My friend, Seabrook, wrote that book, The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory. It’s full of great writing and storytelling about the making of hit records. That was last month.

About five years ago Seabrook started a band with another friend of mine, Homans, and they called themselves the Sequoias, because they were tall. It was a good name.

Last Friday night, the Sequoias played the Bowery Electric. Last time I was there I was seeing the Upper Crust. Of course, the first time I went to Bowery Electric it was to see the Sequoias play at my friend Walker’s 50th birthday party. Back in those days, Walker was the bass player in the band.

I posted about the Sequoias last spring, when they played a show at the Correspondent’s dinner in DC, with Chuck Leavell playing keyboards on Gimme Shelter. They were pretty good that night, as they were at the Century Club around that time, for our friend Susan’s birthday, but the vocals were a bit of a hodge podge.

Last Friday, at the Bowery Electric, they featured a new vocalist, Rebecca Donner, who has a big swooping voice that embraces just about every bit of emotion it can, and squeezes ecstatically. They were also tighter, more rehearsed, and the keyboard man, John Colapinto, stepped up to sing Brand New Cadillac in maximum style, while Ben Dickenson sang some of the night’s rockingest guy vocals, as well as played drums.

So, this link is to an excellent New York Times story that improbably (until you think about it) ran today in the paper of record (and gets every fact as I know them right). Notably, that’s my daughter in the second picture, behind the woman having her book signed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/19/fashion/sequoias-david-remnick-new-yorker.html?_r=0

There’s a link in the story to a clip of Rebecca singing I’ve been loving you too long. Or you can click this:

https://vimeo.com/145943426