Luther Wright & the Wrongs

Blog Archive

| 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 |

The New Year Ahead

December 14th, 2006

Howdy! Well the new year looks to be bringing a trip west to do some solio shows with Hank & Lily, Carolyn Mark and the gang and then as the winter turns to spring we are putting together some concert series stuff around Kingston. My solo project (that is actually not really me and a guitar but alot of cross-over pop stuff) should be done in the first month or two of '07 as my buddy Marty Kinack is dialing in the mixes as we speak. The Hootenanny Revue is up and at'em tentatively starting in Montreal on March 29th. This time Jim Bryson will be playing the part of Oh Susanna and Shuyler Jansen. More dates to come on that soon.

Have a fine hoilday season! xxoo

Resist War

November 11th, 2006

A day of remembrance for the fallen in the wars of men. We are playing for the saddened at our local haunt, the Grad Club, tonight for a 2nd year running with the unbeatable Washboard Hank. A current conflict underway in Oaxaca City has been going on since the spring has become a national concern for Mexico and anyone who knows the state of Oaxaca and it's beautiful capital. For more information about the struggle by the Teachers Union and many other groups to rid the state of its governor you can start at: http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=1641422006 and google your brains out. Tonight we'll play a inspired version of Bells of Oaxaca in tribute to the people of Oaxaca City.

and for a musical look around please go to: www.resistwar.com and download the song.

Down South

October 4th, 2006

Greetings from lovely Thomas West Virginia where I played last night with the Shiftless Rounders at the awesome Purple Fiddle Cafe. The folks here are wonderful (they have a karma soup, free for the hungry) and present music almost every night of the week. The tour through Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia was full of adventure and many generous hosts that fed us fine and gave us warm, comfy places to sleep. As the tour progressed we have been melding our show into a smooth blend of our diverging styles. Phil & Benny are excellent players and singers so check out their music at www.theshiftlessrounders.com and keep an eye out for their new cd "Warm Clothing Line", that I'm producing and hope to have ready for the new year along with my own cd. A few more shows to get us home and then it's off to open for Jenny Whiteley at some of her cd release shows in support of her amazing new cd, "Dear". Go to www.blackhenmusic.com and click on the store and order her cd right away!! Well you're at it I highly recommend the music of Geoff Berner....Whiskey Rabbi will fill your cup my brethren...

zunior.com

September 20th, 2006

It looks like the LW & the Wrongs music is also for sale through http://www.zunior.com/ if you want to buy the downloadable album to put direct on the ipod/mp3 gadgets. You can find the LW & The Wrongs music under Snakeye Muzak on the left of the site in the browsing section.
The whole site is full of good music and one can acquire songs or entire albums in a lossless, audio format and if you are keen the artwork files too. The future is now!

Instrumentality

August 31st, 2006

The long awaited release of LW & the W's instrumental album is over! Yes music lovers you can buy it here http://www.lutherwright.com/store.php from Louie's discount music emporeum for the witchy price of 13 smackers (plus shipping, which is a real deal if you live outside of Canadadia as I can't figure how to charge the foreign buyers more for the postage).

Hey, retail banter aside it's a gem of a musical ride featuring ' the Wrongs at our bestest and wordylessness. Jason Mercer captured it for posterity right here at my secret hideout as we took a wee summer break before our monumental fall ' 03, North American tour. Can't say as I'll be perfoming many of these songs on my up-coming tour with The Shiftless Rounders but I'll be packing them in cd form at the shows and if you could come out I can play the guitar bits and hum you the fiddle & dobro parts if you are really keen (and I'm maybe a little sauced...) Yar!

some other music download options

August 29th, 2006

Hello there music lovers. I set up ap an account on my space:

http://www.myspace.com/lutherwright and loaded up 4 songs as they allow bigger files there and you can download easier. Broken F#@! Heart and the Land of Milk & Honey are there in their full version form and I've put up a remix of Goodbye Blue Sky that our friend Ben Rubin did. Very house, very good. But really the gem of the 4 is Elvis by The Muugworts, the band my brother George and I had back in the mid 90's when we were really angry at the future. It tells of a trip I took to Graceland back when an aunt of the king still lived at the house. We were on the last tour of the day and she stumbled out of a hidden door beside me with a lit smoke and said SHIT and marched away. The tour guide explained that she gets a bit uptight by the end of the day after a houseful of tourists snooping about. Well I guess so. Have a look and listen.

Mars Gets Really Close Soon...

August 17th, 2006

Yep, and that's your chance to jump ship. But if you are staying around earth then go out and see live music as there is a code in the beat that you can decipher and get your confirmation number for your flight to paradise. The Hootenanny Revue summer-lovin' tour was a festival size success! Everyone has scattered east and west to do their thang until next time which is set for middle of October out in Gords country (Alberta that is) and B.C., the land of magic, mushrooms, maryjane and mayonaise. Before that ship sails I'll be doing some diplomatic work down in the former colonies with my bearded buddies the Shiftless Rounders. As the tour dates section of ye ole website will attest, we are staying this side of the Mississippi but foraying as far south as our rental car agreement will allow. Not getting quite into ole Miss though, and it pains me not to play the Thirsty Hippo in Hattiesburg where LW & the Wrongs found sheer happiness in and amongst the many music lovers tucked away in the south eastern corner of that hot and history filled state.

My Old Man for sale!!

June 17th, 2006

That's right people. Got to yonder link and buy this gem.

Red Pajamas Records proudly announces the release of My Old Man: A Tribute to Steve Goodman. This album features an array of Goodman's most enduring songs translated by up-and-coming artists. On My Old Man, Ana Egge, Matt Keating, Emily Spray, Crescent & Frost, Chris Brown, Kate Fenner, Luther Wright and The Wrongs, Anna Hovhannessian, Tony Scherr, Teddy Kumpel and Rosanna Goodman (Steve's daughter) put their spin on Goodman's masterfully crafted classics.

buy:http://www.ohboy.com/red

review:http://www.suntimes.com/output/entertainment/sho-sunday-goodman09.html

"and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares..."

June 17th, 2006

After the excitement of playing the Steve Goodman tribute in NYC I went uptown with friends to the Church of St Ignatius Loyola for Father Dan Berrigans 85th birthday celbration. It featured short speeches, poetry and music from Pete Seeger, Kurt Vonnegut, Amy Goodman and many more friends and comrades of the Berrigan brothers. Dan and his late brother Phillip have been active for years in promoting peace and a better world and their roots in the catholic church and progressive approach have inspired many.

Below is an excerpt from Democracy Now!

"Philip and his younger brother poet Father Dan Berrigan, were leaders of the antiwar movement in the United States in the 1960s. Both were Catholic priests who fought for social justice. They staged their protests against military institutions and weapons manufacturers.

Dan and Philip Berrigan first rose to prominence within the anti-war movement when they burned draft files in a Catonsville, Maryland, parking lot in 1968 to protest the Vietnam War. The action led to harsh prison terms for the two brothers and seven others. But it also propelled the Berrigans into the national spotlight and sparked a nationwide series of draft card burnings.In 1980, they co-founded the Plowshares Movement, begun in 1980, when they and others entered a GE plant in Pennsylvania and hammered on nuclear warheads."

The event was also a benefit for The Saint Patrick's Four Activists and The Campaign to Shut Down Guantánamo. The latter is very visible in the news these days but the story of the St. Patrick Four is also very potent as the action follows in the footsteps of the Berrigan brothers in their unwavering dedication to push the peace package in bold ways that draw the worlds attention to the horrors of war.

The St. Patrick's Four (Catholic peace activists, Peter DeMott, Clare Grady and Teresa Grady and Daniel Burns) carried out their action in March 2003, when they entered a recruiting center in suburban Ithaca, poured their own blood on the walls, in the foyer and on a US flag and then refused to leave.

part of their statement as quoted in Democracy Now!

" We mark this recruiting office with our own blood to remind ourselves and others of the cost in human life of our government’s war making. Killing is wrong. Preparations for killing are wrong. The work done by the Pentagon with the guidance of this military recruiting station ends with the shedding of blood..."

These are times not to be passive in your resistance to war and oppression. If you are reading this then go on and use the web as a resource and learn what is being done and what needs to be done to stop the madness. The bad madness.

My Old Man cd release in the U.S. of A.

June 10th, 2006

Just winding down from the release event for "My Old Man" in NYC this past week. As mentioned below it is a tribute cd to Steve Goodman, the songwriter and performer best known for penning "The City of New Orleans" (which is the song we do on the cd). I'll put them up for sale on the site soon and you will buy one.

Here's part of the press release for the show that featured an all-star band backing the singers. It included Tony Scherr on bass, Anton Fier on drums, Teddy Kumpel on guitar and Chris Brown on hammond organ .

"October 7, 2004, shortly after the 20th anniversary of my father’s death. Several of us set off to New Jersey for a musical tribute to my father and benefit for a leukemia foundation. An evening of folk music. Folk music used to make me cringe. My old man died when I was seven. I rebelled in my musical childhood, having been brought up around an array of singer-songwriters, acoustic guitars and mandolins, discovered pop, hip-hop and metal. I formed a rock band and wrote my own songs. Through my dear Canadian friends Chris Brown and Kate Fenner, I realized all these years I had been missing out on the impact of a well written song. A well-written song can hit close to home – real close to home. I began digging in the boxes in our basement, reading clippings and listening to Dad’s music on CD, a format that didn’t exist while he was alive, realizing that not only was my dad an incredible song-writer but an American songwriting hero.

With the help of friends and talented peers I embraced my Dad’s music and legacy, and wanted to introduce it to my generation. I’ve gathered together the best young talent I knew or Chris knew, artists like Ana Egge, Luther Wright & The Wrongs, Crescent & Frost, Tony Scherr,

Chris Brown & Kate Fenner, Teddy Kumpel, Matt Keating & Emily Spray, and Anna Hovhannessian. These musicians have a kinship, shared songs, play together and look out for one another and, for the most part, invited me into their world so we could all share the life that remains in songs my Dad wrote decades ago. Some picked the songs they wanted to sing, and I handpicked a few I envisioned for them. Like my Dad, his friends and fellow musicians, John Prine, Johnny Cash, Bonnie Raitt, and Jimmy Buffett when they were our age. The wheel makes a new circle.

-Rosanna Goodman June, 2006

Victoria Day Report From The Colonies

May 20th, 2006

Deep into the wily month of May and the events are approaching as the calender ticks.

Despite sound negtoiations by our crackerjack booking team we found out that the Mariposa festival will be declining our Hootenanny Revue services this year. I t came as a surprise to all but agent Jenny quickly sorted us out a show at Harbourfront on the 15th of July and we've decided to host a festival in Elphin, Ontario on the weekend of July 8th. Details to follow about that. Rumours of a Hoot show in Wakefield, Quebec at the legendary Blacksheep Inn in early August also abound. Mandolin/rocket surgeon Dan Whiteley and I have been gigging around as a duo to great response and ' the Wrongs are playing a few local festivals in the next month too. The big news is that the cd "My Old Man", a tribute to Steve Goodman, is ready for release and all the artists that contributed to the cd are joining forces for a show at the Living Room in New York City on June 7th.

We contributed a version of City Of New Orleans for the cd as well as an instrumental number entitled, "Jesses Jig". The spike in the punch of the summer is all about the Hootenanny Revue in it's various forms, culminating with full attendance performances at the sold out, super-duper good time Hillside Festival in Guelph the last weekend of July and the equally awesome, yet slightly more for the whole family, Blue Skies festival the first week of August. We are ending the Hoot summer at the Wolfe Island festival on friday the 11th as part of this increasingly popular and always wonderful event presented once again by Sarah & Virg, two of Kingstons finest event organizers. And prior to all of that LW & the W's and Butterfingers! will be part of the first Skeleton Park Music Festival in Kingston on June 24th. It is a wonderful, community organized event that features loads of Kingston based bands and musicians.

Come one, come all!!

Hootenanny Pics and word of summer festivals

April 19th, 2006

Hey there! Back from the Hootenanny Revue that blazed through Quebec and Ontario with all in tow. There are fine photos from our big show at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto. Check out some photos at: http://TorontoLiveClubHub.com

Click on the Chronicles link and then click on Carolyn's coon-skin

We are gearing up for the festival circut this summer where the Hootenanny Revue will be performing Mariposa (Toronto), Hillside (Guelph), Blue Skies, Wolfe Island (Kingston Area), as well as Perths Stewart Park Festival, a little one of our own in Elphin and a few special shows in between. The 'Wrongs and Butterfingers! are appearing at the 1st annual Skelton Park festival in Kingston on June 24th. It's right in the city and looks to be a great local affair.

SHOP 'TILL YOU DROP!

February 21st, 2006

Hey hey, a nice woman named Daisy has helped me finally get the online store and photo gallery sections of this site open. We were painting and cleaning all night! But the shelves are stocked and our keen sales staff is standing by to ship off your orders. Photos are forthcoming still but it shan't be long before there are many glorious shots to peruse.

REVIEWS

February 3rd, 2006

As the review/press section of this site is not up and running I put some links to reviews in the links section at the bottom. check 'em out: http://www.lutherwright.com/links.php

Spring is looking good

February 1st, 2006

Going great guns out here in loyalist land with recording schemes coming into focus and touring plans multiplying like some freak-assed triginometry style-ee rabbit show. March is me heading west to hone my live performance skills with Ms. Carolyn and then The Shiftless Rounders as we careen through the mountains of B.C. and the flatlands of Alberty plunking out the pervasive party-folk music. Tour dates are listed in said section. And please check out: www.shiftlessroundrers.com for a taste of this New England duo that I was fortunate enough to meet whilst raging the roads with Po' Girl a year or so back.

Following those shows we all convene up in the highlands of Lanrk County to prepare the fabulous Hootenanny Revue thatwill be hitting the road in Ontario and Quebec for three big weeks starting March 30th. The dates and venues are soon to be listed so keep your datebook and a pen handy, it really is a show that is not to be missed.

Art is as art does

Middle class, low class, high class, working class whatever. Remember, modern theatre was suckled on the teat of the working poor. Shakespeare and his like counted on the rabble to fill the seats for
performances of plays that have since lasted centuries being staged in barns to concert halls. I'm not so sure money and taste and inexorably linked like perhaps they were in they heydays of the Edwarrdian era (late 1800's). The world needs accessible "art" more now than ever. It may be that the best thing people can do is to nuture their artistic urges. Each of us has a special, unique view of things and how we each choose to interpret and communicate those views is often one of the more fascinating elements of humanity for me. The artistic expression of total strangers carries no baggage beyond the piece presented. One can assume things about the creator of a painting or a song but really, who's to know if they ain't talkin'? Who really needs to know? It's just out there to take however we choose.
.

hey, I gotta go.

The Gallery is full of songs

January 25th, 2006

Up above where it says GALLERY you can head into the music room and listen to some songs from the catalogue. Some of them are shortened to fit the mp3 format. Something to whet your appetitie and if you want to buy the whole cd or the whole LW & the W's collection of cds you can head over to www.maplemusic.com The photo gallery is being worked on by a team of experts and like the store, ought to be up and running soon!

2006 is happening quick

January 24th, 2006

Moving right along with our newly elected government. Whew! Hey it looks like the Hootenanny Revue Tour 2006 is almost set to go. We are starting on the 30th of March in Kingston and playing our way through until the 15th of April. We'll have all the venues and dates up in a few weeks but I can tell you this, the line up has expanded! All in one night you can see: Carolyn Mark, Oh Susanna, Jenny Whiteley, Shuyler Jansen, Hank & Lily, Luther Wright all playing together and alone with our band of Dan Whiteley, Tolan McNeil, Diona Davies, and Cam Giroux. We have a theme song, dance moves, slick change overs and plenty of humourous asides. www.hootenanny.ca will also be packing some info as the day gets closer. Prior to that I'll be working away on the Luther cd and also will be playing a western pack of shows with my American amigos, the Shiftless Rounders in March that goes through B.C. and Alberta. Summer is shaping up too as the Hootenanny Revue Tour is being swept into some of the finer folk festivals out there. More news on that later.