The Church Of ROCK’N’ ROLL
As it is with so many fireballs of rock’n’roll (Prince, Little Richard, Jimi Hendrix, Alice Cooper, Kurt Cobain, Angus Young…), to meet Adam Weiner off stage is to meet a different person from the Adam Weiner on stage. He’s polite and earnest. He’s approachable but keeps largely to himself. He doesn’t drink. He doesn’t shout or make a scene. But put him on stage, or in front of a camera, and it’s a different story.
Every week since March this year, Low Cut Connie’s piano-thumping mastermind has been singing, playing, gesticulating, sermonising and sweating profusely for an audience he can’t see. Often he’s stripped to his underwear by the end, writhing on the floor of his Philadelphia apartment like a man possessed. It’s like watching an evangelical church service led by the pale Jewish love child of Little Richard and Tina Turner.
Welcome to Tough Cookies, Low Cut Connie’s lockdown live-stream operation. A warm, noisy cabaret of glitz, grit and good times, it’s an exaggerated montage of all that Weiner and his band, an ever-changing cast, have cultivated since 2010. It’s raucous rock’n’roll that begs to be danced to; Jerry Lee Lewis-rivalling piano boogies; affectionate tales of underdogs and misfits (peaking on their previous two albums Dirty Pictures Part 1 and Part 2)… all of which entered the global spotlight in 2015, when then-US president Barack Obama included their song Boozophilia on his summer Spotify playlist.
Over the past six months, with the band’s usual touring on ice due to covid, has grown substantially. As Weiner
