This post is from Out the Other's 2009 Bonnaroo Artist Previews, where I will be posting previews of all the musical acts playing the 2009 Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival. Please check out and subscribe to the full site to learn more about all of this year's performers.
Editor's note: This is a guest preview from J. David Wicker - my friend, fellow music aficionado, and occasional Out the Other guest-blogger. Someday when he stops filling his plate with everything under the sun, I hope he starts a music blog of his own.
“Or Should I Say, Declan MacManus, International Art Thief?”
Given the expansive career of Elvis Costello, it would not
come as shock to discover that Jack Donaghy’s accusation bears a shred of truth. Costello began as part of the New Wave
movement when he started with his big horned-rimmed, geeky glasses, releasing “My
Aim is True” in 1977. Since that time he
has committed more than 300 songs to record, and gone through various
permutations, testing the waters of classical music and the Americana genre. Simply put, Elvis Costello is one of the most
prolific songwriters of his generation.
His most recent record, Secret, Profane & Sugarcane,
is as difficult a task to describe as Costello’s career. Costello hooked up
with fellow noodler T Bone Burnett for this album which was recorded in Nashville
over the course of three eight-hour sessions last year. It features two tracks
Costello wrote for Johnny Cash, duets with Loretta Lynn and Emmylou Harris, and
several of the players on Burnett’s last album, the Robert Plant and Alison Krauss
collaboration Raising Sand. The country-tinged record gets spiced up by
Costello with a few songs from his unfinished opera about the Danish author Hans
Christian Andersen. In other words, it’s
not exactly your standard Nashville country album.
Costello will be accompanied only by his acoustic guitar
at Bonnaroo this year. He has shows with
the Sugarcanes, a band featuring many of the musicians who played on the new
album, slated for either side of the festival, including a date in Nashville at
the Ryman on Monday, June 16.
For those that aren’t able to catch Costello’s set at
Bonnaroo, his recent appearance in “30 Rock” should help to ease the
pain. Besides speaking in the middle of
the “Kidney Now!” benefit song, because “when someone starts talking in the
middle of a song you know it’s serious”, he is also referenced in a joke that
serves as the only entertaining thing a member of Maroon 5 has ever done.
Adam Levine: “I’m in, but when Costello’s not looking I’m
gonna punch him in the back of the head.”
Jack Donaghy: “Fair enough.”
"Down Among the Wines and Spirits"
"Pump It Up"
Elvis Costello will play the That Tent on Saturday from 6:45-8:15 p.m. Check out the Full Bonnaroo schedule on the official Bonnaroo website.
