Low Cut Connie

Low Cut Connie is a Philadelphia band led by piano player Adam Weiner, who's a born ham: an entertainer who will pound his piano (and his listeners) into submission. Low Cut Connie began when Weiner and his partner, Englishman Dan Finnemore, decided to team up.

In this installment of World Cafe, the band plays music from last year's Call Me Sylvia and tells the tale of bonding in a stuck freight elevator. - NPR

The slanting rays of the early-afternoon sun are lighting up the back room of Ray's Happy Birthday Bar in South Philadelphia, and already Low Cut Connie is rocking out.

It's well before any normal hour to take the stage for the four-piece rock-and-roll combo, fronted by Cherry Hill native Adam Weiner, a piano-pumping showman; and Birmingham, England, drummer and guitarist Dan Finnemore.

Joined by Neil Duncan and Ian Vos, the quartet will play Friday at Johnny Brenda's in support of their stellar, self-released second album, Call Me Sylvia. But today, at a neighborhood joint opened in 1933 by proprietor and saxophonist Lou Capozzoli's father, Ray, is a bit out of the ordinary.

With a photo shoot and interview scheduled, the band - hunkered down with a pretour case of Hurricane Sandy cabin fever at Weiner's parents' place in Marlton - decided to invite some friends over for a noon rock-and-roll party.

Before lunchtime had passed, the band had floored the fortunate few with a nine-song set that sampled Call Me Sylvia and last year's Get Out the Lotion. The set included covers of Bruce Springsteen's "Johnny 99," Barrett Strong's "Money (That's What I Want)" and the Robin's "Riot in Cell Block #9," the last two with the 73-year-old Capozzoli happily honking away.

Weiner, a ham who's been known to pull out a chest hair as an offering to fans, had sweat soaking through his tuxedo shirt as he banged the keys with his boot Jerry Lee Lewis-style and dropped to the floor for push-ups as his bandmates wailed away.

"We are on hallowed ground," says Weiner, looking around the bar decorated with Dean Martin dolls and Sinatra photos, which is where the band shot its latest video, for the song "Boozaphilia."

The curly-haired songwriter is sharing his piano bench with the mustachioed Finnemore, who, like him, is 32 and animated by enthusiasm for early rock and R&B.

Coupling that with impressive songwriting and a joyous sleaziness, Low Cut Connie never runs the risk of coming off as mere revivalists.

What the band is passionate about is "the old stuff, the raw stuff, the honest stuff," says Finnemore, who cut his teeth with a series of British bands that regularly played the Birmingham rock-and-roll party known as Cold Rice before he saw Weiner perform in New York a half-dozen years ago.

"That's the taste that me and Adam share. Chess Records. Stax, that old raw sound. That's how we bonded, because he was doing the same things I was doing on another continent . . . .

"For me, rock-and-roll is visceral," he adds, pointing to his heart. "It's in there. If you think about it too much, it becomes tiresome and laborious. Playing this kind of music is the most fun you can have!"

Weiner, who put out three albums in the '00s as Ladyfingers, educated himself in rockabilly and boogie-woogie during a year at the University of Memphis. His resumé also includes teaching music at Appel Farm Music & Arts Center in Elmer, N.J., where he worked alongside Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards. She sang with Low Cut Connie backing her at Weiner's wedding in July in Upstate New York. Weiner also spent several years in New York acting, tutoring, and playing karaoke bars and nursing homes.

"That's where I got my performance chops from," says the pianist, whose kinky character-driven tales are complemented by Finnemore's hooky, guitar-fired, rough-and-tumble tunes. One Weiner standout on Call Me Sylvia is "No More Wet T-Shirt Contests" a lounge lizard's lament worthy of Randy Newman.

"I was thinking about what it must be like to be a stripper, and feign baring your soul on repeat," Weiner says. "I played in a place called Pegasus in New York, which is a Gaysian drag karaoke bar. You're fighting for attention with a 4-foot-10 Chinese man dressed as Patti LaBelle doing 'Lady Marmalade.' That type of crowd will let you know if you're sucking . . . . I learned to do what you have to do to make it work for the crowd."

Weiner and Finnemore played together occasionally after they met. But it wasn't until they got stuck in an elevator in Birmingham with a duffel bag full of Jack Daniel's bottles that they decided to write and record together. In four sweltering days in August 2010, they went to Duncan's studio in Gainesville, Fla., and cut the 11 songs on Get Out the Lotion.

They sent the finished product out to the press. They called themselves Low Cut Connie, Weiner says, because the drawing of a waitress he did for the cover looked like someone named Connie and "like us and our band, she wasn't gorgeous, but she works hard, takes care of business, and on the weekends she puts on something low cut and goes bowling . . . our band is Connie on the weekend, wearing som - Philadelphia Inquirer

Low Cut Connie is one of an increasingly rare breed: a party band, a bar band, a band with a sense of rock 'n' roll history that isn't weighed down by nostalgia or the foolish feeling that music was better way back when. Positive fellows, for the most part, even when they're in their cups, these guys "say yes," as the title of one song goes, to a life in music. Oh, and they're also trying to get women to say yes to their craven come-ons.Adam Weiner sings in a nasal sneer that's really a leering grin in disguise. He's the band's most ostentatious showman; see the band in concert and he'll be the one executing Jerry Lee Lewis hammerings on the piano, leaping onto the bench to emphasize a particularly insistent chord. Meanwhile, Dan Finnemore writes and sings the songs, which partake of a '60s British Invasion sense of harmonics.

Even bar bands get the blues, of course, and with Low Cut Connie, such moments sound like hangover cures set to music. Take "Stay Alive If You Can" from the band's second album, Call Me Sylvia, in which Weiner gets morose while summoning up a James Dean/Rebel Without a Cause landscape of self-regard and despair.

Where the band's debut album, Get Out the Lotion, was the sound of guys rocking out and hoping someone's listening, the attention it got them has thrown them back on themselves, forcing them to take stock of their chosen path. The result is that they're already chafing a bit at still playing small clubs and not rolling in dough; you can't get much more explicit about that than writing a song called "Pity Party." And, toward the end of the album, Weiner follows an eccentric, stream-of-consciousness rant called "No More Wet T-Shirt Contests" with a morose, profane, quiet ballad called "Dreams Don't Come True." But, hey: "That's life, baby," to quote Weiner in that song. Besides, there's always the distinct possibility of bigger crowds, more fans and a chance to move out of your parents' basement. Right? - NPR

Low Cut Connie is a band that basically defies all laws about how a band is supposed to make it in 2013. I know this because instead of sending me a CD or asking me to review a show, the duo's singer took me out to lunch and invited my band to open for them.
Combustible frontman/upright pianist Adam Weiner graduated from the same New Jersey high school as me, five years earlier, and first contacted me on Twitter because I'm a music critic from his hometown of Cherry Hill. I'd heard his band because I'll check out anything "Dean of Rock Critics" Robert Christgau grades an A- or higher, and their bawdy album called Get Out the Lotion stands out for other reasons.

Weiner shares songwriting duties with drummer/guitarist Dan Finnemore, whose own ditties like "Darlin'" and "Brand New Cadillac" are raucously juiced with American rockabilly. Weiner's twisted anthems like "Big Thighs, NJ" and "Shit, Shower and Shave" earned them the "scuzzball" descriptor (from Christgau) and the term was subsequently (and proudly) passed around in their press milleu. But the band is great on a ballad like "Full of Joy" even when they deviate from the loose-rocking schtick. I would've been a fan from that alone, but becoming friends with them has been a whole other fascinating rabbit hole.For example, if I had not known these guys, I never would've found out that Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs was a camp counselor with Weiner at Appel Farm, or that she played Prince and Michael Jackson songs at his wedding, well after winning the Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics poll for her second album w h o k i l l. The pompadoured Weiner's a strangely connected guy, and a great salesman, which is why his band has one of the most quixotic success stories in recent memory.Their two albums are great--I didn't even realize my Weekly editor Ben Westhoff knew they existed until I saw that he listed them in his top ten last year. Their ferocious live show, complete with instrument-switching and Weiner leaping atop his bench to pound the keys, is probably unmatched in all of rock right now, at least until Gogol Bordello comes back around. Every time my bassist sees Low Cut Connie, he vows to steal their stage moves. They upstaged the Shins during a recent Third Man Records opening gig and allegedly made a fan of Jack White in the process.
NPR calls them "The Self Deprecating Bar Band," a title that fits squarely with songs like "(No More) Wet T-Shirt Contests," in which Weiner mock-threatens that his Christian phase is coming soon. Rolling Stone has endorsed the band as well, with two 3 ½ star reviews for two self-released albums. Their song "Boozophilia," ended up in the magazine's top 50 songs of 2012.

The video for it was filmed at Philly's North Star Bar, on a night when my band Dan Ex Machina opened for them. In the clip, we can be clearly seen dancing shirtless in the audience. It was a great show, and in the dressing room between sets I had the pleasure of watching a semi-shitfaced Weiner take a piss in the corner. (When I recall this, he tells me the story of a voice coach who made him press down on her bladder as hard as he could with his hand as she demonstrated how to sing through the uh, pee-pain.)Sounding like Jerry Lee Lewis and Screamin' Jay Hawkins is both a blessing and a curse for the band, who I'd call a healthy anachronism and could break wide open from say, having one of their tunes selected to accompany the right sleazy moment in True Blood. Weiner sums up their current obstacle:

"We had a gig at Joe's Pub, a swanky, upscale, seated dinner place in Manhattan. "The week before us, Leonard Cohen did his press junket there. Elvis Costello has been there. Before that we were playing little divey bars. We went out and played one of the best shows we've ever done. We ripped it up, we blew up that room. That night there was an agent from a particularly large booking agency there to see us destroy a major venue in New York City. He spoke with our lawyer the next day and said, 'You know, they're really amazing. But I have no idea what I would do with them. Pass.
Weeks later we played in Philly. This band I won't name played first, to about five people. They had like, three laptops onstage, had their eyes closed, staring at their shoes. Nothing going on in that room, onstage or in the crowd. That schmuck from the booking agency came down that night, from Brooklyn to Philly, in a rainstorm, to see this band and proceeded to sign them. You tell me what he saw in that band, at that show."

Weiner insists the band "skipped steps," and while they're grateful of the position they're in, they missed the grassroots buildup, the Best New Music, the festival circuit. They're shopping demos of a potential third rec - L.A. Weekly

Adam Weiner and Dan Finnemore, the singer-songwriters behind the raw-boned rock-and-roll combo Low Cut Connie, look at their band as a second chance.

Emerging pretty much out of nowhere in 2011, this union of indie-rock veterans has enjoyed the kind of critical praise and intense fan affection that most groups would kill for. For the two 32-year-olds, Low Cut Connie has afforded them a real opportunity to do something with their music, just when it seemed their professional dreams may have passed them by.

"We both played music for 10 years, and I don't want to say we'd given up, but we were moving into that time of life where we were probably gonna just do it on the weekends," Weiner says. "Then this band hit. We figured we'd worked for a chance like this for so long, we'd be crazy not to give it a real shot now."

Low Cut Connie, which makes its Memphis debut Wednesday at the Hi-Tone Café in support of its recently released sophomore album, has myriad ties to the Bluff City, and its appearance will be a musical and personal homecoming of sorts.

Weiner grew up in South Jersey, just outside of Philadelphia, but it was a trip to Memphis as a college sophomore during New Year's Eve 1999 that changed his life. "I'd never been down South before," Weiner says. "I was 19 years old. I spent the weekend in Memphis and Mississippi, and I just really connected with the place and felt like I wanted to come back."

Weiner returned to college at New York University and saw that many of his friends and classmates were going off to study abroad. When he told school officials he wanted to continue his studies in Memphis, their response was, "Memphis, Egypt?"

In 2001, Weiner enrolled in the University of Memphis' musicology program, working closely with roots/blues expert Dr. David Evans. He continued his informal studies by watching late boogie-woogie pianist Mose Vinson every weekend, and doing an internship with the "Beale Street Caravan" radio show. "I got a really amazing Memphis music experience," Weiner says. "That's where I really dug deep into my piano playing and decided I wanted to be a rock-and-roll piano player."

After leaving Memphis, Weiner started a spooked-out rockabilly/doo-wop project called Ladyfingers, which released a series of albums and toured the U.S. frequently. While playing a show in New York, Weiner first crossed paths with Birmingham, England, native Dan Finnemore. A singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Finnemore was playing drums in a band called The Big Bang. He'd come up as part of Birmingham's Cold Rice scene, a garage-rock record label, club night and collective in the mold of Memphis' Goner Records.

Like Weiner, Finnemore had been similarly shaped by the music of Memphis, both past and present. "It was a lot of Jerry Lee Lewis, Stax, old-school rock and roll," Finnemore says. "But I was exposed to a lot of newer music, too, like Reigning Sound and Greg Cartwright and Jay Reatard."

Sparking a friendship, Weiner's and Finnemore's eventual professional collaboration came as a result of them being stranded together under less-than-ideal circumstances.

In 2006, Weiner had gone to the U.K. to perform as part of a Cold Rice concert event alongside Finnemore's project Swampmeat. "After the show, Dan was trying to take me to a party where there was going to be some girls," Weiner recalls. "We went to this warehouse to drop off the equipment. We got into an elevator with all our gear and a duffel bag full of all the booze from the gig … and then the elevator got stuck."

Eventually, the Birmingham fire brigade had to be summoned to rescue the pair. But during the hours they were trapped together, "the drinks were flowing, and we started messing around on guitars," Weiner says. Over the next few years, Ladyfingers and Swampmeat regularly toured the U.S. and Europe jointly, with Weiner playing piano for Finnemore, and Finnemore playing drums with Weiner.

Then in 2010, Finnemore found himself stranded in the U.S. for two weeks at Weiner's house amid the international travel restrictions caused by the volcanic ash cloud in Iceland. "That's when we really started playing and writing together and where Low Cut Connie came together," Weiner says.

The pair recorded the first Low Cut Connie album, Get Out the Lotion, in a four-day blast at guitarist Neil Duncan's studio in Gainesville, Fla. "It was clear from the get-go that there was something special going on with the band," Weiner says.

The 11 songs on the record vividly defined the Low Cut Connie aesthetic: '50s-flavored melodies, greasy boogie rhythms, salty lyrics, and a sometimes-boozy, but always-lively approach. "Essentially, the spirit behind real rock and roll is what' - GoMemphis

The main problem that I have today is that I can't be the boys in Low Cut Connie. It's not going to happen. I've got to pick up dinner for the family, tuck some kids into bed and then stay up way too late working so that I can do the same thing again tomorrow. Sure, there can be some beers getting cracked while that nocturnal working gets done, but it can be nothing like the shenanigans that these fellas from New York are kicking up at any given moment.

It might just be an exaggerated effort being made to make it sound like everything they're doing, everything Adam Weiner is howling about is going to lead to the most well-earned and satisfying hangover imaginable, but there's nothing at all wrong with that. Even if these are fictions being sung about in these fiery chugs of bluesy and boozy rock and roll, they are the kinds of fictions that we all aspire to. We're looking to find excuses to become the fearless, alcoholic and not just sex-addicted, but sex-acquiring, traveling charmers that this foursome already plays up. It all sounds so glorious.

What we wouldn't give to just pile into the van for the trip that they try to take to Rio in the song of the same name. It gets stalled in Toledo because a baggie of weed was found in the vehicle by some nosy officer of the law, but the anticipation and the possibilities of what was going to or what they were hoping to do in Rio, are enough to buy the tickets. The promise of what the weekend could hold is a thousand times better than anything Vince Vaughn or Bradley Cooper could have ever dreamed up. It's about men being animals - gluttons on everything that you get scolded for indulging in. It's about bottles and bottles of booze, smashed against the streets below hotel rooms. It's about bringing strangers back to those rooms. It's about feeding all of the witty and ingenious devils within. They can be - with the right kind of nurturing - the greatest wingmen we could ever want for. - Daytrotter

The main problem that I have today is that I can't be the boys in Low Cut Connie. It's not going to happen. I've got to pick up dinner for the family, tuck some kids into bed and then stay up way too late working so that I can do the same thing again tomorrow. Sure, there can be some beers getting cracked while that nocturnal working gets done, but it can be nothing like the shenanigans that these fellas from New York are kicking up at any given moment.

It might just be an exaggerated effort being made to make it sound like everything they're doing, everything Adam Weiner is howling about is going to lead to the most well-earned and satisfying hangover imaginable, but there's nothing at all wrong with that. Even if these are fictions being sung about in these fiery chugs of bluesy and boozy rock and roll, they are the kinds of fictions that we all aspire to. We're looking to find excuses to become the fearless, alcoholic and not just sex-addicted, but sex-acquiring, traveling charmers that this foursome already plays up. It all sounds so glorious.

What we wouldn't give to just pile into the van for the trip that they try to take to Rio in the song of the same name. It gets stalled in Toledo because a baggie of weed was found in the vehicle by some nosy officer of the law, but the anticipation and the possibilities of what was going to or what they were hoping to do in Rio, are enough to buy the tickets. The promise of what the weekend could hold is a thousand times better than anything Vince Vaughn or Bradley Cooper could have ever dreamed up. It's about men being animals - gluttons on everything that you get scolded for indulging in. It's about bottles and bottles of booze, smashed against the streets below hotel rooms. It's about bringing strangers back to those rooms. It's about feeding all of the witty and ingenious devils within. They can be - with the right kind of nurturing - the greatest wingmen we could ever want for. - Daytrotter

So often when rock & roll keeps it real it sounds, well, old-fashioned: playing to rules written for a different time. That's not the case with Low Cut Connie and their second album, Call Me Sylvia. Sure, there are plenty of echoes of a hedonistic past ricocheting around Call Me Sylvia -- it's easy to pick out the Stones and the Replacements, or the wild mercury sound of Dylan at his amphetamine prime -- and Low Cut Connie pledges allegiance to a boozy boogie that's been out of style since at least the Carter administration, but the remarkable thing about this cheerfully dirty quartet is that they're never living in the past, never expending energy in capturing the perfect forgotten reverb or rearranging their record collection into a meticulous collage. Low Cut Connie just barrel forth -- they pick up their guitars and play loudly, making a noise with whatever amps happen to be lying around. The difference isn't just attitude, it's instrumentation; unlike so many rock & roll groups of the last 20 years, Low Cut Connie are anchored by the pounding piano of Adam Weiner, and those rocking '88s gives the group real swing and sleaze, elements missing even in such otherwise excellent rock & roll throwbacks as the White Stripes or the Black Keys. That palpable big beat electrifies Call Me Sylvia, but Low Cut Connie aren't only about sound -- they're crack songwriters, bashing out big hooks and riffs in songs that are sharp, clever, and funny without succumbing to cutesiness. Like the best rock & roll of any era, this lives passionately and messily for the moment, and as Call Me Sylvia spills forth, it's hard not to get swept into its giddy, filthy joy.
- AllMusic

Low Cut Connie is one of an increasingly rare breed: a party band, a bar band, a band with a sense of rock 'n' roll history that isn't weighed down by nostalgia or the foolish feeling that music was better way back when. Positive fellows, for the most part, even when they're in their cups, these guys "say yes," as the title of one song goes, to a life in music. Oh, and they're also trying to get women to say yes to their craven come-ons.Adam Weiner sings in a nasal sneer that's really a leering grin in disguise. He's the band's most ostentatious showman; see the band in concert and he'll be the one executing Jerry Lee Lewis hammerings on the piano, leaping onto the bench to emphasize a particularly insistent chord. Meanwhile, Dan Finnemore writes and sings the songs, which partake of a '60s British Invasion sense of harmonics.

Even bar bands get the blues, of course, and with Low Cut Connie, such moments sound like hangover cures set to music. Take "Stay Alive If You Can" from the band's second album, Call Me Sylvia, in which Weiner gets morose while summoning up a James Dean/Rebel Without a Cause landscape of self-regard and despair.

Where the band's debut album, Get Out the Lotion, was the sound of guys rocking out and hoping someone's listening, the attention it got them has thrown them back on themselves, forcing them to take stock of their chosen path. The result is that they're already chafing a bit at still playing small clubs and not rolling in dough; you can't get much more explicit about that than writing a song called "Pity Party." And, toward the end of the album, Weiner follows an eccentric, stream-of-consciousness rant called "No More Wet T-Shirt Contests" with a morose, profane, quiet ballad called "Dreams Don't Come True." But, hey: "That's life, baby," to quote Weiner in that song. Besides, there's always the distinct possibility of bigger crowds, more fans and a chance to move out of your parents' basement. Right? - NPR

Old-fashioned, piano-slapping rock & roll with a drunk-ass punk-rock spirit – like Jerry Lee Lewis if he'd had his first religious experience at a Replacements show. You can practically smell the Yuengling coming off this skunky, slippery ode to lowbrow kicks from Philly to the South Side of Chicago.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/50-best-songs-of-2012-20121205/low-cut-connie-boozophilia-19691231#ixzz2hAu9eOwj
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook - Rolling Stone

#35 Album of the year: Low Cut Connie, "Get Out the Lotion"
- Robert Christgau / Barnes and Noble.com

Low Cut Connie, Get Out the Lotion (Self-released): A trans-Atlantic collaboration between Jersey-ite Adam Weiner and Birmingham, England's Dan Finnemore, Low Cut Connie's debut is a deliriously delivered selection of '50-style jukebox junk that demands repeated listening. - Go Memphis

#24. Get Out The Lotion- Low Cut Connie

First, I have to say, this is my second favorite album title of the year, it promises humor and fun and it delivers big time. Get Out The Lotion is packed with instantly memorable melodies and funny, smart lyrics, as a favorite example; “Goin’ out tonight, goin’ out dancin’, gonna put stains on everything..” This album is as much fun as you’re likely to have with your clothes on this year. The lotion, of course, as always, is optional. - Pop Bitez

‘Tis the first day of music discovery here and yeah you can dance to it. Long Tall Sally and Short Fat Fanny ain’t got nothing on Low Cut Connie, I’ll bet she’s built for speed too. There are no women in this band, so I am not casting aspersions. Uh-oh, the name of the album is Get Out The Lotion, so you might as well assume the position while you are at it. There are five tunes from the album for you to sample on their website, and their two songwriters bridge the pond; New Jersey's Adam Weiner and Birmingham, England's Dan Finnemore. It makes for boozy, swampy, hip shaking stuff. That’s Adam on the piano ala Jerry Lee, and Dan on the drums, along with guitarist Neil Duncan on his Les Paul and bass player Russell Salib. Here is a somewhat lo-fi video of the song “Rio.” Hope we can give them the magic Music Fog treatment one of these days!

- Jessie Scott - Music Fog

ALBUM Get Out the Lotion (self-released)
SOUND Led by songwriters Adam Weiner (piano/vocals) and Dan Finnemore (drums), Low Cut Connie dish out swampy, Fifties-inspired American rock and roll on this debut. Six-string duties are handled by the Les Paul–wielding Neil Duncan, who tears it up on rollicking tracks like Black Keys–tinged “Rio,” swinging “Darlin” and swaggering “Johnny Cool Man.”
KEY TRACK “Rio”

Watch the live video for "Rio" below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eMbGYB_Omd4 - GUITAR WORLD Magazine

#7. Low Cut Connie, Get Out the Lotion (LOW CUT CONNIE)

My friend Adam started this band with wicked, sweat-drenched players so that he could spit venom and bile and Elvis and Buddy Holly and 21-year-old Jagger at you. And then sweat on you.
- FILTER Magazine

#2. Get Out The Lotion – Low Cut Connie
Low Cut Connie sound like how you want the 50's to have been. It’s scuzzy, dirty, and honest rock and roll. It’s the best album you didn’t hear this year. It’s got endless replay value. It’s straightforward rhythm and blues like your dad used to listen to, but with a good helping of sleaze. And it’s fantastic. “Cat and the Cream” is 2 minutes 30 seconds of the early morning walk of shame, “Full of Joy” sounds like making it in the backseat of someone else’s car, and “Show Your Face”, or “Johnny Cool Man” sound like a party you really, REALLY want to go to. Urgently, throbbingly recommended. - What's the Ruckus

LOW CUT CONNIE: "Get Out the Lotion"...#7 Album of the year:

This naughty bar-band self-released a collection of raucous come-ons, romantic pleadings, bragging and sodden exhaustion cast as hard-won victory. - NPR / Fresh Air with Terry Gross

Melodic and driving, Low Cut Connie’s Get Out The Lotion recalls the easy party vibe of those loveable Faces with more than a dash of contemporary rock ‘n’ roll thrown in for good measure. “The Cat & The Cream” and “Big Thighs, NJ” speak to the former, while “Rio” tackles the latter and “Show Your Face” manages to straddle both like a tip-hungry stripper. “Lover’s Call” and “Darlin’” are evidence of a group that’s got a little more up top than it lets on. A rare band that’s equal to its hype, let’s hope we get to watch Low Cut Connie in action for a long, long time to come. - Popmatters

There's something refreshingly louche about Low Cut Connie, the downright down-and-dirty foursome featuring songwriting from Cherry Hill's own Adam Weiner and Englishman Dan Finnemore. Get Out The Lotion, LCC's witty and raucous debut absorbs Jerry Lee Lewis and Charlie Feathers rockabilly moves into a much smarter-than-your-average rock-and-roll attack. And Weiner (also of Lady Fingers) can be quite seriously effective when he slows things down and broods, as he does below, on "Full Of Joy." a.d. amorosi's Inquirer preview is here. On Friday night, Low Cut Connie play the Little Bar on 8th and Fitzwater. Get the album here.

Read more: http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/inthemix/Low-Cut-Connie-at-the-Little-Bar.html#ixzz1cevbZaTW
Watch sports videos you won't find anywhere else
- Philly.com / Dan DeLuca

New Jersey native Adam Weiner, the occasionally mustachioed singer, composer, and hard-pounding piano player with the piled-high hair, has been thrilling the locals as the doo-wopping Ladyfingers. That's the dark, soulful character who croons his way through an array of haunted rockabilly rockers and Bacharach-tinged ballads, while summoning the ghosts of Gene Pitney and Carl Perkins on LPs such as Open Your Robe. But since last year, it has been Low Cut Connie, Weiner's new band with Dan Finnemore of Birmingham, England, that has titillated novice listeners and top-notch critics such as Rolling Stone magazine and NPR's Fresh Air with its debut recording, Get Out the Lotion. While Ladyfingers specializes in dangerous but subtle love songs, Low Cut Connie goes for the gutsy, up-front, whip-smart, loud-as-bombs approach to sexy, snarling, primal Cramps-inspired raunchabilly, with boozy sensuality ("Cat N The Cream") and carnal lust ("Johnny Cool Man") at its command. Thom McCarthy opens with his singular brand of complex songcraft and tuneful crooning (think Van Dyke Parks meets Elvis Presley) as heard on his sole CD, I Lost Half of My Album and My Favorite Hat in the '92 Flood.

- A.D. Amorosi - Philadelphia Inquirer

BY TONY ABRAHAM While the band name (don’t say it too fast!) and the title of their self-released debut LP (the faptastic Get Out The Lotion) aims lowbrow and hits the target every time (the cover art features a middle age Jersey diner waitress whose off-duty activities shall remain a mystery best left unsolved), Low Cut Connie is more than the raunchy sum of their downmarket puns — much more. They are, in fact, hella fun and you can’t put a price on that — although they invariably will. Thanks to killa-dilla debut and well-earned hyping in the pages of Rolling Stone and the airwaves Fresh Air, LCC is blowing up even as we speak. In fact, when we talked with the boys a little while back they were on their way to a meeting with the suits at Sony to discuss signing on the dotted line. The band boasts a classic American rock n roll sound — one part Jerry Lee hellfire piano, one part gargle-with-gasoline vocals, and two parts big boppin’/rockin’ pneumonia/boogie woogie flu. Light match, run away. Comprised of songwriters Adam Weiner of New Jersey and Dan Finnermore of Birmingham, England, Low Cut Connie talked with Phawker about the band, the record, and masturbation in advance of their show at Little Bar on Friday.


PHAWKER: So, Rolling Stone hails you guys as what “indie rock might sound like were it invented in Alabama in the late Fifties.”

ADAM WEINER: Yeah, I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.

PHAWKER: But the album art fits that description pretty well, though. Who came up with the album art and how?

ADAM WEINER: I drew it. That’s Connie. Who came up with it? Yeah, it was me. I drew a picture of my fantasy of a New Jersey diner LOW_CUT_CONNIE.jpgwaitress, you know, like a South Jersey diner waitress.

PHAWKER: I gotcha.

ADAM WEINER: That’s her, that’s Connie. She’s certainly not beautiful, but she’s got a heart of gold. She sorta captures the essence of our band right now.

PHAWKER: Get Out the Lotion is the name of the album. Is that implying what we’re all thinking it’s implying?

ADAM WEINER: I don’t know, what do you think it’s implying?

PHAWKER: You talkin’ about jerkin’ it?

ADAM WEINER: If that’s what you want it to be. I would think it’s, you know, more of a public service announcement for skin cancer. But if you want it to be what is obviously on your mind a lot, that’s your business.



PHAWKER: Where’d the title come from? How’d you guys come up with that?

ADAM WEINER: It’s weird, I have a song that will be on our next album that I pulled Get Out the Lotion from. But yeah, that’s just an expression we use amongst ourselves in the band when something sounds good.

PHAWKER: How would you describe the music on the album?

ADAM WEINER: It’s actually pretty simple. It’s rock n roll. I wouldn’t call it indie in any way. It’s rock n roll. Classic. We use this phrase, “true gut bucket juke joint rock n roll.”

PHAWKER: How did the band name come to be?

ADAM WEINER: This is such a not interesting story.

LOW_CUT_CONNIE_2.jpgPHAWKER: Oh, let’s hear it.

ADAM WEINER: It’s really no story. We wanted it to be a girl’s name and Connie sounds right. You know, like the chick on the cover. If we were a girl, that’s probably the type of girl we’d be: low cut. She definitely on the weekends wears something pretty low cut.

PHAWKER: So how did Low Cut Connie form?

ADAM WEINER: We’re kind of a supergroup. Dan Finnermore is the other songwriter, he’s from Birmingham, England. He and I got stuck in an elevator together in England for about four hours a few years ago, and that’s how he and I became brothers, you know? Neil Duncan, the guitar player/drummer/producer, he hired me to give him piano lessons off of Craigslist. That’s how he and I got to be buddies. And I brought all these guys together, you know?

PHAWKER: Speaking of Dan, you said he’s from Birmingham, England, right?

ADAM WEINER: That’s right.

PHAWKER: And the music is just downright American rock n roll. How can you describe the musical compatibility between you and Dan?

ADAM WEINER: I think he adds a very British kind of perspective on rock n roll. His songs have that classic kind of Beatles, skiffle pop kind of instantly catchy vibe. Mine are a little bit darker and character oriented. But both of them revolve around three, four chords, danceable rock n roll beat, harmonies, and we’re just kind of cut from the same cloth if you know what I mean.

PHAWKER: Listening to the record gives you that feeling that you guys were in the studio having the time of your lives. I

ADAM WEINER: So we recorded in Neil’s garage in Gainesville, Florida in August. So it was about 100-110 degrees every day. It’s this little garage with no windows and no air conditioning, and we had to turn all the fans off while recording, of course. So it was like an oven. It was one of those situations where we were sweating so much that we could get two takes of a song and we’d have to immediately open the - Phawker

The cultural clashes of Low Cut Connie's two frontmen — one's from New Jersey, the other from England — make for an intriguing mix of bluesy indie rock that's never quite sure where it's headed. That unpredictability steers the band's debut album, Get Out the Lotion. You too will never know where these guys are headed — whether it's low-fi indie rock ("Big Thighs, NJ"), Stonesy barroom rockers ("Show Your Face"), twangy, foul-mouthed honky tonk ("Darlin"), jangly power pop ("Cat and the Cream"), moody and meditative slow-burners ("Full of Joy"), or shaky Black Keys/Strokes hybrids ("Rio"). Listening to the record can lead to some serious whiplash if you're not careful. But onstage, Low Cut Connie's musical stew finds an ideal boiling point where all these different regional elements — some homegrown, some imported from overseas — bubble into a hearty mix that spans five decades of rock & roll history. — Gallucci - Cleveland Scene

For a band founded by members from opposite sides of the Atlantic and can't even claim a fulltime drummer, Low Cut Connie remains remarkably focused. Theirs is a sound that references both classic rock and pop sensibilities, doing it with an unapologetic sound that's clearly off-kilter and generally as raunchy as it is raucous.



Truth be told, they don't lack in either element. While song titles like "Big Thighs, NJ" and "Shit Shower & Shave" trumpet their tenacious attitude, their unhinged approach brings to mind the freewheeling, devil-may-care designs of Jerry Lee Lewis (the aforementioned "Shit Shower & Shave"), vintage Stones (the desolate sprawl of "Big Thighs, NJ"), Van Morrison ("Rio," a neat knock-off of "Wild Night") and other unabashed insurgents (the rockabilly romps "Darlin'" and "Johnny Cool Man"). Still, despite a penchant for edginess and irreverence, the foursome - singer/songwriter/piano player Adam Weiner, singer/songwriter Dan Finnemore, guitarist Neil Duncan and bassist Russell Saliba - maintain an air of authenticity which elevates them well beyond novelty status. Happily then, Low Cut Connie actually manage to rate a cut above.



DOWNLOAD: "Big Thighs, NJ," "Shit Shower & Shave," "Rio" LEE ZIMMERMAN - Blurt

Low Cut Connie: These smirking conduits of classic barroom boogie show their cards on “Get Out the Lotion”: infectious roots-rock guitar, libertine lyrics about women and whiskey and more than a slight penchant for the mythical paradise of “Big Thighs, N.J.” Dive-bar bachelor parties need no other soundtrack.

At 10 p.m., the Living Room, 154 Ludlow Street, Lower East Side, (212) 533-7237, livingroomny.com; $10 suggested donation. (Anderson) - New York Times

Low Cut Connie: Get Out the Lotion (2011, self-released): Adam Weiner, from Philadelphia, takes his garage rock sound all the way back to Cameo-Parkway, not that he could get away with the expletives of "Shit Shower & Shave" or the allusions of "The Cat & the Cream" in the 1960s. But nowadays, he's obscure enough he can get away with it all -- even some boogie piano. A- [cd] - Tom Hull, Village Voice jazz critic..tomhull.com

It's been a while since I brightened your world with a new musical selection, mostly because it's been a while since I brightened my own world with a new musical selection. But after making grave efforts to catch up with the latest indie releases, I've found myself enamored with a particularly off beat band that pulls on the 'Jersey Pride' tether to my heart.

Low Cut Connie was founded by New Jersey native Adam Weiner and British songwriter Dan Finnermore, but the band's debut Get Out The Lotion (high class lyricism this is not) sounds more like a '50s rockabilly record straight out of Nashville. The songs are upbeat, catchy, and made for dancing, with plenty of Southern twang and swagger, but the lo-fi aesthetic and hilariously vulgar lyrics (see Shit Shower and Shave or Big Thighs, NJ) bring a decidedly contemporary element to the band's sound that will appeal to the indie rock crowd. And despite the raunchy veneer, Get Out The Lotion has some unexpected heart (Lovers Call and Full of Joy actually border on sweetness) and loads of enthusiasm.

For all of us hit hard by the tough economic times, Low Cut Connie has Get Out The Lotion available for download on their website for whatever you can afford to pay. And those in the New York metropolitan area should check the band out live this August at Bar 4 in Brooklyn or The Living Room in Manhattan. - Unemployed Hipster

If you are looking for some seriously mind-blowing Rock & Roll then get your hands on a copy of Get Out The Lotion by Low Cut Connie...I promise you won't be disappointed!

This is their debut album released unsigned and recorded in FOUR days! Now that simply goes to show how kick-ass they are as a new band. Waste no time to produce great music!

Low Cut Connie is four guys from a little all over the place. Adam Weiner is from New Jersey, Dan Finnemore from Birmingham (UK), Neil Duncan from Gainesville, and Russell Saliba from Memphis and together they have come to make a seriously kick-ass band. The band description from their website shows that they are a bunch of really funny guys: "Low Cut Connie is your friend, your brother, your mistress, and your plumber."

Their opening song "The Cat & The Cream" is a perfectly punchy rock song to start off their debut album. It's got a jump and jive feel to it and will have you up and out of your seat shaking you feet to their outstanding beats.

"Rio" continues the jiving beat; it is a good choice to follow the previous song. The band's humoristic side comes out in the lyrics "We see each other in our Speedos and in the nude...Sometimes you just wanna sit around and drink some booze."
"Big Thighs, NJ" is clearly influenced by Weiner because it is his homestead. It speaks of being the 'black sheep' of the family and makes me wonder if he was considered that by his own? Let's hope not, because he and the band have some serious talent.

Their song "Darlin'" sounds like it could have come out a 50's jukebox with a slightly rock vibe. Again it's another track that will have you jumping and jiving around. The lyrics "you don't put out, tell me is that what love's about...Darlin' what's draggin' you down...Why do you pretend to be in love" sum up the song because it is about a guy trying to understand this girl.

"Full of Joy" starts off with a beautiful piano melody by Adam Weiner followed by some awesome harmonics by Russell Saliba. It is an optimistic song about a guy wanting to see the best for his girl. It's a slower melody than previous songs, but it works well into the bigger picture of the album Bring Out The Lotion.

The sing beat returns in "Johnny Cool Man." The drumming riffs by Finnemore are stellar in this track. When you listen to this song you will imagine how it would have been to be at a hip swing club in the 50's (I know I did).

"Lovers Call" is another somewhat love song where the guy is trying to understand the girl he digs. "Well I dunno why you don't call me baby, well other boys think that I'm your man, I really don't know why you won't call me baby, well the other boys really wanna hold your hand...I've been sitting at home waiting for the lovers call, and the phone don't ring, and I'm on my own, I don't know which way to turn" are lyrics that pretty much explain this poor boys conundrum of love.

The band's humour returns with "Shit, Shower & Shave." Although it's a song about basic hygiene, Low Cut Connie still manages to make it jiving and cool. It definitely had me laughing as I listened to it. The piano riffs are seriously out of this world and the lyrics are well balanced with it which is essential in making a good song.

"Show Your Face" is about going out and enjoying the nightlife. "Goin' out tonight, goin' out dancin'...Baby I don't you, but I'd like to, what kind of things do you like to do...Do the monkey, to the chirp, give me something to make it work" conveys that the guy in the song is looking for a good time and hopes to find a sweet girl at the end of the night.

The last song on Get Out The Lotion "Right Here" is another groovy tune. It's about a guy trying to make his girl realize that she has a great guy and he loves her when she is ready to make that commitment. "I just want to get you to the church on time, everybody's looking for someone, you got it right here baby...waiting for you girl."

Overall this album is STELLAR (yes it is that good...I swear)! Low Cut Connie is an awesome band and I cannot wait to hear more from them. For their debut album, I give it 9 out of 10 and I suggest getting out the lotion cause these guys are hot, hot, hot stuff! - Times Square . com

Any regular / long-term reader of this blog will know that I’m a really big Ladyfingers (aka Adam Weiner) fan; I’ve written about a couple of Ladyfingers albums already and love them so much, I never feel like I’ve managed to do them justice. Adam’s a great talent, has a fantastic and utterly unique voice, and makes music I can honestly say I’ve never heard the likes of before.

Now he’s teamed up with a whole group of dudes (there’s not too much information available about them just yet) to create Low Cut Connie, a bona fide, gen-u-wine rock & roll band. Putting on their debut LP, Get Out The Lotion, you feel immediately transported to a dark, dingy, kind of seedy bar in some backwater town. They’re playing in the back and every once in a while, someone throws a beer bottle.

Actually, my brain makes an immediate connection between Low Cut Connie and the earliest Beatles – way back in Hamburg or the Cavern Club. Known for being quite wild before Brian Epstein made them all shiny and tidy, the Beatles during that time were pure rock & roll. Listening to Low Cut Connie feels very much the same, like there’s nothing but undiluted rock in their veins – except that Low Cut Connie doesn’t have to be censored the way that even the wild Beatles would’ve been. I mean, they’re adorable and all but, c’mon, we all know the young Beatles weren’t as innocent and sweet as they looked. Low Cut Connie is just that little bit filthy, in the best way possible – making Get Out The Lotion feel both modern and old at the same time.

Low Cut Connie is getting some seriously good press already – they’ve apparently received great reviews from Rolling Stone and Robert Christgau – and not for nothin’. I’ve been a Ladyfingers fan for many years now, and I really hope this will be the project that finally gets Adam Weiner and his pals the recognition they deserve. Go grab the album now (pay what you want) from their official site and check them out on tour at a town near you. - One Hundred db

Any regular / long-term reader of this blog will know that I’m a really big Ladyfingers (aka Adam Weiner) fan; I’ve written about a couple of Ladyfingers albums already and love them so much, I never feel like I’ve managed to do them justice. Adam’s a great talent, has a fantastic and utterly unique voice, and makes music I can honestly say I’ve never heard the likes of before.

Now he’s teamed up with a whole group of dudes (there’s not too much information available about them just yet) to create Low Cut Connie, a bona fide, gen-u-wine rock & roll band. Putting on their debut LP, Get Out The Lotion, you feel immediately transported to a dark, dingy, kind of seedy bar in some backwater town. They’re playing in the back and every once in a while, someone throws a beer bottle.

Actually, my brain makes an immediate connection between Low Cut Connie and the earliest Beatles – way back in Hamburg or the Cavern Club. Known for being quite wild before Brian Epstein made them all shiny and tidy, the Beatles during that time were pure rock & roll. Listening to Low Cut Connie feels very much the same, like there’s nothing but undiluted rock in their veins – except that Low Cut Connie doesn’t have to be censored the way that even the wild Beatles would’ve been. I mean, they’re adorable and all but, c’mon, we all know the young Beatles weren’t as innocent and sweet as they looked. Low Cut Connie is just that little bit filthy, in the best way possible – making Get Out The Lotion feel both modern and old at the same time.

Low Cut Connie is getting some seriously good press already – they’ve apparently received great reviews from Rolling Stone and Robert Christgau – and not for nothin’. I’ve been a Ladyfingers fan for many years now, and I really hope this will be the project that finally gets Adam Weiner and his pals the recognition they deserve. Go grab the album now (pay what you want) from their official site and check them out on tour at a town near you. - One Hundred db

Low Cut Connie
Get Out the Lotion
Self-released; 2011

Despite being based (ostensibly) in Gainesville, Low Cut Connie enjoy a strong connection to the beachside.

They’ve played a number of shows here over the last few months and are due back to perform at Paddy Cassidy’s Irish Pub on July 23, so we thought we’d give their excellent 11-track record, Get Out the Lotion, the old review treatment.

If there’s a climate Get Out the Lotion suggests, it’s humid and swampy. And as dolled up for a night of pulling chicks as its creators are, it’s hard to notice anything else but the pit stains on their cotton shirts. Far from being a turn-off though, it only makes them more intriguing. Starting off with a contagious Buddy Holly-fed Beatles track called “The Cat & the Cream” that resounds long after it’s over, the rest of the album alternates between smirky, come-hither glances (“Full of Joy”) and outright arse grabs (“Rio”), and the overall effect is as audacious as it is disarmingly charming.

Rock n’ roll acts as the driving spirit here; not your ironic hipster variety, mind you, but the kind that shakes floors and helps make babies. There’s rusty honkytonk in “Darlin’” and loping country-blues hybrids like “Big Thighs, NJ”; there are even strains of doo-wop and silken R&B, but through it all, Low Cut Connie hew so closely to their sincere vision and pursuit of enjoyment that Lotion never comes across as contrived, as it certainly would in other hands.

As such, Get Out the Lotion sounds like a collection of outtakes from classic bands you never thought would come to light. It’s rare that I move a submitted CD from its relegated section into my own daily listening stash. Get Out the Lotion more than deserves the upgrade.

– R. Figgis - the Beachside Resident

Low Cut Connie...they see themselves as the Rocky Balboa of bands...and they're looking for their title shot.

NPR's Fresh Air loves him. Rolling Stone digs him the most. Yet, beyond a few local gigs at Old Swede's Church......... - ICON Magazine

In the guise of the dire doo-wopping Ladyfingers, Adam Weiner — a filmmaker, playwright, singer and composer — has hiccupped and pleaded his way through an array of spooky rockabilly-based songs that summon the ghosts of Gene Pitney, Carl Perkins and Elvis. I can't emphasize the spooky element enough. What he does never grazes the tip of '50s pastiches or tribute; instead, the high-haired vocalist/instrumentalist's songs on eccentric LPs such as Open Your Robe and My Prom are pockmarked by the most ominous piano sounds to grace vinyl. Weiner is menacing whether he's bellowing what he calls kept-man anthems ("What Size Shoe") or dangerous romancers ("Wonderful Boy"). Then there's Low Cut Connie, Weiner's new band with pals from the U.K., where he tours relentlessly. Cut from the same cloth as Ladyfingers, LCC burns that cloth wholesale with pure raw swamp rock 'n' roll. "No BS, here," says Weiner. "It's Stones/Jerry Lee/Cramps and people will boogie and pee themselves when they hear it." The "it" here is LCC's debut CD — Get Out the Lotion — that Weiner will debut on New Year's Eve at Old Swedes' Church. Why there? It's got a piano — a must for any Weiner gig. "Plus the sexton of the church puts on shows there every few months and is a big Ladyfingers fan," says Weiner. A hotter and heavier happy new years you won't find. - Philadelphia City Paper

Low Cut Connie: Get Out the Lotion (lowcutconnie.com)

The anthem here is "Shit Shower & Shave," in which scuzzballing Adam Weiner explains how "cleanliness is godliness" for a guy embarking on his quest for nocturnal emission, especially if he aspires to better than the handjob-for-hire of the album title. Less mannered here than on his pseudo-doowop project Ladyfingers (lady fingers? do we detect a fetish?), Philadelphian Weiner and some Brits with nothing better to do churn out a resolute rock and roll whose joyless momentum and stubborn little tunes will tell you more than you want to know about the pursuit of pleasure in America's deader downtowns and strip malls. My guess is that he romanticizes this pursuit some, perhaps because he believes the alternatives are measurably worse. You don't have to share his cynical sentiments. But there's a bitter pleasure in hearing his point. A MINUS - Robert Christgau, the Dean of American Rock Critics, for MSN

Low Cut Connie imagine what indie rock might sound like were it invented in Alabama in the late Fifties. The product of two songwriters – New Jersey's Adam Weiner and Birmingham England's Dan Finnermore -- Get Out the Lotion comes equipped with whiskey breath and a satchel full of filthy jokes, all of them funneled through sonics that are decidedly budget-conscious. Opener "Cat N The Cream," with its clanging piano and slow-moseying bass line, sounds like a bunch of Brooklyn barflys taking a pass at "Burning Love," while the chugging scuzzbucket boogie of "Rio" could be the Black Keys at the wrong end of a six-day bender. And then there's "Johnny Cool Man," a bit of greasy-pompadour doo-wop in which Weiner, his voice crackling with no-fi distortion, howls, "I wanna see you naked baby – from the front and from the back." In Low Cut Connie's grits-n-grime world, that's what you call a compliment.

by J. Edward Keyes - Rolling Stone

It becomes clear early on that Low Cut Connie is a bunch of talented musicians who pride themselves on their low-down, low-rent, low-minded methods and instincts. They like to sing about intercourse, inebriation and an inability to have a good time. Recorded for what sounds like a suitably low budget, Low Cut Connie benefits mightily from the buzzsaw yowl of Adam Weiner.
Low Cut Connie - Get Out the Lotion

Take "Rio," in which Weiner sings of a night out with the boys that's so overloaded with testosterone, the guys nearly fall in love with each other before they even get to the girls and the drinking. Then there's the song in which Weiner gets ready for a big night out by performing his ablutions with a directness too blunt for radio, not to mention a big beat that just won't quit. But he does, worshipful party-monster that he is, equate cleanliness with godliness, and that's probably the same deity he prays to in order to channel the 1950s rock 'n' roll that motivates "Johnny Cool Man."

If "Johnny Cool Man" is Low Cut Connie's reach back to Jerry Lee Lewis modulated by doo-wop, Weiner's musical partner, Dan Finnemore, has his own British contribution to make. His "Lovers Call" is Nick Lowe-ish whimsy with a skiffle rhythm that comes as close as these wiseguys want to get to pure beauty.

For all the contagious fun to be had listening to this out-of-left-field, out-of-time collection, respect must be paid to Low Cut Connie's skills as a creator of melodies that nearly always evince more purpose than the pounding boogie they frequently start out as. And the band's lyrics are deceptively simple. In a song such as "Big Thighs, New Jersey," Weiner makes the pun, "Your lips were pierced with pain" carry the weight of woozy romanticism, and in "Show Your Face," he does a terrific job of compressing the pick-up lines a guy uses to disguise the fellow's sincere desire to connect with a woman on a level deeper than a dance-floor grind.

It would be a mistake to over-sell Get Out the Lotion, although with a title like that, Low Cut Connie does a good job all by itself of undercutting any grand ambitions. But over the course of 11 tunes, the band keeps expectations to a minimum in an artful way. It startles you with just how much juice, passion and wit has gone into making this sound like spontaneous, thrown-together music.

review by Ken Tucker at Fresh Air - NPR / Fresh Air with Terry Gross

I turn on the lights, close the disktray and press play. Normally no one bothers me about listening to music, I just keep to myself, but when My Prom opens with the drunken debauchery track that is, “I Want It All”, excitement seeps outwards from the pores of my home.
That is what My Prom is all about. It’s not rock and roll, its not roots, it’s not quite country, but it’s got a bit of everything in a perfect homogenous mixture that goes down as smooth as the best Irish whiskey. It shocks people, not because it’s loud, obnoxious or against the grain, but because this type of music doesn’t really exist in Toronto.

Adam Weiner, deciding to stray solo from his old act Shadow Boys to do something that is more of his own, created Ladyfingers, named after his character that came to a friend in a dream. After a few months of playing the new material in small clubs around the city, Ladyfingers began to grab people’s attention.

After an offer from a big time producer came in, Adam really needed to sit down and think of where he wanted things to go. Once he realized that he was on the path to be morphed into a country crooner, Adam was convinced that everything he ever recorded himself was more to his liking and stuck with it. "I would've been Garth fucking Weiner," he says in a recent interview. I couldn’t be happier with his decision.

Their first album, my prom was recorded on an ancient 8 track player and by large was completely recorded live. This vintage sound mixed with Raky Sastris tempo shifting incredible percussion, Robbie Radack’s flaring banjo and Dave Pinzur’s stand up bass lines, creates the perfect atmosphere for album. The random time changes and fills mixed with the slight hint of complete improvisation only enhance what was already being built.

The single “Cure for the Common Cold” is probably the most “country” thing you will hear on the album. With odd sneezing sounds, yelping and plenty of drum fills this song is something I haven’t heard before, and probably never will again.

“Sinatra” is s slow paced soulful tune filled with drawn out vocals and distorted twang guitar. My mind was blown away when at 3:50 Weiner stunned me with pipes of steel. If there’s anything on this cd that shows off his vocal talent it this song.

“Party Doll” is my favorite song on the album and for the first time in a long while it really made me think and reflect on my life. I’m not sure if it was the lack of sleep that I had, the lyrics themselves or just the fact that the music fit into my life like the smallest stone in the Great Wall. Whatever it was it shocked me. It brought back all these memories that I had completely hidden away and resurfaced them like a drowned life preserver. I just love it when something completely unexpected shakes up the shackles of normal day to day life and make me think and reflect on my existence. Give this album the time it needs to grow on you, its worth it, even if its just to discover something new and unheard of.

Best bets: Party Doll, Cure for the Common Cold and look for Colin Stetson on tack 9 (can anyone say Tom Waits?)

SCORE: 8.1
- Two Way Monologues - Toronto

Ladyfingers defined eccentricity or rather, Adam did, for this live act was without his usual band but not without talent and charm.
A long way from his New York home, standing there in tousled hair and Tom Waits T-shirt, the latest in a long-line of American oddballs running from Jonathan Richman to the Mouldy Peaches, Mr Ladyfingers (Adam, actually) combined a weird look in his eye and an imaginative use of simple, slightly spiky, rockabilly meets Rufus Wainwright song-writing. Arrest that man, he just about stole the whole night.
- Gig Scene with Graham Chalmers (Harrogate Advertiser)

The word "Ladyfingers" might make you salivate and think of spongy treats, but does it make you want to rock out? Unless you are some sort of bizarre epicurean-punk, the answer is usually no. Adam Weiner is planning to change all that, however, with his smoky mix of vintage blues, rockabilly, cabaret, and country, served with a side of pure NYC punk energy. Lead vocalist/pianist/songwriter Weiner says their name was given to them by a friend after it came to her in a dream in which, she told him, he was not Adam, but Ladyfingers. "It's not even like you need to become that person," she said, "you are that person. That's the name. Deal with it."

Anyone who's seen Ladyfingers play knows that they are dealing with it just fine. Weiner describes his band's live show as "in your face but in a non-confrontational way," adding that there's definitely "a theatrical aspect to it." During the band's shows at Pianos, where they are playing every Tuesday in September (including tonight at 11 p.m.), the audience takes all the entertainment it can handle, as promised, right in their faces. Throughout the set, Weiner morphs from a vaguely menacing carnival charlatan, to a yelping rockabilly boy, to a sensuously melodic Frank Sinatra, to Jerry Lee Lewis standing up at the piano, and back again.

Ladyfingers' songs often feature outlaws as narrators, though many also catch the flavor of painfully suburban Americana; "white bread/Aquanet/I'm all dressed up for the dance," Weiner sings in the track that lends their newly-released album, My Prom, its name. When asked how personal the songs are, he responds "I think I'm looking for characters within my own persona, or maybe I'm trying to create extensions of my persona ... I don't like to totally detach from myself." He says the characters he explores affect his psyche in turn; for example, when he first did the darkly smoldering "Real Live Boy," "people thought that's Adam doing a gag, or that's me doing cabaret. And the more I've done that song, the more I've turned into that guy."

Scary? Maybe a little. But it's this open exploration of fantasies both dark and light that make for such an engaging performance. The backing band, consisting of Dave Pinzur on bass, Robbie Radack on guitar and banjo, and Raky Sastri on drums, play hard and loose, taking liberties with arrangement that can only come from trust borne of hours of practice. Sastri in particular will often go off in unexpected directions. "It's unbelievable," Weiner says. "He plays it like it was an improvisational jazz song ... it makes it a whole different genre."
The energy of these live performances is not easy to harness, but the band recorded My Prom in such a way so as to let that energy shine through as much as possible. They recorded it on a vintage reel-to-reel 8-track over the course of three sweaty days in Weiner and Pinzur's Astoria apartment, and 80 to 90 percent of it was recorded live. "There are tracks in the album where we messed up," Weiner says, "there's a tempo shift, I stumble over some words, somebody hits a clammy note, but that's the way we wanted to do it. It sounds like we sound live."

This gritty sound is a far cry from Weiner's previous recordings. In a brush with country stardom, he once garnered interest from some heavyweight Nashville producers but quickly realized he wanted out. "We went through this whole process of making this demo in one of the best recording studios in Nashville, and I ended up liking my stupid mini disc recording that I made at a live show better than that," Weiner explains. Additionally, the producers' concept for the band-"straight up country ... the outfits, the string ties, everything ... but as delivered by New York Jews"-was somewhat degrading. Adam has no regrets: "I would've been Garth fucking Weiner," he says. "What would that have done for me?"

Not much, for the band's likability lies partly in their unassuming character. Unlike many bands who do "straight up vintage," the four guys in Ladyfingers refuse to play dress up or identify as any particular genre other than the nebulous catch-all of "rock and roll." "If I'm doing something that I feel is just a recreation of a genre, we usually take it out of the set because it's not ours," Weiner says. Though this resistance to genre often makes it difficult to fit into the notoriously cold and snobby New York scene, it seems people are starting to take note. If you crave a departure from prevailing musical trends into the forgotten wilds of America's past, Ladyfingers will make you drool. - Columbia Spectator

In front of a small audience of friends, Ladyfingers and Sister Suvi both brought love and soul to the small stage at Zoobizzare. Ladyfingers performed a solo guitar and footstomping set full of everything werid that you would expect from the opener of Sister Suvi. With lyrics about dripping handkerchiefs and chorus which included intentional sneezes, Adam Weiner aka Ladyfingers won everyone's hearts. His music, which is some wondrous medly of rockabilly and grimy punk, is as addictive as the cigarettes it makes you crave.
Sister Suvi is definitely one of my favorite bands this year. The chemistry these three attractive people have band is undeniable, their lyrics are totally insane while somehow completely relevant, and their range of different musical genres make each song as unpredictable as the next. Both Ladyfingers and "the sisters" shared between them apparent respect for each other's musical endeavors (both dedicated songs to each other). Both also expressed equal desire to share music for the sake of nothing but expressing a love for people and the audience (the tickets were only 5 bucks!). All in all the evening left me with a happy thoughts as I meandered my way back down St. Hubert... - the Radio Files, Montreal

One of the first things that strike me about Ladyfingers is just to what extent lead vocalist and songwriter Adam Weiner can sing. Listening to “My Prom,” several times I had to double check that there is only one singer on this album, because Weiner manages to variously channel Elvis, Screaming Jay Hawkins, and Dion with incredible ease and fluidity. Somehow, through all this polyvalence he still manages to have his own voice. The vocal shadings are tailored perfectly to each song on the album, where pieces range from Tom Waits-influenced polkas to drunkenly heavy minor blues and raucous banjo-driven country punk. The Tom Waits influence is underscored by the appearance of bass clarinetist Colin Stetson – who has played on several of Waits’s albums – on the track “Real Live Boy.” - Handlebar Jack - the Deli Magazine

"I've got to lose some weight before the wedding, dude/I've got to practice my handshake . . . All my friends are geniuses, and they all respect me," Adam Weiner, a.k.a. the one-man band Ladyfingers, brags/confesses on his new self-released CD, My Handbook. The New Yorker has "no management, label affiliation, booking agent or personal stylist," and, as he makes clear on the defiant folk-funk rant "Scoliosis in Secaucus" ("Don't entertain me/I can entertain myself"), he is a self-contained, self-aware and self-propelled song factory, obviating the need for rock critics. He's a little bit like the early, pre-cute Jonathan Richman, with such sarcastic lyrics as "I'm happy listening to lite FM" and "There's a World War II memorial underneath your dress . . . and I ain't impressed," but Mr. Ladyfingers sluices his raw ballads and electric-guitar-backed shuffles with a mournful beauty that goes beyond simple jokiness. He'll be here all week (nightly, through December 5), but please don't try the veal. It's been through enough already. (Falling James) --- LA Weekly - LA Weekly

With his dark hair swept into an understated pompadour, his furrowed eyebrows accenting his soul-searching gaze and a ring emblazoned with an icon of Elvis, it’s no wonder that Adam Weiner—aka Ladyfingers —sings songs that sound like the 1950s met up with a modern-day subway busker and his well-worn acoustic guitar.?

On his new album Open Your Robe , released in April, Weiner opens up a floodgate of yowls, whoops, starkly strummed guitar chords and pounding piano keys. Whether he’s singing a tender ballad with his emotions laying naked and broken, or rousing up a raucous drinking tune, the album retains an old-timey, Wild West saloon feel. There’s a constant sense of urgency and unease, a tension that could break into a gunfight at any moment.?

Weiner might not have had a gunfight in mind while recording the album, but an old-fashioned feel was certainly front and center. “We did—almost to the point of nerdiness—a total analog process. All vintage mics, vintage tape machines, the whole bit,” Weiner says. “We did all-tube analog mastering, which took forever and was very tedious, but I knew I wanted the sound to be classic.”?

Onstage, Weiner retains that attention to detail. His live performances aren’t just concerts—they’re spectacles, experiences. “I did a year in the experimental theater wing at NYU, so I definitely come from a theater/performance art background. I wouldn’t say that my show is a ‘stage act,’ but I definitely see it as entertainment,” he explains.?

“I also think that especially when [a performance] is solo, you get this sort of ‘me versus the world’ feeling when you get on stage ... I feel the need to really connect or win over the crowd, which demands a level of interaction and comedy banter with the crowd to break the ice.”?

Add a bit of hip gyration, and the King might just live again.?
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Katherine Silkaitis, for the Philadelphia Weekly (Umm..Drop Column) - Philadelphia Weekly

First things first, I owe Adam Weiner a bit of an apology. He was kind enough to let me hear his new Ladyfingers album hot off the presses (released in April) and, just like last time I wrote about his music, I was in the middle of transitioning from one place to another (geographically, not emotionally or anything) and, sadly, his album had to wait. A shame indeed, because Open Your Robe deserved to be shouted about right away. Hopefully this is better late than never.

Adam correctly pointed out that I missed a Ladyfingers album from last year (My Handbook, which I’ll have to get my grubby hands on asap), so I’m not sure if there was a progression from the sounds of My Prom to those on Open Your Robe, but there is definitely a difference. I’ll admit right now that I was, at first, a bit alarmed to find the growl of My Prom missing on this new album. That urgent rockabilly mayhem that almost sounded like it was tripping over itself – that’s what I liked most about Ladyfingers! But I kept listening and it turns out it’s not really gone – it’s just … less frantic. Urgency and guts still drive the music, but it’s like it’s taken a moment to slow down and take a deep breath.

Slower, yes, but are these love songs? No, I don’t think so, or at least not in the way we tend think of love songs. You’ll find no rhyming of love and dove ’round these parts. Relationship songs, perhaps – sweet in places, dark in others. They definitely feel more personal than anything else I’ve heard from Ladyfingers (again, admitting that I’ve missed a whole album in between). Maybe that’s why, even after my initial surprise, Open Your Robe may be a longer-lasting album than My Prom, if you know what I mean. I’ve listened to this album a lot and it only gets more interesting as I listen.

Check out one of my two favorites below (”Tell Me Again”) and hear the other (”I Just Wanna Be Your Baby”) and more at Ladyfingers’ myspace. Buy and download Open Your Robe from Ladyfingers’ official site on a pay-what-you-can scheme, or order a vinyl copy + download from the same location. - Hangin' Out in 100b

“I keep it pretty low-key/ Can’t you tell I’m so damn low-key?”

So snarls Adam Weiner, musically known as Ladyfingers, on the title track of his newest, self-released CD, “My Handbook,”a collection of songs recorded hodgepodge in motel rooms across the country. Low-key? Hot-wired is more like it.

As musical personas go, Ladyfingers is fairly shticky, punctuated with self-conscious rockabilly hiccups and stutters. But he’s also got a delirious, Hasil-Adkins-meets-Captain-Beefheart-in-a-whorehouse vibe — and he works it, well. Onstage, Jersey boy Weiner is all wicked humor and coiled intensity, ready to pop. There are moments when he seems to put aside the wisecracking persona and get quasi-serious, as on “Sweden” (“They cut my records in analog just to keep me in the red”) and “Genius Friends” (“They all respect me/ So much love between us, yeah/ But they all neglect me”), an impression boosted by his dramatic wail and taut guitar playing. But here’s the trick to Weiner’s act: He never fully gives it up. That keeps audiences off balance, uncertain where he’s going to come at them from next.

While he scolds himself (on “Scoliosis in Secausus”), “Gotta get my mind outta the gutter,” most of the time he’s pumping his salacious alter ego: vamping on Shirley Temples and “Richard Simmons doin’ cartwheels in the nude” and referring to himself as “the minority whip” over barrelhouse piano (his snappy theme song “Ladyfingers”), riffing on Adam and Eve meeting in the garden of Eden (“Game of Love”) and getting laid (the falsetto “Australia”), and expressing caustic support for an errant lover on the dark, driving “Cocaine” (“You’re comin’ home at 7:30/ And you show me all your money/ I said I’m happy for you honey/ But I’m only happy when you’re sleeping”).

The erstwhile playwright (his play “Lapdog” received a one-night workshop at New York City’s La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club last year) is currently planning a European tour for 2009. In the interim he’s coming to LA for a weeklong residency at the Redwood Bar, starting this Saturday and wrapping up the following Friday — the night of the Redwood’s celebration of the 75th anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition (a show that will also feature drummer D.J. Bonebrake’s jazzy band the Bonebrake Syncopators). With his floppy forehead curls, sideburns, cuffed jeans, guitar, amplified maple stompbox, ready quips and vaguely Waitsian sensibility, Weiner fits the friendly but street-wise aesthetic encapsulated by Redwood regulars like Jake La Botz, Quetzal Guerrero and Mike Stinson. Usually he plays solo, but considering his appreciation of chaos and spontaneity, it’ll be interesting to see what guests pop up to sit in while he’s here. Don’t miss him.n

Ladyfingers performs at 10 p.m. nightly from Saturday, Nov. 29, through Friday, Dec. 5, at the Redwood Bar, 316 W. 2nd St., downtown LA. Call (213) 680-2600 for details. www.ladyfingers.org - Pasadena Weekly

New York one-man band Ladyfingers (you’d probably change your name too if it was Adam Weiner) plays a twisted version of old-fashioned rockabilly and blues shot through with a cabaret theatricality, equally influenced by the likes of Cab Calloway, The Cramps, and Captain Beefheart—and that’s just the Cs. From atop a stompbox rigged with a guitar pick-up, the high-energy Weiner works through his various personae—from sensitive soul to self-deprecating smartass to snake-oil salesman—while riffing on subjects ranging from “Sinatra” to “Cure For The Common Cold,” which finds him yelping and sneezing like a cross between Jerry Lee Lewis and Suicide’s Alan Vega over rolling banjo licks. He appears here behind the sultry new Open Your Robe. - Austin Decider / AV Club

With his dark hair swept into an understated pompadour, his furrowed eyebrows accenting his soul-searching gaze and a ring emblazoned with an icon of Elvis, it’s no wonder that Adam Weiner—aka Ladyfingers —sings songs that sound like the 1950s met up with a modern-day subway busker and his well-worn acoustic guitar.?

On his new album Open Your Robe , released in April, Weiner opens up a floodgate of yowls, whoops, starkly strummed guitar chords and pounding piano keys. Whether he’s singing a tender ballad with his emotions laying naked and broken, or rousing up a raucous drinking tune, the album retains an old-timey, Wild West saloon feel. There’s a constant sense of urgency and unease, a tension that could break into a gunfight at any moment.?

Weiner might not have had a gunfight in mind while recording the album, but an old-fashioned feel was certainly front and center. “We did—almost to the point of nerdiness—a total analog process. All vintage mics, vintage tape machines, the whole bit,” Weiner says. “We did all-tube analog mastering, which took forever and was very tedious, but I knew I wanted the sound to be classic.”?

Onstage, Weiner retains that attention to detail. His live performances aren’t just concerts—they’re spectacles, experiences. “I did a year in the experimental theater wing at NYU, so I definitely come from a theater/performance art background. I wouldn’t say that my show is a ‘stage act,’ but I definitely see it as entertainment,” he explains.?

“I also think that especially when [a performance] is solo, you get this sort of ‘me versus the world’ feeling when you get on stage ... I feel the need to really connect or win over the crowd, which demands a level of interaction and comedy banter with the crowd to break the ice.”?

Add a bit of hip gyration, and the King might just live again.?
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Katherine Silkaitis, for the Philadelphia Weekly (Umm..Drop Column) - Philadelphia Weekly