“Living in the U.S.A. but it ain’t my home,” Adam Weiner, frontman and pianist of Low Cut Connie, sings in the band’s latest release, a mournful ballad that alludes to the authoritarian bent of the federal government circa 2025. “Living on the streets there’s people dying out there every day / Screaming in the midnight, ‘Don’t you take my child away.’ ”
It may sound incongruous with the Philadelphia band that one music critic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine, said is “carrying the torch for good old rock-and-roll sleaze — the kind that can be heard on Jerry Lee Lewis’s ‘Live at the Star Club’ and the dirtiest Rolling Stones records,” but the musician is intent on taking a stand against the racism and xenophobia that characterize this era of eroding democratic norms and institutions.
In March, Mr. Weiner canceled the band’s scheduled performance at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. “Our little rock-and-roll act stands for diversity, inclusion, and truth-telling,” he wrote to fans. “My extended Low Cut Connie community includes black, white, gay, straight, transgender, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, atheist, and immigrant individuals — all of whom are wonderful upstanding Americans.” President Trump, he went on, appointed a new board to the Kennedy Center, “not a single member of which has any arts experience whatsoever. Arts institutions are one area that should be immune from our corrosive political culture.”
More recently, a Low Cut Connie performance that was to have taken place earlier this month was canceled, this time by the organizers of a festival in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. No reason was provided, Mr. Weiner told fans via social media, “but they have indicated that they’re canceling my show for political reasons.” He spoke of diversity as “American as apple pie,” adding that “the fact that those principles of love and acceptance are controversial, it shows how far we have fallen in the United States.”
Waving this defiantly inclusive banner in the face of mass deportation and marginalization of minority groups, Low Cut Connie comes to the Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett on Sunday at 8 p.m.
“I can’t wait,” the singer of good-time rockers like “Shake It Little Tina” and “Boozophilia,” the latter listed as a favorite of then-President Barack Obama’s in a 2015 summer playlist, told The Star. “It’s always a smash at the Talkhouse. It’s always a wild show. It’s always very uplifting. People come into that bar ready to have fun, so it’s always easy. The crowd really wants it, and we give it to them.”
“I would not return to a venue five, six times if I didn’t love it,” he continued. “The thing I like about the Talkhouse is like, I’m eyeball to eyeball with the crowd. You can be onstage, reach out and touch them. That bar really has a lot of soul.”
In a discussion of music and this moment in American history, the musician spoke of his love for the guitarists Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards. “Chuck invented a lot of aspects of rock-and-roll that people still use, but at the base of it all is rhythm,” he said. “That’s the bottom line of what I do. My songs, some of them have nice melodies, but the main impetus is it’s got a beat you can dance to, which a lot of rock music these days does not have.”
“At the end of the day, I play piano the way Keith plays guitar, very rhythmic, boogie-style,” he added. “I’m not necessarily virtuosic on the piano — people can play circles around me — but I’m very, very, very rhythmic on the piano, in the way that Chuck or Keith is with their music.”
But the music is about more than fun, “and in some cases, sleazy fun,” he said. “We also talk about issues and address people’s lives. I want the songs to resonate with people, with how they’re feeling.” Life on the road in the United States today is “challenging,” he said. “I travel all over the country, we play a lot of outdoor shows in the summer — big theaters, little festivals, clubs, free shows, we do everything. I bring people together. I ask people to make one new friend at the show, to introduce themselves to each other. I talk about how beautiful and diverse the audience is, which is rare in 2025, to see such a mix of people. I talk about these things, and people love it everywhere we go, despite what’s going on in the country.”
He sounded at turns puzzled, dispirited, and, in the grand tradition of the art form in which he works, rebellious. “I’m not saying anything radical,” he insisted. “I’m talking about basic core values. I say things like ‘Everyone is welcome at my show.’ That, in and of itself, is controversial, apparently.”
“ ‘Livin in the U.S.A.,’ ” he observed, is “capturing how a lot of people are feeling these days. It hit a nerve, but it also pissed people off, which I’m good with. But I’m an artist, I’ve got to write the songs I want to sing and say the things I want to say.”
America’s artistic contributions to civilization are many, he noted. “We’ve given the world jazz, rhythm and blues, rock-and-roll and hip-hop, film, Broadway. Art is the best of us, and it’s being not just devalued but it’s being targeted. We have arts institutions being targeted and losing their funding, and I’m seeing other artists and arts institutions cower to this, which we need to not do. We need to stand firm.”
To that end, Low Cut Connie promises another memorable evening on Sunday. “You never know who you’re going to see at the Talkhouse,” Mr. Weiner said. “It’s a beautiful mix of people, always a great show. We reach out and touch each other. It’s just a great time.”
Tickets for Low Cut Connie are $80 and available at stephentalkhouse.com and at the door.
