BETTER GET RIGHT, the first of three new CDs to be released by critically-acclaimed singer, songwriter, guitarist and bandleader Howard Fishman in 2010. The sixth studio album from Howard Fishman (and seventh overall), it is Fishman’s love letter to New Orleans, his adopted home when just starting out as a struggling street musician in the mid-90’s. “It really wasn’t until my first post-Katrina visit back, a few years ago, that I realized I needed to find a way to front my own brass band, to bring some of that music and chaos back up to New York. I wasn’t sure how it would work – brass bands don’t typically have a guy out front, singing and playing an acoustic guitar – but I wanted to try. I wrote a bunch of new tunes, added tuba and horns, put my memories from living down there to work, and this is the result.” On BETTER GET RIGHT, Fishman is indeed backed by a New Orleans-style brass band (dubbed “The Biting Fish”), in a set of new originals interspersed with new takes on traditionals and gospel from the Big Easy repertoire. The music is by turns funky, intimate, dirty, and reverential. Often compared to artists like Lou Reed, Beck, The Magnetic Fields, and Jonathan Richman, Fishman brings a punk-like vitality and edge to his almost encyclopedic familiarity with diverse musical forms to create “an irresistible synthesis” (Backstage) that truly is “something entirely new” (Downbeat.) He made his debut at the Algonquin Oak Room in 1999, and has since headlined in major venues both here and abroad, including Lincoln Center, Joe’s Pub, The Steppenwolf Theatre, The Pasadena Playhouse, NJPAC and Le Petit Journal in Paris. He maintains a full-time touring schedule, including recent dates with singer/songwriter Nellie McKay in San Francisco, Seattle and New York.