Oregon Public Radio just posted an in-studio session with Neko Case and two of her band members, guitarist Paul Rigby and singer Kelly Hogan. Case performs three songs from her latest, Middle Cyclone: the title track, People Got A Lotta Nerve and after the second interview section she closes with Harry Nilsson’s Don’t Forget Me, sans piano orchestra as on the album, even though it’s not listed on the page.
There are also two fairly lengthy interviews with various snippets of interest. She talks about the album and the natural forces themes that run through it as well as real tornadoes, cigarettes, her new farm in Vermont and her sometimes band The New Pornographers.
Nice performances and a fun interview. A shame that the closest she comes to Connecticut on her current tour are dates in Maine, Vermont and the Newport Folk Festival, all in August. Listen to it at OPR.
The only question left is whether Michael Lang, who produced the original festival, will stage anniversary events in August. There were reports earlier this year about free 
The sound is pristine, the performances near flawless and the songs are fully formed in almost every instance. It’s an easy and pleasant listen. What it lacks is a hint at how most of these tunes changed from the early demo stage to the finished product.
But Secret, Profane & Sugarcane is hardly just a bluegrass album. Costello imbues his songs with rock, country blues and jazz sensibilities as well as folk themes built around four songs from an unfinished Hans Christian Anderson opera.
Disc 1 in the 10-disc set, which I have in DVD format, is titled Early Years (1966-68) and is dedicated to the mid-to-late ’60s group that many of its fans lament over for its short tenure on the rock scene, about two years.
I have a dedicated SACD/DVD player connected to my stereo and that’s where I have listened to it the most, although I’ve played it through one of my computers to access the visuals available while songs are playing, hidden tracks and other goodies that you can only see with a monitor.
Not electrifying in a showy, glitzy, glamorous sense, but in a musical sense. The two giants whose careers started in the 1960s and have paralleled each other, intersecting once for an extended period in 1969, show they are still fully capable of producing inspring and creative performances on their own material and covers of some of their contemporaries.
The Amherst, Mass., based trio mixes elements of blues and jazz into its melodic and involved riffs, unusual rhythms and a decided accent on the instrumental and improvisational side to its songs. In fact, sometimes it seems the songs exist simply to push the musical side of the compositions further along.