I guess we should just make a blanket statement at this point and reveal that ANYtime you can catch Bee and Flower, you’d be well advised to do so and suffice it to say we’ll recommend them every time.
Tone, texture, mood, arrangement. We’re simpatico.
Bee and Flower play NYC’s The Suffolk this Friday night and they’re bringing with them some friends—Winter Family, Sondra Sun-Odeon, and Leyna Papach. “Cheap and cheerful” at only 5 clams. Please do come out if you’re in the vicinity. (Facebook invite here.)
In line with some additional things simpatico, it seems Bee and Flower’s Dana Schechter has been reading TVD recently. . .
“A strange thing just happened: I was musing about one of my all-time favorites, Otis Redding, when I stumbled on this fine recent TVD post by Elias Leight, marking what would have been Otis’ 70th birthday. A fine coincidence, but not such a shock.
Otis Redding tops my personal list as the most important singer in history, and while my tastes are truly all over the map, no single artist has made such a deep impact on me. Years ago I did a cover of “Cigarettes and Coffee”, and while I don’t claim to have done the song justice, I still wanted to pay a homage in my own little way.
His music crosses genres and language and time. His raw emotion is so immediate, it’s searing. We sense his deep yearning and that bittersweet aching blues in the heart, and it’s so human, who could deny it? Otis and the band…no sir, don’t forget the band, they were fantastic, sparse and alive, perfectly integrated and so damn good. The whole thing was food for the weary soul.
Of all the artists who have passed before my time, Otis is who I’d most like to have met. He seemed like a good man, the kind of friend you could count on, and you can’t help but to like the guy. While we can only speculate what he may have gone on to do — he was only 27 when he died, which seems unbelievable—I’m grateful we had him around even for a short while. All artists want to make a mark on history, and he did a knock-up job of it. Long live Otis!”
—Dana Schechter
