TEDxABQ, Sept. 18

I will speak at the 2010 TEDxABQ conference on Sept. 18. What, or who is this TED, you ask? Read here.

The theme of the conference is “Ideas that make us…” This means I am now nervously thinking about how to best complete this sentence as the theme of my six-minute talk. I’m leaning toward “Ideas that make us sing” however, contingent on the strength of my performance, a more appropriate title may be “Ideas that make us go hummm?”

I won’t be alone on the stage, I will present my talk with my trustee banjo in hand. And if things go south, I will just dive into a bluegrass rendition of Ke$ha’s “Your Love Is My Drug” — so it’s kind of a win/win.

I think I will flesh-out the talk from this video, which was taken during Ignite NM, earlier this year.

Buy tickets to TEDxABQ and share in the event. Despite my talk, it’s going to be very cool.

Owls

Owls are in the pine,

glassing every move with hungry, orphan-boy eyes.

If we were smaller, they would eat us.

NM musicians showcase solo work, Aug. 27

Seis Balas: The Solo Sets

New Mexico, August, 2010: Six of New Mexico’s premier musicians come together to showcase their solo music during “Seis Balas: The Solo Sets” at 8 p.m. on Aug. 27 at REVLIS art and music space, 712 Central, Albuquerque. The all-ages show features lively performance from the following artists: 

Pops to deliver the annual Santa Fe Fiesta lecture

Santa Fe Fiesta Reveals City Different’s Changing Culture

Andrew Leo Lovato to deliver the annual Santa Fe Fiesta Lecture

Santa Fe, August, 2010 – From its earliest incarnation as a 1700s religious event through its evolution into a civic enterprise and then a community party, the Santa Fe Fiesta has reflected the changes in the City Different’s makeup and culture. Andrew Leo Lovato, an associate professor at Santa Fe Community College, will discuss those changes in the annual Santa Fe Fiesta Lecture at 6:30 pm on Wednesday, Sept. 8 at the New Mexico Museum of Art’s St. Francis Auditorium, 107 W. Palace Ave. Admission is $5 on a first-come basis. Members of the Palace Guard and the Fiesta Council, co-sponsors of the event, are free.

Todd Eric (publicity bio)

Todd Eric: Electro-folk for the soul

“All music is folk music” – Louis Armstrong

With a banjo in his hands, Todd Eric Lovato creates feet-stomping, award-winning roots music. Equal parts singer/songwriter, showman and music producer,

Lifestyle Advertising Daydream

Picture yourself in a sleek new car — the wind blowing through your hair, which is thinning but in a cool ironic way. You’re driving toward a bright and uncompromisable destiny. You’re wearing a boutique graphic tee. Riding shotgun, your model-type, subtly-ethnic girlfriend sports an asymmetrical hairstyle beneath a slightly-cocked women’s paperboy. She softly nods her head to the beat and taps her hand on the car window ledge. The song: Cruiseline. The tag line: “Life is, like, a road. Cruise it, or whatever.” Listen to Cruiseline.

Juan de Marcos’ Afro Cuban All Stars

Wednesday, 25 February 2009

By Todd Eric Lovato
On March 5, the Santa Fe’s Lensic Performance Arts Center becomes the stage for one of the most influential and important purveyors of traditional Cuban music in the past two decades. While ears and feet alike tend perk up at the very mention of bands like the Afro-Cuban All Stars and Buena Vista Social Club, Americans are generally hard-pressed to identify Juan de Marcos Gonzalez, the man, the maestro and the catalyst behind the explosion of Cuban music and its unfounded popularity in the United States during the past 20 years.

Political relations and tightened homeland security measures have prevented Gonzalez (along with many great Cuban musicians) from touring in the U.S. in recent years. But Gonzalez’s passion to share the music and culture of his home country is boundless and he’s back touring the states with a new incarnation of the famed Afro-Cuban All Stars, a world-class ensemble of musicians from Cuba, the U.S., Europe and Canada. Frequently referred to as the Quincy Jones of Cuban music, Gonzalez has carved himself a deep and meaningful musical career as a multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer with a knack for surrounding himself with talent — this tour will be no exception.

Gonzalez is the progenitor of many musical triumphs from Cuba, many of them Grammy-nominated and considered some of the best music to make it past Cuban shores in the past two decades. One of these projects included the famed Buena Vista Social Club sessions, a watershed moment in American/Cuban music history. In the early ’90s, Gonzalez’s traditional Cuban music ensemble, Sierra Meastra, was garnering its share of international exposure after more than a decade of touring Africa, Europe and Cuba and releasing more than a dozen albums. In 1994, Gonzalez was asked by his British record label to put together a project that celebrated the Cuban sound of the 1940s and ’50s, regarded by many as Cuba’s golden age of music. The plan was to record two albums, one a Cuban big band project, the other a more traditional Cuban folk outing. The records were a dream-come-true for Gonzalez, who grew up watching his father perform with many of Cuba’s greatest and famous musicians in his hometown of Havannah. The project was also an opportunity to put many of Cuba’s musical legends into the same recording studio as younger generations.

To record the albums, Gonzalez went on a recruiting mission for talent, many of them mentors and old friends, or retired musicians like Manuel Puntillita, Pio Levya and Raul Planas, all in their 70s when Gonzalez first approached them. Drawing on a roster of more than 60 musicians, Gonzalez recorded the first album, the compilation, “A Toda Cuba le Gusta,” which was nominated for a Grammy. Then, drawing from the talent of the first album, which consisted of celebrated artists such as Compay Segundo, Omara Portuondo, Eliades Ochoa and new recruits Ibrahim Ferrer and famed American guitarist Ry Cooder, Gonzalez helped record the blockbuster self-titled album Buena Vista Social Club, on which Gonzalez served as consultant, coordinator and conductor. In 1997, Buena Vista Social Club was released and Cuban music would never be looked at the same in the U.S. The same year, Gonzalez assembled a touring version of the Afro-Cuban All-Stars and began spanning the globe. The rest, as they say, es historia.

However, in 2003, politics and homeland security concerns shut the door on the American tour circuit for Gonzalez and many of his fellow Cuban musicians. “We used to perform in the U.S. every year starting in 1994 when I went for the first time with my group Sierra Meastra. We toured the whole country,” said Gonzalez. “Then musicians from Buena Vista started to tour with great success and their own bands we put together, for many years. But in 2003, everything stopped.”

In 2009, we have a new President and Gonzalez and the Afro-Cuban All Star ensemble are back. Santa Fe is one of 40 U.S. cities to witness the return of the Afro-Cuban All Stars live and in concert. Gonzalez spoke with Local iQ, just 30 minutes before the band’s opening-night performance in Tacoma, Wash. With horns blasting in the background in a last-minute sound check, the enthusiastic and loquacious Gonzalez took time to answer a few questions over the phone before it was time to hit the stage:

Top 20 Albums of 2008

Friday, 26 December 2008

TV On The Radio By Todd Eric Lovato I was 8 years old when a well-intentioned but preoccupied aunt, in an eleventh-hour scramble to fulfill her Secret Santa obligation to me, wrapped a pair of beat-up cassette tapes in gift paper and masking tape. As my cousins and siblings reveled in the likes of new Atari games, Swiss Army knives and movie theater gift certificates, I found myself slowly peeling away the wrapping paper to reveal my veritable lumps of coal: Supertramp’s 1974 Crime of the Century and the ensuing Breakfast in America. I think I cried. But in due time, I actually listened to the albums and subsequently fell in love with them — well, Breakfast in America, anyway. Two decades later, the Swiss Army knives are long gone, the gift certificates expired and the video games are outmoded. But curiously, those two cassettes — once the bane of a childhood Christmas circa 1987 — now occupy a special place in my music collection and woe to the man in my presence who tries to switch the radio dial to  tune out “Goodbye Stranger,” “Logical Song” or “Take the Long Way Home.” When it comes to giving the very flexible gift of music, a little exploration (the fun part), a bit of empathy (e.g.  grandmothers and Swedish experimental death metal bands will almost never jive) and some good fortune (see the aforementioned Supertramp anecdote), often new or unheard music makes a wonderful gift that has the power to make a monumentally lasting impression on a loved one. Like all fine art, good music evokes memories and emotions and helps frame new perspectives for its listeners. That’s a pretty potent gift. While the music of popular one-word entities like Britney, Beyonce and Kanye, will likely end up ranking as this year’s most popular stocking-stuffers, 2008 has been an exceptional year for new artists making music outside of the spectrum of commercial radio. If you are the type of person that asks Santa for music that’s a little bit out of your comfort zone, here’s to hoping your inner gift-giving circle is well aware of it. And even if a beat-up Supertramp cassette ends up in your stocking, trust me, there are worse things in life. But if it contains even one of the following 20 recordings, count yourself as one of the lucky ones.

Leaving the light on for Nels

Wednesday, 20 August 2008

PHOTO BY ARTHUR NOBRE

Armed with new record and pending European tour, folk hero Nels Andrews stops by to say hello to a few old friends

BY TODD ERIC LOVATO
In just a few days, former local folk hero Nels Andrews will return to his former stomping grounds, riding a wave of newfound international recognition. He’s also toting a new critically acclaimed album, Off Track Betting.

Following the release of his 2005 debut Sunday Shoes, Andrews packed up his acoustic guitar and pork pie hats and made the leap to Brooklyn, New York, to pursue his music. For Andrews, whose lifetime of wanderlust has carried him to Alaskan fisheries, heartland carnivals and tree-planting operations in South Dakota, the move to Brooklyn was just another chapter in an already storied career.

The East Coast underground folk scene warmly embraced Andrews’ pathos-filled songwriting and sun-baked tenor. And as it turned out, so did Europe. The same year, Sunday Shoes found its way across the pond and into the hands of British disc jockey Bob Harris of BBC Radio 2, one of the U.K.’s most popular radio stations.

The album received regular play on British airwaves and prompted Harris to declare the record one of 2006’s “Albums of the Year.” Soon, word of the folk Americana sensation from New Mexico began to spread across the isles and by 2006, Andrews was being critically lauded by members of the European folk music community. More prestigious awards followed, as did tours of the U.K., Europe and U.S.

Following his Aug. 22 Albuquerque performance, which includes an opening set by Dameon Lee of local band Lowlights, Andrews will move on to play three more shows in the U.S. and then a string of performances throughout England and greater Europe. There, eager Americana fans are chomping at the bit to hear Andrews perform.

Off Track Betting, is earning even more praise than its predecessor. The all-star musicians on the record include guitarist Adam Levy (of Norah Jones and Amos Lee fame) and Wilco keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen. It is produced by Todd Sickafoose (Ani DiFranco, Erin McKeown, Andrew Bird), the latter of which the New Yorker called “Ani DiFranco’s secret weapon.”

Local iQ recently spoke with Andrews about his skyrocketing career, the new album and why Europeans love Americana music more than Americans.

love, pain and craft

Wednesday, 09 July 2008

Local music mainstays Unit 7 Drain set to release seventh studio recording

STORY BY TODD ERIC LOVATO

PHOTOS BY WES NAMAN

Something wicked this way comes. On July 19, Unit 7 Drain releases studio album number seven with LoveCraft (Socyermom Records), the most brooding, catchy and arguably daring piece of work to date from New Mexico’s darlings of avant/indie pop. Longtime fans of the band are in for a treat, albeit more tart than sweet.

“This record is the most dark and down thing we’ve ever recorded,” singer, guitarist and chief songwriter Harry Redus-Brown said during a recent interview with Local iQ. “It’s very aggressively experimental in a lot of (areas). A lot of painful experiences and dark ideas found their way onto these tracks.”

Redus-Brown and bassist/co-vocalist Ella Vader are relaxing inside Downtown Scooter after a busy weekday at the shop — the married couple opened the burgeoning business in 2005. Drummer and shop hand Christian Newman joins them on the couch. It’s a cramped but vibrant scene. Dozens of sleek scooters sporting polished chrome and retro colors like candy apple red, slate blue and sea foam green sit idle and crammed into the showroom like sardines. Thanks to spiking gas prices, the scooters are selling faster than they can restock them. The shop is furnished with a greasy salon chair (complete with a bubble hair dryer) and decorated with an array of fitting memorabilia, including the obligatory Quadrophenia pinup and nearly 10 years worth of Unit 7 Drain concert posters. From the vantage of the barber chair, one gets the sense of being tucked snugly into the hub of some kind of hipster headquarters.