Review by Shawn Perry The last time I saw Little Feat and Tedeschi Trucks Band in the Nashville area was at the famous Ryman Auditorium. Separately, not together. Certainly, a double bill with both requires a bigger venue. The FirstBank Amphitheater, retrofitted within a former limestone quarry, proved to be the right fit. Here, the only rock extracted on this night came straight from the stage and shared with the audience. The current lineup of Little Feat features lone founding member and keyboardist Bill Payne; percussionist Sam Clayton and bassist Kenny Gradney (both on board since 1972); plus Fred Tackett, who plays guitar, mandolin, and trumpet, joined in 1987; and the newest recruits, vocalist and guitarist Scott Sharrard and drummer Tony Leone. Together, they served up piping hot versions (and plenty of jamming) of Little Feat favorites, along with new songs from the group’s most recent album, 2025’s Strike Up The Band. They opened their 50-minute set with the classic “Fat Man In The Bathtub.” The calypso rhythm of the song evolved into a free-form jam where both Tackett and Sharrard soared effortlessly. This would happen time and again. Payne, on lead vocals and piano, lead the boogie groove on “Oh Atlanta!,” complete with map visuals on the backdrop just in case no one knew where Atlanta exactly was (about four hours south). New numbers like “4 Days Of Heaven 3 Days Of Work,” “Too High To Cut My Hair,” and “Midnight Flight,” resonated well, especially showcasing Sharrard’s vocals. He also handles most of the songs originally sung by the band’s late leader, Lowell George. Just after Tackett wound down an extended mandolin passage on ‘Willin’,” Sharrard exhaled a George-like growl at the end of the song’s verse, before ascending through Tucson, Tucumcari, Tehachapi, and Tonopah. “Spanish Moon” had Clayton and Leone setting the pace and Sharrard tapping into George’s nuanced delivery, as Taggert sang backup and stretched out on an aching guitar solo. Payne then took it down another path, banging out a sharp piano retort to the laid-back rhythm. Sharrard answered back with a searing solo of his own. As if all the heavy lifting was over with, Taggert blew through an idiosyncratic trumpet solo and Gradney unearthed a booming bass turn to get “Dixie Chicken” off and running. At one point, Payne grabbed the spotlight with Clayton and Leone juggling the beat. Everyone took solos and gathered up to finish the night up in grand style with “Tripe Face Boogie” and “Feats Don’t Fail Me Now.” With such a strong opener, Tedeschi Trucks Band had their work cut out for them. As usual, they accepted the challenge without batting an eye. It was the same thing when I saw them in New York with Gov’t Mule. Even though those TTB shows at the Ryman most certainly made things feel more intimate, a medium-sized venue like FirstBank redefines the range of their unique musicianship and sound. They shaked off a couple of new, still-to-be-released songs, “Crazy Cryin’” and “Devil Be Gone,” for the audience to absorb while angling for a common groove. With Tedeschi on the sidelines, Trucks lead the troops through the jazz-flavored, Middle Eastern-seasoned instrumental “Pasaquan,” the only track of the night from 2022’s ambitious I Am The Moon, the most recent TTB release. Considering the new songs played, it’s clear the group is working in more accessible material. Live, of course, all bets are off. Not many bands can successfully transition from an upbeat rocker like “I Feel So Bad” with Mike Mattison on lead vocals, to a wild explosion of finesse just between drummer Isaac Eady and saxophonist Kebbi Williams that goes on for a good five minutes. Or how about Gabe Dixon taking his Hammond B3 for a pastoral jog on :Let Me Get By” before Trucks comes along and throws in a few crunchers from Jimi Hendrix’s “Manic Depression.” As if by instinct, TTB thrives on a wide fabric of disparate musical dalliances, ready to switch it up and go in any direction at practically any given measure. Accompanied by Gabe Dixon on piano, Tedeschi delivered a tender rendition of Mike Reid’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” a major hit for Bonnie Raitt in the 1990s. As for hits of their own, “Midnight In Harlem,” which Trucks wrote with Mattison, is a close contender though it was never released as a TTB single (it does, however, appear on their 2011 Grammy-winning debut album, Revelator). They’ve played it every time I’ve seen them since 2013, and it always exudes a warm and fuzzy feeling in the house. Franklin was no exception. Both Tedeschi and Trucks fired off fiery solos during “How Blue Can You Get?” Then Tedeschi painted the quarry blue on “Just Won’t Burn” with a slow, thoughtful read and guitar solo that pretty much summed up why her name is first on the marquee. Of course, Trucks followed up accordingly with a vigorous swipe at Santana’s “Soul Sacrifice” that would have left Woodstock in tatters. No TTB show would be complete without an Allman Brothers Band song, and tonight it was a rollicking stroll through 1972’s “Stand Back,” with Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble keyboardist Reese Wynans sitting in. The horns, the singers, even bassist Brandon Boone, all added their own kicks and licks to the mix. As part of an ongoing tribute to Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs & Englishmen, the evening ended with a jaunty, soulful “Space Captain” that had everyone on their feet, singing along, and salivating for more. Makes you wonder how many followed the ensemble to the next town.    

'It's very difficult'

72 people have died, while 48 others are missing

Friday's Final Word

On Monday's Deadline: White House, host Nicolle Wallace and reporter Jacob Soboroff were eager partisan spinmeisters on Democrats like Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker for their feverish resistance to President Donald Trump's deportation efforts of our "neighbors." But it really went off the rails when Soboroff touted conspiracy theories to mobilize protester turnout against the National Guard. He loved the line that "I don't know if we'll have an election in 2026 or we will have the military outside of the ballot boxes." Wallace opened the show suggesting Trump could still lose support on the immigration issue and claimed that Pew Research polling found that only small numbers of Americans support deporting all illegal aliens -- a claim she has been making for months in spite of being debunked by NewsBusters. Here's Wallace: He (Joe Rogan) doesn't like deporting people who have been here 20 years who haven't committed crimes. Pew polling had that number at about I think eight percent of Americans supported deporting people married to a U.S. citizen. It's about 12 (percent) who supported people -- I mean, there were always micro, micro numbers of people who supported what's actually happening -- 87 percent of Americans, according to Time/CNN, support deporting adjudicated violent criminals. And the whole program is built around deporting the people that eight (percent) of Americans want gone. In fact, more recent polling finds that most Americans still give support to deporting all illegal aliens. In the next segment, Wallace began by talking up Governor JB Pritzker (D-IL) resisting President Trump's deportation efforts in Chicago: "Pritzker seems to have been made for this moment, or to be emulating what Gavin Newsom pioneered both as an advocate for his city and state -- and Karen Bass as well for her city." She then asked Soboroff for predictions, leading him to repeat some of the spin pushed by Pritzker and other Democrats: And what they are communicating when they're saying, "Come get me -- come arrest me" is that -- he said to me -- he said, "I don' t know if we'll have an election" -- we were joking about it, but "I don't know if we'll have an election in 2026 or we will have the military outside of the ballot boxes. And so they are taking this from just an immigration-related issue to saying, "Democracy is on the line here, ladies and gentlemen." And I think that's part of what is compelling people that -- as you said, Cornell -- may not have otherwise shown up for an immigration protest into the streets. That protest of 10 or seven or 10,000 people up and down Michigan Avenue was just -- was not your ordinary immigration protest. He added: It was a really electric, impressive thing to see, and I think because their local leaders are standing up and saying, "This isn't -- this is about your neighbors -- documented and undocumented -- but it's not just about the future of who gets to live in this country -- it's whether or not we get to have a free country at all." Belcher jumped in to tout how this could work for presidential contenders: I'm going be the bad guy here because I'm going to say it's not bad for their politics thinking about running for President. ... You look at Pritzker, and you look at Newsom. You know, they've been outspoken -- they've taken on this fight -- they're doing everything the base has asked that they want to see more Democrats doing. ... I think this positions them well in a crowded field going into a Democratic primary. Transcript follows: MSNBC's Deadline: White House October 13, 2025 NICOLLE WALLACE: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Monday. It's 4:00 in New York. If Donald Trump's political power lies in being able to convince his supporters of anything and everything, then loud public dissent from inside his coalition from prominent Trump influencers might be the thing that will melt his carefully crafted, alternative fact-based reality faster than the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz. And that is exactly what is starting to happen with his brutal and ugly and clunky and wildly unpopular mass deportation scheme. The sight and the sound and the smells of heavily armed federal agents of sweeping up people with no criminal records -- everyone from grandmas to kids -- with arrests everywhere from outside of schools to outside of bakeries to even a Marine base. Those sights and sounds are proving to be too much for arguably the most influential podcaster in the MAGA-adjacent universe. (Plays clips of podcaster Joe Rogan and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) arguing against deporting illegals who have been in the country a long time who are working) WALLACE: So the reality of Trump's mass deportation campaign and how it is impacting everyone of us. Everyone is going to be touched by it regardless of who you voted for -- if it's starting to sink in. We should note that the administration is about to turn the volume up even louder. They are now escalating what brought those two to their conversions in their views on Trump and his policy. In city after city after city, it's going to get worse. On Friday ICE deported the father of a U.S. Marine who was first detained along with his wife at a Marine base in San Diego. In Chicago, more than 1,000 people have been arrested since deportation operations began last month, leading to some incredibly harrowing scenes that have put the city and the country and mixed documented families in this country on edge all over the country. Scenes like this one. This video is from The New York Times showing a flower vender being detained. Or authorities conducting a military-style operation on an apartment building on the south side in which children were zip-tied, and, according to one eyewitness, the agent said, "F the kids." Or this: agents shooting pepper balls at a pastor with his hands held up in prayer. Trump's Department of Homeland Security claiming that it is arresting, quote, "the worst of the worst," end quote. But brand-new reporting from MSNBC blows that lie out of the water. It reveals that, out of the more than 1,000 arrests made in Chicago, quote, "the agency provided detailed information for only 10 men with a criminal background, about one percent of those detained, making independent verification difficult." The public intra-MAGA backlash to the open cruelty of Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign is where we start today. ... (...) Jacob Soboroff says President Donald Trump wants to deport as many immigrants as President Barack Obama did, and then recalls the Obama-era deportations: JACOB SOBOROFF: There will be advocates who say there were interior removals that tore apart families. Read Dr. William Lopez -- he has a new book out now about raised in the heartland of the United States and how these played out under multiple Presidents, but he didn't have wide-scale, indiscriminate family separation-style raids like Donald Trump and Stephen Miller and Tom Homan and Kristi Noem are effectuating on the streets of this country right now for the purpose of only of hitting the numbers that Stephen Miller wants to hit. Barack Obama -- I'm not justifying it in any way -- I think any of the advocates would say it was very damaging and traumatic -- traumatizing to the children that were caught in those policies -- but for Donald Trump -- and I'm not objectively -- this is what they said -- the point was to harm people with family separation. The point is to hurt these communities so that other people -- there are ads running in Chicago in English with Kristi Noem on television offering people money  to leave the country. They want as many people as possible to leave, and the way they think they can do that is by scaring the holy hell out of people by putting these images on television. That is not what prior administrations did. This is a whole new level. WALLACE: If you take the parts of this that -- let's just go with Joe Rogan because he's speaking publicly, and the MAGA coalition listens to him.  He doesn't like deporting people who have been here 20 years who haven't committed crimes. Pew polling had that number at about I think eight percent of Americans supported deporting people married to a U.S. citizen. It's about 12 (percent) who supported people -- I mean, there were always micro, micro numbers of people who supported what's actually happening -- 87 percent of Americans, according to Time/CNN, support deporting adjudicated violent criminals. And the whole program is built around deporting the people that eight (percent) of Americans want gone. BELCHER: Yeah, well. look, I'm -- the cruelty is the point, yeah, the cruelty is the point, but I want to go a little deeper than that, right? This doesn't lower the prices of gas or eggs or groceries (...) 4:24 p.m. Eastern NICOLLE WALLACE: We're back with Jacob, Cornell, and Tim. I feel like we could solve everything. Jacob, just tell me -- I mean, Pritzker seems to have been made for this moment, or to be emulating what Gavin Newsom pioneered both as an advocate for his city and state -- and Karen Bass as well for her city. But just tell me -- tell me where you see this heading this weekend and in the coming days. JACOB SOBOROFF: Well, I think what they have all come to realize and understand is that not only is this a usurpation of their power -- at least that's what they say -- that's what Bass said on the streets -- that's what Newsom was saying when it came to the calling up of the Guard and the deployment of the Marines. Obviously, he's not going to deploy the Marines to L.A., but when the Marines were on the streets of L.A. -- and Pritzker as well -- and what they are communicating when they're saying, "Come get me -- come arrest me" is that -- he said to me -- he said, "I don' t know if we'll have an election" -- we were joking about it, but "I don't know if we'll have an election in 2026 or we will have the military outside of the ballot boxes. And so they are taking this from just an immigration-related issue to saying, "Democracy is on the line here, ladies and gentlemen." And I think that's part of what is compelling people that -- as you said, Cornell -- may not have otherwise shown up for an immigration protest into the streets. That protest of 10 or seven or 10,000 people up and down Michigan Avenue was just -- was not your ordinary immigration protest. That was people from all walks of life on the night that that Cubs' future was on the line in Chicago. It was a really electric, impressive thing to see, and I think because their local leaders are standing up and saying, "This isn't -- this is about your neighbors -- documented and undocumented -- but it's not just about the future of who gets to live in this country -- it's whether or not we get to have a free country at all." WALLACE: Yeah, I mean -- CORNELL BELCHER, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Nicolle, I'm gonna --  WALLACE: Yeah, go. BELCHER: I'm going be the bad guy here because I'm going to say it's not bad for their politics thinking about running for President. SOBOROFF: Yeah. BELCHER: Right? WALLACE: Yeah, yeah. BELCHER: You look at Pritzker, and you look at Newsom. You know, they've been outspoken -- they've taken on this fight -- they're doing everything the base has asked that they want to see more Democrats doing. And, again, I'm completely neutral -- I never want to work another presidential campaign as long as I live -- but I got to tell you, I think this positions them well in a crowded field going into a Democratic primary. WALLACE: Let me just give you an alternate analysis, I mean, President of what? Because -- because -- right? Because like if this doesn't win, President of what? And I think that the MAGA world braids these things together, right? Why do -- why do 48 states pass voter suppression laws? They pass them predicated on a lie that Bill Barr told us was a lie. He told us it was bull bleep. It's Monday -- I'll try to go through two hours without swearing. So the same thing with the -- with immigration raids and militarized federal law enforcement. But what are they on the streets for? Only the pro-democracy side is trying to answer that question. To MAGA it's a lollapalooza. They're there for all of it. They're there for -- they're there for mass deportation -- they're there to make it scarier to vote -- they have no plans on leaving. We're the only side trying to unbraid what is just their mass overreach. BELCHER: Yeah, I'm not kidding when I'm not sure there's going to be an election. WALLACE: Yeah. BELCHER: I'm not, right? I, fingers crossed, I hope there's going to be election. But if I look at everything that's happening in this country right now, I'm not 100 percent sure that these people aren't going to block an election. There's -- he's not -- WALLACE: A free and fair election. BELCHER: A free and fair election -- that he won't, you know, put military on the street and especially in certain areas of the country, military will be on the street to stop us -- get in the way of having a free and fair election.

It appears that President Donald Trump wasn’t bluffing at all when he stated that a potential criminal investigation should be launched against leftist "Connoisseur of Chaos” George Soros. This weekend is another string of "No Kings" protests organized by the leftist group Indivisible, which could spur chaotic activity. Soros, through the Open Society Action Fund, issued a two-year grant of $3 million in 2023 to Indivisible. The Wall Street Journal reported October 15 that the Trump administration is “preparing sweeping changes at the Internal Revenue Service that would allow the agency to pursue criminal inquiries of left-leaning groups more easily.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s adviser Gary Shapley -- who was a whistleblower on the Hunter Biden case -- has put together a list of groups that the IRS criminal-investigative unit will be looking into that are “creating anarchy in Democratic-led cities,” prominent among them being Soros and his affiliated philanthropies. This development comes on the heels of the Justice Department directing prosecutors to start drafting plans to investigate the leftist billionaire. An explosive Capital Research Center report, which served as the pretext for main Justice’s interest in Soros, revealed that he funneled at least $80 million into organizations tied to domestic and foreign terrorism.  Some of the Soros-funded terror-linked organizations include the radical climate-obsessed, youth-led Sunrise Movement, which the CRC noted “endorsed the Antifa-linked Stop Cop City campaign, in which activists currently face over 40 domestic terrorism charges and 60 racketeering indictments.” The coalition engaged in a litany of riot activity like “setting a police vehicle ablaze; throwing Molotov cocktails, bricks and rocks at police; setting construction equipment on fire; blocking roads with obstacles like tires; harming police officers’ eyes with lasers; and attacking the Atlanta Police Foundation’s building with fireworks.” Following news that Soros’s Open Society Foundations were under investigation, Sunrise announced to lefty outlet The Intercept that it was going to war with Trump to protect its major financier, speaking to Soros’s enormous power over the organizations he funds. Sunrise Executive Director Aru Shiney-Ajay told The Intercept that “‘There is no serious way to think about stopping the climate crisis under a fascist government.’” She continued: “‘The path to climate lies through getting rid of the authoritarian government we’re in.’” It was discovered that Soros had fueled at least $7,610,000 into the unhinged Indivisible Project, which was responsible for organizing the infamous “No Kings Protests” along with other leftist orgs where some had devolved into violence. In addition, MRC Business also documented the Soros connection to the Tesla fires that occurred earlier this year as a result of violent protestors running amok in its April 22 report Eco-Kingpins: How the Soros Empire Funds and Steers the Global Climate Change Agenda. Trump has apparently had enough of the political chaos that Soros has kept ablaze with his ungodly fortune. On August 26, Trump publicly lambasted the leftist billionaire on Truth Social and called for criminal racketeering charges to be pursued against his empire: “George Soros, and his wonderful Radical Left son [Alex], should be charged with RICO because of their support of Violent Protests, and much more, all throughout the United States of America.” Americans should understand that Soros was never a passive player. He thrives off of political chaos, and he’s willing to inflame the masses in order to achieve his dark open society ends. At the very least, an investigation should have been conducted into his antics years ago. Trump is now doing what his predecessors and other Washington politicos were either too corrupt — or too intimidated — to do in finally calling the wretched Soros empire to account. 

The partisans at the PBS News Hour have skipped over the scandal of Virginia attorney general candidate Jay Jones sending texts in 2022 wishing to murder a Republican opponent and his small children, since he was “breeding little fascists.” After almost two weeks of silence, they finally spent a piece of a minute on Jones in a story on Thursday…as a side note to promoting a Politico story on Republican non-candidates saying awful things. The segment carried the online headline: “Young Republicans’ hateful group chat sparks bipartisan condemnation.” The texts are worth condemning. The question is whether they matter on the same level as a statewide candidate for a law-enforcement office. New York-based Politico reporter Emily Ngo, who also appeared on CNN and MSNBC – like she hit a liberal-media triple – touted the power of their report in ruining careers:  EMILY NGO: The fallout has been vast. The story and our reporting has reverberated widely across the nation. By our most recent count, we have eight of the 12 members of this chat that as you said is just filled with racist epithets and gay slurs and references to violence are out of their jobs so. PBS and their guests didn't feel this way about people losing their jobs over awful things said after Charlie Kirk's murder. Ngo dismissed the Jones angle as part of a “permission structure” for bigoted Republicans: GEOFF BENNETT: Some Republicans have condemned these messages outright. Others are trying to shift the focus, citing the leaked text from the Virginia Democratic attorney general candidate Jay Jones, who appeared to threaten a Republican lawmaker. How are GOP leaders for the most part framing this moment?  NGO: So it varies, of course, but we see now — and it's to be expected in this political climate — a lot of congressional Democrats and New York Democrats, including Governor Kathy Hochul, who are seizing on this and capitalizing on this to use against their Republican rivals, including those who immediately condemned these text messages. But with this latest set of remarks from Vice President J.D. Vance, I find that I'm asking now whether there is a sort of permission structure being established slowly and steadily to allow some of these Republican leaders to excuse this behavior or at least — at the very least question why Democrats aren't condemning similar violent language from their camp, but particularly from Jones, as you say, in Virginia. Bennett quickly returned to the “juicy” part, the massive bigotry among Republicans: "Based on your reporting and the conversations you have had connected to this investigative piece, to what extent has the current Trump era normalized or even emboldened the racist, homophobic, sexist language and attitudes among some young conservatives?" Ngo replied: “These are jokes, dark humor, sort of a casual kind of cruelty that were repeated over and over again in a pattern. And we put them in the context of what's happening now in the political climate, where people are at each other's throats, where, in social media, on podcasts, including very, very widely listened to, watched podcasts, and very popular hosts, this language is being echoed, it's being exemplified. They're not getting this from nowhere. And sort of it's been OK in some stratospheres, when it really shouldn't be.” As if Jay Jones doesn't show "dark humor" and "casual cruelty" among Democrats?

Causing a Storm: Trump White House Joins Bluesky With Epic Trolling Video (WATCH)

Dem Strategist Julie Roginsky Says If Violence Breaks Out at ‘No Kings’ Rallies It Will Be Trump’s Fault