Low Cut Connie

History

Weiner performed as a solo artist prior to starting Low Cut Connie. While living in New York City, he played piano in gay bars, karaoke bars, restaurants and ballet classes, often under the name Ladyfingers. He toured throughout North America and Europe playing to often unforgiving crowds in dive bars, honky tonks, anarchist squats, warehouses, drag bars, etc. Weiner started the project that would become Low Cut Connie with former members Dan Finnemore (from Birmingham, U.K.) and Neil Duncan (from Gainesville, Florida). The band's name refers to a waitress who often wore low-cut tops at a restaurant near where Weiner grew up.

Get Out the Lotion

The group recorded their debut album, Get Out the Lotion, at Weiner's friend Neil Duncan's garage in Gainesville, Florida, over a period of four days in the summer of 2010. The band recorded both Weiner's and Finnemore's songs, with Duncan engineering, and they considered the collaboration so informal they had not even decided on a name for it yet during recording. The band self-released this album in 2011. Starting with a surprise review from legendary music critic Robert Christgau, the record received many positive reviews from critics, including NPR's Ken Tucker praising the "buzzsaw yowl of Adam Weiner" on the record. The album also prompted Merrill Garbus to name Low Cut Connie her "favorite artist of the year," and was awarded 3.5 out of 5 stars by Rolling Stone, which described it as "what indie rock might sound like were it invented in Alabama in the late Fifties."

Call Me Sylvia

The band began work on their second album, Call Me Sylvia, with the goal of trying harder to make a "real" album than they were with their debut, when their songs were less arranged. Finnemore moved to the U.S. in advance of the record release. The album was released on September 24, 2012, and currently holds a score of 80% on Metacritic, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Among these reviews was a four-star (out of five) review from AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine, who praised them for making music in a style that originated in the 1960s, but without seeming outdated. PopMatters also reviewed the album, giving it a score of 7 out of 10 and also noting that the album's sound resembled that of mid-20th-century music, as well as specifically comparing Weiner's piano style to Jerry Lee Lewis. The album's song "Boozophilia" was ranked the 31st best song of 2012 by Rolling Stone, which described it as "like Jerry Lee Lewis if he'd had his first religious experience at a Replacements show." It was also chosen by Barack Obama as one of the songs on his Spotify summer playlist in 2015. Weiner posted on Facebook that they were “completely humbled and honored and confused" by Obama doing this.

Hi Honey

In January 2015, Low Cut Connie announced the release of their third album, Hi Honey, which was released April 21, 2015 via Weiner's Contender Records. Duncan had left the band after the release of Call Me Sylvia. The record was produced by former member of Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings Thomas Brenneck (Charles Bradley, Black Lips, Alabama Shakes) and features contributions from Tune-Yards, Dean Ween, Greg Cartwright of Reigning Sound, members of Dap-Kings, Budos Band, and a special cameo by Vincent Pastore of the Sopranos. The record features new members of Low Cut Connie James Everhart and Will Donnelly. The album was recorded at a small studio owned by Daptone Records.

The record received widespread acclaim, including being named #2 album of the year by NPR/Sound Opinions critic Jim DeRogatis.

Unnamed Album Project--2016

Before the release of Hi Honey, Finnemore moved back to the UK, and eventually, in spring 2016, the band continued without him. In May 2016, Weiner and the band began an untitled album project for potential release in 2017.

Discography