By Denny Dyroff, Entertainment Editor, The Times
Swing That Cat
There is a band headlining a show at 118 North (118 North Wayne Avenue, Wayne, www.118northwayne.com) on May 22 that has a name that, if misunderstood, could draw PETA advocates to protest outside its shows.
The band is Swing That Cat, which was formed more than a decade ago by vocalist Michele Peraino and her husband guitarist Chris Peraino. It is a band that has one foot in the swing era and one foot in the present.
Fortunately, the band’s name has nothing to do with the act of swirling around a hapless feline in the air.
“I wanted a name that had cats in the name – a reference to cats and hep cats which were terms used in the swing era,” said Chris Periaino, during a phone interview yesterday from the couple’s home in Wenonah, New Jersey.
“I also wanted a name that had a sense of movement. It should sound like ‘swing that, cat’ but you can’t just put a comma in when you’re saying the name.”
Swing That Cat’s music is a sonic smorgasbord drawing from jazz, swing music from the 30s, 40s and 50s, blues, R&B, gypsy music, jump blues, cabaret and New Orleans jazz.
On its Facebook page, the band posted, “We’re a crazy bunch of cats who love that rock and roll thing mixed with jump blues, jazz and lots of horny swing! Add a dash of panache from the cabaret and a splash of the way the Gypsies play. Shaken well, then served straight up, or on ice. We like it all — dirty, neat and nice.”
Swing That Cat straddles the Delaware River between South Jersey and the Philadelphia area.
“We live in South Jersey – in the Gloucester area,” said Chris Periaino.
“For about 30 years, they have had a one-night benefit concert in the area. Chris and I had both been in it for several years.
“One year, we did a song and recruited horn players from Rowan University. That was back in 2012.
“The idea of having a horn-led band had fallen out of favor. We wanted to go back to swing as a forerunner of rock and roll. We looked at swing bands from the 30s, 40s and 50s in a modern context.”
Michele Periaino said, “Chris and I went to an open mic at The Bus Stop Music Café in Pitman. We began playing there a lot. We even ended up practicing there.”
That was the beginning of Swing That Cat.
The band currently features Michele Peraino, Vocals; Chris Peraino, Guitar; Hugh Luck, Flute; Sam Harasink, Bass; Styx Latte, Drums; Andrew Donaghy, Sax; Pavan Chary, Sax; Rickey Rhoem, Trombone; and Dawn Webster, Trumpet.
Swing That Cat is a band that is Philly born and bred.
“I’m from Broomall – a 1983 Marple Newtown grad,” said Chris Periaino. “Our drummer is from Havertown. Sam is a Jersey boy – his family is from Wenonah. Hugh is from West Virginia, but he’s lived in South Jersey for a long time. Our horn players are all from South Jersey.”
Michele Iacovittti Periaino is from Norristown – East Norriton actually.
She is one of several national music talents from the Norristown area including late jazz greats bassist Jaco Pastorius and Hammond legend Jimmy Smith, Humblemanband leader Charlie Cooper and the late Tim Boyle, who was one of the most sought-after recording engineers in Southern California.
“We started with 13 in the band and then scaled down to seven or nine,” said Chris Periaino.
“We used our flute player as lead guitar with a four-piece horn section. And the band also features bass, drums and guitar. Our first gig was at The Bus Stop in July 2013.
“After a while, we were playing gigs in Philadelphia – Underground Arts, the Troc, Kung Fu Necktie. I think we’ve played just about every venue in Philly. We just did a record release last fall at the Ardmore Music Hall.”
Michele Periaino said, “There was an influence by Louis – three of them. I grew up listening to Louis Prima. Chris was listening to Louis Jordan. And we agreed that Louis Armstrong was king.
“It was a learning lesson in this music and what it became. It’s a reminder to people of how it started.”
Chris Periaino said, “After a while, we were playing gigs in Philadelphia – Underground Arts, the Troc, Kung Fu Necktie. I think we’ve played just about every venue in Philly.
“At first, we thought it was just going to be something little for fun. Then we got more gigs and it escalated. It became its own animal. To be able to show that side of me was great.
“Our first recording was an album a few years ago – ‘3 To Get Ready and 4 To Go.’ It was a live double EP featuring three original songs and four standards. We recorded at a 2016 show at Philly Sound Studios.
“We just did a record release of our new album last fall at the Ardmore Music Hall.”
Swing That Cat released a new full-length studio album, “LEAP,” in July 2025.
“We started working on ‘LEAP’ just before COVID,” said Michele Periaino. “We had a couple band changes. Our old bass player was on three songs on the album and then left.
“We went through three or four bass players and then got Sam (Harasink). He’s our music director. He and I work on orchestrating songs so we can bring them back to the band. I wrote four songs on the album.”
Her songs were written in the 2020s but could just as easily been created by swing bands from the 1930s and 1940s.
According to her, “Our music is not trapped in an era — it’s a call to action that makes you shimmy, shake, and wanna leap off your seat to dance your tail off!”
Video link for Swing That Cat – https://youtu.be/_Jef7sRcwAk.
The show at 118 North on May 22, which has The Wonton Soups as the opening act, will start at 8 p.m.
Tickets are $20.
Other upcoming shows at 118 North are Pure Petty on May 23, Peter Holsapple + Don Dixon Duo on May 24 and MT Jones on May 27.
The Toadies
For The Toadies, making an album with Steve Albini as the producer was a match made in music heaven.
It was a match that the band from Fort Worth, Texas wanted to see happen for a long time.
It was a match that took a long time to actually take place.
And it was a match made just in the nick of time.
The Toadies, who will be headlining a show at Union Transfer (1026 Spring Garden Street, Philadelphia, www.utphilly.com) on May 22, released their new album, “The Charmer,” on May 1 via Spaceflight Records.
The Toadies are Vaden Todd Lewis (vocals), Clark Vogeler (guitar), Mark Reznicek (drums) and Doni Blair (bass).
Spaceflight Records is an Austin-based nonprofit record label supporting those who make music through physical releases, distribution, and hands-on release management.
Its work focuses on creating sustainability by restoring record sales as a meaningful source of income for working musicians.
On January 8, 2024, The Toadies announced that their eighth studio album, “The Charmer,” which was recorded with Steve Albini, was scheduled to be released later in the year.
However, following Albini’s death in May of that year, the album was delayed multiple times before its release a few weeks ago.
The album was done with Albini at his Electrical Audio in Chicago and is among the few projects Albini recorded before his unfortunate passing that have not yet been released.
Albini was a highly acclaimed musician and audio engineer.
He founded and fronted the influential post-hardcore and noise rock bands Big Black (1981–1987), Rapeman (1987–1989), and Shellac (1992–2024).
He engineered acclaimed albums such as the Pixies’ “Surfer Rosa” (1988), PJ Harvey’s “Rid of Me,” Nirvana’s “In Utero” (both 1993), and Manic Street Preachers’ “Journal for Plague Lovers” (2009).
After Big Black’s dissolution, Albini became a sought-after recording engineer, rejecting the term “record producer.”
He recorded several thousand records, collaborating with acts such as the Breeders, the Jesus Lizard, Page and Plant, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Joanna Newsom, Cheap Trick and Slint.
Albini founded the Chicago recording studio Electrical Audio in 1997, dedicated to recording a live sound at a cheap price. He refused to accept royalties, preferring to charge a fixed fee.
At the time of his death, Albini charged $900 a day, less than a quarter of the rate a producer of his experience would typically charge. He would occasionally work unpaid if an act ran out of money, preferring not to leave work unfinished.
In 2018, Albini estimated that he had engineered more than 3,000 records.
Noted for his outspoken and blunt opinions, Albini was critical of local punk scenes and the music industry, which he viewed as exploitative of artists.
Albini preferred to record bands together in live takes rather than overdubbing, believing this created the most natural result. He was a strict adherent of analog recording.
“We recorded the album in August 2023,” said Doni Blair, during a recent phone interview from a tour day off in Atlanta.
“We were one month with Steve on tour the year before. We were in Chicago in 2023, so we went to his studio to say – hi, how are you doing?
“A little while later, our manager had set up a meeting which went by really quite quick – very cordial and very business-like. He had his rates posted on his website. We had our budget and it worked out.
“We started each day at 9:30-10 a.m. and were done at 7 p.m. Steve was very workmanlike. He had a reputation for acerbic wit and not doing things wrong. We’re the same way.”
According to Reznicek, “When we first signed with the major label back in 1993, they asked us who we wanted to record with and we all replied ‘Albini!’”
Albini’s technique of capturing bands raw and live was the perfect match for band’s energy resulting in the classic Toadies sound.
According to Blair, “Steve was as advertised. He had an acerbic wit and dark sense of humor, so we felt at home.
“His dedication to the craft of recording blew my mind. We won’t see his kind of engineer ever again and recorded music will suffer because of it.”
Though a mostly “hands-off” producer, Albini did help the band land on specific guitar tones and piece other parts together.
“He was our sound guy,” said Blair. “There were so many things sonically that he did. He had a really good hand in it. We knew we had found our guy – and then he passed away.”
Fortunately for The Toadies, they were able to complete the album before Albini’s ticker betrayed him. Albini died from a heart attack at his home in Chicago, on May 7, 2024, at the age of 61.
“We did ‘The Charmer’ that month in August 2023,” said Blair, whose brother Zach Blair is lead guitarist of Rise Against and was also Flattus Maximus of GWAR.
“We were all set up – the four of us in the same room – playing live to analog tape. Steve had guitars in the bigger room. Mark was in a room-within-a-room – an enclosed drum room.”
According to Vogeler, “The amps are in the room, and the soundwaves are bouncing off each other and doing weird, magical things. The sound of us playing together in the room comes through loud and clear on the album.”
The Toadies followed with a second session at the studio in the Windy City.
“We went back and did some more recording for another few weeks,” said Blair. “That second session was in April 2024.
“We did a lot of pre-production for this album. We also worked a lot on the songs in our live shows.
“Before heading to Chicago, we spent about four weeks of pre-production in Fort Worth. We wanted to show up more than prepared.”
The Toadies were no strangers to analog recording.
“People who know us are used to hearing our songs that way,” said Blair
“The band recorded the ‘Rubberneck’ album analog – playing together live to tape.”
In the three decades-plus musical career, The Toadies have built one of alternative rock’s most enduring legacies.
Formed in Fort Worth in 1989, The Toadies blend the band’s love for MTV staples such as Talking Heads and the Pixies with its affinity for classic rock, ZZ Top and traditional country.
They added to their popularity by playing major festivals including Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits. Their hometown of Fort Worth has even declared an official “Toadies Day.”
December 30 is officially “Toadies Day” in Fort Worth to celebrate the band’s contributions to Dallas’ Metroplex neighbor.
Their platinum-selling 1994 debut “Rubberneck” spawned the iconic singles “Tyler” and “Possum Kingdom,” hit #1 on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart, and spent 49 weeks on the Billboard 200.
The Toadies were scheduled to play the Shadow of the City Festival in Asbury Park on May 23.
Because of a nasty weather forecast for the area this weekend, the outdoor show has been postponed until August 28 at the same venue.
Fortunately for Toadies fans, the announcement was made early enough to allow them to make plans for attending the show in Philly instead.
Video link for The Toadies – https://youtu.be/GaSRR4inWXA.
The show at Union Transfer on May 22, which has Local H and The Vandoliers as openers, will start at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets are $58.26.
Another show at Union Transfer this weekend will be Superheaven on May 23.
People’s Light (39 Conestoga Road, Malvern, peopleslight.org) is presenting “The Woman Question” now through May 24.
A new play with local roots, “The Woman Question” unearths the stories of medical pioneers who led the charge for women’s health and reproductive freedom 150 years ago.
This world premiere docu-fantasy follows the 1894 class of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, an intrepid cohort of students whose struggles and joys reverberate across centuries.
The play is written and performed by acclaimed theatre-maker Suli Holum (“Hurricane Diane”) in collaboration with Company Artist Melanye Finister (“A Raisin in the Sun”) and a remarkable cast and creative team.
Holum is an award-winning director, performer, choreographer and playwright based in Philadelphia and Brooklyn. Holum’s “The Woman Question” is a multi-year research and performance project which has been created in partnership with the Drexel University Legacy Archive and People’s Light Theater Company, with support from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage.
Finister is a 30-year member of the Philadelphia theater community. In 1991, she joined the resident acting company at People’s Light where she appeared in more than 30 productions.
The creative team also features director Melissa Crespo, choreographer Fatima Sowe, scenic designer Ann Beyersdorfer, Costume Designer Lux Haac, lighting designer Lily Fossner, sound designers Daniela Hart, Bailey Trierweiler, and Noel Nichols, projection designer Lisa Renkel, and composer and music director Daniela Hart.
“The Woman Question” blends archival research, flights of collective imagination, and a delightful, Victorian-infused theatricality.
The play centers on the 1894 graduating class of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP) — the first degree-granting medical school in the world exclusively for women, founded in 1850.
“The Woman Question” is running now through May 24 at People’s Light.
Ticket prices start at $30.
The Candlelight Theater (2208 Millers Road, Arden, Delaware, www.candlelighttheatredelaware.org) is presenting “Arsenic & Old Lace” now through June 20.
“Arsenic and Old Lace” is a play by American playwright Joseph Kesselring, written in 1939. It has become best known through the 1944 film adaptation starring Cary Grant and directed by Frank Capra.
The play opened on Broadway at the Fulton Theatre on January 10, 1941.
The play, a clever combination of the farcical and the macabre, centers on two elderly sisters who are famous in their Brooklyn neighborhood for their numerous acts of charity.
Unfortunately, however, their charity includes poisoning lonely old men who come to their home looking for lodging. The two women are assisted in their crimes by their mentally challenged nephew who believes he is Teddy Roosevelt and who frequently blasts a bugle and yells “charge” as he bounds up the stairs.
Matters get complicated when a second nephew, a theater critic, discovers the murders and a third nephew appears after having just escaped from a mental institution.
“Arsenic & Old Lace” revolves around drama critic Mortimer Brewster, whose engagement announcement is upended when he discovers a corpse in his elderly aunts’ window seat.
Mortimer rushes to tell Abby and Martha before they stumble upon the body themselves, only to learn that the two old women aren’t just aware of the dead man in their parlor, they killed him.
The “murderous old lady” plot line may also have been inspired by actual events that occurred in a house on Prospect St in Windsor, Connecticut, where a woman, Amy Archer-Gilligan, took in boarders, promising “lifetime care,” and poisoned them for their pensions.
“Arsenic & Old Lace” runs through June 20 and features a themed meal and free parking.
Tickets are $83 for adults and $38.50 for children (ages 4-12). Tickets for show only are $43.50 (adults and children).
Cirque du Soleil’s new production “LUZIA” just opened this week and will run through June 7 under a big top at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center (100 Station Avenue, Oaks, www.phillyexpocenter.com).
Billed as “A Waking Dream of Mexico,” the show looks at our neighbors from the south.
Poetically guided by light (‘luz’ in Spanish) and rain (‘lluvia’), “LUZIA” chronicles the encounters of a parachuted traveler with the culture, nature and mythology of a dreamlike land inhabited by a mystifying menagerie of characters.
Refreshing and unexpected, “LUZIA” enchants by artistically incorporating water into the acrobatic presentation — a first for a Cirque du Soleil touring production.
As the sun rises, the running woman awakes an imaginary Mexico, honoring the monarch butterfly’s migration.
In a series of grand visual surprises and breathtaking acrobatic performances, “LUZIA” takes audiences on a surreal escape to an imaginary Mexico – a sumptuously vibrant world suspended between dreams and reality.
Smoothly passing from an old movie set to the ocean to a smoky dance hall or an arid desert, “LUZIA” journeys through a colorful tapestry of multiple places, faces and sounds of Mexico taken from both tradition and modernity.
Video link for “LUZIA” — www.cirquedusoleil.com/luzia.
“LUZIA” will run through June 7 in Oaks.
Ticket prices start at $25.
Kennett Flash (102 Sycamore Alley, Kennett Square, 484-732-8295, http://www.kennettflash.org) is hosting The Third Arrangement with special guests The Gavani Trio on May 22 and Just Jammin’ on May 23.
Steel City Coffeehouse (203 Bridge Street, Phoenixville, www.steelcityphx.com) will present The Treebirds on May 22 and Bob Dylan’s 85th Birthday Benefit on May 23.
The Colonial Theater (227 Bridge Street, Phoenixville, thecolonialtheatre.com/events) will host Are You Ready For It on May 22 and Wesley Stace on May 23.
Jamey’s House of Music (32 South Lansdowne Avenue, Lansdowne, 215-477-9985, www.jameyshouseofmusic.com) is presenting Jazzmen Experience on May 22, Tom Freund on May 23 and Jamey’s Blues Union on May 24.
Elkton Music Hall (107 North Street, Elkton, Maryland, www.elktonmusichall.com) hosts “Echoes The American Pink Floyd: Pink Floyd Tribute” on May 22 and Crack the Sky on May 23.
Ardmore Music Hall (23 East Lancaster Avenue, Ardmore, www.ardmoremusic.com) will have Hezekiah Jones + Mason Porter + Chris Kasper on May 23, Lady Alma & Vertical Current on May 24, Steely Dead: A Sonic Fusion of The Grateful Dead and Steely Dan on May 28 and Broken Arrow: Neil Young Tribute
on May 29.
The Sellersville Theater (24 West Temple Avenue, Sellersville, 215-257-5808, www.st94.com) will present Tom DiMenna on May 22, Dr. K’s Motown Revue on May 23, Carl Cox and Tim Hutson on May 24, Parker Barrow on May 27, The World Famous Glenn Miller Orchestra on May 28, Gary Louris (of The Jayhawks) on May 29, Joe Grushecky on May 30 and Dirk Quinn Band on May 31.
The venue also gets off to a strong start in June with Jackrabbit featuring Dermot Mulroney on June 2, Sponge on June 3, crowd favorite The Slambovian Circus of Dreams on June 5 and Jann Klose on June 6.
