Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Movie Review: Big Easy Express

Eclectic and divers movie and music tastes; that's me. As Bob says, he never knows what movie we're going to watch next.

Watch this 67-minute rockumentary from 2011 (about three bands who travel together from California to New Orleans on a historic Railroad Revival Tour) for some foot-tapping, dance-inducing, sing-along-inspiring music. The train stopped along the way to play sold-out shows in a number of different cities across the southern U.S.

The three bands on the 2011 tour were Mumford & Sons (English folk rock band), Old Crow Medicine Show (Americana string band) and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes (American indie train folk band). It's fun to enter the world of three different bands living on a train. When they weren't performing, they were playing music on the train. I don't know when they slept!

My feet were tapping and my head was bobbing and weaving to the music. What a fun movie. It won a Grammy in 2013 for the Best Long Form Music Video. The thing that impressed me most was how much fun the band members were having. The way the movie was filmed, you could feel the joy emanating from the people singing and playing their instruments. And because they had so much time together on the train, they learned each other's songs. When they performed at their stops, sometimes all three bands would perform together. That made a total of up to 30 people on stage at one time.

Check out this movie if you like fiddle playing, banjo plucking, foot-tapping music. It's just the right length and the train doesn't derail off its musical tracks (pun intended).

Travel Bug out.