Don’t be surprised if big slices of “Grapefruit Moon,” Southside Johnny Lyon’s big-band tribute to Tom Waits, leave you wishing that someone had produced a similar project for Ray Charles. Wouldn’t he have been inspired by the album’s vividly drawn songs and brassy orchestrations, especially when arranger Richie “LaBamba” Rosenberg pulls out all the stops on “Down, Down, Down,” “Please Call Me, Baby” and other treats drawn from the Waits catalogue?

Certainly the songs and the settings bring out the best in Lyon, not to mention the opportunity to share a duet with the composer himself during a chummy, swaggering, polyphonic arrangement of “Walk Away.” The lyrics demand a lot from a vocalist — soul, power, personality and finesse, for starters — and Lyon consistently delivers, supported by arrangements that blend large ensemble thrust and jazz solos with R&B touches, including blues harmonica and stinging lead-guitar work.

Some of Waits’s best-known tunes are freshly framed by Rosenberg and swiftly personalized by Lyon, including “New Coat of Paint” and “Shiver Me Timbers.” But it’s also a pleasure to hear Lyon unearth lesser-known gems such as “Dead and Lovely,” a terse, noir-inspired vignette that features one of Waits’s pitch-perfect lyrics: “She made up someone to be/She made up somewhere to be from.”

– Mike Joyce, The Washington Post

Source: The Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/21/AR2009052101627.html

SOUTHSIDE JOHNNY & LA BAMBA’s BIG BAND – LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O’BRIEN – September 18th, 2008.

WHAT A DUET! Sherry said: “OMG – it just doesn’t get any better than this!” And she’s been more than right on the point with that statement! LaBamba shines so much in his various roles as a bandleader, trombonist and singer (!!!)… I truly and deeply love the album duet by Johnny & his Waitsness himself. But here, the song gets into a whole new dimension… I only wish I could get more of that one day on a stage in Europe…

And the South? He seems to have the fun of his life… truly wonderful stuff!

sly – I didn’t even know your blog! Forgive me my ignorance! All you out there probably know Sherry from her famous JUKESLEGS project… and only the very, very few and lucky of you know her by her famous cakes… ;-)

Another Top 10 arrived: Donald Gibson, Music critic and editor for the Blogcritics Magazine compiled his ranking of the 10 best covers of the year 2008. Southside Johnny’s “Temptation” of GRAPEFURIT MOON made it on place 8, which is just great, given the Gazillion covers released again last year! So here’s what Donald had to say:

8) “Temptation” – Southside Johnny & The LaBamba Big Band Album: Grapefruit Moon: The Songs of Tom Waits Soaked in the faded glitz of late-night burlesque and the blue-collar grime of a Jersey shore bar, Southside Johnny bejewels this Tom Waits gem with a big brass band (or is it a brass big band?) and swagger to spare. It’s a nocturnal lament, ladies and gentlemen, rife with carnal delights and callings. It’s Southside Johnny for one night only, every night of the week: He sings! He swings! ‘Til the money runs out, he’ll tango ’til you pour.

http://donaldgibson.blogspot.com/2009/01/do-it-again-top-10-covers-of-2008.html

SOUTHSIDE JOHNNY, GRAPEFRUIT MOON: THE SONGS OF TOM WAITS: It’s all about the horns. Southside Johnny Lyons’ interpretations of classic Tom Waits tracks benefits from LaBamba and the Hubcaps rich horn section. The disc crackles with an energy nearly unmatched by any band recording this year.

Says GROOVEVOLT on their blog.

The interesting statement comes at the end – about how an album qualifies for the selection and what the consequences that selection process puts on the team:

This is not a countdown. These are the albums that filled our offices all year. Non-Stop, continuous play and sometimes feelings of hatred towards the employee who kept pressing repeat.

Now, me thinks, that the GROOVEVOLT office might be a place I would like to work at. Then I’d spend the whole day at the water cooler together with the person who kept pushing GRAPEFRUIT MOON… Thanks GROOVE-people!

While recently many folks have covered Waits’ music — ranging from the successful such as Holly Cole, to the ludicrous such as Scarlet Johansson — this is one of best salutes, enhanced not by the Jukes, but rather by Richard LaBamba Rosenberg’s big band settings, which are a real plus. (…)

He (Southside Johnny) has a years-on-the-road bar band voice — which while not quite a true junkyard razor-wire Waits-ian growl, does lend authenticity to the interpretations; and when Waits joins him for a duet on “Walk Away,” it sounds like the two of them have been trading lyrics in the back of some old-time, back-of-beyond, railroad bar for a long, long time.

Read the full review at: THE LAHONTAN VALLEY NEWS

There’s some fabulous bar joints up and down the dirt roads in Nevada – I’d always like to see the Jukes in such a setting. But imagining a Big-Band show at Cesars Palace, Las Vegas, NV that’s my favourite of the moment… anyone like to join me?

3. Southside Johnny. Grapefruit Moon: The Songs of Tom Waits: It’s all about the horns. Southside Johnny Lyons’ interpretations of classic Tom Waits tracks benefits from LaBamba and the Hubcaps rich horn section. The disc crackles with an energy nearly unmatched by any band recording this year.

This is another very, very nice compliment to the great tribute to Tom Waits and the Big-Band sound of 2008.

And, just by the way: Guns N’ Roses, “Chinese Democracy” finished 40th! I’m sure there’d be some people to argue that! ;-)

LINK: 500 WORDS: THE BEST ALBUMS OF 2008

THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER’s Nick Cristiano offers a brief interview and write-up about GRAPEFRUIT MOON and Tom Waits in advance of the show at the Keswick Theatre:

“There’s this conception of him as just some whack ball who writes songs about people in the street – and that’s true to an extent,” Southside says. “But he’s also just a brilliant writer, and he’s got these wonderful melodies. . . . Because of his vocal style, people don’t hear that stuff. I hear it and I go, wow. I’m jealous.” Johnny told Nick Cristiano on the phone talking about Tom and the project with La Bamba’s Big Band…

The whole article is posted at: THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

Jonathan Takiff of the PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS elaborated the topic a bit more in his talk to Southside Johnny. I’ll save you the bit about my favorite actress, John himself finds the appropriate words about her Tom Waits project.

But on another – seasonal – topic, not Big-Band Tom Waits, but Christmas songs, John told Jonathan Takiff:
I’m not going to start listening to all those songs now and have a whole month of hearing them. You can be sure if I got arrested and thrown in jail, they’d be playing that music as another form of torture. It used to be you didn’t hear or play Christmas music until two weeks before the holiday. I want it to be really Christmasy Christmas time first.

When I’m emperor, you won’t be able to listen to this stuff until Dec. 1. And if your Christmas lights are still up on the house at the end of January, you’ll be socked with a thousand-dollar-a-day fine. Those lights keep suggesting to me that we still have a miserable winter ahead, even though Christmas and the start of winter might be long past.

Thanks for the words John… yeah!

You can read the whole interview with Jonathan Takiff at the: PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS website.

Jim Abbott at the Sunshine State newspaper’s blog: THE ORLANDO SENTINEL – SOUNDBOARD delivered his take on the album already in May, according to the timestamp on the blog! How the heck did he get his hand on the pre-release copy??? Anyway, he deserved all the treatment, since he offers another priceless quote from Johnny:

That fact about illegal duets is something, we really now have to keep in mind when we are going to re-evaluate John’s work over all the years! And does the NJ state attorney care about that at all? Or would California state law have to be applied here, since “Walk Away” has been recorded in the Schwarzenegger state? Anyway, while somebody should have stopped before-mentioned sweet Hollywood actress, nobody could stop the fearless chansonier – not even the law! If they want, let them send the troopers to Ocean Grove…! We will hide John in Europe…! How ’bout Belgium…?

Jim continues:

It doesn’t matter how marriage laws in California or Jersey did change recently, or will change again, or should be changed in the future… This marriage – obviously – has been made in Big-Band heaven…

Although I wanted to ignore blogs referring to Scarlett… sincere thanks for that review Jim!

Read Jim’s full take on GRAPEFRUIT MOON at THE ORLANDO SENTINEL

Now, there would be much more to say about Bob Harris. But maybe just the fact that he has been nominated the worlds’ best radio DJ numerous time is ’nuff said.

His show runs on Saturdays 23:00 – 02:00 GMT, the taped appearance of Southside Johnny is supposed to run after midnight. But don’t rely on that and tune in on BBC Radio 2 or via online live-stream next Saturday night (29.November 08) !

The show will then be available on the website’s “LISTEN AGAIN” feature for another week after the initial broadcast. Unfortunately, there’s no archive of the Bob Harris shows, so after the week is over, the show will be gone!

Link: BBC RADIO 2 – Bob Harris’ Saturday Show

Link: Bob Harris – official homepage

As a songwriter, Tom Waits seems to be undergoing a sort of popular revival these days. During the spring of 2008, actress Scarlet Johansson released her collection of Waits songs; produced by TV On The Radio’s Dave Sitek, Anywhere I Lay My Head was a collection of textured fantasy-pop more akin to polished early-‘80s studio concoctions like the Cocteau Twins than to Waits’ gritty, world-weary portraits in sound. (…)

Now it’s Southside Johnny Lyons’ turn, and with Grapefruit Moon, the Asbury Park veteran takes a completely different tact on the Waits songbook. Backed by LaBamba’s Big Band, fronted by his New Jersey pal Richie “LaBamba” Rosenberg, Lyons has reinvented these Waits songs as grand jazzbo antiques with big band arrangements and lots of horns up front in the mix. Channeling both Duke Ellington and Woody Herman, Lyons’ gruff, slightly-worn voice sounds good on both the slow-crooned ballads and the album’s rambunctious up-tempo flare-ups, while the band’s overall excellent performance is integral to the success of the material. LaBamba runs a damn tight ship, and these boys are playing their hearts out…sounding uncannily like a white-suited-and-gloved throwback to a kinder, gentler era.

While this is beautifully written – and that’s real and honest admiration to critics who really know how to put their words, picturing Southside Johnny in a white suit… Hmmmm. I think he wore something like that the last time when Miami Steve was still in the Jukes. I can’t take that picture for too long anymore… I’m sure that the South agrees with me that white suits are definitely a NO! Unless he would move, well, to Miami..? ;-)

But where Mr Gordon concludes about the album, and I’m totally with him again:

As a concept album, Grapefruit Moon works on several levels. Waits wrote solid songs; Southside Johnny wraps his voice around the material like a worn, slightly scratchy velvet blanket, and LaBamba and the boys carry the heavy instrumental load. For everybody involved, it’s win-win situation!

You just can’t put it better!

Will this now have been the last review which reflects on Scarlet’s album? I wonder, but I couldn’t care less…

Now, go over to BLURT-ONLINE and read the whole piece…