so infectiously that “Johnny Can’t Dance” became a taunt and “Bijou Creole” became a rousing theme song. Both were sung in comfortable Creole French, with Watson’s squeezebox answering his every vocal line.

Yet the band was just as convincing when it played a waltz as slow and lovely as “Cher ‘Tit Coeur” or switched to a minor key for “The Corner Post.” Watson traded his accordion for a fiddle for about 40 percent of the set, sawing rhythmically on the zydeco of “O Man” and bowing sweetly on the ballad “C’est la Vie.” It seemed the band could do almost anything, whether it was a bilingual treatment of Kitty Wells’ “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” or a lively fiddle treatment of Michael Doucet’s “Cochon de Lait.”

Sixty percent of the band has turned over since Cedric Watson and Bijou Creole released their Grammy-nominated album L’Ésprit Créole in 2009. Zydeco Mike still plays rubboard, triangle, and bongos, but Ryan Poullard, the son of noted Creole musician Edward Poullard, is the new drummer. D’Jalma Garnier, who has played with C.C. Adcock, File, and Jeffrey Broussard, is the new bassist, and Jeremy Saxon, a San Francisco bluesman, is the new guitarist. This lineup is about to release a new live album from the Blue Moon Saloon in Lafayette, Creole Moon, and will enter the studio in February to cut a new album. That album will feature several songs that the group previewed in Catonsville Sunday, including the infectiously Caribbean original “Soleil Leve.”

The next Cajun/zydeco dance at the Catonsville Knights of Columbus features Lil’ Pookie and the Zydeco Sensations Oct. 23.

LCD Soundsystem deserved its headlining slot at the Virgin Mobile Free Fest Saturday, for it’s one of the most exciting rock’n'roll bands in the world right now.

I know, I know: some would dispute that it’s really rock’n'roll and even more would dispute that it’s even a band. After all, the new LCD Soundsystem album, This Is Happening, was created almost entirely by singer-songwriter James Murphy on his own, relying on the kind of synths, samplers, and drum machines that imply hip-hop and techno more than rock’n'roll.

It was definitely a band that took the stage at the Merriweather Post Pavilion Saturday night, however, as Murphy was joined by keyboardist Nancy Whang, drummer Pat Mahoney, bassist Al Doyle, keyboardist Gavin Russom, guitarist David Scott Stone, and percussionist Matt Thornley. And though the first song, “Dance Yourself Clean,” was performed without guitars or conventional bass, it was best described as rock’n'roll. The song, which also kicks off the new album, began with three minutes of a strange prelude where Murphy murmured to a sing-song melody and a tom-tom drum pattern about all the jerks he knows. Then the song suddenly exploded with a synth riff as distorted as a grunge guitar chord and with as much quiet-to-loud drama as any Nirvana track. “Don’t you want me to wake up?” Murphy shouted, dropping the detached cool of a dance track vocal in favor of a rock’n'roll roar.

The band broke out two guitars for the second song, “Drunk Girls,” but the sound didn’t change appreciably, for the riffs were just as loud, distorted, and implacable, whether played on synths, samplers, or six-strings. It was the contrast between that pounding background and Murphy’s astonishingly personal tenor that gave each song its drama, no matter what the instrumentation. It was precisely because the rhythm section sounded so industrial and predetermined that Murphy’s vocals sounded so human and spontaneous. It was not so different, really, from Ray Charles improvising over a carefully arranged horn chart.

The guitars disappeared again for “I Can Change,” and the wall of synths and samplers sounded like grinding gears, far harsher than the recorded version. Against this backdrop, Murphy sounded achingly romantic: “Dance with me until I feel alright.” He never sounded the least bit sentimental, for one could always hear him struggling through the industrial soundscape, never quite sure if he would make it through to the love he desired. And that soundscape was far from static, for instruments were continually added and subtracted to the mix, gradually accumulating density and tension, just as Murphy’s vocal grew more agitated, often leaping into a giddy falsetto. Even without guitars, it was a classic rock’n'roll moment.

With his blue-plaid shirt untucked over his beer belly and his pudgy face unshaven, Murphy is the antithesis of a rock star, a concept he mocked on songs such as “Watch the Tapes” and “You Wanted a Hit.” Be that as it may, he possesses one of those rare voices that can sound vulnerably personal even as he bellows over a cacophony of beats and riffs. Moreover, he knows how to write catchy little tunes for that voice so it reach out through the stomping dance grooves and grab out sympathies. And that’s just what he did on the five songs from LCD Soundsystem’s brilliant new album and on the six older songs, most notably “All My Friends,” still his best vehicle.

Alessi, a tall, slender man with a rising forehead and a silver horn, began the concert with an isolated, descending trumpet figure that was answered by Drew Gress’ bowed bass, Andy Milne’s plinking piano, and Mark Ferber’s swirling brushes. The tempo was patient, but there was a disquieting edginess to the disconnected motifs. Slowly but surely, though, Alessi, with help from tenor saxophonist Tony Malaby, began to fill in the pauses between his phrases. As he did, a warm ballad melody gradually emerged, a satisfying balm to what had gone before.

The tune was “Platform Velvet” from the group’s 2007 album, Look, which featured Ravi Coltrane instead of Malaby on tenor. The quintet unveiled three newer tunes from its next album, tentatively titled Halves and Wholes and scheduled for early 2011. “Playing for Ashcroft” and “Evil Genius” both took their titles from Alessi’s reaction to the last Republican administration and both featured his angriest, most aggressive blowing of the night. The first began with a New Orleans parade march, then segued into the kind of mathematical counterpoint that Alessi learned from his former mentor, Steve Coleman. The tension built and built until the leader released it in a bravura cadenza.

The third tune from the next disc was “A Dollar in Your Shoe,” a brisk, darting number that subsided into contemplative passages, only to rouse itself into a romp again. Near the end, a lovely, unaccompanied duet between Alessi and his ponytailed bassist gathered momentum till it picked up Ferber, then Milne, and finally Malaby before sprinting home. On the unrecorded ballad “Good Boy,” Alessi introduced a strong romantic theme that made good use of the warm, full bottom of Malaby’s tenor.

Alessi’s connection to Towson University is Gress, an alumnus. The bassist is also featured on Alessi’s latest release, Cognitive Dissonance, which features pianist Jason Moran and drummer Nasheet Waits (and Milne on two tracks). It’s one of the year’s most stimulating jazz albums, because Alessi is not afraid to take the music out but neither is he afraid to bring it back home again.

Blondie

Blondie (not a current photo)

“Oh, yeah, I remember this place,” Debbie Harry told the Pier Six audience Sunday night. “Right over there on the waterfront is where we had the wrap party for that film I made with John Waters and Divine. I got the worst mosquito bites of my life.”

It was a night for memories as Harry’s band Blondie shared a double bill with Cheap Trick. The biggest cheers were inevitably reserved for hits such as Blondie’s “Dreaming” and Cheap Trick’s “Dream Police.” And the cheers were deserved, for the hits were the catchiest, most confidently performed tunes of the night.

It was easy to confuse the two groups. Blondie had allowed its once sleek arrangements to grow blowsy with arena-rock guitar solos, a cheap trick if ever there were one. Meanwhile Cheap Trick’s golden-tressed lead singer Robin Zander deserved the name of Blondie more than Harry, a 65-year-old woman in a white wig and white tutu. Both acts tried to slip a few new songs into the setlist, but the crowd wasn’t interested.

Cheap Trick opened the evening, with three-fourths of the original line-up on stage: Zander, guitarist Rick Nielsen, and 12-string bassist Tom Petersson. Zander was still skinny in a shiny black shirt and silver-studded black-leather pants, while Nielsen was still pasty-faced in a black baseball cap and thick-framed glasses. They preserved the myth that the nerd could become the best friend of the rock star. They played a hard-rock arrangement of the Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour,” as if to prove that the secret of their success really was combining the Beatles and Led Zeppelin. When they played “Surrender,” it still sounded like the perfect prototype for power pop.

Blondie boasted three-fifths of its original line-up: Harry, guitarist Chris Stein, and drummer Clem Burke. Stein ceded far too much ground to the bar-band overplaying of guitarist Tommy Kessler and keyboardist Matt Katz-Bohen, but Harry was still in terrific voice. She displayed power and control in all three gears: alto, soprano and her eerie, operatic falsetto. The latter was especially impressive on “Atomic” and “Rapture.”

Mulgrew Miller

Mulgrew Miller

After his quintet had finished an exhilarating version of Chick Corea’s “Humpty Dumpty” at An Die Musik Friday night, saxophonist Tim Green explained how each of his bandmates had come to join him on stage. He and vibraphonist Warren Wolf, he noted, had been friends since they were kids growing up in Baltimore; Wolf had even turned Green onto jazz by giving the latter a Charlie Parker album at age 13. Glancing over his shoulder at upright bassist Josh Ginsberg, Green recalled that when he was a senior at the Baltimore School for the Arts, his favorite master class was the one by Baltimore’s Ginsberg. Nodding to the drum set where Ulysses Owens sat, Green explained that they had met at Colorado’s Jazz Aspen program in 2003. When Green had spent the 2005-2006 school year at the Thelonious Monk Institute, he went on, studying with Herbie Hancock and Terence Blanchard, each student had been allowed to suggest one guest teacher. Green had suggested Mulgrew Miller, the veteran pianist from Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and the Tony Williams Quintet, and now here he was in Baltimore. “He’s an uncle to us all,” Green added.

Green, Wolf, and Ginsberg are all young musicians from Baltimore now working in New York, but for this homecoming concert, they brought a bit of New York back with them. Miller was a generation older than everyone else on stage, and he supplied a gravity that grounded their restless exuberance. After his piano-trio treatment of the ballad standard “Moonlight in Vermont,” the quintet tackled Wolf’s “Natural Beauties,” which boasted an attractive, mid-tempo theme. Wolf’s felt mallets were a blur of red as he hammered out a cloud of high-register harmonies to surround that theme, and Green provided contrast to those percussive breaks with more sinuous solos on the soprano sax.

The set concluded with Green’s own composition, “Eva,” named after his grandmother. This was a bright, brisk hard-bop number that soon found Green and Wolf trading eights on alto sax and vibes. Green may not have the sheer speed that some young horn players boast, but he has something more valuable: the ability to shape a familiar melody into a new melody, as well-shaped and appealing as the original.

Jackson Browne reached the peak of his artistic powers on Aug. 27, 1977, in Columbia, Maryland. The previous fall he had released his last great studio album, The Pretender, and now he was bringing the songs from his first four albums and most of the musicians who had played on them to the Merriweather Post Pavilion. Browne was 30 years old, impossibly handsome, and singing his glorious pop hooks with an irresistible confidence. Nearly as lyrical were the fiddle fills and slide-guitar solos by Browne’s longtime sidekick David Lindley. I know; I was there.

Browne introduced a batch of unrecorded new songs, and the rolling tape machines captured his exhilarating versions of “Running on Empty” and “The Load-Out/Stay” that night. Those versions became the opening and closing tracks of that December’s live album, Running on Empty, the best-selling record he would ever release. For one summer evening in Howard County, Browne was better than he’d ever been—and better than he’d ever be again. He’s been trying to reclimb that peak ever since.

Thirty-three years later (minus three days) Browne returned to Maryland, to the Pier Six Concert Pavilion this time, with Lindley in tow again. The two old friends opened the show alone, sitting side-by-side in straight-back wooden chairs, and sharing songs by Browne, Warren Zevon, and Bruce Springsteen on acoustic guitars. The unplugged format echoed Browne’s latest album, Love Is Strange, a double-disc live set with Lindley and various Spanish musicians. Lindley remained onstage to play two songs by himself, and you’ve never appreciated the possibilities of Steve Earle’s “Copperhead Road” until you’ve heard it played on the oud.

After a short intermission, Browne—and eventually Lindley—returned with a rock’n'roll band to play songs from all phases of Browne’s career. Inevitably the biggest cheers greeted the oldest songs: “Doctor My Eyes,” “Rock Me on the Water,” “Fountain of Sorrow,” and “The Pretender,” all songs he had sung on Aug. 27, 1977. It’s easy to chalk this up to nostalgia on the part of the baby-boomer audience, and that was clearly a factor.

But those songs were also markedly better than anything Browne has written since, for they benefited from Browne’s greatest gift: the ability to pen a melody that captures that reluctant, ineluctable slide from rationality into the tide pools of emotion. Though Browne has penned a handful of strong lyrics, that was never his true strength. What made him special were those chorus melodies, and that talent can depart as mysteriously as it arrives.

Browne never stopped writing—and he made a brave move into political subject matter—but his hooks were never again as sharp as they’d been in the mid-’70s and his lyrics were too ordinary to compensate. So he found himself outdoors in Maryland once more on an August night, trying to mix his later songs (“Giving That Heaven Away,” “In the Shape of a Heart,” “My Problem Is You,” and “The Naked Ride Home”) in with his early ones, as if they were equally valid. But there was no ignoring the difference. Browne was still impossibly handsome and still possessed a honeyed tenor, but he was trying to recapture a past that was beyond retrieval.

When Lovett finally took the stage to join his 14-member Large Band, it was to the strains of overdriven rock guitar solos played by Mitch Watkins and Ray Herndon. That set up “It’s Rock and Roll,” a number from Lovett’s latest album, last year’s Natural Forces. With its sardonic, half-spoken verses and anthemic choruses, it was terrific satire but it wasn’t the blues. That was followed by a high-speed hillbilly romp, “Farmer Brown/Chicken Reel,” lit up by solos from fiddler Luke Bulla and mandolinist Keith Sewell, bluegrass veterans both.

At the end of the song, however, the four backing vocalists—Atkinson, Bowens, Arnold McCuller, and Willie Greene Jr.—started clucking and crowing in delirious four-part gospel harmony as if they were the Five Blind Boys of Alabama reincarnated as poultry. That provided the show’s unlikely door into the blues, and a few songs later, Lovett led the four singers through a stark version of “I Will Rise Up,” a slow lament that the leader had adapted from the old Texas prison blues song, “Ain’t No More Cane.” Lovett’s voice was as dry and sturdy as a West Texas ranch, but his four harmonizers fluttered around him like mourning doves, thus suggesting both a prisoner’s mean circumstances in the present and high hopes for the future.

Like Willie Nelson and Ray Charles, Lovett is one of the rare performers who can honestly say he transcends genres. He whittled down his large ensemble to a bluegrass quartet (himself, Bulla, Sewell, and bassist Leland Sklar) for three tunes (“Pantry,” “I’ll Come Knocking,” and “Up in Indiana”). On the sharp, brisk arrangements of “Cowboy Man,” “My Baby Don’t Tolerate,” and “That’s Right (You’re Not from Texas),” the full complement of musicians split the difference between Western Swing and big-band jazz.

On the slower, understated arrangements of “Natural Forces,” “If I Had a Boat,” and “Whooping Crane,” Lovett combined the dignity and command of his role models. Dressed simply in a white shirt and black slacks, his brown curls piled atop his slanting face, he sang of being caught between gravity and wishes with an anguished yearning. Maybe that’s the blues and maybe it’s not, but it sure was effective as the sun went down on the green hills of Cockeysville Saturday night.

The quintet roared back to life, giving “Body and Soul” an early-’60s dance beat and filling it with flatted thirds and sevenths as if Chubby Checker were jamming with Coleman Hawkins. And sure enough, the parquet wooden dance floor in the cavernous Bavarian polka palace filled with Dundalk grandmothers, Hampden hipsters, and Columbia families all pumping their elbows and gyrating their hips with abandon.

This was far from the only act of musical transformation that the magicians in Brave Combo pulled off. A medley of “Jeepers Creepers” and “Chopsticks” was turned into a salsa. A medley of the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Green River” was turned into a cha-cha called “No, No, No, Cha, Cha, Cha,” with a free-jazz jam in the middle. “Do the Hokey Pokey,” which had three-fourths of the audience putting its left foot in and its left foot out, smoothly incorporated James Brown’s “Licking Stick” into the hand-waving dance. And when Finch announced, “That Beethoven was a pretty good songwriter, right?” you just knew what was coming next: The Ninth Symphony distilled to a three-minute polka.

It all worked because the five members of Brave Combo are all such terrific musicians, especially Jeffrey Barnes, the rounded, bearded figure in the Asian sunhat who played the theme from Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” as he introduced the polka standard, “The Clarinet Polka.” It also worked because the band takes dance music seriously, playing “Satellite Polka” from its new album Kikiriki and “Holiday in Poland” from the Connecticut Twins with crisp authority. And when it dedicated “Oaxaca Polka” to its composer, Tex-Mex legend Esteban Jordan, the “Jimi Hendrix of the Accordion” who died Friday night, they did so with obvious feeling.

Her second number was a spry swing number, “Why Didn’t You Call Me?” The lyrics were aimed at an absent lover, but they could just as easily have been targeted at a music industry that has never quite known what to do with this Alabama fireball whose expressive voice and idiosyncratic interpretations make her one of the most fascinating vocalists in American music. One of her artistic assets and commercial liabilities is her inability to sit comfortably in any one genre; she began as a mainstream country singer, became a pop-jazz swinger, was repackaged as a roots-rock hipster, and recently recorded an album of Dusty Springfield songs slowed down to maximize their latent blues.

So Lynne–the older sister of Allison Moorer and thus the sister-in-law of Steve Earle–left the big labels behind and released her latest album, Tears, Lies, and Alibis, on her own label. It’s a terrific CD, featuring the above song, the ballad lament “Like a Fool,” the drinking song “Old #7,” and the ode to the open road, “Something to Be Said About Airstreams.” She sang all these titles in Annapolis Friday, stretching out syllables in yearning and then collapsing them in regret. She also reached back to older tunes such as 2005’s “Johnny Met June” (a heartfelt tribute to Johnny Cash and June Carter), 2001’s “Jesus on a Greyhound” (about an unexpected seatmate on a cross-country bus), and Dusty Springfield’s “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me.”

A big part of the show was Jackson’s remarkable guitar fills and solos, which created such a rhythmic and richly textured context for the songs that you didn’t really miss the absent band. Jackson, who toured with Bob Dylan’s band from 1991-1997, is one of those musical treasures hidden away in plain sight in Nashville. Ultimately, though, the show belonged to Lynne, who appeared liberated by the stripped-down duo format to explore nuances that sometimes get lost in studio production. When she sang “Pretend,” for example, she pleaded with all her purring persuasion for an ex-lover to at least pretend that he still loved her, but she also emitted a moaning undercurrent to acknowledge the foolishness of the request.

Ray Wylie Hubbard (photo: Todd Wolfson)

Hubbard’s new album deserves all the attention it can get, for it is a brilliant blending of the Texas songwriting tradition of Townes Van Zandt with the country-blues sound of Lightnin’ Hopkins. Because it’s the first release on his own Bordello Records, Hubbard felt compelled to make his first East Coast tour in nearly eight years, venturing out of the safety of his native Oklahoma and longtime home of Texas, where he is a revered local legend. He brought along his 17-year-old son Lucas, a tasteful if sometimes tentative blues-rock guitarist, and longtime drummer Rick Richards, a master of minimalism.

Ray Wylie sat between them, his shaggy, salt-and-pepper hair and beard framing his weathered face, and finger-picked an acoustic guitar. He played too few songs from the new disc as he tried to represent the substantial body of songs he’s compiled since his last East Coast visit. One of the new numbers, the infectious “Down Home Country Blues,” defined the musical fundament for the entire evening, and another, “Drunken Poet’s Dream,” hinted at the literary ambitions of the lyrics.

But songs were drawn from all phases of his career—from his breakthrough hit, “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother,” best known from Jerry Jeff Walker’s 1973 recording, to his hilarious 1999 talking blues, “Conversation with the Devil,” and his 2006 sing-along, “Snake Farm.” Almost as good as the tunes was Hubbard’s between-song patter, self-deprecating shaggy-dog tales delivered as drily as the West Texas wind. A story about his father, an Oklahoma card shark, set up three songs about gambling. Like so many of his tunes, they started out funny and wound up unsettling.

The brand new Los Lobos album, Tin Can Trust, is a recession record, a reflection of an America learning to get by with less. When the East Los Angeles sextet played the album’s title track at the Rams Head Tavern Monday night, lead singer David Hidalgo needed the lyrics on a stand because the song was so new. But with the band’s lyricist Louie Perez playing rhythm guitar next to him, Hidalgo barely glanced at the sheet as he described the life of a laid-off worker collecting empty bottles in “a dime-store shirt” with a vocal full of simmering stoicism and telling pauses. When the song’s protagonist told his wife that he couldn’t buy her golden rings but only give her love, that love took the form of a tuneful, sweaty guitar solo from Hidalgo’s gold Les Paul.

Before the night was over, Los Lobos would play six of the 11 songs from the new disc: “Tin Can Trust”; the brooding “Burn It Down,” which wrestled with the temptations of violence; the percolating “On Main Street,” which celebrated the street life of the old neighborhood; the bubbly cumbia “Yo Canto,” which Cesar Rosas sang in Spanish; the aching “Jupiter or the Moon,” which yearned for elusive change; and the Latinized blues “West L.A. Fadeaway,” the old Grateful Dead number. “Tin Can Trust,” “Yo Canto” and “Jupiter or the Moon” are likely to stay in the band’s set list for years to come.

And that’s why Los Lobos remains one of the world’s most important rock ‘n’ roll bands, even if they are reduced to playing a 300-seat club in Annapolis. Not only do they have a terrific back catalog—Monday they performed “Don’t Worry Baby,” “Emily,” and “Evangeline,” and left the requests for many more unsatisfied—but they also continue to create important new songs. Moreover, they are playing better than they ever have, especially now that Perez, an extraordinary lyricist but just an OK drummer, has moved to rhythm guitar. In the small confines of the Rams Head Tavern, it was easier to appreciate just how good bassist Conrad Lozano and new drummer Cougar Estrada are, and how their muscular syncopation stokes everything else that happens on stage.

The combination of those beats and Hidalgo’s road-weary voice shifted the set list in Rosas’s direction, and the bulbous guitarist in the blackened shades, black shirt, and tuft of chin hair sang no less than eight songs in Spanish, most of them rollicking cumbias that had most of the audience squirming in their chairs or jumping out of them to dance in the aisles. It was the perfect antidote to the recession blues.

Yet Orton delivered a set charged with the kind of drama missing from the other sets. Here were songs that refused to settle for easy answers but instead explored the push-and-pull between what we should do and what we can do. Many were the singers who advised their listeners to leave behind their bad relationships as if that were the easiest thing in the world. Orton was the only who asked why she—and so many like her—couldn’t “let it go,” as she did on “Someone’s Daughter.” Many were the singers who urged their listeners to pursue their dreams. Only Orton asked how one can “keep your dream alive” in the face of so many setbacks, as she did on “Conceived.” Many were the singers who declared that love would outlast all obstacles, but when Orton sang, “How long can this love remain?” on “She Cries Your Name,” she seemed as uncertain of the answer as her listeners.

The tall, lanky British redhead in the shoulderless, flower-print blouse and faded jeans was accompanied only by her own acoustic guitar. With her thumb and forefinger, she finger-picked tumbling arpeggios and warbled her sprightly melodies on top. But whenever her conversational vocals reached an awkward collision between expectations and reality, a little catch in her throat, a sort of gasp or gulp, signaled that flickering moment when a worldview is being readjusted. On such powerful originals as the above songs, that catch in Orton’s throat proved more powerful than all the belt-it-out anthems delivered by Bareilles, McLachlan, and the Court Yard Hounds’ Emily Robison, spookier than all of Cat Power’s mopey mumbling. And when Orton reinterpreted the Five Stairsteps’ 1970 Chicago R&B hit, “O-o-h Child,” as a British folk ballad, that catch hinted that love isn’t always less than expected. Sometimes it’s more.

Willie Nelson played just one song from his terrific new album for Rounder Records, Country Music, in his 32-song concert at Pier Six Sunday night, but “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” was delivered in a moody, drummer-less arrangement that reflected T-Bone Burnett’s production on the album. And the album’s theme of revisiting and reinterpreting songs from country music’s past was reflected throughout the evening.

As he has at almost every show for 25 years, Nelson sang songs such as Johnny Bush’s “Whiskey River,” Kris Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” and Elvis Presley’s “Always on My Mind,” but he also added such surprises as Tom T. Hall’s “Shoeshine Boy” and a trilogy of Hank Williams songs. Nelson attacked each number with a strange mixture of genuine affection and reckless irreverence, reshaping the melody as if he were a jazz singer and guitarist.

Which he is. It is seldom remarked that Nelson is one of the most inventive guitarists in American music, altering time and tune with fast phrases and forceful chops on an acoustic guitar so worn that it bears a gaping hole where his pick has repeatedly scraped the wood. He enjoys the perfect foil in harmonica virtuoso Mickey Raphael and on Sunday the two men filled Nelson’s classic composition “Night Life” with dizzying solos that left enough of the familiar song to satisfy the audience but changed it enough to keep the band interested after playing it several thousand times.

Nelson is as important a songwriter as he is an interpreter, of course, and he sang not only such familiar originals as “On the Road” and “Good-Hearted Woman,” but also such relative rarities as “Still Is Still Moving to Me,” “Superman,” and “You Don’t Think I’m Funny Anymore.” He was at his best on ballads such as “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground” and “Healing Hands of Time,” where he could take advantage of his elastic tenor and reharmonizing guitar.

Nelson’s longtime drummer, the ailing Paul English, sat behind a single snare drum for the song Nelson wrote about him, “Me and Paul,” and for the trilogy of Nelson’s earliest songwriting triumphs: “Ain’t It Funny How Time Slips Away” (a hit for Billy Walker), “Crazy” (for Patsy Cline), and “Night Life” (for Ray Price). Otherwise the drumming duties were handled by Paul’s kid brother Billy. Joining Nelson, the English brothers, and Raphael were bassist Bee Spears and Willie’s son Lukas, who played electric rhythm guitar and opened the show with his own quartet, an undistinguished blues-rock bar band.

“I got to know this city over the past seven or eight years,” Steve Earle told his Rams Head audience Tuesday night. “I know all about lake trout now. I learned about Baltimore from some guys who grew up here and loved the city enough to turn it into some of the greatest art America has ever produced: The Wire.”

Earle looked very much like Walon, the character he played on The Wire: a streak of white running through his Old Testament beard, the sleeves of his snap-button denim shirt rolled up. As Earle acknowledged, it didn’t require much acting for him to play a garrulous, recovering addict from Texas, nor did it take much acting for him to play Harley, the garrulous street singer from Texas in David Simon’s new show, Treme.

Earle had opened his solo-acoustic show at the Rams Head with the theme song from The Wire: Tom Waits’ “Way Down in the Hole.” He taught the audience the “In the hole, in the hole” refrain, and used that impromptu choir as a counterpoint to his vocal and harmonica solo. His fourth song of the night also had a Maryland connection: “Taneytown” is a story of parental neglect, racism ,and a bloody Randall knife set in a small Carroll County town.

It was an up-and-down evening. Many of the uptempo numbers, even songs as strong as “Copperhead Road” and “Someday,” suffered from Earle’s lackluster guitar rhythm. But the finger-picking ballads were often spectacular. When he got those pretty guitar arpeggios going, he seemed to relax into his still handsome tenor and brought out all the melancholia of songs such as “Goodbye,” “My Old Friend the Blues,” “Now She’s Gone,” and his mentor Townes Van Zandt’s “Pancho & Lefty.” He usually topped them off with an even sadder harmonica solo.

Treme is set in the winter and spring after the levees failed when Hurricane Katrina sideswiped New Orleans. Simon asked Earle to write a song that his character Harley might have written that spring and to play it on the final episode. Earle reprised it at the Rams Head, and “This City Won’t Drown” sounded like a rallying anthem as strong and persuasive as his encore version of “Christmas in Washington.”

The old saying, “Hip-hop makes great records but puts on lousy shows,” is a cliché only because it’s so often true. There was reason to think that Wale might defy this pattern, because this MC emerged from Washington D.C.’s go-go scene, where the live shows are usually stronger than the studio recordings. Wale’s headlining set at Artscape Sunday didn’t fulfill that hope, but it didn’t quite dash it either.

The set got off to a bad start. The band seemed ready to go at the advertised 6:30 p.m. time but the crowd had to suffer through 20 minutes of false starts, misleading promises, and awkward pauses before the show began in earnest. When Wale bounded onto the stage in front of the Maryland Institute College of Art’s station building, his dreads were pushed back beneath a red baseball cap and he quickly peeled off a denim jacket in the sweltering heat. He was backed by a go-go-like band—guitar, bass, drums, congas, keys, and turntables—but the rhythm section was buried in a muddy mix, the guitarist leaned on hoary rock moves, and the DJ kept missing cues. Nor did the band know how to stay out of the way of the vocals. And Wale made the perennial hip-hop move of inviting so many non-performers onstage that the show lost its visual focus. It often seemed as if he were singing in the middle of an airport terminal with strangers walking by for no apparent reason.

The vocals, though, were terrific. The Nigerian-American rapper, born Olubowale Victor Folarin, could spit out syllables rapidly and crisply—most notably in machine-gun fashion on “Mirrors”—and still seem like he was having fun. He could even throw out brand-new, a cappella rhymes that his band hadn’t learned yet and still hold the crowd’s attention. He was most effective, in fact, when the band pulled way back on the romantic hip-hop ballad, “Diary,” allowing Wale to sit in a folding chair and use a conversational voice to describe a woman who’s been hurt so much by men that she won’t even consider the singer. Both the lyrics and the live rap pulled off the difficult trick of balancing the woman’s justified feelings against the singer’s sincere affection.

Wale was just as capable of belting out a stomping boast, such as his 2006 underground breakthrough hit, “Uptown Roamers,” or last year’s sing-along anthem of lust, “Let It Loose.” He ran up MICA’s stone stairs in the middle of “Chillin’” and engaged the arm-waving crowd in call-and-response on “90210,” a masterful depiction of the dangers of idolizing rappers and other pop stars. That portrait of a doomed groupie was balanced by “Mama Told Me,” the self-portrait of a struggling, would-be star. Both these tunes from last year’s impressive Attention Deficit subvert the easy myths about show biz, and it’s Wale’s willingness to undermine the bling, bong, and bang formulas of hip-hop that make him so fascinating. If only he could tighten up his live show.

Gov't Mule

What makes Gov’t Mule the most satisfying jam band of this era? Unlike most of its genremates, this quartet doesn’t play music; it plays songs. Attend a concert by Phish, Widespread Panic, the Yonder String Band, or the Funky Meters, and you’ll hear hours of skillfully played, feel-good, undifferentiated music unfurling like wallpaper. If you attended the Gov’t Mule show at Artscape on Saturday, however, you heard distinct songs, each with a specific mood, a one-of-a-kind melodic hook, a particular story to tell, and a beginning, middle, and end. And that made all the difference.

How to account for this? More than any of the other second-generation jam bands, Gov’t Mule is rooted in the songcraft of Southern blues and hillbilly music, much like the genre’s twin pioneers the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers Band. Warren Haynes, the lead singer and guitarist for Gov’t Mule, also plays guitar for the current versions of the Dead and the Allmans, but unlike those repertory companies, Gov’t Mule generates new material. In fact, the highlights of Saturday’s show were Haynes’ compositions from Gov’t Mule’s latest album, By a Thread.

“Broke Down on the Brazos,” for example, opened with a modern funk riff but soon took the form of a traditional Texas blues fleshed out by amplifier overtones. His long red hair flying out over his shoulders, with different melodies for the verses and chorus, Haynes sang of being stranded on a Texas River, “up to my knees in water, up to my ears in dragonflies.” This grounded the ensuing guitar solos in an easily visualized story, which gave the improvisation considerably more weight. “Frozen Fear” did something similar over a pop-reggae groove by advising a troubled young friend to “rise and shine.” “Railroad Blues,” the traditional British ballad adapted by Gov’t Mule for the new album, was surprisingly understated and effective on the big Artscape stage.

Near the end of the set, right after Gov’t Mule covered Prince’s “When Doves Cry,” Haynes brought out Maryland’s Ron Holloway. Holloway, the tenor saxophonist in Dizzy Gillespie’s final quintet, has often joined Gov’t Mule onstage, and on Robert Johnson’s “32/20 Blues,” he engaged Haynes in a friendly duel of trading two-measure phrases, then single measures, as they patiently worked their way upward in pitch to an exhilarating climax. Two songs later, Holloway returned to add to the wall of sound on a cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” and the Haynes composition, “Soulshine,” originally recorded by the Allman Brothers.

Lafayette Gilchrist

Lafayette Gilchrist continues to tour the world as pianist for the David Murray Quartet and as co-leader of a quartet with Chicago drummer Hamid Drake, Hungarian bassist Matyas Szandai, and Hungarian saxophonist Mihaly Dresch (the latter group releases its debut album this fall). But Gilchrist still lives in Baltimore, and this past Sunday he unveiled a new version of his hometown band and a new suite of his hometown music.

Gilchrist’s octet, the New Volcanoes, has lost trumpeter Freddie Dunn and alto saxophonist Gabriel Ware, and the leader has replaced them with conga drummer Kevin Pinder and a third tenor saxophonist, Tiffany DeFoe. Trumpeter Mike Cerri was unavailable on Sunday, so the octet was down to a septet: three tenors and the four-man rhythm section.

Gilchrist began the evening with one of his trademark piano figures, splitting the difference between Monk and funk, displacing notes within a groove. When Pinder added a rippling conga pattern, he inevitably tugged things in an Afro-Cuban direction. Trap drummer Nate Reynolds and electric bassist Anthony “Blue” Jenkins added a wiggly strut to the rhythm, explaining Gilchrist’s title for his new four-part suite: Baltimore Parade.

The three tenor saxophonists (DeFoe, John Dierker, and Greg Thompkins) were bunched front and center as if they were ready to march down the right lane of Martin Luther King Boulevard for King’s Birthday Parade. They played punchy little riffs that didn’t duplicate the groove (as a boring fusion band would) but instead counterpointed it. They also kept changing the inner voicings of their chords so they were never played quite the same way twice. Gilchrist’s own solos were similar: thickened chords that kept breaking down and reassembling Monk-like without ever losing the pulse of a marching band on Baltimore’s West Side.

“Unscripted,” the suite’s first movement, boasted a midtempo Latin tinge and a buttery Thompkins solo, while the second, “Spontaneous Combustion,” offered a jittery, push-and-pull groove and lots of flatted notes. Gilchrist played a piano segue into the third movement, incongruously titled “Phase Four,” a fast number highlighted by Dierker’s squealing solo and Gilchrist’s broken chords. The suite ended with “Spotlight,” a slow, sauntering blues. Taken as a whole, the suite is a welcome sign that Gilchrist’s writing has entered a new, ambitious period.

Before the show started, the musicians joined the 60^th birthday celebration for Doc Manning, who emcees the jazz shows at An Die Musik and who hosts the In the Tradition program on WEAA-FM.

Both Dierker and DeFoe will be part of the first annual New Atlantis Festival at the Windup Space on July 25.

Stan Tracey (by William Ellis)

English pianist Stan Tracey is a giant in European jazz circles, but if he’s known at all to most American listeners, it’s because of his collaboration with Sonny Rollins in 1965-’66, two live albums and the Alfie soundtrack. So it makes sense that the last time Tracey played in the mid-Atlantic area, at the British Embassy in 1998, it was with Maryland tenor saxophonist Ron Holloway, a Rollins protégé.

“We’re going to pick up where we left off,” Tracey told the crowd at the Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church Sunday, as he brought Holloway onstage after three tunes with his British trio. A dozen years had gone by since they’d seen each other and at age 83 Tracey had even less of the speed and power he enjoyed in the ’60s and ’70s. What he had instead is an unerring ear for short melodic inventions that he phrased with lean elegance and framed with careful pauses.

A short man with combed-back salt-and-pepper hair and a pink shirt with the sleeves rolled up, Tracey hunched over the Yamaha grand piano and stabbed at the keys with surgical precision. Sometimes his left hand crossed over his right to help with a tricky variation; sometimes the two hands splayed across the keyboard to construct knotty seven-note chords.

In the early tunes, such as Duke Ellington’s “Great Times” with the trio or Freddie Hubbard’s “Byrdlike” with the quartet, Tracey played with the spare classicism of the late-period Hank Jones, always swinging but never fussy. Tracey’s rhythm section—his son Clark Tracey on drums and the even younger Andrew Cleyndert on upright bass—supported him with the same surefooted minimalism.

Holloway, though, pushed the band out of its comfort zone by unleashing one robust tenor solo after another. He was the saxophonist in Dizzy Gillespie’s last quintet, but he has also toured with Gil Scott-Heron and Susan Tedeschi. As a result he can negotiate bebop changes at ferocious tempos but can also sustain the buttery, vocal-like tone that pop music demands. With moon-round face surrounded by a dark afro and graying sideburns, Holloway played a gorgeous version of “Body and Soul,” seeming to croon on the chorus and then stretching the theme like taffy. He then counted off “How High the Moon” at a brisk pace and lifted the familiar tune into a higher octave with a burst of perfectly pitched, perfectly timed, piercing squeals.

That inspired the pianist to grow ever more adventurous in the voicing and phrasing of his concise statements. Suddenly one could hear why he was considered the Thelonious Monk of England. Tracey heard the same thing and called for “Bolivar Blues,” which Monk had written for and recorded with Rollins. This caught the band off-guard and there was an early stumble, but soon they righted themselves with a muscular attack on the infectious theme and its possibilities, with Holloway growing more abstract expressionist in his solos and Tracey more cubist. That led to the exhilarating set-closer, Monk’s “I Mean You.”

It wasn’t a perfect show. Because the band was obviously under-rehearsed, Tracey did not get a chance to showcase his remarkable compositions. And the Mount Vernon Church, while a handsome setting with its golden organ pipes and its carved stone balcony behind the band, is not a comfortable place on a steamy June afternoon. Halfway through the set, Holloway’s purple-striped shirt was soaked with perspiration, front and back, from his shoulders to his waist.