Corey Harris Tues. and Wed. 10 PM Wed, and Fri 5 PM

Pictured her in Telluride last summer with Nick Vagnoni and Pat Lonergan the Young Blues Legend Corey Harris will appear at Green Parrot next week.
In what is certainly the Parrot's biggest musical coup of this year,
or perhaps any other, the young blues legend and giant talent Corey
Harris will will perform with his 5 x 5 band at The Green Parrot Bar
on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, April 4th and 5th beginning at 10 PM
with 2 afternoon "sound checks" beginning at 5 PM on Wednesday, and
Friday April 5th, and 7th.
"We are so excited about having Harris at The Parrot," says the
usually composed manager John Vagnoni. And why not, a coveted
performer at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, as well as
the North Sea Jazz Festival, the Montreux Jazz Festival, the Montreal
Jazz Festival, the WOMAD festivals in England and the Canary Islands
and the Festival International in Lafayette, Louisiana, he has
traveled to Brazil and West Africa with the US State Department's Jazz
Ambassadors program. In the course of his travels Corey has shared the
stage with BB King, Tracy Chapman, Natalie Merchant, the Wailers,
Burning Spear, The Dave Matthews Band, and Ben Harper, among many
others.
Since Harris shook up the blues scene with his 1995 debut release,
Between Midnight and Day, a masterpiece of rural blues exploration,
he's been finding ways to extend the journey, composing new songs,
reinventing old ones, following his instincts fearlessly wherever they
might lead. As a singer, songwriter and cultural emissary he has
merged blues, African pop, rock and electronica in brilliant and
original ways.
He has built a worldwide following among musicians and fans alike.
Rolling Stone gave his rocking 2002 release, "Downhome Sophisticate"
four stars. Acclaimed film director Martin Scorcese tapped Corey to
star in and narrate the documentary film, "Feel Like Going Home."
Filmed in Mississippi and Mali, West Africa, it tells the story of the
blues from African origins,
ABSOLUTE SOUND magazine said of him, "Harris… dazzles on guitar, but
his sound is… galaxies beyond a primal acoustic-blues palette.
Drinking from the African well, Harris updates his brand of 21st
Century blues with funk, hypnotic bottleneck boogie, lap steel drawl,
reggae, samba, and, hip-hop. He's a vocal chameleon, speaks and sings
in different voices, and his 5x5 band unaffectedly adapts to stylistic
shifts. Historically rooted but progressive sounding, I can't help but
compare Harris' vision to that of Jimi Hendrix"
"If you're looking for a sound, they've got one in spades", said
Robert Christgau of The Voice
.
Daily Bread, Corey's most recent release on Rounder records,
represents the culmination of years of touring and recording. Hailed
by Billboard magazine as "a gem, Corey and his electric band, the 5x5
(with John Gilmore on drums and Houston Ross on bass) are taking the
music world by storm. Offbeat magazine calls Corey "one of America's
more vital roots artists, so deep inside himself that he remains
uncategorizable."
. National newspapers and magazines climb all over each other to
accurately describe Corey Harris and his music. Blues Revue magazine
says, "Harris is a rarity, a throwback to a lost era and an innovator
as well. Dynamic fingerpicking and other-worldly singing." The
Chicago Sun-Times raves, "Harris draws such resonance and varied tonal
quality from his National (guitar) that it sounds at times as if
several guitarists are playing."
Experience Corey Harris and his 5 x 5 band for yourself. up close and
personal at The Green Parrot Bar, your Southernmost Center for Blues
Culture at the corner of Whitehead and Southard Streets.
For additional information call The Green Parrot at 294-6133.

Julien Kasper

Julien Kasper struts his stuff to the Parrot faithful. By all reports the guy was amazing and really needs to do two nights next time so the word can get out to the faithful. Many local musicians were present and jaws were dropping left and right. The guy has the chops and some chord fingerings that defy description and challenge anatomy: witness the spread in the bottom photo and there was four hours of this shit.
He teaches a course on Jimi Hendrix at the Berklee School of Music, the only course of its kind anywhere. He's more than a scholar though having paid some dues in Austin and Miami, to name a few.
And by the way, the guy was totally unassuming and couldn't be nicer.
photo credit:Tony Gregory

Springtime in Indianapolis

Things may have thawed since these photos were forwarded to me but you have my apologies for the glacial (no pun intended) pace with which things move here here at the nerve center of the green parrot' Thanks for the photos Rachel and the one shot of your bungalow is right out of Currier and Ives. And the shot of Jimmy...he looks like one chilly ninja.

Caution: Artist At Work

Here's visiting artist Steve Heuel single-handedly attempting to "dispel the myth that artists are utterly incapable of any form of physical labor" (hey, he said it, I didn't) by pushing a wheelbarrel loaded with his grandmother's cast iron Sears and Roebuck wood stove to his truck to be transported back to from whence it came, Wisconsin, where it will be infinitely more useful than here in Key West.
To Stevie I would say that, wheelbarrel olympics aside, the first thing I would do to dispel that myth would be to get a J-O-B and stop hanging around the toolshed of the Green Parrot and poundin' the Beck's.

Fats and Trumpet Bob

This is Trumpet Bob, no slave to fashion, who, while sketching The Parrot takes a break to chat a bit and to admire another artist's (Steve Heuel) portrait of another trumpeter (Fats Navarro) which will soon hang on the stage of The Green Parrot.
Bob was well aware of the legendary Fats' role as a seminal figure in Bee Bop.
Fats, a Key West native was said by many to have been the best jazz trumpeter of his generation, which of course included Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. He had a huge natural talent and a meteoric career that ended all to soon at the age of twenty seven.

A "Sound Check" Fan

Alice with Johnny Sketch

Here'a Alice last Monday with Johnny Sketch of The Dirty Notes gettin' a free ride.

On The Look Out

This would be the ever-vigilant Captain Conch in tandem with SIB outside the Parrot.
"Careful, Dude, there's a beverage involved here"

More of the SuperHeroes

As we said, there would be more to follow. This would be Stock Island Boy, part of the CrimeFighting Arm of the Alice Foundation.
I for one can't wait to hear what his SuperPowers are.

Mondays with Alice, Vol. 1

You know, I'd like to say I have no idea what the hell is going on here, but I I do.
This would be Alice, onstage with Jimbo Mathus' KnockDown South, and joined by the Crime Fighting Wing of the Alice Foundatiion, namely, Stock Island Boy and Captain Conch. And I would venture to say that, Jimbo, who I'm sure has seen a lot, does not appear ready for this rodeo.
More to follow, I'm afraid.

Jimbo's Book Club

Jimbo takes advantage of the laid-back reading room atmosphere of the Parrot at midday to curl up with a favorite volume.

Jimbo Mathus' Parrot Webcam Debut

Jimbo Mathus' Knockdown South brought their North Mississippi juke joint blues to the Parrot for the third time but this time with a twist as they became the first band to be beamed on the internet on the Parrot newly-minted stage webcam. All shows should be available for live viewing and many will be archived to view again and again. I know, I know, we swore we'd never do this and believe me we agonized over it (till it gave me a headache) but lately some of this stuff has been to good not to share.
My mother always said "never hide your light under a bushel" so here goes.
There's a link to the webcam on our home page, so check out out entertainment calendar, grab a beer, put on your smirk t shirt, enjoy, and let us know what you think.

Update: Here's a link to the webcam. V.

Oconomowoc Artist steve Heuel

Visiting Wisconsin artist Steve Heuel, who has done probably more installatiions in the Parrot than anyone, puts the finishing touches on this one out back.

Those Halloran Boys

The Halloran brothers, former city commisioner and old friend George and visiting brother Andrew paid us a visit yesterday, ostensibly to check to see if the Boca Chica Bar sign George had put on loan to the bar was still on display (it was) but we think it was just a chance to grab a beer (they did).
George looks rightfully proud and Andrew looks down right Heminwayesque as they stand under the sign George had spotted in a Havana, Cuba boatyard while he was having his boat hauled out there a dozen or so years ago. George managed to salvage the sign, which was being used at the time to keep a cuban boat mechanic's head out of the dirt while he crawled around under some dry-docked vessel. George recognized the valuable piece of Key West memorobilia for what it was, proceeded to big-deal the guy out of it, and hand-delivered it to us at the Parrot where it hangs today. And for that George gets a beer on us whenever he walks in the door.
For those who don't remember the Boca Chica Bar it was located right on US 1 in Stock Island that saw it's hay-day in the seventies and eighties and was kind of like Stock Island's own little Barbary Coast, rife with smugglers, hookers, cops-on- the-take,fisherman, gays, thieves, writers, musicians, the occasional slumming or over-dosed celebrity and pretty much everything in between. Unless you've spent some time in there or maybe even been woken up out front of the place in the bed of a pickup truck at 7 AM with the tropical sun blazing down on you it's pretty hard to describe.
There is nothing in town today to compare it to. It was a cross section of a Key West that has all but vanished and could certainly never be recreated and put under one roof again (a scary proposition at best). The stage was wrapped in cyclone fencing like Bob's Country Bunker in the Blues Brothers movie, the bartenders and the bouncers didn't suffer fools gladly, and as the sign says, it was "Open 7 Days a Week, 24 Hours a Day" although the place didn't really come into it's own until 4 AM or later, when all bars in key west proper let out and all the not yet sated revelers poured over the Cow Key Channel bridge for a nightcap...or two. I believe Hunter S. Thompson made mention of it on occasion as the "soft underbelly of Key West".
Anyway, thanks George, for thinking of us.
As a kind of sidebar to this it seems that my son Nick's longtime girlfriend Renee's family were the proprietors of The Boca Chica Bar and she, like Nick, grew up in the salty atmosphere of a Key West bar. If these two wonderful young folks ever decide to tie the knot it would signify the union of the two great slum bars in recent key west history, a union, I would venture, on the scale of one between the Borgias and the DeMedicis.

Public Service Announcement for NOLA Area Voters

The Louisianna Secretary of State has posted information for displaced voters to obtain absentee ballots.

With so many of our NOLA and gulf coast friends spread far and wide, we thought some outreach might be helpful.

Here you GO!

.

Hendrix Scholar Julien Kasper, Thursday, March 23rd

Blues/Rock Guitar Virtuoso at The Green Parrot
"Jimi Henrix Scholar"
Blues/rock guitar phenomenon Julien Kasper will appear at the Green Parrot Bar for one night only on Thursday, March 23rd beginning at 10 o’clock.
South Florida Blues fans may remember Kasper as a member of Florida’s legendary swamp/blues band Iko Iko. Others may have heard of him as the only associate professor of guitar at Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music, or anywhere, for that matter, to offer courses on Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck. A recognized authority on the playing of these two masters and described by Guitar Player magazine as a “guitarist’s guitarist” with “a stunning virtuosity” he has used his perennially popular Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck performance labs at Berklee to advance rock, jazz and blues techniques and now he
brings this improvisational spirit on the road and more specifically to culture-hungry patrons at The Green Parrot.
The Green Parrot is your Southermost Center for Blues Culture at the corner of Southard and Whitehead Streets. For more information call The Green Parrot at 294-6133.

The Fins, Friday and Saturday March 17th and 18th

Take a Ride With The Fins
at The Green Parrot

The Fins are back! The blues & party band that reviewers and audiences throughout New York and New Jersey have acclaimed as the hippest, hottest, most happening band around are heading straight back to their favorite south Florida gig - The Green Parrot Bar - on Friday and Saturday March 17th and 18th, at 10 pm with a special 5 P.M. ”Sound Check” on Saturday.
The Fins have brought together Chicago blues, jazz, jump, funk and swing styles for a fresh sound all their own.
The Fins have shared the stage with B.B. King, Albert Collins, Buddy Guy, KoKo Taylor, and dozens more Blues greats. Now, they’ve got the legendary Green Parrot stage to add to their impressive list. Gary Walker of WBGO sums it up best, "What's a '59 Imperial without Fins? Nothin'! What's Jumpin' Blues without The Fins? Nothin'!"
Take a ride with The Fins this weekend at The Green Parrot Bar, the Southernmost Center for Blues Culture, at the corner of Southard & Whitehead streets. For additional information call 294-6133.

Johnny Sketch and The Dirty Notes

Heidi's Mom

Heidi's mom prepares to shove off from the Green Parrot in the style of Pat Lonergan, i.e. with his bags occupying the bar stool next to him as he waits for a cab.
As it turned out they needn't have been rushing since while they were running for their cab another cab was bursting into flames at the airport and delaying all the flights.

Johnny Sketch and The Dirty Notes

Spring (break) is in the Air

What's the first sign of spring on our corner?
A crocus peeping out of the soil?
A robin redbreast?
How about the first appearance of Woody, our tight-lipped and ever-vigilant doorman on the Whitehead Street side.

Art Conservator Steve Heuel

Flown in from Wisconsin for the occassion, Green Parrot Art Conservator Steve Heuel spruces up the Bill Berg portrait of the Great Thinker in preparation for Einstein's birthday next week.

Brian Stoltz

New Orleans' King of Funk Guitar Brian Stoltz turned in three stunning shows in two days and even the seasoned fans at The Parrot were in awe of this guy's seemingly effortless guitar wizardry.
Pictured on the porch of the bandhouse in the bottom photo is Brian with his Fort Lauderdale-based bassist Kilmo as they fuel themselves with their morning Cuban coffee from Buco's Courthouse Deli across the street from the bar.

Time To Funk It Up with Brian Stoltz

Funky Meters' Brian Stoltz
Returns to Green Parrot
It's gonna be a couple of those Oh-Boy-They've-Done-It-Again nights
at The Green Parrot as New Orleans' King of Funk Guitar, Brian Stoltz
returns to the Parrot stage for two Funked-Up performances on Tuesday
and Wednesday nights, March 7th and 8th, beginning at 10 o'clock, with
a special 5 P.M. "Sound Check" on Wednesday.
While Brian is probably best known as the guitarist for the Funky
Meters, before that he was busy touring and recording for 10 years
with the world renowned "First Family of Funk," the Neville Brothers.
In addition, Stoltz has created fluid and coherent bodies of work on
his own. Always in demand as a phenomenal guitarist, his skill as a
songwriter has caught the attention of artists like Aaron Neville, the
Neville Brothers, blues artist Coco Montoya, zydeco artist Zachary
Richard and film director John Sayles.
Renowned for his awesome virtuosity and unmistakable sound, his
performances have been featured on recordings by artists as diverse as
Bob Dylan, Edie Brickell, Linda Ronstadt, the Neville Brothers, Dr.
John and Aaron Neville to name a few.
Brian is currently touring and recording with the New Orleans
supergroup Porter-Stoltz and Batiste as well as touring the country
leading his own band and in solo performances.
The Green Parrot Bar, on the corner of Whitehead & Southard Streets,
is indeed the Southernmost Center for Funky Culture. For more
information call 294-6133.

Albert Castiglia and Graham Wood Drout