Music Picks: Lloyd Price, Leni Stern, Amon Tobin and The Residents

fri 2/22

Kurt Rosenwinkel

KIRK DOUGLAS THEATRE

PHOTO COURTESY OF LENI STERN

Leni Stern: See Sunday.

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More About

• Kurt Rosenwinkel
• Van Dyke Parks
• Victor Wooten
• Moris Tepper
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media

Kurt Rosenwinkel's playing is richly complex and challenging, and while he is smarter than most of us, smart people also feel. Thus, to label this guitarist as "intellectual" or "cerebral" does him a disservice. He is more poet than scientist, more Lennon than Hawking. His music, rife with the innovations that have inspired a generation of jazz musicians, is defined by lyrical beauty and emotive soul. It is this union of head and heart that elevates Rosenwinkel to a place among the hallowed. The band tonight is the same as on his recent album, Star of Jupiter, with Eric Revis and Justin Faulkner on bass and drums and the superb Aaron Parks on keyboards. —Gary Fukushima

Victor Wooten

EL REY THEATRE

Béla Fleck & the Flecktones bassist Victor Wooten is thought of by many as one of, and in many cases the, finest electric bassist in the world, having now picked up five Grammy Awards. Wooten likes to take on unusual musical projects, and this stop at El Rey showcases his latest, as he plays in support of album releases Words and Tones and Sword and Stone. The seven-person band features four bassists, two drummers (including longtime Wooten bandmate Derico Watson) and a vocalist, Krystal Peterson. All the musicians play multiple instruments, including Peterson. —Tom Meek

Moris Tepper

TAIX

Maybe you remember Moris Tepper from Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band, gnawing at his guitar on "Hot Head" and "Ashtray Heart." Maybe you remember when he popped up at the Echo with PJ Harvey as his bassist. Maybe you never had a clue this guy existed until the two sentences just before this one, and you're frothing at the mouth with pain and regret because you've yet to hear a note by this true and righteous animal man. Don't worry — we can fix you. Tepper's new album, A Singer Named Shotgun Throat, is traditional and original all at once, familiar at first listen but revealing something subtle and unexpected and sad and beautiful and real every time. Maybe that's why Beefheart liked him; maybe that's why PJ liked him. I don't know, but I do know that's why I like him. —Chris Ziegler

sat 2/23

Lloyd Price

MCCABE'S

When 19-year-old Lloyd Price cut his 1952 masterpiece, "Lawdy Miss Clawdy," the kid likely had no idea just how far the track would take him. An epochal blast of grinding, funkenized New Orleans rock & roll it was, mightily enhanced by the all-star, Dave Bartholomew–led band that backed him. It was the teenager's loose, luminous, declarative pipes, though, that elevated the song to a celestial level. A slew of choice chart-toppers followed, and Price swiftly ascended to R&B royal. He went MIA for a spell starting in the 1970s, when he spent time in Africa, tending to diamond mines and co-producing, with Don King, the soul-funk music festival held in conjunction with the 1974 Ali-Frazier "Rumble in the Jungle." This appearance, his first L.A. date in decades, is a must. Price, apart from our own Big Jay McNeely, is one of the last surviving stars from R&B's golden age. This opportunity must not be squandered. —Jonny Whiteside

Robert Randolph, Slide Brothers

ROYCE HALL

The sacred-steel style is one of American music's unique forms. Created by black members of Southern Pentecostal churches in the '30s, it combines fervent gospel vocalizing with wild steel-guitar playing, the guitar replacing the traditional organ. The son of a deacon and a minister, Robert Randolph grew up unaware of most secular rock music; it was only after he was championed by jazzman John Medeski and the North Mississippi Allstars in 2001 that he realized the deep connection between sacred steel and bluesy classic rock. Since then, he's been widely recognized as one of the world's most dazzling guitarists, jamming with the likes of Buddy Guy and Santana. He returns the favor by presenting the Slide Brothers, sacred-steel whizzes who tear through Elmore James and George Harrison classics on their debut album. —Falling James

sun 2/24

Leni Stern

ALVAS SHOWROOM

So much great music continues to come out of Mali, even as Islamic rebels attempt to take over the northern part of the country and impose Sharia law, which, among other things, discourages such unbridled and creative music making. Vieux Farka Touré, Amadou & Mariam, Tinariwen and Khaira Arby are among Malian performers who've toured here recently, and Ballaké Sissoko is due to appear next month at the Skirball Center. Now, even Western musicians like German jazz guitarist Leni Stern are being influenced by this distinctively hypnotic style. On her new album, Smoke, No Fire, Stern twists her fluid guitar runs with strains of the banjo-like instrument n'goni to weave a gently intoxicating spell as she sings haunting lamentations in several languages. For this show, she's joined by Senegalese bassist Mamadou Ba and percussionist Alioune Faye. —Falling James

mon 2/25

The Residents

EL REY THEATRE

Somewhere between rock & roll's spiritual mystique and a distinctly unhinged surrealist pathology, you'll find the lair of bizarro-art-imitates-music tribe The Residents. Unprecedented, with no discernible frame of reference, save for a magnificently idiosyncratic streak, The Residents explore a shadowy landscape where aural blunt-force trauma, deliberately opaque aesthetic intent and downright weird sonic collisions coexist like a thick growth of mutant cultural calico fur — on the roof of your mouth. The Bay Area–based clan has strange running through its veins, a bunch of talents so drastically odd that they make Captain Beefheart seem like Lawrence Welk. Any visit from these provocateurs is rare, and this 40th-anniversary Wonder of Weird tour should deliver as compelling a dose of rugged, all-American, underworld individualism as you'll encounter. —Jonny Whiteside