Sing Me Back Home preview

Sing Me Back Home
Millennium Park, Chicago
Friday, August 24, 2007

The city brings the all-star cast behind stellar New Orleans-tribute Sing Me Back Home to a free Jay Pritzker Pavilion concert.

Merely a month and a half after Hurricane Katrina and the floodwaters flattened New Orleans, an unofficial “social club” of musicians gathered in Austin, Texas in an attempt to recreate, musically at least, from where they came and what they had lost. For what was hustled together in such a hasty and ad hoc manner, the record is a brilliant tribute to the city including Dr. John, Cyril Neville, and The Subdudes.

Friday’s concert will include Ivan Neville, Leo Nocentelli (The Meters), Raymond Weber, Tony Hall, and Henry Butler as the band behind vocalists including Koko Taylor, Irma Thomas, Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews, John Boutté, and Willie Tee. And while some of the original New Orleans Social Club members will be missed (namely Cyril and his tough cover of Curtis Mayfield’s “This Is My Country”), the set’s ultimate track, however, is undoubtedly Boutté’s soul-shaking version of Annie Lennox’s “Why.”

Mucca Pazza open.

— Steve Forstneger

Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly