Cayamo Review

I read this great review about the Cayamo and Mayercraft cruises. It's really long so I've only included the DRH mentions.

Cayamo Day Three: "...After that Brenna and I went to see David Ryan Harris play a set at the Adriatic Lounge. We took the table right at the stage and after a few songs two women sit down next to me---it was Brandi and her mom, who were having a good time watching David perform. I had seen him 3.5 years ago, when he opened for Jamie Cullum but hadn't been able to catch any other sets of his, so I was happy when he was announced as a performer for Mayercraft and Cayamo. His set was soooo good. What a talented and funny guy. He told this story that if he were to be a Superhero, he would be 'Mister Emotional'. He even cried during one of his songs and made people in the audience cry with his beautiful lyrics. After the show Brandi went up to David, said a quick 'Hey' and ran off....at this point it was 2am so she was probably tired and didn't want to deal with fans. We also went back to our rooms to go to bed..."

Cayamo Day Five: "...After Brandi's set we went upstairs to the Lounge, where David Ryan Harris was due to play a set. I was upset that I missed Ernie Halter's set, but if I have to chose between Ernie and Brandi, Brandi wins. David's set was really good, I will definitely try to see him again.
Then we went to get some food, because I hadn't eaten since lunchtime and who did I meet outside at the midnight buffet? Josh of course Then we went to the Casino and stayed up until 3.30am, most people tried their luck gambling but I have been good and have not wasted any money on that..."

The blog is really a very well-written account of the goings-on and totally worth the read. Check it here: http://marinaiscruising.blogspot.com

DO YOU WANT MORE?!!!??! DRH, TEMPLE BAR, SANTA MONICA, 11-17-07

A blog from Scotty Crowe:


SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2007
DO YOU WANT MORE?!!!??!
DRH, TEMPLE BAR, SANTA MONICA, 11-17-07

David Ryan Harris and BOOYAHWHATCHA-CHING (see below) hit the stage last night at Temple Bar in Santa Monica, CA -

For You*
All I Need (Everything's Not Lost)
Turn Around
Sweetest Berry**
Pretty Girl (The Most Beautiful Girl in the World, You Send Me, Natural Woman, Let's Get it One)
Used to This
Hold My Fire
Yesterday Shutting Down**
can he get an encore, do you want more?
If I Had A Dime

all songs performed by BOOYAHWHATCHA-CHING (DRH, Michael Chaves, Sean Hurley, JJ Johnson, and the new addition of Chris Lovejoy on percussion) except:
*DRH solo electric
**BOOYAHWHATDENCHA-CHING (add a dash of Bob Reynolds to make it extra tasty)

So, it's a Temple Bar sandwich on Hotel Cafe bread this month - our boys posted it up 11 blocks from the beach and pretty much tore the place down. With JJ and Bob still hanging out in LA, it was another crowded stage of all-stars. Chris Lovejoy jumped in the mix tonight, adding all kinds of things from his neverending bag of tricks (he's like Gallagher over there...except good). I'm not gonna lie, I feel like my toes were a little stepped on when he broke out the triangle in YESTERDAY SHUTTING DOWN, but I'll make it. Let's hear it for a sweet Summer 2001 reference!

Bob killed it on SWEETEST BERRY - best I've ever heard the tune. DRH did his thing in HOLD MY FIRE and YESTERDAY before the crowd brought the dudes back for the first IF I HAD A DIME of the month. Of the season, even.

All in all, a fantastic little night. I think we downsize to BOOYAH tomorrow night at Hotel Cafe, but you don't have to take my word for it.

-Scotty


POSTED BY SCOTTY CROWE AT 03:52 PM

WHO WAS WHERE WITH WHOM AND WHERE YOU WAS? WHAT? YES.

A blog from Mr. Scotty Crowe:




Photo courtesy of Gari Lamar Askew.

David Ryan Harris and BOOYAH (and more!) returned for Round 2 at Hotel Cafe last night:

All I Need (Al Green interlude, Everything's Not Lost)*
Hold My Fire*
Sweetest Berry**
Yesterday Shutting Down***
Sittin' On Top Of The World***
Pretty Girl (Shining Star, No One, The Most Beautiful Girl In The World, Sexual Healing)*
For You

*band comprised of BOOYAH (Michael Chaves and Sean Hurley) and JJ Johnson, creating BOOYAHWHAT
**band comprised of BOOYAHWHAT and Bob Reynolds, creating BOOYAHWHATDEN
***band comprised of BOOYAHWHATDEN and John Mayer, creating BOOYAHWHATDENAWWWCHYEAH(snap)
all other songs performed solo (yes, for those of you keeping score at home, that's only one of 'em)

What a day. After spending the day prepping for and playing a little private set with BOOYAHWHATDENAWWWCHYEAH(snap)'s other configuration, we rolled to Hollywood for the big Hotel Sauna (or Sauna Cafe or Sauna Sauna, point being it was WARM in that mofo) show. The kids came out like no shoes and were not disappointed.
We got HOLD MY FIRE early in the night, which set up one of the most rockin', deepest groovin' SWEETEST BERRYs I've ever heard. Bob added some sweet sweet saxiness. John jumped up for YESTERDAY SHUTTING DOWN and SITTIN' ON TOP OF THE WORLD (a Howlin' Wolf cover), all the guys trading solos in the latter and all the people soul-clapping in the former. DRH brought back the love to close the set (got to understand he loves the kids). A special night indeed for everyone in the room.

A few visuals to go with that essay, all via my man Gari Lamar Askew (with his Ron Gant-esque swagger)...see you next week...












Don't act like i never toldya.

-Scotty



POSTED BY SCOTTY CROWE AT 11:59 PM

David Ryan Harris Was at the Hotel Cafe Last Night. Were You?

A BLOG FROM MR. SCOTTY CROWE:


TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 06, 2007
DAVID RYAN HARRIS WAS AT HOTEL CAFE TONIGHT, WERE YOU?

For You*
Strong Enough*
All I Need (Everything's Not Lost)
Can We Get Down
Caribbean Queen tease >
Used to This
Turn Around
Pretty Girl (The Most Beautiful Girl in the World, No One, Sexual Healing, Let's Get It On, I Want You To Want Me, Your Body is a Wonderland)
--
Don't Look Down*

*solo
all other songs with Michael Chaves and Sean Hurley (not this one), creating the collective group I will henceforth call "BOOYAH"

Ok y'alls. I've seen a lot of shows and talked a bunch of hyperbole, but tonight was something special. I can only assume it's a harbinger of the Mondays to come, but these guys together make magic. These songs, old favorites, had a completely new and different vibe thanks to BOOYAH. "Can We Get Down" ended with a singalong and a "that's the man workin' on your bed...springs." "All I Need" and "Used to This" were great all Chaves-ized. "Pretty Girl" was fun as always and included a little of the new Alicia Keys single. BOOYAH reverted to DRH for an encore of "Don't Look Down."

It was a special night, and there are 3 more coming up this month (if you were at home tonight, your November was only 25% ruined). Monday nights. Hotel Cafe.

BOOYAH.




POSTED BY SCOTTY CROWE AT 12:18 AM

Old Interview/Review - Boundary Jumpers

Boundary Jumpers
Friday, February 04, 2005
MARTY HUGHLEY

Let's put this simply, shall we? David Ryan Harris is a musician you really should go to hear.

His name isn't widely known, and if you've heard him at all, chances are it's been in the role of sideman. But his own work is richly rewarding, eclectic yet accessible, brimming with chops and soul. Rock, funk, soul, blues mingle in refreshing ways that remind you why you liked any or all of those styles in the first place. Highly recommended.

Same goes for Citizen Cope. Like Harris, Cope (as he's called for short; his real name is Clarence Copeland Greenwood) makes music that doesn't conform to simplistic classification. He hasn't had the best of luck getting through the major-label mill and reaching a sizable audience. But he's gaining traction with his second release, the critically praised "The Clarence Greenwood Recordings."

Both singer/songwriter/guitarists play Monday at Berbati's Pan, on a bill headlined by Marc Broussard. All three acts straddle genres, show the influence of Southern roots, can groove well and play with passion, so the evening should have a certain cohesiveness to it as well as variety.

"Everybody has their own take on it," as Harris put it recently by phone. "Everybody's mixed up the pot. Marc has his Louisiana thing, Cope is more East Coast and mine is kind of a Southern thing, but now maybe also So Cal -- though not in a No Doubt way."

Broussard, at least to judge by his first major-label release, "Carencro," isn't nearly as imaginative or as compelling as the others. (Though he does serve as a common connection: Harris co-wrote two songs on "Carencro," and that album's first song includes the line "me and my daddy and a kid named Cope, making music that nobody would hear.")

Harris first emerged in the early 1990s as an Atlanta teenager in a punk/funk band called Follow for Now that tried to squeeze through the black-rock door of opportunity briefly opened by Living Colour. Then, as musical director for Dionne Farris, he helped the former Arrested Development singer reach the Top 10 with her hit single "I Know." In recent years he's played in John Mayer's band.

Harris' big solo shot came in 1997, when he released an album through Sony, on a boutique label led by Pearl Jam producer Brendan O'Brien. It was a brilliant amalgam of the Stevie Wonder, the Allman Brothers and the more earnest side of Prince. But its unclassifiability and the vagaries of record biz politics and promotion doomed the record to relative obscurity. Later, he teamed up with ex-Black Crowes bassist Johnny Colt in Brand New Immortals, issuing an album on Elektra. Harris' more recent works "Soulstice" and "Atlanta" have been put out on his own and are available online. Perhaps the cultural climate is better suited now to accept music that goes beyond category.

"(In the mid-'90s) we didn't have the culture of iTunes and of indie music being low-hanging fruit," he said. "I think the thing that's changed is there being a greater number of people who seek out new things. I don't have to homogenize what I do so much."

Harris won't be bringing a band for this tour, but that shouldn't diminish the power of his presentation. Citizen Cope, in a separate phone interview, recalled being "blown away" seeing Harris open for Farris long ago with a solo acoustic set like the one he'll perform in Portland.

Cope will have a four-piece backing band including players who've worked with the likes of OutKast and Robert Randolph. The inspirations for his character-driven, cinematic soul-rock range from Willie Mitchell's productions for Al Green to Radiohead to the photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson.

"I don't want to sound like anybody else," Cope said. "But at the same time, I want people to enjoy my music and be inspired. Ultimately, people like they sound 'cause they sound like they sound. But you make more of an impact when you change the boundaries of what came before." DAVID RYAN HARRIS

Source: The Oregonian

DRH in The Oregonian, 1997

DEBUT OF A JACK-OF-ALL-TEXTURES

by MARTY HUGHLEY of the Oregonian

Friday, September 12, 1997

Summary: David Ryan Harris mixes solid guitar chops with keen harmonic sense

Three years ago, when the Dionne Farris album ``Wild Seed -- Wild Flower'' was released but before its remarkable single ``I Know'' grew into the light of the Top 10, Farris was most readily identified by reference to her earlier work.

She'd been an ``extended family member'' of Arrested Development and had stamped ``Tennessee,'' the hip-hop group's breakthrough hit, with a distinctive gospel wail.

Similarly, the easiest reference point for David Ryan Harris is his contribution to Farris' hit. The ear-grabbing country-blues slide guitar that helped make the fusion of styles on ``I Know'' come across so convincingly was played by Harris, who also co-produced the album and was musical director for Farris' terrific touring band.

And, just as ``Wild Seed'' revealed a vibrant, wide-ranging talent, so does Harris' solo debut.

In the early '90s, Harris was part of a young Atlanta band called Follow For Now that echoed such bands as Fishbone and Living Colour in its hard-hitting fusion of funk, ska, thrash and progressive rock. But the group foundered, reportedly because of management problems. Harris has been working on his own music since before helping Farris with her project and eventually signed with 57, a new label led by Brendan O'Brien, Pearl Jam's producer and a fellow Atlantan.

The resulting album reflects a maturity of vision and a musical open-mindedness to match Harris' abundant guitar chops. He acknowledges as prime influences Stevie Wonder, Sly Stone, the Allman Brothers and Bad Brains. But while the album ranges from bluesy rockers to lushly poetic musings to pure pop pleasures, it finds a cohesive character through Harris' invitingly soulful voice and Wonder-fully keen harmonic sense.

Harris does so many things so well (writing, arranging, producing, performing all vocals and guitars and so on), it's hard to know where to start praising him. He's a jack-of-all-textures on guitar -- from the shimmering e-bow intro of ``Me and the Leaves'' to the acidic-freakout solo that climaxes ``It's All the Same'' -- but he specializes in beefy funk rhythm riffs as tasty as Brunswick stew.

While it's easy to get caught up in just the sound and the feeling, Harris turns a neat phrase or two, also. In ``Change,'' he chides those unwilling to challenge themselves: ``Well that old man's . . . is rotting in his favorite rocking chair/Hell and high water drop by, and they always find him there.'' And the album's should-be smash single, the gorgeous pop confection ``Six Feet off the Ground,'' turns on this romantically ebullient chorus: ``You make a psychedelic town out of a world with no color or sound/the way your kisses lift me six feet off the ground.''

If radio programmers aren't scared off by such an unclassifiable talent, Harris' career should lift off soon, too.


***Thanks to Furious Rose for submitting this review.

By Kandia Crazy Horse

Aw rooty, now! This here biased and concise guide to some of the masterpieces of black rock should serve as a suitable entree to the aesthetics and titans of the genre. There are more black rockers on the planet than blackglama playa Lenny Kravitz and the on-again socio-shred quartet Living Colour, y'know? Blackfolks' history in the rock & roll arena has been likened to an "electric purgatory," but out of the madness comes magnificence.

Ike Turner

Before he beat (ex-wife) Tina, the Father of Rock & Roll, Ike Turner, transformed boogie-woogie into rock music with a driving back beat, fuzzy electric guitar and wailing saxophone at Memphis' Sun Studios in 1951, via legendary Oldsmobile ode "Rocket 88" (mistakenly credited to Turner's vocalist Jackie Brenston). From the highs of that No. 1 hit with his band the Kings of Rhythm through the lows of Turner's coke-fueled LA studio paradise, rock's first likely guitar god perfected a mix of blues, country and western, R&B, jazz and everything after. The Ikon has certainly been lauded by greats: Turner was referred to by Little Richard as "The Man" and B.B. King dubbed Tina's Bane "[The] best band leader I've ever seen." Check out Rhythm Rockin' Blues (Ace) to see if the Blues Boy was right.

Little Richard

Hailing from Macon, "Little" Richard Wayne Penniman is more than the Georgia Peach and a minister, honey -- he's the self-proclaimed "Architect of Rock & Roll." You can practice your piano bang with the Great Emancipator's debut, Here's Little Richard (Specialty), as accompaniment. Bow down before such rockin,' gender-bending, electrifying classics as "Tutti Frutti," "Long Tall Sally," and "Keep A Knockin'" -- or shuut up!

Ray Charles

Recently deceased and eulogized on celluloid via Jamie Foxx' Oscar-winning performance, Brother Ray will forever remain an American treasure due to his revolutionary erosion of the boundaries between Saturday night devil music and sanctified Sunday morning sounds. Furthermore, remember him not just for his keys mastery but his innovations in country music. Charles' Anthology (Rhino/WEA) collects several of his standards: "Hit the Road Jack," "I Got A Woman," "Georgia On My Mind." What'd I Say? Go git it!

Love

This high 60s psych-rock band was led by black Crenshaw-Adams native (by way of Memphis) Arthur Lee, a brilliant, mercurial musician who not only inspired and mentored the world's most famous (black) rock star, Jimi Hendrix, but Lee influenced Jim Morrison as well. Forever Changes, the Love group's string-laden classic full of dark visions of the American Way and baroque prefaces to suicide notes, regained its pride of place as a perennial cult favorite during Lee's recent tours (now sadly ended) with the young LA band Baby Lemonade.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience

This ubiquitous guitar mag posterboy needs no introduction. If your record collection lacks eternal ax spirit and "Voodoo Chile" Jimi's finest hours on tape, Electric Ladyland (Experience Hendrix), then get hip.

Sly & the Family Stone

The artist and funk king formerly known as Sylvester Stewart almost single-handedly revolutionized many forms of pop music at the turn of the 70s, with the release of his desperate, downer symphony There's A Riot Goin' On (Sony). Few musicians dared plumb the depths of such Sly songs as "Luv 'N' Haight" and "Spaced Cowboy" but many, from Madonna to Janet Jackson to Human League to World Party's Karl Wallinger, have made a mint aping the Family Stone's churchy harmonies, elastic beats, and multiracial/multi-gendered communion. Of interesting note: Sly produced the Jefferson Airplane classic, Surrealistic Pillow.

Betty Davis

This Betty Davis was born Miss Mabry. However, her eponymous debut (a rare groove Grail recently reissued in the UK -- where else?) places Miles Davis' ex-wife in badass league with the late Hollywood actress of the same name. These superstar ladies share not only factory-town heritage (Mabry hails from Pittsburgh, the actress from Lowell, MA), but inimitable voices and womanist strength. Corraling a slew of former Janis Joplin and Sly Stone sidemen, along with rocker-turned-disco divo Sylvester and the Pointer Sisters, the hot bitch who introduced her good friend Jimi to Miles fearlessly sings such lyrics as, "If I'm in luck I just might get picked up" in a pre-punk snarl Johnny Rotten could never top.

Prince

This many-handed, multiple-monikered one-man band from Minneapolis was almost the sole reservoir of rock in the 80s for "the Youth" and other folks of discerning taste. As an earlier generation of rockers descended into self-parody and desperate bids for relevance (ahem, world music, ahem), Prince's sexy electro and funkdafied psych provided a breath of fresh air in the Reagan Era, as the bouncy street track "Lady Cab Driver," Chuck Berry-esque road song "Little Red Corvette" and premillennial anthem "1999" attest.

David Ryan Harris

Former Follow For Now leader Harris, from down the road in Hot'lanta, delivered some of his finest tunes on 2001's unjustly overlooked Tragic Kingdom (Elektra/WEA), recorded as part of power trio Brand New Immortals. Even if you're not charmed by this disc's rave-ups ("Blacksun") and funky Wonderlove ("High Time"), the transcendent, soulful elegance of Harris' greatest song, "If I Had A Dime," will melt your Philistine heart.

Glen Scott

Scott may be the most unsung player amongst the last decade's crop of progressive black musicians. His first release, Without Vertigo (Sony), barely registers even with the crate-digger crowd, yet it's one of the best-crafted exhibits of the awesome might of black rock. Purveying a lush, Beatlesque soundtrack fit for archetypal black boho Denise Huxtable's wet dreams, Brer Scott's album deserves recognition amongst such 90s alternative fusion touchstones as Beck's Odelay and The Jayhawks' Sound Of Lies instead of being consigned to the dustbin of sonic history. He croons Sly's lyric "Shadrach, Meshach, Abendego" in the coda of "Way I Feel," self-consciously measuring the distance between Sly and himself. Both were maverick artists compromised by the major-label shortsightedness that still plagues black genius today.

***Thanks to Furious Rose for submitting this info.

Source: http://charlotte.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=125511