BOB MALONE: Malone Alone

Bob Malone

Malone Alone

© 2003 Meloontunes (786851025125)

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WINNER: BEST LIVE CD: Just Plain Folks 2004 Music Awards. Top 20: Roots Music Report/Living Blues Radio Charts. Billy Joel meets Leon Russell with Dr. John and Tom Waits stopping by for drinks - and Mose Allison drinking them all under the table

notes

"Malone connects with audiences via his self-depreciatingly witty banter and songs...sung with an affable misanthropy that recalls Randy Newman and Tom Waits. He's also a dazzlingly skilled pianist." City Link (Broward/Palm Beach, FL)

"Malone Alone is a pure joy to listen to. A surefire chart climber!" Roots Music Report

"Dixie-fried vocalist, songwriter and piano pulverizer supreme, Bob Malone, returns with his first live album, Malone Alone. Fiery performances and on-mic asides reveal the masterful storyteller and musician at his most entertaining. Highly recommended." Music Connection Magazine
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Bob Malone makes music for grownups. A timeless sound that is pure Americana: an intoxicating distillation of uptown blues, gutbucket New Orleans ragtime stomp, and classic singer/songwriter pop songcraft, delivered with a wry lyrical eye for detail, and the ferocious energy of a great rock and roll piano man. An extraordinarily charismatic performer and virtuoso musician, he has been best described in review as "a raconteur of the human condition." Bob Malone's songs span the musical spectrum from full tilt boogie to the seamless melodies of great ballads that linger like classic standards, all sung with his one-of-a-kind whiskey-cured voice.

Bob's 4th CD release, the much anticipated live-solo MALONE ALONE, distributed in the U.S. by Burnside, leapt onto the Living Blues and Roots Music Report radio charts in its first month of release, and is now on this year's Grammy entry list for Best Contemporary Folk Album. Recorded during his 2002 Like It or Not tour, the CD is a high-energy showcase of Bob's prodigious live talents.

A genuine indie success story, Bob Malone is highlighted along with Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Keith Richards, and Harry Connick Jr. among others with a featured essay in the 2002 HarperCollins book Working Musicians. With four critically acclaimed CDs and a busy touring schedule, Bob has established an impressive international fan-base, extensive radio airplay and solid record sales. Bob Malone's 2002 release, Like It Or Not, won Best Album in the Male Singer/Songwriter category out of a field of over 8,000 entries at the JPF Music Awards in Los Angeles.

Bob Malone tours nonstop, performing both as a headliner and as an opener for acts like The Neville Brothers, Rev. Al Green, Boz Scaggs, Manhattan Transfer, and Vonda Shepard, to name a few. He has been featured on syndicated NPR shows Car Talk, Acoustic Cafe, Woodsongs Old Time Radio Hour, and Rock & Roots. His songs have been heard on network TV shows Jag, the Young & the Restless, All My Children, Cupid and on the Travel Channel. Bob was an Acoustic Café "One To Watch" artist in 2002, was featured on a Performing Songwriter Magazine "Best of the DIYs" compilation CD, and was voted one of the 'Best Unsigned Artists in LA' five years in a row by Music Connection Magazine.

Born and raised in New Jersey, Bob Malone currently resides in Los Angeles where he lives with his wife Karen Nash, and their two cats Bacchus and Zulu.
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Liner notes from "Malone Alone" by music writer Paul Zollo, who has written for Rolling Stone and Spin, among other esteemed publications:

It's a fundamental truth: There are piano men and there are guys who play the piano. And their paths don't cross. And Bob Malone is a piano man. When he plays live, you hear it instantly. It's the real thing. And there's something that happens when you hear the real thing. It's something elemental, something intrinsic, something as surefire fundamental as a force of nature. It's a recognition of real music. And the one thing that Bobby has always had in spades, not to mention diamonds and clubs, is real music. Take the break in the middle of his ode to infidelity, "I Know He's Your Husband," Resounding with the ghosts of ragtime and Dixieland, it's as essentially as American as jazz. It's something he carries around in his vest pocket, close to his heart. The guy's a train. A locomotive. He criss-crosses America time and again. He's the train that keeps going. He cooks on the keys. He can light a piano on fire just with the lightning-slick motion of his hands. His voice is the voice of the city, but also the harbor and the boardwalk. He's known the late night of the soul, so late the sun's already coming up over the old piers. He's got a touch of the Carney in his voice, just a shade of the circus, the sideshows and the carnival. But he also happens to have a heart about as big as Manhattan, so while he gives us the great slinky simmering blues-funk groove of "Like It Or Not" he also turns around and tugs our collective heartstrings with classic love songs like "Valentine's Day," which are about as romantic as romance gets. He's funny, he's sentimental, he rocks, he shuffles, he jams. He takes on a formidable folk fable like Dylan's "Tangled Up In Blue" and makes it entirely his own, bending it into a whole new shape.

He does it with those elemental chords, the building blocks of ageless blues and eternal jazz. They are the links in a long chain that connects Leadbelly with Little John with Little Richard with Jerry Lee Lewis and Ray Charles with Doctor John with Mose Allison and Bob Dylan and it all leads directly to that place that he lives, where Bob Malone can be found eating blues for breakfast, or nursing a big mug of soul late somewhere between the burnt-orange Angeleno afternoon and the silver-black Manhattan skyline. The Man is connected. He's plugged in. Into that thing you hear when people play and sing who were born to play and sing. God made them that way. They're not out digging ditches or laying bricks because they're on this earth to make the music that gives the ditch-diggers and bricklayers a decent reason to get out of bed in the morning. It's a reason to believe, is what it is, and his music makes believers out of us. To believe that regardless of the cards this world might deal him, he's not going to fold. He's the train that keeps going. He's the train that keeps hope alive. He's going to give us that great blend, that eclectic electric acoustic amalgamation of sound, of two hands on a piano and one earthy voice in perfect concord. And the ditch-diggers and bricklayers and students of life and the blues will dig what he's doing, and he will deepen their days and brighten their nights. And it might not make life perfect. Or even easy. But it sure goes a long way in making it better. And you can't ask for any more than that.

-- Paul Zollo

reviews

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  • Raw, Bob at his best.
    author: Paul Weaver

    Bob Malone is the best piano playing blues entertainer I've ever heard. Period. Bob has a lot of good stuff out there but this CD catches him at his most powerful, in front of a crowd!

  • A regular guy performing great music!
    author: Lynn Quintieri

    Great CD! I love Bob's style and share it with everyone!

  • Like sitting down with an old friend
    author: Monica

    Bob Malone has such a talent for inviting you into his music and making you comfortable. It's like sitting down and visiting with an old friend; telling jokes, catching up and enjoying their company.

  • author: Claire Mc

    Good music, entertaining comments by Bob before each piece, making it a wonderful act.

  • Pure, Raw Bob Malone
    author: Tony Indriolo

    This is the next best thing to seeing Bob Malone in person. His other CDs, with back-up vocals & complex music arrangements are also good. But, this is pure Bob Malone. I asked if he had a CD of his live performance the first time I saw him live. I was disappointed then. This is a great CD. Bob's stage presence really come through on this disk. Thank You Bob!

  • Great CD !!!
    author: Yvon

    Everything is good on this CD. Great music, great performance, even some humor. You just feel like having a good time at the bar with Bob !

  • Great Performer
    author: Andreas Egger

    I really don't know what I like the most : the voice, the songs, the piano-playing, the humor.... I guess, it's everything together. A great CD from a great performer !!!

  • Great performance
    author: Martin Hannemann, Germany

    What a powerfull concert by just one man ! You don't miss a band at all. Bob's got his one style, and prooves it on this CD. I also like the jokes, combined with great music, that's entertainment. Martin

  • Intelligent writing with a true blues spirit
    author: David P

    Bob Malone has quickly become one of my favorite artists. This cd shows off his talents as both a writer and piano player. I have not been able to catch Bob live, so I was awed be the piano work on the cd. Hope Bob makes it to N. Carolina soon.

  • Really captures the feel of his live concerts!
    author: Bruce Musicus

    Unlike some of Malone's other CD's which have emphasized his singing, this CD perfectly captures the wild enthusiasm and effortless keyboard mastery that is so evident in his live performances. I've seen Bob Malone twice now (at Johnny D's in Somerville, MA), and I love his gritty voice, his compositions, and the way he can just rip off these fabulous riffs without missing a lyric. This CD captures his solo performance perfectly!

  • Great Album
    author: Joe Hearne

    Bob Malone is one of the true inventive talents of our time. I'm glad to see that as of March 6th CD baby is out of stock on his CD -- that means that demand for the new CD is greater that everyone expected. Hope that you will have more soon. A terrific album from an amazing artist!

  • Bob is way-over the top and I love it!
    author: Dan Kingkade

    Bob Malone is a true original and you haven't experienced Bob, until you've seen him, and in this case, heard him "live". I saw Bob open for the Neville Brothers several years ago and he nearly stole the entire show with his story-telling, humor and wild piano escapes. This CD is only lacking the "visual" of Bob. Great quality, a nice mix of Bob classics, hell, it's like having Bob in the living room sitting at your piano...now that's a visual! Buy this CD if you like "true originals", funny and clever song writing and wild piano antics. Even if you don't like those things, buy it anyway.

  • Great Live CD From A Great Live Performer
    author: Eric Quertermous

    This CD captures Bob Malone perfectly. Whether it's from Malone classics like "I Know He's Your Husband" to newer songs like "Texas" and a GREAT cover of Bob Dylan's "Tangled Up In Blue", this CD a must in any Blues collection. One of the best things about this disc is the fact that Malone keeps a lot of the talking he does to the auidence on the CD. Whether it's a little background to the song or oberservations about life in LA, it was very nice to hear this, adding a layer of intimacy that is missing from a lot of live CD's.

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