Concert preview
Alton Brown and the Edible Inevitable Trio
Friday’s concert at Smith’s Olde Bar is sold out. The Edible Inevitable Tour returns at 8 p.m. Feb. 28. $51.70-$73.60. Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 1-855-285-8499, www.foxtheatre.org.
Brown isn’t the only TV presence making the jump from small screen to live stage.
HLN “Morning Express” host Robin Meade makes her Atlanta concert debut at 9:30 p.m. Oct. 16 at Eddie’s Attic. Her second album, the country-tinged “Count on Me,” hit No. 29 on Billboard’s Heatseekers Chart after release this summer. She’ll perform with hit songwriter Victoria Shaw and ace Nashville session players Andy Childs and Chuck Tilley. Tickets are $14 in advance, $18 at the door or $70 for a reserved table for four. Ticket info: 404-377-4976, www.eddiesattic.com.
The multitalented Hugh Laurie will bring his Copper Bottom Band to the Buckhead Theatre for a show at 8 p.m. Nov. 3. The former “House” star recently released his second album, “Didn’t It Rain,” which showcases his love of the blues. Tickets are $36. Info: 1-800-745-3000, www.ticketmaster.com.
Just in case you didn’t think Alton Brown was interesting enough as a TV personality, chef, author and pilot – he typically flies himself in his Cessna unless it’s a long stretch to the West Coast – add another accomplishment to his exhaustive resume: He’s also a musician.
And if you don’t believe that, well, the proof will soon be live on stage.
On Friday, Food Network star Brown and his Edible Inevitable Trio will perform a sold-out show at Smith’s Olde Bar.
“It’s a hard name to fit on the drumhead,” Brown said with one of his wry smiles. “But it helps us weed out the drunkards if they can’t say it.”
The Smith’s gig will be the first time the threesome – Brown on guitar and saxophone; Patrick Belden, Brown’s longtime sound designer and “actual musician,” on guitar; and Jim Pace, a right-hand man to Brown and his wife DeAnna, on drums – has played in front of an audience.
“I don’t want to call it a dress rehearsal,” Brown said last week during a chat at his new office headquarters in Marietta. “It’s a debut, because with debuts you can still throw up before it, right?”
The “debut” of the Edible Inevitables is hardly a one-shot vanity project, either. Brown and his cohorts will hit the road on Oct. 18 for a five-month tour – officially called “Alton Brown Live! The Edible Inevitable Tour” – of performing arts centers that will wind its way back to Atlanta with a Feb. 28 date at the Fox Theatre, the biggest venue on the itinerary.
“It’s the freaking Fox Theatre. Who wouldn’t want to play there? I’ve never played anything with that many chairs in it,” Brown said with a combination of awe and the teeniest hint of “Yikes!”
The show, which Brown, 51, has wanted to do for years, will spotlight all of his abilities (sans piloting).
There will be cooking demos — some will require certain parts of the audience to don ponchos — Q&A sessions, food lectures (or, as Brown puts it, “stand-up comedy with a Power Point presentation”), video (the yeast puppets from his award-winning “Good Eats” show play a prominent role) and, of course, music.
The longtime Marietta resident, a major presence on Food Network staples “Iron Chef America,” “Food Network Star” and his newest series, “Cutthroat Kitchen,” has always been immersed in music.
“I definitely wouldn’t have made it through high school without jazz,” Brown said of his days at Lithonia High School, where he also encountered some inspirational band directors. “I would have been dead if it hadn’t been for Miles Davis.”
Brown’s musical inclinations started in childhood: Piano since age 5. Saxophone since the fifth grade, when his dad, a trumpet player and cellist, brought the instrument home from a pawn shop for the boy. Then came guitar around the days of “seeing every show that went into the 40 Watt Club” in Athens while a student at the University of Georgia.
“I remember hearing my first U2 album and was like, holy smokes, that’s so, so brand new. To my mind, when you look at guitarists, there’s Jimmy Page, Eddie Van Halen and The Edge. Those are the peaks of the musical Himalayans for me,” Brown said.
He isn’t a novice tunesmith – “I did write songs before, but it was a long time ago and very badly,” he joked – but has crafted enough material not only for the two legs of the tour, but for a planned album as well.
In typical Brown fashion, the songs reflect his dry sense of humor and intellect.
There’s “TV Chef,” a “scathing, satirical examination of the TV chef phenomenon,” that Brown said was originally inspired by Warren Zevon’s “Mr. Bad Example” but now sounds like a Johnny Cash anthem.
“Airport Shrimp Cocktail” is a hardcore Nashville country song about love gone bad, “Easy Bake” brings out Brown’s punk side – and will be performed on a guitar specially designed with dozens of Brown’s old Post-it Notes, his signature form of communication- and “Pork Chop Blues” is exactly as it sounds, a 12-bar blues romp.
Brown is relishing the fun he’s having writing amusing food songs and playing them with friends and is reasonably confident that audiences will appreciate this new addition to his professional oeuvre.
“Number one, I think people will be forgiving, and number two, you get away with things because the songs are funny and they’re meant to be funny. I think people will be surprised that we’re as good as we are,” Brown said, then added with a laugh, “but I can hide behind the skills of an actual musician if I have to.”
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