Soundcheck

Venezuelan legend of Llanera music Larry Bellorín and GRAMMY-nominated bluegrass and oldtime musician Joe Troop play as Larry & Joe.  Larry was forced into exile and is an asylum seeker in North Carolina, and worked construction to make ends meet, although he has been a musician and educator all his life. Troop, a socially conscious “Latingrass” musician with Che Apalache, has written songs about migration, and works with asylum seekers; he relocated to North Carolina to be in this duo with Larry.

Venezuelan and Appalachian folk music come together on Larry’s custom-built Joropo folk harp and Joe’s fiddle and banjo, as they blend their musical inheritances and traditions as well as storytelling on their record, Nuevo South Train. The duo performs remotely from the 2023 Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, TN. The duo plays at 6PM on June 15 at Rockwood Music Hall. 

Set list: “Gabanjo”, “Caballo Viejo”

Watch "Gabanjo":

Watch "Caballo Viejo":

Dominican guitarist, vocalist, composer, and producer Yasser Tejeda explores the African roots of Dominican music, and combines the folkloric with jazz, rock and Caribbean influences. Lately, he has turned to Congolese guitar, and Haitian rhythms (Hispaniola), New Orleans and Afrobeaty funk to highlight the way that music has crisscrossed the Atlantic. Tejada and his band tear it up in the studio with music from his latest, La Madruga, (Dawn/Dusk). Yasser Tejeda plays at TV Eye on June 15.

Set list: 1. "El Sol De La Madruga" 2. "En El Naranjo" 3. "Todo Va A Marchar"

Watch "El Sol De La Madruga":

Atlanta-based indie rock band Manchester Orchestra has long had a decidedly cinematic approach to songwriting, with tunes that grow in the telling and explode into grand, almost orchestral choruses. Now, they’ve released The Valley Of Vision, a stirring, emotional journey of healing inspired by a 1975 book of old Puritan prayers found in a suitcase. In these six songs and a VR film, Manchester Orchestra digs deep to find the peaceful floating zen of resolve and try on what it might mean to feel all right again. Songwriter Andy Hull and guitarist Robert McDowell play some of these tunes remotely in intimate arrangements.

Set list: “Capital Karma”, “Quietly”, “Rear View”

Watch "Quietly":

Since 1981, Welsh musician Mike Peters has been the voice of the hit-making British band The Alarm. After the band split up in 1991, Peters wrote and released solo work, before reconstituting The Alarm in 2000, (Wikipedia.) Since being diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia in 2005 (he is also co-founder of the Love Hope Strength Foundation), Mike Peter’s career has been largely determined by the cycle of remission and relapse. But to listen to The Alarm’s upcoming album, pointedly called Forwards, and you’ll hear a man whose songwriting is as anthemic as ever, and, yes, determinedly forward looking. Mike Peters plays some of these new songs, as well as one of the band’s old hits, on acoustic baritone guitar, in-studio. (-John Schaefer)

Set list: "Forwards", "Next", "The Stand"

Watch "Forwards":

Watch "Next":

Watch "The Stand":

Orquesta Akokán bursts and flows with the spirit of dance orchestras of the 1940’s and 1950’s of Havana on their debut record of nine tunes - all sparkling, blazing, soulful, and meticulously arranged and composed mambo originals. Together, singer José "Pepito" Gómez, producer Jacob Plasse, and arranger Michael Eckroth, along with Cuba’s finest players, young and old, recorded the record live to tape in a three-day session at the legendary and revered Estudios Areito in Cuba – where percussion and piano absolutely pop, and the brilliance of brass is magnified. The recording is the first Spanish-language venture for Daptone Records, (the folks who brought you Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, Charles Bradley, and other timeless artists) whose old-school techniques and attention to sonic detail ensure a living, breathing warmth.

The big band collective Orquesta Akokán joins us to play some of these Cuban Mambo (and rumba, cha-cha and jazzy) tunes in-studio.  -Caryn Havlik

Dom Flemons is a Grammy-winning singer, guitarist, banjo player, and all-around scholar of old Americana who was part of the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Flemons has dubbed himself “The American Songster,” and has performed songs rooted in blues, early gospel, ragtime, proto-country, and other forms of old-time folk music. His new album, Traveling Wildfire, includes a couple of his unerring arrangements of older tunes, but it’s largely comprised of original songs. Dom Flemons, the preservationist, storyteller, and instrumentalist, brings his one-man Americana road show to the live studio. 

Set list: "Traveling Wildfire", "Slow Dance With You", "It's Cold Inside"

Watch "Traveling Wildfire":

Watch "Slow Dance With You" :

Watch "It's Cold Inside":

Curtis Stewart is a violinist, composer and arranger, and the current Artistic Director of the American Composers Orchestra. He is also the son of two professional jazz musicians, and when, at some point, he was offered the choice between composition and improvisation, he said “yes please” and took both. So on his own and with the improvising string quartet known as PubliQuartet, along with The Mighty Third Rail, Curtis Stewart plays a huge variety of music. Stewart and several musical friends: (Aaron Diehl, Eleanor Oppenheim, students from the Kaufman Music Center, Special Music School, and PubliQuartet) give just a hint of his range, performing in-studio. (-John Schaefer)

Set list: Trad.: "Thalassaki Mou" Stewart: "Call, Response" with PubliQuartetTrad.: "Deep River", with PubliQuartet, with Eleanor Oppenheim, students from the Kaufman Music Center, Special Music School

of Love. by Curtis Stewart

This is the Kit is the alias of British singer and guitarist Kate Stables, as well as the band she fronts. Her early albums were rooted in the long British folk/rock tradition, with later work perhaps more under the influence of indie rock.  In June, she releases a new album called Careful of Your Keepers produced by Gruff Rhys (Super Furry Animals), full of big ideas and big arrangements, but it’s also a very intimate, honest, and introspective set of songs. Kate plays some of them in a solo performance, in-studio. - John Schaefer

Set list: “More Change”, “Stuck in a Room”, “Inside Outside”

Watch “More Change”:

Watch “Stuck in a Room”:

Watch “Inside Outside”:

The Heavy is a band from Bath, England – an unlikely place for a group whose sound has been rooted in the kind of swampy, sweaty mix of gospel, R&B, funk and rock that we associate with the American south. Their latest, Amen, is "an exhilarating maelstrom of ‘60s R&B riffs, horns, and gospel harmonies" (Bandcamp), which "writhes with seditious blues drama, soul and gospel passion, the crunch of prime hip-hop and garage punk’s visceral electricity", (ShoreFire.) The full band joins us in-studio on a rare day off on their American tour.

Set list: "Hurricane Coming", "I Feel the Love", "Feels Like Rain", "Bad Muthafucker"

Watch: "Hurricane Coming": 

Watch "I Feel the Love":

Watch "Feels Like Rain":

Watch "Bad Muthafucker":

Gotopo is a Venezuelan singer and musician currently based in Berlin. Her music explores her own Afro-Indigenous roots through a mix of ancient folkloric sounds and modern electronic dance music. She is a "digger", and has thrown herself into researching source material, as in an Afro-Venezuelan hymn intended for slaves to give a spiritual farewell to their relatives who died at the hands of the enslaver which informed her song, "Malembe". Her debut release, called Sacudete, comes out on May 19, and Gotopo performs her indigenous and ancestral futurism, in-studio. 

Set list: "Piña Pa La Niña", "Cucu", "Sacudete" 

Watch "Piña Pa La Niña":

Watch "Cucu":

Watch "Sacudete":