A-Train Entertainment

Welcome to the A-Train Newsletter

In this issue

2009 GRAMMY NOMINEES

Kasai All-Stars fRoots Album of the Year

Canyon Records Wins CAMA Awards!

Hector Zazou’s 'In The House Of Mirrors' Garners Esteemed Reviews

Tour dates from Will Bernard, Bloodkin, and Canyon Artists

Nina Simone said it best: “It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me…and I’m feeling good.” And feeling good is what it’s all about in this new year with a new season of releases from A-Train! Starting off the new year’s celebration for ‘09 we proudly present and congratulate our five Grammy nominees and other distinguished award winners, along with a host of titles from around the globe. From Georgia to Morocco to Brazil to the Congo and beyond, A-Train is coming with nothing less than an A-list roster of hits to keep the party going all year long! .

- The A-Train Staff

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2009 Grammy Nominations

Grammys 09

Best New Age Album(Vocal or Instrumental)

Pathfinder
Will Clipman
Canyon Records

Best Native American Music Album (Vocal or Instrumental)

Spo'Mo'Kin'Nan
Black Lodge
Canyon Records

Red Rock
Northern Cree
Canyon Records

Come To Me Great Mystery — Native American Healing Songs
(Various Artists)
Tom Wasinger, producer
Silver Wave Records

Faith
Kevin Yazzie
Canyon Records

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Canyon Records Wins CAMA Awards!

In addition to their 4 Grammy nominations, Canyon Records were feted at the 10th Annual Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards, presented November 23rd, 2008 in Toronto, Ontario. CR artist Northern Cree received two CAMA awards for "Red Rock" (Best Pow-Wow Album) and "Dancin' 'til Sunrise" (Best Hand Drum Album). All four Grammy nominees and the two CAMA winners were produced by Stephen Butler, Canyon Records director of production.

At the Indian Summer Music Awards Northern Cree & Friends' Calling All Dancers landed the award for Best Hand Drum Album, while five other artists received nominations: Northern Cree, Red Rock (Best Pow-Wow Album, Contemporary), Warscout, Scouts (Best Traditional Album), Blackstone Bring Your Feathers In! (Best Traditional Artist), Clark Calrk Tenakhongva, Po'li (Best International Album), Alex E. Smith, and Cheevers Toppah & Nitanis "Kit" Landry, Harmony Nights (Best International Album).

The 2008 Native American Music Awards saw another win for Northern Cree & Friends for their Calling All Dancers in the category of Best Traditional Drum Album. Six other Canyon artists were nominated: Verdell Primeaux, Johnny Mike, Xavier Quikas Yxayotl, Steven Frailey & Stephen Butler, The Color of Morning (Best Traditional Vocal Album), Elk Soldier The Elk Way (Best Traditional Drum Album), Verdell Primeaux & Terry Hanks Stories Told (Best Traditional Vocal Album), R. Carlos Nakai, Udi Bar-David & Will Clipman, Voyagers (Best Flute Album), Clark Tenakhongva Po'li (Best Traditional Vocal Album), and Cheevers Toppah & Kevin Yazzie First Light (Best Traditional Vocal Album).

www.canyonrecords.com

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Kasai Allstars Nominated for fRoots Album Of The Year…Rolling Stone Gives Praise

Kasai

Congrats to Kasai Allstars on their 2008 nomination for the fRoots Critics Poll Album Of The Year with their newest release In the 7th Moon, The Chief Turned Into a Swimming Fish and Ate the Head of His Enemy By Magic. This year the band has been building heat with a stellar album name backed by much glowing press including a Rolling Stone Magazine review citing the groups “deeply hypnotic, interlocking rhythms” as the “Best jam moment that never happened at Bonaroo…bring on the US tour!”

www.crammed.be

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Hector Zazou’s 'In The House Of Mirrors' Garners Esteemed Reviews

zazou

Hector Zazou was known for innovation and boundary busting composure, so it comes as no surprise that his last album In The House Of Mirrors, released just after his death this past September, has hit the hearts and minds of listeners with his inspiring, signature journeys into sound. Praise from Sonic Boomers hails the records as “an infinite reflection on all the different aspects of musical cultures…Classical Asian music has never sounded like this…impossible not to feel…An album of the ages, for all ages”. Zazou himself reflected on the album, noting the recording experience as being “A lot of love and--I don’t really like this word--something very spiritual, practically mystical. The beauty and depth of the inspiration that comes forth from these musicians, who are steeped in a ‘sacred’ relationship with music, has really moved me a lot.” All Music Guide notes “This is deeply spiritual ambient music that has as its source of inspiration not only the land, but the human heart and its multiple secret chambers. [Zazou] has given us a record to ponder slowly, deliberately, and purposely yet reward us with real fulfillment in the listening experience.”

www.crammed.be

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NEW RELEASES

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Phunk Junkeez
Hydro Phonic

With the groups sixth release, Hydro Phonic, the Phunk Junkeez are throwing a worldwide party, and everyone's invited! This new recording is a rock-mixture, a fusion of hip hop, punk, funk and rock music styles with the Junkeez infamous lyrical energy. Through their consistent touring, record sales and visibility, the Junkeez have developed a core underground fan base. Featured on more than 40 film, television and videogame soundtracks and performing over 120 shows a year in the United States with the likes of Primus, Kottonmouth Kings, No Doubt, Pennywise, Incubus, Run DMC, Lenny Kravitz, Insane Clown Posse, Wu Tang Clan, Slightly Stoopid, Pepper, Linkin Park and most recently 311, they have ultimately become a catalyst & stable for a style of music which they helped create.

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David Darling
Prayer for Compassion

"Maverick cellist" is the phrase most often assigned to David Darling, but it hardly captures the richness, diversity, breadth and sense of humor of a man who literally has redefined the way the cello is played and the way music is taught. His five solo albums and appearances with the likes of Bobby McFerrin, Spyro Gyra, the Paul Winter Consort, Arlo Guthrie, Ketil Bjornstad and R. Carlos Nakai represent nearly every musical genre and every conceivable way a human can communicate via stringed instrument. Recent credits include collaborating on the musical scores for works by noted European film makers Jean-Luc Godard, Wim Wenders, and Sandra Nettelbeck; Sandra’s latest “Helen” with score by David Darling makes its Sundance debut in January 09.

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David Darling & Eve Kodiak “The Return to Desire” Review

"It is hard to believe that this compelling music is improvised, and yet, listening to it repeatedly, as I have done, makes you feel, yes, this is not music labored over, revised, vetted, but music springing direct from the soul and musical sensibility of the two musicians, cellist Darling, and pianist, Kodiak. And like spontaneous verbal expressions of love, grief, joy, regret, longing, are never said exactly the same way again. This what makes the music so immediate. You are there with the musicians at the moment of creation…”

Barbara Garland Polikoff – winner of the Carl Sandburg Award for her novel "Life's a funny Proposition, Horatio"

Eve Kodiak's music receives honorable mention from Yo Yo Ma! See her new videos here:

Dona Nobis Pacem: 8 "Scrapbook" Variations, Pt. I

Dona Nobis Pacem: 8 "Scrapbook" Variations, Pt. II


Glenn Phillips

Glenn Phillips’ musical career began in 1967, as a founding member and songwriter of the legendary Hampton Grease Band. The group released a double LP on Columbia and played with countless classic bands of the era, including Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead, Fleetwood Mac and The Allman Brothers. In 1973, Phillips began his solo career and in 1975, he released his first album, Lost at Sea. Recording at home and self-released, it predated, as well as influenced, the do-it-yourself movement that overtook rock music several years later.

In the years since, Phillips has released 11 albums under his own name and has also collaborated with artists as diverse as Pete Buck of REM and Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead. The one constant throughout Phillip’s career is that his music has remained as unique as it is acclaimed. Rolling Stone writes, “If rock & roll guitarists were like Kamikaze pilots, Glenn Phillips would be in heaven right now.” Phillips has received several 4-star reviews in the magazine, one of them for Echoes, a double CD career retrospective. From Relix, “Phillips is a guitarist with flair and imagination and seemingly limitless technical ability. He comes up with a sound that defies categorization. His music is melodic, it’s tough, it’s uplifting, it’s inventive and highly recommended.”

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Supreme Court
Supreme Court Goes Electric

Forget about those nine robed stiffs laying out the law in the nation's capital. Weld deranged Southern-cracker humor to a guitar that blows as hot as an acetylene torch and you've got an inkling of what this other, far more intentionally entertaining Supreme Court is all about. Supreme Court Goes Electric presents a gallery of colorful characters who are dealing with urge overkill in a variety of time-tested ways: hitting the road or the bottle, cheating on the wife, blowing it all in Vegas, pontificating gloomily on the corner, vowing revenge on the world. The chief architects behind the Court are vocalist and rhythm guitarist Jeff Calder of the Swimming Pool Q's and uberguitarist Glenn Phillips, who has been cutting an instrumental swath through uncharted terrain for more than two decades. Calder's nut-house vocals- especially on soliloquies such as "King Fried Jackass" and "Hot Potato"- mimic the railings of the deliriously dispossessed, sun-crazed scions of the South. More pathetic characters are treated with compassion. By cutting the madcap commentary with more sympathetic material like this, they have shown there can be balance on the Supreme Court after all-at least on the version that uses guitars instead of gavels, that is. – Rolling Stone Magazine

Echoes 1975 - 1985

“Echoes is a flawlessly compiled record of a decade's worth of music." **** - Rolling Stone

Walking Through Walls

"Like Hendrix, but in a vastly different way, his guitar is the voice of his soul, and it's a soul as stirring as that of any great poet. In an era of cynical, corporate-inspired copycatting, Walls is the work of a true original." - huH Magazine

Scratched By The Rabbit

"Phillips is a guitarist with flair and imagination and seemingly limitless technical ability. Scratched by the Rabbit is tough, it's uplifting, inventive, and highly recommended." - Relix Magazine

Angel Sparks

"Listening to Angel Sparks is like armchair travel to a place you didn't even know existed." - Atlanta Journal-Constitution

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Larry Ochs, Miya Masaoka & Peggy Lee
Spiller Alley

"This music of exquisite sensibilities, profound listening and genuinely laid-back cloth at first throws you; nobody is trying to do anything, just play as together as possible. Nobody gets in anybody’s face, including the listener. Nobody solos more than the depth they listen at; nobody never wanted not to be there... Anyway if this ingenious blend of scents from Masaoka’s ancient koto, Lee’s middle-European cello and Ochs’ out of hock saxes is any indication, 'musica da camera' - that old elite art of chamber music - is going to be around for some time yet," says composer Alvin Curran. Spiller Alley was recorded on Avril 2006 by Alberto Spezzamonte (Venice, Teatro Fondamente Nuovo, Italy), Wolfgang Obrecht (Munich, Offene Ohren e.V., Germany), Charly Wienand (St Johan, Alte Gerberei, Austri) and received notable mention in AllAboutJazz Best of 2008.

See the reviews:
Free Jazz Blog Review and JazzLoft: (noted in Free Jazz' "2008 Best of List")
Point of Departure Review
Artist Bios

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New from Crammed Discs

U-Cef
Halalwood

Morocco's first and foremost digitalizer delivers his debut album for Crammed. 'Halalwood' is a tour-de-force which puts gnawa music, dub, sinuous classic Arabic arrangements for qanun, flute & violins, electronic beats, MCs, big drums and crunchy rock guitars into a giant blender to produce something fresh and original. U-Cef has all the legitimacy and inspiration needed to navigate between cultures without any prejudice, disrespect or fear. Born and raised in Rabat, he absorbed much of his native Morocco's multiple traditions before moving first to New York and then to London, immersing himself along the way in the Western world's electronic & rock scenes. His first CD 'Halalium' (2001) was a milestone in Moroccan urban dance music, and has inspired a whole generation of rappers, b-boys and pro-tools adventurers, from Tangiers to Taroudant and Melila to Marrakech. 'Halalwood' boasts an exciting cast of high profile guests including Damon Albarn, Natacha Atlas, Rachid Taha, Mirror System (Steve Hillage & Miquette Giraudy), UK Apache, Amina Annabi, Justin Adams and rap duo Dar Gnawa.

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BossaCucaNova
Ao Vivo (celebrating 50 years of bossa nova)

Bossacucanova are the Brazilian band who first tackled the electronic/bossa fusion with their milestone debut album back in '98. They are celebrating the 50th anniversary of bossa nova with this new release, which documents an exciting night at Rio de Janeiro's famous Canecão concert hall, where they invited bossa legends and prominent young artists to join them onstage to revisit classic bossa songs. They also organised a series of acoustic sessions in the comfort of Nara Leão's apartment in Rio, which spawned lovely, relaxed performances and some interesting insights about the early days of bossa nova. "Ao Vivo" comprises tracks recorded live in the concert hall and during the apartment sessions.

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BossaCucaNova and Robert Menescal
Brasildade

BossaCucaNova burst onto the international dance music scene in 1999 with Revisited Classics, a collection of both new and old bossa nova songs given new life and vigor through the application of funky breakbeats, skillful turntablism, electronic manipulation and adventurous mixology. Bossacucanova's approach to Euro-Brazilian fusion was unusually respectful of their home country's traditions, putting the bossa first and the electronica second, and the international music press took notice quickly. Brasilidade found them working with the legendary guitarist Roberto Menescal, composer of several classic bossas and a hugely influential producer and A&R man during the 1970s. On Brasilidade the band takes a more organic approach to modern bossa nova, spending less time coming up with electronic adaptations of classic material and focusing more on writing new songs that could be played in a live setting. You can hear more of the band's debt to the traditional verities of Brazilian dance music, but there is still no question that they are coming up with new and better ways to get people up and out of their chairs.

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Staff Benda Bilili
Très Très Forte

Staff Benda Bilili are like nothing you have ever seen or heard before. A group of paraplegic street musicians who live in and around the grounds of the zoo in Kinshasa, Congo, they make music of astonishing power and beauty. Five senior singer/guitarists on makeshift wheelchairs are supported by a young, all-acoustic rhythm section, and a 17 year-old prodigy performing infectious guitar-like solos on a one-string electric lute he designed and built himself out of a tin can. Within the group's mesmerising rumba-rooted grooves, overlaid with vibrant vocal arrangements, you can hear echoes of old-school rhythm and blues, then reggae, then no-holds barred funk. Prepare yourself for the utterly soulful and mesmerising sound of Staff Benda Bilili.

To see a video of Staff Benda Bilili, Crammed's exciting new band from DR Congo, performing "Polio" from their album "Tres Tres Fort," please click HERE

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UPCOMING RELEASES

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FLAT EARTH SOCIETY - Cheer Me, Perverts


MOCKY - Saskamodie


PHUNK JUNKEEZ - Live Material


JOSE NETO - Mountains in the Sea


ROGER SMITH - My Colors


NEW JAZZ HUSTLERS (Stuart Wade of Down to The Bone)



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TOUR DATES

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Will Bernard Band

Featuring Andy Hess (bass), John Medeski (keyboards), and Stanton Moore (drums)

MARCH 20, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO JAZZ FESTIVAL - SAN FRANCISCO, CA

MARCH 21, 2009
THE ROXY - LOS ANGELES, CA

MARCH 22, 2009
THE ORIENTAL THEATER - DENVER, CO

MARCH 23, 2009
FOX THEATER - BOULDER, CO

MARCH 24, 2009
HODI'S HALF NOTE - FT. COLLINS, CO

MARCH 25, 2009
STATE THEATER - FALLS CHURCH, VA

MARCH 26, 2009
HIGHLINE BALLROOM - NEW YORK, NY

Canyon Records

January 24 2009, 7 PM
Will Clipman
Wilde Boys at Dicus Auditorium, Ajo AZ

January 25 2009, 1 PM
Will Clipman
Scott August, Quail Creek, Madera Club House, Green Valley AZ

February 14 2009, 11:30 AM-3:30 PM
Will Clipman
Amber Norgaard, Sabra Faulk & Will Clipman at 17th Street Market, Tucson AZ

February 21 2009, 8 PM
Will Clipman
Gentle Thunder & Will Clipman, Unity Center, Austin TX

February 22, 2009 3 PM
R. Carlos Nakai & James DeMars
Phoenix Boys Choir and premiere, soloist, Jim DeMars at Chaparal Christian Church, Scottsdale, AZ

February 25, 2009 6 PM
Peter Phippen
Shanghai Bistro, Eus Claire, WI

Saturday March 14 2009, 8 PM
Will Clipman
William Eaton Ensemble, Old Town Center for the Arts, Cottonwood AZ

March 20-22, 2009 12 PM
Peter Phippen
Madison Four Lakes Flute Circle Equinox Retreat - Devil’s Lake, Devil’s Lake, Wisconsin

March 20 2009, 7 PM
Will ClipmanTim Weed Quintet, Javarita Coffeehouse Concert Series, Sahuarita AZ

March 21 2009, 8 PM
Will Clipman
Wilde Boys, Old Town Center for the Arts, Cottonwood AZ

March 22 2009, 3 PM
Will Clipman
Wilde Boys, Old Town Center for the Arts, Cottonwood AZ

March 22, 2009 12:45 PM
Gabriel Ayala
Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, Scottsdale Arts Festival, 7380 E 2nd St, Scottsdale, AZ

March 29, 2009
R. Carlos Nakai
Bloomsburg PA symphony, Gift to the People by Jim Hoch, soloist.

April 17, 2009, time TBA
Will Clipman
Amber Norgaard, Sabra Faulk & Will Clipman, Javarita Coffeehouse Concert Series, Sahuarita AZ

April 26, 2009, 6 PM
Will Clipman
Mary Redhouse & Will Clipman, Casa Esperanza, Green Valley AZ

June 13, 2009, 8 PM
Will Clipman
Wilde Boys, Sheridan Opera House, Telluride CO

July 19, 2009
Peter Phippen
The Norwood Village Green Concert Series at the Norwood Village Green Band Shell in Norwood, New York, show starts at 7:00 pm. Peter will perform gentle improvisations on antique and modern Shakuhachi, Bansuri, Anasazi, Native American and Wooden folk flutes.

August 17-19, 2009
R. Carlos Nakai
Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival World Premiere, Jerod Tate's Woodwind Quintet.

Bloodkin

(touring with the Drive-By Truckers in January and February)

January 24, 2009

The National - Richmond, VA

January 29, 2009

Valarium - Knoxville, TN

January 30, 2009

The Orange Peel - Asheville, NC

January 31, 2009

The Orange Peel - Asheville, NC

February 19, 2009

The Music Farm - Charleston, SC

February 20, 2009

9:30 CLUB - Washington DC

February 21, 2009

9:30 CLUB - Washington DC

March 6, 2009

Mellow Mushroom - Tuscaloosa, AL

March 7, 2009

Proud Larry’s - Oxford, MS

March 13, 2009

Loco’s Live - Savannah, GA

March 14, 2009

Freebird - Jacksonville, FL

March 19, 2009

40 Watt - Athens, GA

March 21, 2009

GottRocks - Greenville, SC

March 27, 2009

Sky City - Augusta, GA

March 28, 2009

Smith’s Olde Bar - Atlanta, GA

April 18, 2009

Double Door - Chicago, IL

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For More Information Contact:

Bob Williard - Digital Distribution • A-Train Entertainment • bob@a-train.com