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A tribute to Elliott Smith at T.T. the Bear's, rock and Red Sox at "Hot Stove, Cool Music," and more
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Elliott Smith memorial Flashback, middle of previous decade. "My favorite songs right now are written and sung by a guy named Elliott Smith," Mary Lou Lord wrote in an on-line post to her fans back in 1995. "He’s in a band called Heatmiser. I like the band OK, but his solo acoustic stuff is incredible. I had the good fortune to tour with him in March. . . . I would describe him as a cross between Dylan, Nick Drake, and (dare I say) Joni Mitchell [in her] ‘Cold Blue Steel [and Sweet Roses]’ phase. Wynton Marsalis says that the ‘blues’ are like a vaccine; you gotta get a little to take it away. . . . That’s how it is listening to Elliott. It’s so sad and heartfelt that it takes those feelings away. I can’t describe or explain how much his music means to me. I would suggest you get his record and see for yourself." Many of us did. Smith showed up — via his songs, and his voice — on Lord’s records over the years, and she offered one of the more touching tributes to him at this year’s CMJ New Music Festival in New York on the weekend after his death from an apparently self-inflicted stab wound. On December 21, Lord heads up a tribute to her late friend at T.T. the Bear’s Place, 10 Brookline Street in Central Square, that’ll also include performances by Apollo Sunshine, Ad Frank, and Jason Hatfield, preceded by a screening of some rare footage of Smith. It’s an early, 2 p.m. show, and admission is $12, with the proceeds going to the Elliott Smith Foundation for Abused Children, the charity he established with the windfall from his Oscar-nominated song "Miss Misery." Call (617) 492-BEAR. Wait’ll next year At last January’s "Hot Stove, Cool Music" benefit — the annual rock-and-baseball bash thrown by ESPN’s Peter Gammons to benefit the Jimmy Fund — the 29-year-old guitar player in an outfit called Trauser was taking a lot of heat from the fans in the audience. But not about the Pearl Jam tune he’d been playing — it was the matter of the baseball team whose GM he happens to be. And you can bet that Theo Epstein will have a bunch more questions to answer when Trauser join other friends of Gammons including former Letters to Cleo hottie Kay Hanley, local garage-pop greats the Gentlemen, Buffalo Tom’s Bill Janovitz, and, if last year was any indication, at least a few members of the Boston Red Sox for the fourth annual "Hot Stove, Cool Music" benefit January 11 at the Paradise, 967 Commonwealth Avenue. Tickets are $25; call (617) 423-NEXT. Revealing Wynton Marsalis has hardly finished unpacking his bags for his All Rise concerts with the BSO, but already it’s time to think about big brother Branford’s gigs coming up at the end of the month. Hardly less ambitious than Wynton, Branford has just released Romare Bearden Revealed (his second on his own Marsalis Music label), a suite composed to accompany a show of the great African-American painter’s work in New Orleans. Branford and his superb band — pianist Joey Calderazzo, bassist Eric Revis, and drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts — will spend five days, December 26 through 30, at the Regattabar in the Charles Hotel, 1 Bennett Street in Harvard Square; call (617) 876-7777. Phil Spector’s last stand When we talked to the Britpop outfit Starsailor early last year, the band had just played a show in LA that brought out legendary producer Phil Spector, who liked ’em so much he invited them back to his house. Later that year, Starsailor flew Spector over to England to record a couple of songs for their sophomore album, Silence Is Easy (Capitol, due January 27), and these, as far as we can tell, were the last songs he did before being arrested for and subsequently charged with the murder of actress Lana Clarkson. However that turns out, we can report that he managed to record a pair of pretty beautiful tunes. And Starsailor will be playing them January 20 at the Paradise, 967 Commonwealth Avenue. Tickets, at $15, go on sale today (December 4) at 10 a.m.; call (617) 423-NEXT.
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