Shock and Awe: The Songs of Randy Newman

Featuring: David Hidalgo (of Los Lobos), Bill Frisell, Vic Chesnutt, Maurice Seezer, Gavin Friday, Robin Holcomb, Stan Ridgway, Steve Berlin (of Los Lobos), Oren Bloedow, Elysian Fields, Van Dyke Parks, Ed Harcourt, Pete Thomas, Perla Batalla, Julie Christensen, Jimmy Fallon, Ellen Greene, Victoria Williams, Steve Weisberg, Bob Neuwirth, Sebastian Steinberg

Just added!
Taj Mahal, E (of the Eels), Howard Tate, Jon Brion, John Ventimiglia (from The Sopranos), Jennifer Charles and Rip Torn

Randy Newman knows American music in its entirety: its field hollers and film scores, minstrelsy and tin pan alleys, the standards and the below-standard (art rock). Deft as a riverboat card shark, he uses this fluency with our music to give voice to the least-appealing people among us and in ourselves. Gun-happy, love-happy, always self-betraying, Newman's characters are in sorry circumstances with only their story to offer by way of explanation. His vocal performances have been so authoritative as to defy mere “rendition;” much of his vast songbook lies tantalizingly uncovered. Hal Willner, whose mind created the now legendary Harry Smith Project and Halloween evenings in Royce Hall, explores the songbook with a sparkling, even startling, cast drawn from the legions of Newman's admirers.

Produced by Hal Willner and Janine Nichols

Lineup subject to change

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