CostelloNews.com

Seattle Times

Raina Wagner, assistant A&E editor

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Classics and plenty more

Elvis Costello's coming to town is reason enough to celebrate. When he comes with friends — especially friends like New Orleans' own Allen Toussaint and the Crescent City Horns — well, then it's time to kick off your shoes and dance.

And that's just what 3,400 fans did Sunday night at Chateau Ste. Michelle, where Costello and Toussaint opened the Woodinville winery's 2006 summer concert series.

Costello, who seems out to master every musical genre, pop to country to jazz, this time is dabbling in New Orleans R&B. His distinctive voice — a pop-y tenor laced with cynicism — didn't always mesh perfectly with Toussaint's earnest, soulful songwriting, but the onstage camaraderie made for a tight performance.

The picnicking, wine-drinking crowd may have bought their concert tickets so they could sing along to Costello classics like "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding," "Pump It Up," and "Alison" (all ably delivered), but they got plenty more: about a dozen songs from the pair's new CD, "The River in Reverse." The CD — a mix of Costello covering old songs penned by the New Orleans songwriter-pianist and new pieces they wrote together — provided many of the night's best-received tunes.

One of those, the funky, bluesy "On Your Way Down" (a Toussaint song from 1970) was jazzed up by the real stars of the night, the Crescent City Horns, who matched Toussaint note for note as he pounded the keys on the baby grand. The horns — who during the second of three encores gave a dreamy brass-quartet intro to "Alison" — were led by the remarkable Sam "Big Sam" Williams on trombone.

Toussaint and Costello (who announced Sunday that he and wife Diana Krall are expecting a baby, according to The Associated Press) are actually longtime collaborators. The match brings out the best in both. Like a lot of R&B, Toussaint songs can be overwrought; "Ascension Day" (sample lyric: "She hasn't been gone long enough for me to miss her") could be heard as no more than one man singing for his lost girl. But with Costello's edge, it was a song for all of us, and all we have lost.

Costello and Toussaint stretch their songbook

Greg Buium
Vancouver Sun
Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Elvis Costello and the Imposters featuring the piano and songs of Allen Toussaint

The TD Canada Trust Vancouver International Jazz Festival

Orpheum Theatre, June 26

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If you bundled together all of the recent benefits for the city of New Orleans very few could rival the sobering, shimmering, ecstatic River in Reverse, the wonder-stroke union of Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint, which arrived in Canada for the first time Monday night at the Orpheum.

The pairing of Costello and Toussaint, the fabled New Orleans singer, songwriter and pianist, for the first time since 1989, wasn't ever meant to be a minor operation. They matched Costello's band, the Imposters, with Toussaint's Crescent City Horns, plus his guitarist Anthony Brown.

Together, 10 men mounted the stage in a night of surging, soaring intensity. The River in Reverse, their recent CD, was only the starting point: the scope and substance of the night stretched back to old-time New Orleans and up into huge swaths of Costello's own, multifaceted songbook.

Indeed, the sometime British Columbian walked out with his three-piece -- organist Steve Nieve, bassist Davey Faragher, drummer Peter Thomas -- and tore into (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding: a fabulous, muddy mix that turned far more precise as the horns arrived and the night progressed.

"Congratulations, dad!" someone yelled out. "A new baby!" shouted another, noting the news that his wife, Diana Krall, is expecting a child in December.

Costello hesitated, then looked at his watch.

"Does this make me Canadian, then?" he said to wild applause.

Costello was certainly centre stage all night, retelling the story of the project, and the first time he and Toussaint played together again, just after Hurricane Katrina, at a Lincoln Center benefit, before going into a duet on Freedom for the Stallion.

There was so much to watch, and listen to. Costello's own inspired, chainsaw rhythm guitar playing, trombonist Sam Williams's towering solo turns, and his moonwalk.

And there was of course Toussaint himself.

"How come you sing all the vocals on this record, you big-headed swine," Costello recalled someone asking him, before explaining that Toussaint was just too "self-effacing."

This late review went to press before the end of Monday's concert.