Bon Iver is coming to the Santa Barbara Bowl tomorrow night, and we can’t wait.  In the meantime the band honored the late, great Levon Helm on Thursday night (hours after Levon passed at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco) by covering The Band’s Ophelia.   Ophelia was one of Levon’s signature songs and vocal shines. Check it out below followed by Levon singing the song with The Band and with his own band.

Ophelia with The Band (Levon on lead vocal):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RjqcTsxx-8

You can also watch Levon perform the song HERE at the 2008 Newport Folk Festival courtesy of Wolfgang’s Vault.

Drive-By Truckers’ song Mercy Buckets was one of our top songs of 2011.  Here’s more substantiation for that claim.  Check out the band’s Patterson Hood and Jay Gonzalez killin’ on the song for WNRN in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Who can’t grip the gist when Hood sings: “When all your good days keep getting shorter, count on me; when you’re ’bout 20 cents shy of a quarter, count on me; when you just need a place to hide out for a while; I’ll help you hide the bodies in a little while.”

After the unplug, check out another performance of the same song by the band at last year’s Record Store Day.  Tomorrow (Saturday) is Record Store Day in America (perhaps beyond).  So get out and support your local Record Stores!!  Warbler in SB.  Buffalo Records in Ventura.  Boo Boo Records in San Luis Obispo.  The rest are on your own.

We have it on good authority (from someone whose taste we trust) that The Head and the Heart were one of the highlights of the entire Coachella weekend last weekend (still waiting to see why anyone would go the second weekend if they could go to the first).  Check out the band unplugged playing their song All My Friends for San Diego’s 98.7FM.  Monkey and pop-sickle, gratis.

Nonprofit music-promotion organization Weathervane produces a series of recordings in which artists take two days to record a new song. The series is a part of Shaking Through, and the latest song features Cat Martino. Her new song, I Promise, was recorded a month ago on March 17th – 18th with help from Sufjan Stevens (heard of him) and Man Man’s Chris Powell. You can listen to it below, and download it HERE. You can also watch a video about the song and its recording below. And don’t forget to donate to Weathervane.  As a bonus, at bottom check out a video of Martino backing Sharon Van Etten on Shaking Through’s first song production of Van Etten’s awe-inspiring Love More.

Cat Martino (with Cat–jk–Stevens and Chris Powell)–I Promise
[audio:https://www.thelefortreport.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/Weathervane-Music-I-Promise.mp3|titles=Weathervane Music – I Promise]

Last night San Francisco’s Girls played Conan on their way to Pappy and Harriet’s in Pioneer Town tonight before landing again in Coachella this weekend.  Check out the band (complete with three backup singers) performing their do-wop-ish, throwback song Love Like A River off of their fab latest album, Father, Son, Holy Ghost.

Quebecois singer/songwriter Patrick Watson has a big buzz about him, and he and his band (including Simon Angell, Robbie Kuster, and Mishka Stein) have been garnering clamorous critical cries for both their recent live performances at SXSW (which NPR dubbed the best of the entire event) and in Europe, and for new album, Adventures in Your Own Backyard (to be released on May 1st).  And it’s not just the critics:  fellow musicians (including, notoriously, Kathleen Edwards and others) have been raving about the new album.  Adventures in Your Own Backyard is actually Watson’s fourth proper album.  Heretofore 2006’s Close to Paradise was the most notorious and propelled Patrick Watson quickly into stardom in Canada and elsewhere; it went gold in Canada, and won numerous awards, including Canada’s prestigious Polaris Prize.

For those missing Jeff Buckley, you may have a new singing savant in Watson (just watch his Jeffy performance on opening track Lighthouse for L’Hiboo below).   Watson’s songs and sound combine into Buckley-esque cabaret at times, but evince eclecticism too, featuring everything from chamber-pop, to folk, to ambient, to occasional shoegazer sonorities.  And despite the complecticies (our new word for the day), it all manages to coalesce into a marvelous whole.

To get a flavor for Patrick Watson, check out a recent live performance on L’Hiboo in France and then one of the band’s SXSW  performances from last month, followed by a series of performances captured by CBC at the Glenn Gould Theater, and a brief Mojo magazine interview with Watson.   Then get out and buy the new album on May 1st before Watson tours the West Coast (as listed way below) in the first two weeks of June.

L’Hiboo:

A SXSW playing of the new album’s Into Giants (this was the performance that captivated the NPR reviewers):

The following performances for CBC, the first a reprise of Into Giants:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yf8Xra_DOZA&feature=channel&list=UL

Black Wind:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55XkPgGLMek&feature=relmfu

Adventures in Your Own Backyard:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JytEqxjg5xs&feature=channel&list=UL

Step Out for a While:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o-HGUeBUNc&feature=channel&list=UL

Quiet Crowd:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1jAm7-2-ow&feature=channel&list=UL

Mojo Interview:

West Coast Tour Listing:

• 07/06

  The Loft, UC San Diego, La Jolla, CA, US

• 08/06

  Bootleg Theater, Los Angeles, CA, US

• 09/06

  Don Quixote’s International Music Hall, Felton, CA, US

• 10/06

  Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA, US

• 12/06

  Mission Theatre, Portland, OR, US

• 13/06

  Columbia City Theater, Seattle, WA, US

We love so much about (the band) Plants and Animals from Montreal.  Their last album (2010’s La La Land) was a huge hit at Chez Lefort (complete with Central Coast referents).  They have a somewhat retro (th0ugh updated) sound that fires on all retro rockets when they are heat-seeking.

Last month the band showed up at SXSW in support of their new album, The End of That, and was captured well (as usual) by KEXP.  Check out the dynamics and acoustic/electric guitar-play on their songs Before, Lola Who and The End of That.  Clearly this band is at their best performing their songs live and stretched out.  And if you like what you hear (and who wouldn’t?), check out the entire performance at bottom.

Two of the best concerts we’ve ever attended were put on by the phenomenal mod-punk band, The Jam.  The first was in support of their fine album All Mod Cons in April 1979 at UCLA’s Royce Hall (unfortunately for Royce Hall), at which the crowd got so riled up by the band’s musical antics (the photo above gives a flavor) that they ripped the Hall’s bolted theater seats out of the floor and threw them up on stage to make more room for thrashing.  The phenomenal setlist for Royce Hall can be viewed HERE.  The second Jam concert was in 1982 at Perkins Palace in Pasadena on the band’s last tour behind their album The Gift (you can read a mod-scooter anecdote about the show HERE).  We’ll write more later about The Jam.  Unfortunately, the band broke up in December 1982.  The upshot was that the end of The Jam resulted in the launching of Paul Weller’s band Style Council and his eventual solo career.   While neither have moved us nearly as much as The Jam and its discography, Weller has borne up well over the years artistically.  Proof of that can be seen from the videos below of Weller tonight on the Later with Jools Holland show.  Weller and the boys (and girls) are out in support of his critically-lauded new album, Sonic Kicks.   Check out his somewhat Springsteen-esque performances (but with added string section) below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJZIl7McOC8&feature=uploademail

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4RSgciEcKk&feature=channel&list=UL

On their way to Coachella last week, Radiohead unintentionally delivered this challenge to all other performers who will play the Santa Barbara Bowl this year:  let’s see you top this!  The primary contender to attempt the challenge hits town this Sunday when the big-banded Bon Iver will bound onto the stage at the Bowl (a quantum leap from their last show in Santa Barbara a few years ago at Muddy Waters).  Their eponymous 2011 album was our second-ranked album of the year (behind Radiohead’s The King of Limbs naturally).  After two sequential Saturday shows at Coachella, a clean-shaven Justin Vernon, heavily underrated multi-instrumentalist/singer S. Carey, Canadian sax colossus Colin Stetson, and a multitude of other great players in the band will try to knock Radiohead off its pedestal.  We can’t wait.  In the interim, check out Bon Iver below performing three songs at Coachella last Saturday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHikJ3LDA0A&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSgXXf_VQT8&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX97hfbYHYA&feature=relmfu