A Letter to Michael Dorf: Ten Shows Worth Losing Sleep Over at City Winery St. Louis
From the City Winery St. Louis Programming Desk, Written in the Tradition of Gonzo Journalism
Michael,
It is late, later than I'd admit to in a normal memo, and I am sitting here with a stack of ticket manifests, a bottle of something red that will not survive the hour, and a growing, uncontrollable need to tell you exactly why the rest of this year in St. Louis is going to be absolutely deranged in the best possible sense. You asked, once, in passing, what we were most excited about. I mumbled something professional and forgettable. I am ashamed of that answer. This is the real one.
There is a letter Hunter S. Thompson once fired off, ranking his ten favorite albums of the 1960s, and I have never been able to shake it, because he understood the one thing every calendar review meeting forgets: you do not rank shows by projected bar spend. You rank them by what makes the hair on your arm stand up in a dark room. By what you'd blow off a Tuesday for. By what you'd tell a stranger about on a plane whether they asked or not.
So here it is. Ten shows. Not a list. A full-blown fever.
1. Eric Roberson, August 14 & 15
Eric Roberson
Thursday, August 14 and Friday, August 15, City Winery St. Louis
Two nights, and frankly they should have carved out a third because this man has spent TWO DECADES being an independent artist in an industry that eats independent artists for breakfast, and he is still standing here on his seventeenth studio album, Lessons, with a lead single remix that somehow rounds up Anthony Hamilton, Raheem DeVaughn, AND Kevin Ross into one room without anybody's ego combusting. Grammy-nominated. Self-made. Calls what he does "Honest Music," which is either the most understated marketing line in R&B history or the truest one, and I genuinely can't decide which, and I love that I can't.
2. Bebel Gilberto, August 13
Bebel Gilberto, Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of Tanto Tempo
Wednesday, August 13, City Winery St. Louis
Her father, João Gilberto, more or less invented bossa nova, which means she did not learn this music, she was BORN into it, in New York, raised in Brazil, and came back around to collaborate with David Byrne and Caetano Veloso and Thievery Corporation like it was nothing. Now she is bringing the twenty fifth anniversary remaster of Tanto Tempo back into rooms like ours, whisper-soft vocals, guitar and percussion and electronic beats, a local DJ sitting in for good measure, and I keep thinking: twenty five years and it still sounds like a secret you're being let in on.
3. esperanza spalding, August 29
esperanza spalding
Friday, August 29, City Winery St. Louis
First jazz artist to EVER win Best New Artist at the Grammys, and here she is stripping it down to three musicians, just voice and bass and songs pulled from all eight of her albums plus a preview of something new nobody has heard yet. And there's a meet and greet where a hundred percent, ALL of it, goes to PRISMID Sanctuary, the eco-cultural hub she built in Portland for Black, Indigenous, and other artists of color. This is not a booking. This is a woman using a stage the way a stage is supposed to be used.
4. Musiq Soulchild, September 1
Musiq Soulchild
Monday, September 1, City Winery St. Louis
Taalib Johnson. Weaned on Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and Donny Hathaway, Taalib Johnson got his start singing on Philadelphia street corners in the late nineties, and by 2000 he's got a Def Jam deal and a sound so new they had to invent a name for it: neo-soul. He basically helped START a genre. Thirteen Grammy nominations since. Two sets in one night. I have no notes, only the request that you not schedule anything else that evening because I will not be present for it.
5. Lacey Sturm, September 12
Lacey Sturm
Friday, September 12, City Winery St. Louis
The first solo woman to ever top the Billboard Hard Rock Albums chart, and she fronted Flyleaf through the songs that soundtracked a very specific kind of teenage searching, "All Around Me," "I'm So Sick," and now she is doing something almost unbearably intimate: acoustic, seated, her husband Josh Sturm on guitar beside her, the arena electricity stripped clean off so you can hear the architecture underneath the songs. Grammy-nominated. Nothing left to prove. Doing it anyway, closer than she has to.
6. Twista with a Live Band, September 20
Twista with a Live Band
Saturday, September 20, City Winery St. Louis
A GRAMMY WINNER. A former Guinness World Record holder for fastest English-speaking rapper alive, platinum on Adrenaline Rush, number one on the Billboard 200 with Kamikaze, and now, for reasons I can only describe as an act of controlled beautiful chaos, he is doing it with a full live band. Two sets. "Slow Jamz." "Overnight Celebrity." "Girl Tonight." Reimagined, live, at speed. I do not know how a human being raps that fast with an actual band trying to keep up and I intend to find out in person.
7. Rufus Wainwright, September 27
Rufus Wainwright
Saturday, September 27, City Winery St. Louis
Where do I even START. Ten studio albums. Two operas. A Dream Requiem that premiered with MERYL STREEP narrating in Paris and then Jane Fonda narrating it again at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Collaborators across his career include Elton John, Joni Mitchell, Sting, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, practically the entire canon of people you'd assume he'd never actually get on the phone with. There's a VIP add-on for this one, soundcheck access, a Q&A where he tells stories from THIRTY PLUS YEARS of doing this, a photo with the man himself, and I am telling you now, book the add-on, because this is not a show, this is an audience with someone who has genuinely lived an entire artistic life and is still building.
8. Rakim, October 16
Rakim
Thursday, October 16, City Winery St. Louis
Kool Moe Dee said this man INVENTED lyrical flow. Not popularized it. Invented it. 1986, Eric B. Is President, and hip hop's whole relationship to rhythm and melody changes forever. Paid in Full. Follow the Leader. The 18th Letter. Collaborations with Jay-Z, Dr. Dre, Alicia Keys, Damian Marley, an absolute A-Team of people who all owe him something whether they say it out loud or not. He sold this room out once already. Two sets this time, 6pm and 9:30pm, because apparently once was never going to be enough, for him or for us.
9. D.L. Hughley, November 6, 7 & 8
D.L. Hughley
Thursday, November 6; Friday, November 7; Saturday, November 8, City Winery St. Louis
Original King of Comedy. First host of BET's ComicView. A Peabody Award winner, which is not a thing comedians usually get to say, for a satirical special that apparently made the Peabody committee sit up and take notice of a man who has never in his life been afraid to say the thing everyone else is thinking. Nationally syndicated radio show in sixty cities. Memoir dropping right around this run, which means the wound will still be fresh when he hits our stage and the material will still be TRUE. Five shows in this touring series, three of them right here. Astute. Politically fearless. Funny in the way that only comes from actually paying attention.
10. Kamasi Washington & Ami Taf Ra, November 15
Kamasi Washington & Ami Taf Ra presenting The Profit & The Madman
Saturday, November 15, City Winery St. Louis
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The Prophet & The Madman. Married. Collaborating. Touring the record they built together, which she made her debut on and he helped shape, and now they're standing on the same stage performing it as the two people who lived it. There is a kind of trust between two people who make art together and then have to go home together that most bands will never, ever have. This is not a co-headline. This is a marriage happening out loud, in public, in tune, and it is going to be the kind of night City Winery St. Louis talks about into next year.
The Full Picture
That's the ten, Michael. Not a calendar. A confession, laid out one artist at a time, and I stand by every capitalized word of it. I know this room. I know what it feels like half-empty on a slow Tuesday and I know what it feels like when somebody like this walks through the door and the whole place remembers, all at once, exactly why it exists. These ten nights are why it exists.
Get the wine breathing early. Turn the tables fast between sets. And hold me a seat at the Kamasi and Ami show, because I fully intend to be there, and I fully intend, against all odds and prior evidence, to remember it.
Yours in noise, neon, and Cabernet,
The City Winery St. Louis Team