interview: Low Cut Connie
Tune in as WMSE talks to Adam from Low Cut Connie before their Milwaukee gig at Turner Hall Ballroom on Tuesday, July 17th.
“Across five albums of piano-driven rock and soul, Low Cut Connie has proven masterfully fluent in the foundational languages of Western pop, living at the crossroads where the church house meets the roadhouse, or where the Dew Drop Inn meets CBGB. They’re revivalists, but definitely not re-enactors: You can hear the traces of and nods to the wildfire boogie of Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis or the big piano balladeering of Billy Joel and Elton John (the latter of whom gave the group a hearty endorsement in 2017). The blood that pumps through the Philadelphia band’s work comes from a place that’s fresh, original, and truly pledged to rock and roll.
“In an interview earlier this year, frontman and piano-banger Adam Weiner explained the dividing line between last year’s Dirty Pictures (Part 1) and the new Dirty Pictures (Part 2) (out May 18 on Contender Records). The group’s explosive live shows and blues-punk bluster had engendered a certain rep.
“”To be completely honest, we have a reputation and perception of our band that I think strategically I had to undo a little bit,” Weiner tells NPR Music. He was getting tired of write-ups that leaned on words like “sleazy” and “scuzzy” and “greasy,” however well-intended.
“”I think it’s just because we do this kind of full-bodied, red-blooded rock and roll thing, as opposed to what’s more in fashion, which is just this ironic indie rock thing,” he said. And the overall Dirty Pictures batch of songs was starting to show him that it had two sides; the songs that would populate Part 2 were emerging as more complex. They were songs that still rocked – songs that you could still climb a piano to, as Weiner often does with his semi-famous battered upright named Shondra — but with character, nuance and emotional complexity.”
~NPR