WIB Listening Party #34: Giving Thanks

featuring…

Fishbone, In Your Face

🍺 Sierra Nevada Fantastic Haze Imperial IPA

Words & photos: Vincent Abbate

It’s Thanksgiving week and I’m using that as an occasion to veer from the usual Listening Party format. At the risk of getting overly sentimental, I’ll use this space to give thanks for three things that have not only helped me survive the past year-plus of the corona pandemic, but several decades of life in general.

Those three “things” are friends, family and music.

Along the way, I’ll share a story of what was probably my most memorable Thanksgiving. It’s a while back and foggy in my memory, but I’ll do my best. The music in that story was supplied by Los Angeles, California’s Fishbone, so that’s the music you’ll hear this time around, taken from their 1986 album In Your Face.

If you’re unfamiliar with Fishbone or turning up your nose because it’s not blues – imagine the great band leader Louis Jordan had been a young man in the 1980s. I’d venture to say his music might have sounded like this.

And since no Listening Party is ever complete without a delicious beverage, we will be cracking open a Sierra Nevada Fantastic Haze Imperial IPA.

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WoW #10: Doyle Bramhall II – “New Faith”

Doyle Bramhall II – “New Faith”

When autumn comes, the days get gloomier, the rain starts falling, I get to needing music more than in the sun-blessed days of spring and summer. Music like Doyle Bramhall II’s Rich Man.

Rich Man was among my favorites records of 2016 and is definitely one that feeds the soul. Two songs stand out for me. “November” is a beautifully-rendered remembrance of times spent with his musician father, Doyle Bramhall, who I was lucky enough to interview a few years before he passed in 2011. “New Faith” – sung as a duet with Norah Jones on the album – is illuminated from within by humanity and hope.

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