Urban Folk

the zine on the acoustic scene

Issue 11
Spring 2007

A Hard Look at
Soft Black

The Wolfson
Campaign

Wakey!Wakey!

Billy Syndrome

Public Records

More!

Plus: Lowry,
Chris Maher,
Brook Pridemore
 Urban Folk Issue Eleven. Available May, 2007 (now)
Paul Alexander writes:
Last issue I made a mistake. Certainly not the first I've ever made, and without a doubt, far from the last. The mistake
in question has to do with misquoting the very apt and quotable Leo, who sent me the witty lyric "Now I met Zach
back in 1899 / We were diggin' for diamonds in the songwriter's mine," which I egregiously corrected, thinking it was
chronologically mistyped. I altered it to read "Now I met Zach back in 1998 / We were diggin' for diamonds in the
songwriter's mine." It didn't occur to me that my revision clearly avoided the rhyme scheme. Some songwriter, huh?
To once again paraphrase Leo's words: "Retractions, retractions, ga-ga-ga-ga-gotta write the retractions…"
So, now that I've retracted my most recent faux-pas, I hope Leo, along with the rest of our Urban Folk readers, will
forgive and forget any other missteps I've made along the way. Thanks for reading.
www.myspace.com/palexandermusic

Jonathan Berger writes:

I hope you enjoy this issue. If you don’t: it’s not my fault; it’s yours. You could contribute. In fact, you should. This
publication runs on dreams, and if you don’t supply the fuel, it ain’t going nowhere. Help us go somewhere. Write
something. Advertise something. Show people that we’re something. Urban Folk needs you - just like you need
Urban Folk. Want to get involved? See below for contact info...

IN THIS ISSUE

COVER DESIGNED BY A MISTER HERB SCHER 1

WOLFSON FOR PRESIDENT TRUE STORY: BEN GODWIN WRITES ABOUT ERIC WOLFSON 4
"D ARK BUT LOVEABLE" EMILY MOMENT ON THE GREY SCALE WITH SOFT BLACK 6
COVER ART BRIAN SPEAKER ON SINGING COVER SONGS. 9
AFTER THE ELECTRIC MOON (3 OF 2) CHRIS MAHER COMPLETES HIS WHIRLWIND ADVENTURES IN 2006 10
“IT WILL ALL COME BACK TO ME TOMORROW ” DAN COSTELLO GOES DRINKING WITH A FERMATA AND IVAN SANDOMIRE 14
PUBLIC RECORDS PAUL ALEXANDER ON THE BEST LITTLE LABEL YOU 'VE NEVER HEARD OF 16
20 QUESTIONS MATT DIFF ASKS WEB DESIGNER JEFF SCHRAM ALL ABOUT HIS CHOSEN FIELD 18
UNSUPERVISED EXISTENCE RAY BRAZEN TELLS ALL ABOUT BILLY SYNDROME'S FALL AND (HOPEFUL) RISE 20
WAKEY !WAKEY ! TARA MC NALLY GETS HER GRUBBY LITTLE HANDS ON A MAN NAMED MIKE 22
THE ROAD TO LONDON GARETH GREGOR Y TRIES TO PLAY LONDON ENGLAND. THAT'S IN THE UK 24
LOWRY PAUL ALEXANDER TALKS TO THE TOURING MACHINE, ALEX L OWRY 26
EXEGESIS DEPARTMENT ERIC WOLFSON EXPLAINS JUST WHY "SLEEPING IS A SUCKER 'S GAME" 28
THE AMERICAN INTERZONE GREY REVELL TELLS SOME ABOUT THE FALL AND RISE OF NEW ORLEANS 30
GET IN THE MINIVAN BROOK PRIDEMORE HATES OAKLAND. WHY ? R EAD THE ARTICLE 32
RECORD REVIEWS THE NAME SAY S IT ALL 34

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 Eric Wolfson
wolfson for president
Ben Godwin
Rewind approximately exactly one year from now (of
course, by the time you read this, it’s then, but who’s
counting?) and it’s 2.30am on a Monday (maybe we’re
calling it Tuesday by now) and I’m sitting bleary drunk in
a corner at the Sidewalk Café, watching this skinny kid
from Boston play his first ‘Hoot (and my second) while
Dan Costello runs the sound board. Sometimes you have
no idea how things are going to turn out.
Fast forward eight months, and I’m at Seaside Lounge
Studios in Brooklyn, having a stellar time. I’m playing
bass for the skinny Bostonian kid, who turns out to be
Eric Wolfson, in the live room that has started to feel like
a second home over the last few months – this is the
third record I’ve made here this year. It keeps getting
better, too. Dan is in the producer’s chair and we have a
nice little Class of ’06 AntiFolk supergroup going on –
Andrew Hoepfner on the Hammond, Dan on the piano,
Vin on electric guitar, Eric’s cousin Marc Pinansky on
the drums. And Eric, of course. Eric is stomping and
hollering and getting one hundred percent lit up, on fire,
into it. True story!
Of course, that’s not how it starts. Rewind further, and
it starts with Momma Wolfson getting rushed to the de-
livery room on Christmas day, exclaiming “If there is a
God, He has a sense of humor.” Or, maybe it starts with
Eric the miracle baby having his heart rewired. Or maybe
it starts with Wolfson banging his head against the car
seat in time with “Bad Bad Leroy Brown.” Maybe it starts
photos by Herb Scher
with finding a guitar in the attic and learning Beatles
songs, taking them apart and trying to make four chords
and verse-chorus-bridge move mountains. Maybe, if you
want it to be a bit more starry and don’t care so much
about all the biographical stuff, it starts with Eric listen-
ing to the first Springsteen album every day for two months,
then meeting His Bruceness and scoring his first Side-
walk show in the same week, and feeling like the angels
of music had just tapped him for the big game. It’s hard
to tell.
Let’s just say, for the sake of making some sort of
sense out of it, that it starts with Eric Wolfson arriving,
like many others, lit up by the rusted monster dream
that is New York and finding it much harder going than
expected. “I tried to find all the places that they talk about
in the Dylan books and they’re all gone – even Café Wha,
which has all that ‘Dylan played here!’ signage, doesn’t
do any folk music.” The West Village didn’t offer much of
a welcome. Finally, a trip to the Lower East Side to see
a friend’s band resulted in a chance meeting with Jaymay.
“It was this line between folk and pop and I’d never heard
anyone do that before. And the way she was stacking
the rhymes made me think of early Springsteen. So I
asked her ‘Where do you play? How do you get started?’
and she said ‘Go to Sidewalk, you’ll get a really bad
number and go on really late and have to work your way
up, but you’ll have to keep coming back.’”
It took precisely two AntiHoots for Eric to work his way
from number umpty-leven-teen to a
precocious and fortuitous twelve. “I’ll
never forget, it was one of the most
powerful performing experiences of
my life. I explained the song – ‘this
is a song about a drug dealer who
was also Buddy Hackett’s niece’ –
and the way the song builds, when I
got to the hook ‘life ain’t ease when
you’re loving Buddy Hackett’s niece’
the whole room started applauding.
In the middle of the song.” Lach of-
fered him the show on the spot.
I mention that I was present at both
of the ‘Hoots in question, and Eric
flips. “This is like that Kennedy film,
from just before he was assassinated!
If you’d told me at the time that Dan
Costello would become one of my
closest collaborators… and that you
were there…” We compare notes on the ‘Hoot newbie
experience. “I sat there and watched for five hours… next
day I thought ‘Who do I remember and why?’ It was the
best people and the worst people. It was the Bowmans,
and Joie Dead Blonde Girlfriend singing about burning
down Bleecker Street. Then there was that guy who had
to go put on a penguin suit before he could perform.
Clearly he knew there was some level of kitsch there,
but he still had to go put on the suit. And then, ‘Who’s
this lady with the blue hair?’ She must be some kind of
random New York person. Then it’s ‘Woo! She must be
some kind of star here.’” He pauses momentarily. “That
was a 180.”
He kept on coming back. “It’s an institution. It was the
only real door I could find, and I remember I found it really
intimidating – everyone seemed to know each other ex-
cept me. But… you prove yourself and prove you want to
be a part of it. And the track record is amazing. It’s like
Sun Records. You’ve got the Bowmans, Erin Regan, Frank
Hoier, Jaymay… people who are like the greatest
songwriters in America today, and they all happen to be
coming out of this scene. There’s something about the
way it’s set up which is working. And it’s all-inclusive.
You can sound like Pete Seeger or Joie and it’s all good.
But if Joie went to the West Village he would get kicked
Looking up to EW
out. I also feel real loyalty to what Lach is doing. I think I
missed six ‘Hoots in a year.” and say ‘that’s what that was.’ But I take it apart and put
In a year like that, it doesn’t take too long to end up it back together so it’s all truthful but to the casual ear it
playing a ton of shows as well as playing bass for pretty sounds like a complete random jumble.”
much everyone, and with that many favors to call in, a It’s an unbridled wild horse of a record, with a fat streak
great record was inevitable. “It seemed like everyone was of goofy humor and not a little social outrage. And of
going in to the studio at the end of last year. I thought it course, it’s got presidents in it. “I’ve always been into
would be a good thing to have out there.” It was an them. I don’t really know why. I was always drawing in
unashamedly retro process – “This might be one of the front of the TV, but in 1988 I looked up at the TV and
few chances I have to make a record I want to make on drew this picture of Michael Dukakis, who was running
my own terms, so I thought ‘what do I like, what don’t I for president at the time. I drew Bush, and I drew Reagan
like?’ It’s the Basement Tapes, the early Motown stuff, and Nixon and before long I was reading president’s bios.
this kinetic energy you get from having people in a room. I already knew a lot of the history at college because I
And there’s that sense of experimentation and trying knew what happened in each administration – like, ev-
something for the first time. I was listening to live Dylan eryone from Lincoln to Roosevelt sucked because it was
and the Band – the fullest sound I could think of. I thought, the Gilded Age and it was business running the show.”
‘Who’s going to be Rick? Who’s going to be Richard? In Eric’s universe, rock history works the same way.
Who’s going to be Garth?’ And it came from there.” “Elvis is Washington and the Beatles are Lincoln. Then
The band session was augmented by a few solo cuts, punk is president in the 70s, although Neil Sedaka was
and the resulting disc State Street Rambler is a glorious president in between. There’s revolutions, mini-revolu-
mash-up-swaggering rock’n’roll that sounds just like you tions every 20-40 years. Some people look at Reagan
immersed your head in a bucket of 1969; simple, evoca- as the last great president. I don’t know if I go along with
tive balladry; and loony truth-to-power talking blues. Eric that. And it’s a long time since Nirvana, who were the
Wolfson, as some of you may have gathered, is big on last big rock band everyone could get behind. We need
true stories. “Dylan would make up a new story at every a shakeup in both music and presidents.”
turn: ‘Oh, I was a circus performer,’ or ‘I’m really from So, Eric, what’s your manifesto? “I figure as long as
New Mexico’ and I’d try to do that and it never felt right. stuff is working, take one step at a time, and keep doing
So I thought I’d go completely the other way. I just fell what works.” Vote Wolfson, running on the AF ticket, at
into this thing where I always want to tell the truth… no three hundred thirty three revolutions per second.
matter how abstract, I want it to be true, so if someone State Street Rambler drops May 5th.
pulls out a line, I want to be able to point at something http://myspace.com/ericwolfson
 “Dark but lovable.”
an interview with Vin
Emily Moment photos by Herb Scher
It was Monday, nearing 8pm about everyone slicked back
as a light rain worked on wash- their hair, he was taunted
ing away the last night of Win- with nicknames like
ter. I ducked into Cafe Pick Me “Screech” and “Horshack.”
Up, a cozy, well-lit coffee shop “I have a love-hate relation-
with little wooden tables and ship with where I’m from.
chairs and settled myself by the When you are always com-
door with a large iced coffee. ing to New York and then you
At 8:01 Mr. Vincent come home every night to
Cacchione arrived. Those who this really quiet, fucked up
have only recently been intro- town where nobody under-
duced to the AntiFolk scene stands you, and nobody is
may know him as the curly- interested in making art or
haired, well-mannered front making music, and you’re
man of the band Soft Black. To just this big weirdo amongst
those of us who have been all this squareness, you can’t
around a little longer, he is sim- help but resent where you’re
ply Vin. from a little bit. Of course...
His mini ringlets glistened it informs what I do. It in-
with a little bit of water and he forms the things I write
smiled, and gave me a warm about, the people I write
hug. For the next hour he about, and the way I think
sipped a cappuccino and spoke about the world. But you
candidly about his childhood, know New York City... New
his outlook on life and music, York City is the greatest
and his upcoming album. place on earth.”
Vin was born in Hawthorne, At the age of 18, Vin quit
NJ, a town that sits in between his band in New Brunswick
one of the most impoverished and moved to New York. He
cities in the state and the richest county in America. It got an apartment in Brooklyn with his girlfirend and a job
was here that he and his sister were raised by his mother, working full-time answering phones at the Gotham Com-
an aging hippie teachers’ aide, and father, a stand-up edy Club. Very much in love but doing very little with his
comedian. Growing up, Vin felt like an outcast. He knew life, at least he was in New York. He’d gotten out. That
he wanted to make music but what he liked wasn’t cool year something unexpected happened. Vin’s father, a
in a place like Hawthorne. Vin most related to Nirvana, a bad drinker with a self-destructive lifestyle, suffered a
band which he claims changed his life. “I would never heart-attack and died. Vin took that as a severe wake-up
have had the courage to start writing songs if I didn’t call to start getting serious about his life: to appreciate
hear a band like that. Which is a shame about what every day as though it were his last, and start making
younger kids are getting to hear today. I look at a lot of some music. Unfortunately, it was not long before his
the bands that kids like, and I think there’s a lot of pos- emotional resolve would be tested again.
turing, a lot of rockstarryness. And Nirvana weren’t rock After the death of their father, Vin’s younger sister, al-
stars, they were just three dorky dudes… they just rocked most college bound, took care of their mother, and not
harder than anyone else did.” Vin fell in love with punk simply in a consolatory fashion. Vin’s mother lives with a
music. He found it to be the antithesis of what growing malady called “progressive multiple sclerosis” which lim-
up in a town like Hawthorne was like. its her mobility and necessitates personal assistance
But it wasn’t just his taste in music that set him apart around the clock. To ensure that Mrs. Cacchione was
from his peers. Though now Vin’s hair may be consid- well-taken care of, Vin’s sister would have had to do pre-
ered a hip trademark, growing up in a town where just cisely what she didn’t want to do and attend Community
College in Jersey. Someone had to stay for the Now, A year later Vin is awaiting the re-
other one to go. So Vin did what he felt was lease of Blue Gold (co-produced with Dan
right, and without being asked, moved back to Costello), the first album with his current
the town he couldn’t wait to escape to live with band, Soft Black. The band’s name, a title
his mother. . “I get up in the morning, help my ripped from one of the tracks on his al-
mom get ready for work, take her to work come bum, was donned to allow for his band to
home then and I get ready and go to work. Then feel more like his equals than his backup
I go get my mom, bring her home, make dinner artists. When asked what Soft Black
and to be honest it’s been sort of hard. I’m very means to him he didn’t really seem to
caring and definitely sensitive but I’m not that know. “It doesn’t mean anything and it
nurturing a person. I’ve definitely had to work at means a lot of things. I like it because I
being more helpful. It didn’t come naturally.” thought it didn’t have any specific mean-
Resettling in New Jersey, Vin took a job at a ing which meant that I could make it what-
vacuum repair shop. Working eight hours a day, ever I wanted... right now I think it just
seven days a week, he spent most of his time alone. means dark but loveable.”
Business was so slow, much of his time in the shop was Now, I have to say, Vin is loveable. He is also genu-
put to good use writing. inely kind. Easy to sing the praises of anyone he likes,
In the winter of 2005, it just so happened that one of he waxes so affectionately about his band, that to hear
Vin’s friends was kicking off a tour with a gig at the Side- him speak of them, it’s clear why Soft Black works. “Tate
walk Café. The opening act was Frank Hoier. “When I Bushell, my drummer is a rambler, a free spirt, and beau-
watched Frank it just cut me straight into my fucking tiful person. Nick Coleman, my guitar player is a brilliant
body. I just fell in love with Frank’s voice and his music composer, musician, and film scorer. Clancy my violinist
right away. And as soon as he got off stage, I just had to is an amazing human being, she’s 18 years old and just
talk to him. I asked him about himself and about what he finished her first novel. She also happens to be in one of
was doing. He told me about the Monday nights and I my favorite bands, Blue Hippopotamus. My best friend in
just kept it in the back of my mind. And then the night the whole world Mike Curry is the bass player. He is a
after X-Mas, I went, got the last number and played it. wonderful photographer and visual artist and a great friend
Really, I was pretty nervous. But I remember seeing Debe of mine... I grew up with him. And then there’s Dan. Apart
[Dalton] and looking at Debe right before I played and from playing really beautiful parts on the record, (he plays
getting just a good vibe from her, closing my eyes and all the piano and organ) Dan did a wonderful job produc-
just singing my heart out. Right when I
was done, Lach said to me, I’ve been
trying to remember his exact words,
‘This is why I continue to come out on
a Monday night because every once in
a while someone comes in and just
gets it.’ He offered me a show right
away. It was really a big thing for me. It
just came along at the right time. I was
really very depressed, I had just moved
home maybe a month before, and I was
feeling like I was never gonna do any-
thing with my life and I was gonna get
stuck in Hawthorne, live and die there.
I had very few friends. Really all I did
was come out on a Monday night, sing
two new songs and basically spend the
rest of the week writing.”
It wasn’t long before he was a regu-
lar face at the Sidewalk, making friends,
writing music, and being welcomed with
open arms by the community. In be-
tween February of ’06 and June of ’06
Vin would write all but one of the 11
songs on his upcoming album. It was
a time of frustration, adjustment, and
ultimately, great inspiration.
ing. If you knew what a mess it was prior to Dan’s in- At 23 years old, Vin appears very at peace with him-
volvement you’d go run and give Dan a huge kiss. He self. Zen-like. One would never sense the tragedy,
really helped bring this album to completion. I can’t say struggle, and loneliness that he has endured. When asked
enough good things about Dan Costello. about how he maintains
It’s a very artistic landscape and such a sweet disposition he
everyone’s got their own thing outside of says, “I’ve been very de-
this but we come together on this. I tell pressed in my life. I have had
‘em the chords and every one goes… real some really bad times. But
organic.” now is not one of those
Though many of the themes times. Really, now I’m doing
behind Vin’s music are very dark, he alright. And in a lot of ways I
manages to present them in a way that really owe that to this com-
warms you. This is an accomplishment munity I’m in, the Sidewalk,
on his part, albeit an inadvertent one. and I owe it to myself for not
Avoiding the ever-easy trap of furnishing allowing myself to feel angry,
all sad lyrics with sad musical arrange- and trying to be positive. I’ve
ments, many of Vin’s songs at least feel definitely been down in the
uplifting and usually make me want to dumps and feeling shitty,
search for the nearest tambourine. and I guess we’ve all been
Some of Soft Black
Though he says he’s not conscious of down that road. But ulti-
much while writing, he believes as a general rule, black mately, it’s not good for you and you can’t live like that
and white is never a good thing for an artist, it is better to forever, certainly not if you’re trying to make something
function on more of a grey scale. “And maybe that’s my of yourself in this world. And I feel like being angry at the
grey scale, and that is the balance on this album that way your life turned out is a shitty way to go through
even though some of the themes may be dark, that the your life. Love what you have, be grateful for that, and
music really is not, it’s up or… um, bouncy.” Though I move forward.”
expect him to laugh after he refers to his music as www.myspace.com/vincentcacchione
“bouncy,” he does not. He seems entirely content with
this word choice and I can’t help but smile. Vin told sev-
eral stories that made me laugh, but when I searched his
face for some acknowledgment of irony, I found none.
Vin speaks entirely without sarcasm and I’m not sure
he’s always aware of his subtle sense of humor.
“One thing I think about the songs that I write, is that
they’re not static. I really hope that people have they’re
own interaction with the material and I hope that they
take from it something that’s entirely their own that they
get to keep and do whatever the fuck they want with it.
And it has nothing to do with me. And that’s my favorite
thing about other songwriters. I like a songwriter that
makes me have an experience with their experience. And
then I just have my own trip that they didn’t even know
they put me on... but I’m having it. “
Vin admits that he lacks the aggressive money-earn-
ing gene. Becoming rich is the lowest of the motivations
for him to continue producing music. With a wave of his
hand, a non-nonchalant tone, and a little smirk, he ex-
presses a dream of living on a farm in upstate New York
with “a cute wife who cooks and 30 children running
around.” Aware of how difficult it can be to sustain a living
off of art alone, Vin believes so firmly in music he insists
he could be content continuing to stuff envelopes (his
current profession) as long as he could write music for
the rest of his life. He is very spiritual about the art form
he feels has chosen him, and accepts that it is how he
emotionally connects with others.
 Cover Art
singing the words that we knew
If you’re a regular at any open mic anywhere in the
world then you’ve probably heard a few singer/songwriters
performing cover songs. For most of us, the process of
learning how to play guitar and sing involves learning how
to play the songs that inspire us. I mean, how would one
be able to write an original song without first experiment-
ing with a tune already written? That would be like put-
ting Jon Berger behind the wheel of a tractor for the first
time and expecting him NOT to try banging the farmer’s
daughter. Well, sort of. Anyway, for most of us, the cover
song is the first step of many in tooling ourselves to be-
come proficient singer/songwriters.
In speaking with AntiFolkers and the like, I found that
most people cover songs by artists they listen to and are
influenced by. Erin Regan covers the Elliott Smith song
“The Biggest Lie,” saying, “There’s something about that
song that breaks my heart. More than any other song.”
She also refers to the deceased troubadour in her own
song “Mom’s Car,” where she laments, “...like Elliott
Smith’s ‘St. Ides Heaven.’”
Cover songs are an easy way for new artists, still writ-
ing their first songs, to be able to play out and fill a half
hour set. Mastering covers can be useful in other ways.
Frank Hoier offered, “I only cover songs I would have writ-
ten myself.” When Frank is learning some new guitar
technique, he finds it handy to learn a few songs that
use those specific techniques to hurry the process and
see how other songwriter’s implement these styles.
The first song I remember inspiring me was Kenny
Roger’s “The Gambler.” I must have been 7 years old and
my mom would play the radio while cleaning up around
the house. I remember knowing every single word to that
song and having a strange feeling of wonderment while
singing along. Of course, then came Queen, Kiss, AC/
DC and Foreigner’s “Juke Box Hero,” which saved me
from a life of sappy country music – that, and my much
cooler older brother (uh... no offense to you country folks
out there). The point is that good songs stay with you.
They teach you something and tell you stories that are
directly relatable to your life.
On a couple of nights in January, I came by the Side-
walk to see Debe Dalton and Frank Hoier play sets of
mostly covers during their Sunday night residency. One
song they played that night was “Strategery Blues” writ-
ten by Eric Wolfson. Fortunately Eric was in the audi-
ence that particular Sunday and was sitting right next to
me. In between his cries of “true story,” I asked him what
he thought of Frank and Debe covering his song. “It’s an
honor,” he said, “Frank is one of my favorite songwriters.
Brian Speaker
I take it as a compliment.”
Another highlight of this particular evening was Debe
Dalton’s introduction of the Richard Fariña song “Pack
Up Your Sorrows.” After taking a moment, Debe, with a
gleam in her eye and a smile on her face, relayed to the
audience, “I once sang this song with Pete Seeger.” That
experience created a special memory from which she
draws for its performance. “We were at a songwriting
circle and he came in from outside to join me for this
one.” It has become Debe Dalton’s mission that every-
one know this song. To help her with this conquest, here
are the lyrics to the chorus so the next time she plays it,
you can sing along:
“If somehow you could pack up your sorrows
and give them all to me / You would lose them,
I know how to use them, give them all to me.”
Debe definitely makes this song her own as the origi-
nal version has a soft slow sentimentality that she has
turned into an anthem with a more bright and optimistic
view. In fact, most songwriter’s I spoke to think it is very
important to bring something new and original to a cover
song. Lach said, “Tony Bennett never wrote a single song
he sang, but he made every song his own.” And that’s
the beauty of performing a cover. The words and music
are already familiar to your audience so your own per-
sonal perspective and emotional performance is what is
on display.
Lach came up with an idea for a night where AntiFolkers
cover AntiFolkers. The concept is that you choose a song
written by one of your fellow singer/songwriters to play at
the Monday night AntiHoot. A stand out song he men-
tioned from one such night was Rachel Devlin’s cover of
a Joie Blaney song. I personally love the principal behind
this night. Sometimes I feel as songwriters, we get so
caught up in our own lives and creations, but this gives
us an opportunity to set it aside and enter the head space
of some of our peers. I chose “Little Spies” by Amy Hills.
Though the song speaks about being “...one woman, one
body and one soul,” I myself related to this song. It was
satisfying sitting back and being the narrator rather than
the author. As an outsider I could offer my own unique
peek into her story. It also made me appreciate Amy’s
writing in a way that I may not have otherwise.
All in all, there seems to be one underlying factor about
performing a cover song. If you are able to simply use
the song as a platform for your own experiences, emo-
tions and talent – your “art,” then your cover song perfor-
mance can sound and feel as original as you are. Unless
you’re doing it as a joke, which is cool too.
 After the Electric Moon
travelogue 2006 (part 3 of 2)
Chris Maher photos by Toby Price
On the morning of October 29th, 2006, after catching a while I got ready to play.
midnight train from Hannover, Germany to Paris, France, This was the largest audience on this tour and, argu-
Phoebe Kreutz and I pulled into Gare du Nord, surpris- ably the highest profile bill I’d ever been on. With a set
ingly well rested. Our brief ‘Fall into Europe’ tour was list written on a scrap of paper and my Martin 00-15 slung
coming to a close. Soon, Phoebe would be back in New over my back, I hopped on stage, harp-holder and A har-
York and I would be on tour with Jack Lewis and the monica in hand. I played an eight or nine song set and
Cutoffs, soldiering on for another two weeks through with each subsequent song, the audience response grew
France and England. But that night, I was opening a show louder and more enthusiastic. Almost too soon, I played
for M. Ward at Le Point Éphémère to a near-capacity “Heather” and reluctantly left behind the most enthusias-
300-plus crowd. tic crowd I’ve ever had the pleasure to play for.
Phoebe and I decided to split up for the afternoon. As Matt Ward played an excellent set. That guy knows
Phoebe explored the City of Light, I sat alone in a his way around a guitar. I spent most of his set back-
laundromat, using a Sharpie to label 25 copies of a make- stage, using a pair of scissors to cut up the newly photo-
shift tour EP, Some Songs! copied covers of Some Songs! When Ward finished, I
Up to this point, the Some Songs! EP had been nothin’ set up a small merch table by the side of the stage and
but trouble. I assembled it back in New York with such sold all but four copies of Some Songs! I also sold the
haste that it wasn’t pressed until after my European tour last copies of both the Morningsides 7" and What Was
with Phoebe had started. The resulting 100 silk-screened Magnetic. Everyone who came up to the table had some-
copies were to be shipped to Berlin, where I was to pick thing nice to say. One guy even made the outlandish
them up. Unfortunately, due to a series of mishaps, they claim that my set was better than M. Ward’s.
didn’t arrive before I’d left Germany. I was nearly sold-out As I collected the few remaining items from the table, a
out of Morningsides singles and my 2005 chapbook, What tall blonde woman came up and introduced herself as
Was Magnetic, so the night before leaving Berlin for Barbara Carlotti. What a surprise! Carlotti is one of my
Hannover, I scrambled to burn stand-in copies of Some favorite contemporary French songwriters and I had traded
Songs! using Heiko Gabriel’s PC. I felt I needed some- notes with her via MySpace months earlier after having
thing to peddle until the ‘real’ copies reached me. trouble finding her recent record in New York. She told
In the early evening, I made my way to Le Point me she had come to the show, only to recognize me
Éphémère, unloaded my bags in the dressing room, put from our previous correspondence.
on freshly washed clothing, and began sound check on We didn’t get to see our New York friends the Baby
the generously large stage. As I wrapped up, M. Ward Skins and Turner Cody. They were in Paris that week,
and his tour manager Fitz arrived. Ward introduced him- preparing for a tour with Herman Düne. We hoped to cross
self as ‘Matt’ and commenced his own sound check. I paths with them at some point but didn’t know how best
spent the next hour with Phoebe, back from her museum to get in touch. Instead of aimlessly searching, we de-
expedition, and quickly sketched a stand-in cover for cided to hang around with Jimmy and Capucine at the
Some Songs! A s I nearby hotel where M.
worked, my friends Ward and Fitz were
from Bordeaux, staying. It was by no
Jimmy Kinast and means a luxury hotel
Capucine Frey, ar- but it was quite a plea-
rived. Jimmy was re- sure to take a shower
sponsible for getting and sleep in a bed.
me on that night’s bill The next morning,
and I was nothing but Phoebe and I headed off
grateful. When I had to Lyon to play a show
finished the cover, with Jane Kidder and
Phoebe & Capucine Mary Me. The venue
offered to run out and was in the basement of
make photocopies members of the Cutoffs, many of whom are Jack Lewis (tobyprice 2006) a small restaurant
called Johnny’s Kitchen. When we arrived, a table of teen-
age girls started giggling and whispering to each other.
Apparently, they were big fans of Phoebe from MySpace
and came to the show to see her play. How totally cool!
Phoebe didn’t disappoint, treating the crowd to some of
her best tunes like “The Ballad of Throat Culture” and “All
Summer Long.” Afterwards, everyone went out to a bar
housed in a riverboat docked on the Saône River (or was
it the Rhône?).
We had the following day off so we accompanied Jane
and her friend Romain to the Lyon Zoo. I was having trouble
enjoying it: I was worried about a dog bite I’d received in
Hamburg, Germany. On our way to the show with our
friend Sibsi I was bitten, quite randomly, by a small,
mangy dog. It wasn’t a vicious attack but it stung, and if
you’ve been to the Reeperbahn, you know how unnerving
it was to get bitten by a dog in that neighborhood. At
first, I could find no sign that the dog had broken skin. A
day or two later, I noticed a tiny scab that indicated the
mutt had, in fact, torn through my jeans into my heel. It
was in Lyon that I received word that my doctor thought
I should go through with the vaccination.
The following day was Halloween, an uncelebrated ‘holi-
day’ in France. Phoebe was due in Bordeaux for a show
at a club I’d played in April called El Inca. Instead of
accompanying her, I chose to stay in Lyon and start the
rabies vaccination process. Phoebe left early in the morn-
ing and I didn’t see her again until I was back in the USA.
As I found out later, Phoebe had to cancel the show:
After taking a train from Lyon to Paris, all the connecting
trains to Bordeaux were sold out. C’est dommage!
Although the French don’t celebrate Halloween, I found
out the hard way that they do observe All Saints Day (11/
1). Eerything in Lyon was closed, including health clin-
ics. Jane and I tried to go to an emergency room to start
the rabies shots but they claimed it was ‘too late’ and
turned us away. I spent the day contacting French friends,
hoping they might know a doctor who would see me. At
long last, Lisa Li-Lund and David Herman Düne’s doctor
friend Ome tipped us off to a list of rabies treatment cen-
ters and we scheduled an appointment in Lyon. It was
quite a relief when I got the first two (of five) shots. My
arms sore, I gathered my bags and guitar, said my
goodbyes and rushed off to the train station.
The first of fifteen shows I was scheduled to play with
Jack Lewis and the Cutoffs
(Simon Beins of the WoWz on
guitar and trumpet, Raphi
Gottesman on drums and guitar
and myself on guitar and drums)
was that very night in Tours.
A friend of mine named Odran
Trümmel had set up the show.
I was scheduled to open with a
‘solo’ set but missed my slot.
I also missed Odran but made it
to the venue about midway through the Cutoffs set. To
my surprise, Jack had me jump on stage with them and
finish the show. To speed things along, I borrowed Odran’s
guitar. I was excited to join these guys, especially with
my diminishing rabies fear.
The next two days were a whirlwind. Instead of sleep-
ing, we drove to Paris with our new friend, François, the
proud owner of a new Rav 4 - and a new baby. He agreed
to be our driver for the French leg of the tour. We crashed
at his flat, woke up early the next morning and tried to
find coffee with a film crew in tow. A French television
journalist named Aurore Victoire had asked to film us
throughout the day for a French/German television pro-
gram called Tracks. Aurora and her three-person film crew
followed us, watched us practice, travel to the venue,
and filmed the first of our two scheduled shows. At vari-
ous points throughout the day, she conducted brief inter-
views with us on all things AntiFolk.
Our first show of the night was with Lapin Machin at
Café Montmartre. The show wasn’t one of our best. Un-
fortunately, our second show at Le Kitch’Up, a venue I
had played in April with Prewar Yardsale, may have been
worse. Whereas the first show was a rough-and-tumble
stumble through our most rehearsed material like “The
Day Neil Young Died” and “Shadow Party,” the second
show was a quieter affair spent battling a disagreeable
sound system. Despite our best efforts, we left the size-
able audience scratching their heads.
The next day, we drove to Bordeaux, where we played
at Saint-Ex. Capucine Frey had set up the show only to
learn a week or two earlier that the club had stopped
hosting live bands. Capucine begged to let our booking
stand and the club agreed on the condition that we play
a “quiet” show. We did our best. My first ‘solo’ set of the
Cutoffs tour featured the others joining me for some
songs, including two that we’d been playing during the
Cutoffs set: “Heather” and “Pretty Smile.”
We crashed at Jimmy’s place and spent the following
day relaxing, working through new material. After an over-
whelming 24 hours in Paris, it was a necessary break.
The next morning, minutes before we had to leave for the
next town, the ‘real’ copies of Some Songs! finally ar-
rived from Berlin. Thrilled, I jumped in the car with the
rest of the Cutoffs and we set off for Toulouse, where we
were playing with Herman Düne, Turner Cody and the
Baby Skins at a giant venue called Le Ramier. It was our
only show with Herman Düne, who’d
started their own tour in support of
their just released new album, Giant.
It was a wonderful celebration when
we arrived. The show was one of my
favorites. We opened the night to a
crowd of several hundred, playing a
raucous set that focused on Jack’s
louder material, peppered with my
and Simon’s songs. To surprise
Turner, we played a version of his
song “Suzannah”, which he
played again during his set, ac-
companied by David and
Neman Herman Düne. The
Baby Skins played after us and
lulled the large audience into
raptured silence. During the fun-
filled Herman Düne set, Jack
jumped up on stage to sing
along and play percussion.
The next day we reluctantly
said goodbye to our friends and
hit the road for Clermont-Ferrand for our last scheduled
show in France. The drive was long, the town small, but
the show was another highlight. We ended up playing
two sets, both well executed and well received.
We were booked to play the Windmill in Brixton, just
outside of London. With a long commute ahead of us,
we decided to drive directly to the airport where Jack,
Simon and Raphi were taking a RyanAir flight to London.
I still had my Eurail train pass and decided to take the
Eurostar instead of joining the other three Cutoffs on their
flight. After the long drive to the airport, François and
I drove back to Paris. When I reached the train station,
I learned that there was a train strike and I couldn’t get
booked on a train until the evening. I was almost guaran-
teed to miss that night’s show.
By the time I got to the Windmill, Dufus had finished.
For the second time in just under a week, I arrived in the
middle of the Cutoffs’ set and jumped on stage for the
last few songs. We closed with “Picked a Winner,”
a new song of Jack’s that was quickly becoming a high-
light of the show. Our friends Chris Irish and Emily Wasp
were in attendance. It was nice to see them, if only for a
moment. After the show, we went back to the Wave Pic-
tures’ flat and crashed on their floor.
For the UK leg of the tour, we failed to secure a driver,
so Jack decided we’d travel by commuter bus. It wasn’t
the easiest way to travel but it was flexible and cost ef-
fective. Before leaving London, I vis-
ited the Royal Free Travel Health Clinic
and received a third vaccination shot.
That night, we played a show at an
Oxford bar/bookstore called QI. We
suffered again from a malfunctioning
sound system. It didn’t boost our
morale when we realized Dufus was
playing to a near-capacity crowd
nearby. There was momentary talk of
an impromptu set at the Dufus show
but when we arrived, we were told it
was too late for another band to play. Instead of sticking
around, Cat, who had helped set up a show that Phoebe
and I had played in Oxford several weeks earlier, offered
to let us stay in her living room. We gladly accepted.
The next day, we caught two connecting buses that
left us in Brighton, where we were to play the Hope, the
venue at which Phoebe and I kicked off the ‘Fall into
Europe’ Tour. Unlike that first show back in October, this
one was packed. We had the pleasure of playing with
the Wave Pictures, who I had only seen once before,
years earlier, in Dashan Coram’s bedroom. I was glad to
again stretch out into a full ‘solo’ set and after the dis-
couraging night in Oxford, the Cutoffs played a great show
– perhaps the best of our tour.
Two nights later, we played a pub called The Bowling
Green in a pretty desolate part of Manchester. Although
the show was fairly well attended, the crowd seemed
sedate. To our surprise, we sold a lot of CDs and people
had very nice things to say. Folks from Manchester are
just a strange bunch: This was, after all, the town where
someone yelled ‘Judas’ during Bob Dylan’s 1966 con-
cert with the Hawks.
Our next stop was Sheffield, where we were playing
The Cricketer’s Arms. After nearly a month of similar sets,
I was feeling frustrated with my songs. Instead of using
my acoustic, I decided to play the majority of my set
with Simon’s Fender Telecaster. I opened with Dave
Deporis’ “I C U Thru Lightning,” a song I tend to play
whenever I don’t feel like playing at
all. It usually diffuses all tension; this
night was no exception. I followed it
with a number of songs I hadn’t yet
played on this tour.
The last date I played with Jack,
Simon and Raphi was at a place
called Bunker’s Hill in Nottingham. It
was on the second floor of a two-story
restaurant/venue. The promoter had
some difficulty securing a PA, so
things started late. I played a short
solo set that, because of the mud-
died sound of the PA, didn’t go over
terribly well with the hundred or-so
people there. The Cutoffs fared bet-
ter, starting with our loudest numbers
and ending with a few unamplified
songs in the middle of the room. We
closed with our only performance of
Jack’s “Another Girl.” It was a nice
way to end the show. Unfortunately,
as we were settling up, there was
some dispute over money and we left
discouraged and not very well com-
pensated.
The Cutoffs were booked for a final
show at the Birdcage in Norwich. Ex-
hausted, I opted out of the show and
went back to Greenwich to sleep at
Chris and Emily’s loft. Next morning,
I took a commuter train to the Tube,
got my fourth rabies vaccination shot,
took the Tube back to the train sta-
tion, boarded another train to
Heathrow and eventually made it onto
my New York-bound Virgin-Atlantic
flight. I fell asleep almost as soon as
I sat down.

A week later, I agreed to play a two-

song set at a show curated by Yoko
Kikuchi, in celebration of Cake Shop’s newly approved
liquor license. I was totally burnt out from tour and had
no desire to play any of my own compositions. I consid-
ered avoiding music altogether and reading a few poems
from What Was Magnetic, but ended up borrowing a gui-
tar and playing “I C U Thru Lightning” and a venomous
version of Turner Cody’s “Suzannah.” It was my last per-
formance of 2006 and an unfortunate way to end an oth-
erwise extraordinary year.
After the show, I realized I needed a break and – more
than anything else –needed to finish my first record,
Epigram on the Death of a Feeling. Touring the world had
been a revelation but it was only part of the puzzle. As I
traveled around, it became clear that to continue doing
what I enjoyed doing most – playing shows – I needed to
create something tangible, a document of my songs. It
would be my primary goal for 2007.
Over a year has passed since I stood in front of that
Woody Guthrie statue in Okemah, Oklahoma and prom-
ised myself that I’d tour more. I kept that promise and
intend to keep a promise I’ve since made: Complete
Epigram. When it’s done, I can get back on the road and
resume traveling from town to town, country to country,
sharing my songs and helping friends share theirs. What
else can I do? Now that I’ve spied it, I’ll always be after
that electric moon.
myspace.com/chrismaher
 “It Will All Come Back to Me Tomorrow”
drinking with a fermata and ivan sandomire
Sometimes Michael David Campbell writes about cock-
roaches and sometimes Ivan Sandomire sings about but-
terflies. They are both wonderful guitar players and have
great falsettos. They both record their songs in their apart-
ments, on their computers. I’ve drank my share of whis-
key with both of them. Time to combine our music with
our penchant for Jameson, and now we will have a social
and musical night at my house for Urban Folk with a
bottle of Irish Whiskey. Which we’ll finish. No problem.
Ivan’s late and Mike’s hungry. So am I. I made a chicken
pot pie that day because it’s something that I can easily
make a lot of, to get me through most of the week. Mike
and I dig in while we wait for Ivan to get there. The only
sure thing about tonight is we’re drinking a bottle of whis-
key. Somewhere along the way we’ll discuss Mike and
Ivan’s music. There’s something similar about these two,
what is it? Ivan arrives with cigarettes. Michael brought
cigarettes too. Good, we’ll need them. Ivan sits down,
not hungry yet. We crack the bottle and pour. Neat.
A Fermata usually includes two or three people, but
sometimes Mike plays solo under that name. Musically
speaking, A Fermata conjures the best parts each of Brian
Wilson and Van Dyke Parks, with some Ziggy Stardust
balladeering sprinkled on top. Mike spent time in Boston
going to Berklee and running a homeless shelter. He
moved to New York after childhood friend Andrew Hoepfner
sang a song called “The Birds Are Whistlin’” to him over
the phone. A little while later, he bought a drum kit to
play in Creaky Boards.
As balladeering as Mikey can be, he isn’t afraid to let it
rip. I remember an A Fermata show at Sidewalk where
one minute, Mike sweetly harmonizes “lift up our heart”
with Elizabeth Devlin in the number ”From Mountain High,”
and then in the next song, he is doing a dance break,
complete with umbrella, and sings about someone who
“leaps from his body and becomes the sky.” And then
Missing copies of Urban Folk? Get ‘em online!
Or... you can order print copies for two dollars each, payable to:
urbanfolkzine@gmail.com
Dan Costello
Tyson Sleete comes up, sings and plays guitar on one of
their original A Fermata songs while Mike beats the shit
outta the drums (really, really loud, really, really well).
His best recording is “Rain of Peace.” It’s got so much
John-Lennon-the-world-can-be-beautiful optimism in it!
Mike once said something about “This moment is more
beautiful than you or I or all of us will ever be.” He was
drunk, and he was shouting to a punk passerby who
didn’t stop to think about what he was saying, but I did.
Ivan’s been back from San Francisco almost a year
now. He used to have a band called Echolalia, and his
new band is Ivan and the Terribles. He has this soft tenor,
and his theater training is apparent - his singing is smooth
and consistent. It works really well with acoustic instru-
ments and synth strings, as shown on “Bury It” on Ivan’s
new album, If You Say So (Crafty Records). Towards the
end he does this pseudo-arabic vocal thing over a pedal
tone. It’s showy in deserving ways, how he puts together
these gorgeous tones. It seems like he actually finds
where they live inside him and pours them out. A lot of
artists I know aren’t that generous.
Like with Shilpa Ray or Ben Godwin, when Ivan plays I
sometimes think, “I can’t believe that sound is really be-
ing created right there. It sounds too big for one person!”
One time this girl at Sidewalk had her head in her hands,
staring dreamily at Ivan. She waited on his next word,
then his next note, like her body used his songs for fuel.
Then she looked pleadingly to her female companions
as if to say, “could this get any more (pause) amazing?”
A shy but emphatic talker, Ivan is also tremendously
modest. It’s as if he doesn’t like attention or something.
Brook Pridemore once told me a story about punk kids
he met on tour, kids who aren’t usually driven to some-
thing as warm and personal as Ivan’s music. They lis-
tened intently to a show in someone’s living room, and
were noticeably complimentary to him afterwards.
urbanfolk.org
Jon Berger
1119 Longwood Avenue Bronx NY 10474
the bloodsugars, akron/family, dan costello, lowry, skrit steak and the english mufkins, dawn landes, dan torres, the bowmans, timothy dark, jessie murphy.
maher, joie dead blonde girlfriend, jeff lewis, dibs, phoebe kreutz, dan fishback, lou rose, jenn lindsay, kansas state flower, urban barnyard, elastic no-no band,
the voyces, jack lewis, citizen cope, ben kweller ,casey holford, david l.k. murphy, mike tyler, schwervon!, scotts roger, dream bitches, miki huber, chris
toby goodshank, double deuce, langhorne slim, the babyskins, grey revell, beau johnson, ben godwin, jamie rae, the kin, case shea, amy hills, jon berger,
answer d) all of the above…which obviously excludes the following clients: whisper doll, frank hoier, the undisputed heavyweights, matt singer, robin aigner,

And once Eric Wolfson leaned over to me and whis-
pered, “Y’know, I think Mikey is the most amazing musi-
cal mind I know.”
And here I am with Ivan and Michael and a bottle of
whiskey, chatting up the most inconsequential philosophi-
cal debate. A confusing dribble of insight, and every time
we pause to think, we sip. Before what seems like about
an hour goes by, we realize how fast we’re drinking. Little
Richard’s on the stereo. We decide to play some of our
songs. Mike and I play two songs, “From Mountain High”
and “The Censored Song” and Ivan and I play a song
together that I always forget the name of. I play “On A
Plane.” We smoke the occasional cigarette, jam a bit,
finish the bottle.
Ivan mentions the open mic at Bar Matchless is going
on tonight. Yes sirree, let’s get some air and a change of
venue. It’s a beautiful night for walking, and I can’t tell
you what we’re talking about, but it’s certainly interest-
ing and I’m certainly drunk. I didn’t feel great when we
left the house, but after the twenty minute walk to Match-
less, I’m feeling like I have a new lease on the night.
How is Matchless? It’s (pause) amazing.
(I don’t like it when people run the word ‘amazing’ into
the ground. Like it’s the default word for something that
you don’t wanna work too hard to aptly praise. It was,
uuhh, amazing. It even STARTS with “umm”, it should be
spelled Ummmazing. I wonder if anyone else feels like
this but me. I would call Mike and Ivan’s music amazing,
but that would be so wrong, man. Really, like I was too
lazy to write about them in appropriate detail. Man, who
is gonna write this article? I don’t remember a goddam
thing that happened.)
Matchless is all right, I love the bar and Tanya and the
Rogue Dead Guy Ale. Like most every open mic there
are great, average and poor performers. Mike comments
on how good Austin Donahue’s voice is (Or did Ivan say
that? God, I can’t remember). We sing, trying not to give
mind to whether we’re great or poor that night. Toward
the end of our time together we get very concerned that
we not forget the essential things we each said. And I
remember that we still need to talk about harmonies,
because both Mike and Ivan write tight harmonies and I
think harmonies are important. Mikey is particularly em-
phatic that we all remember a Peter Nevins quote about
harmonies as a metaphor for the world. (I have since
forgotten the quote. Mike retells it, ‘Harmonies are self-
less and cooperative. Countries could perform that way.’)
We never say goodbyes, I think some of us come back
to my house to get stoned, and the next day I don’t think
any of us had an easy morning. And then it took a couple
days to get back up to speed. We all remember that.
And Ivan remembers snow, too.
Mike Campbell myspace.com/thosekidsmusic
Ivan Sandomire myspace.com/ivansandomire
 Public Records
giving it all away
Paul Alexander
Tom Drake’s story is a familiar one. Uprooting himself page for the label. But with stuff like the Creek and the
from his Detroit home, he moved to New York City a year Cave comp out, word will get out.” Certain that Public
and a half ago, and quickly immersed himself in the city’s Records is doing important work, Maguire will release
urban folk scene, honing his craft and expanding expo- his next album independently, but will once again ask
sure. Initially playing the Sidewalk Drake to distribute it.
Café’s AntiHoot in the hopes of land- As Tom Drake puts it, “Parts
ing a gig at the club – a hope since [of the record company], like
fulfilled – Tom made great use of his having music available for free,
time with the artists who flock to are new, but the idea for Public
the many open mics across the city, Records has been around for
establishing the grassroots artist- six to seven years.” From the
centered label, Public Records. start, Tom was looking for a
Why would an aspiring artist start creative way to market music,
a record company? The answer may and thought that in addition to
seem obvious, but as Drake be- establishing a record company,
came more entrenched in the com- offering audiences a place to
munity, he “really just wanted to be download music for free was the
involved in music, more than mak- best way to get music out with-
ing it myself – just to be involved in out bankrupting himself. Aware
other people’s music. To put out Public Records ’ founder, CEO, engineer, graphic that typical publicity is so ex-
stuff I believe in when I get frustrated designer, talent scout and producer Tom Drake pensive, Tom’s idea of giving
with other shit I see.” product away is aimed at build-
In Detroit, Drake, a teacher, had trouble figuring out a ing a community in the hopes of increasing audience
financial way to put out an album. However, Tom insists that really cares about the music. “Recording with
that with new CD burning capabilities and other tech- Octavio, one of the early songs we recorded, “Charlotte
nologies, the concept of creating an album has become Klein,” was included on the Lonesome Call of the Whprwhil
a much more obtainable aspiration. Before arriving in New comp.” Yet another example of the community building
York City, Tom had established Public Records, but had and collective sharing Public Records encourages.
not generated any product. That changed last Septem- Undeniably low-fidelity, the worldwide offices of Public
ber when Mr. Drake released his own solo CD, Love Un- Records are his 300 square foot Manhattan apartment.
wound. More recently, he produced the open mic compi- Armed with ProTools LE, guitars, an Audio Research
lation Crowin’ at the Creek and the Cave, featuring local Technology Tube preamp/compressor, a drum machine,
artists like Ben Patton, Jason Merriman, Greg Smith, a small collection of mics, and a Hammond Chord Organ
Agro Disco, and many others. Soon, Public Records is Tom found at a flee market for $25, Drake has been able
scheduled to make available Octavio Lafuentes’ new disc to capture captivating performances from the artists he
this summer, and will tentatively record and release an has worked with. Crediting his always increasing under-
album from the exciting new artist Best Blanket. Tho- standing of limited resources and the persistent patience
mas Patrick Maguire has allowed Public Records to dis- of his wife, Tom Drake has produced high quality albums
tribute his last two albums, Pissing Streams and – great records of exciting artists in their prime.
Woodside Lanes, making them available for free down-
load online. Drake is always interested in working with new artists
According to Mr. Maguire, “Public Records is taking to expand Public Records’ catalogue. “When I see people
baby steps right now, but it’s exciting to see where it’s I believe in, I want to be involved. Who I work with is a
going with Tom Drake’s CD out right now and Octavio’s combination – I’ve never really worked with someone who
highly anticipated CD its future. More people should know wasn’t a friend, but I also like to work with artists who
about the label, but because of Drake’s modesty it doesn’t just something about them strikes you. The artists I have
get enough attention. He doesn’t even have a myspace worked with most recently are very different. Thomas
THE PUBLIC RECORDS TRINITY: Octavio Lafuentes, Best Blanket & Thomas Patrick Maguire
Patrick Maguire is proletariat pop, while Octavio has some
of the most natural pop phrasing – he just comes up with
something off-the-cuff and it catches you. A lot of stuff
just comes, like meeting Steve – Best Blanket – at the
Crowin’ at the Creek open mic. I asked him to come over
and record, and he asked about the label. I am inter-
ested in putting something out for him, but won’t even
start recording ‘til at least May. I would love to buy a few
hard-drives and do more work, but I don’t have time for
more work right now.”
As a true entrepreneur and Public Records sole engi-
neer, graphic designer, talent scout, artist rep, market-
ing mogul, founder, CEO, first signee and producer, Tom
Drake’s job can be exhausting. Nonetheless, working
directly with artists, Tom remains honest, helpful, yet
hands off, encouraging artists to compose and create
compositions that come across as they see themselves.
“In mixing and recording I will give my real opinion, but I
won’t tell someone who or what they should be. Unless
it’s Berger and ‘Preteen Girls.’ I edited that a bit on a
podcast. Octavio just came over to get some better ‘home
recordings,’ and I helped him decide if songs were good
or finished, but I let him put his own foot forward about
what he wanted to say. With the Crowin’ at the Creek
and the Cave album, I just took what I thought was best
from each artist I recorded for the podcasts. I started
with thirty tracks and then cut them to nineteen, with
only Zach James making the album twice.” Acutely aware
that sometimes putting together a compilation album on
a close knit scene can become overtly political, Drake
made sure to carefully select the tracks which made the
final cut. “There were definitely people I wanted to in-
clude, but there were also people I knew attended the
open mic a lot, so I added them. Debe Dalton, although
often at the open mic, never made a podcast, so I re-
corded her to make sure she made it on.”
Public Records was explicitly set-up under a non-com-
mercial creative commons license, which means, Drake
explains, “anyone is welcome to go download songs,
trade them, and burn them, and will never be breaking
any laws. At the same time, no one who passes on the
music can ever make money off it.” In other words, many
people already openly share
their favorite music, but Pub-
lic Records does it right, with
the idea that music is meant
to be shared. Keeping costs
low allows this progressive
sharing to continue.
As might be expected from
a record company which
prides itself on giving away
its product, sales at Public
Records have been minimal.
Drake and his artists have not yet made much money,
but “everyone involved has defiantly had more people show
up to shows.” With the Creek and the Cave now stocking
the comp recorded within its walls, Tom may finally turn
a small profit, but for now, public praise is the only pay-
ment Tom receives.
Though, as a songwriter, Tom Drake often gains more
than recordings from the artists he works with. “I don’t
think there’s a way to work with others and not have their
work affect you. Specifically, with Octavio, watching him
use a lot of samples and drum machines reminds me of
a lot of the stuff I used to be interested in but fell away
from – so he helped me reconnect with influences while
influencing me. My work with Public Records probably
has taken away from my own work. I’ve been meaning to
record myself for the last four months and I haven’t, but
I’ve learned a lot, and it’s fun. Working on Public Records
may pull away time from songwriting, but it allows me
other creative outlets as well, such as the graphic de-
sign I did for Crowin’ at the Creek and the Cave or work-
ing at mixing tracks, all of which helps keep songwriting
from getting monotonous or repetitive.”
With its CEO and sole employee moving to Rhode Is-
land at the end of the summer, the future of Public Records
in NYC may seem uncertain. Nonetheless, Drake insists
his little label will carry on. “At this point it’s still a hobby,
but being only three hours away, I am sure I’ll be back.
With friends still here, I’ll keep up with what’s going on,
and hopefully have people up to Rhode Island where I
hope to have a full live drum kit, and a separate room for
tracking songs.”
Public Records was built to bring new music to the
world, and Tom Drake is anxious to work with “everybody
– most of the people I see around town. Plus, people I
daydream about working with, Jim O’Rourke, Jeff Tweedy,
Juana Molina, and thousands of others, but really just
people who care about what they’re doing and want to do
something interesting or different, and aren’t full of them-
selves or full of shit. I guess really, that’s more important
than the big names.”
www.publicrecordsaudio.com
 20 Questions (or so)
with web designer jeff schram
Matt Diff
Jeff Schram has been designing websites in the New York City area for over 10 years. His clients include musicians
such as Casey Shea, The Bowmans, The Undisputed Heavyweights, Wakey!Wakey!, and many more. He knows
everything you need to know about getting started online.
“How much?” How much money and how much Most designers will charge around $200-$400 to set up a
time will it take to build a website? myspace account with advanced features that an aver-
It all depends. I’ve worked on projects that have taken as age computer user might not be able to install. It’s a
much as four months and cost $4,000, and I’ve worked small price to pay for the benefits they could bring. If a
on projects that have been done in one day and cost musician is able to afford a website, I would always rec-
$200. Cost and time really depend on what the client is ommend going that route.
looking for. An average site for a musician What can a website do that myspace can’t?
will cost around $1500 and can usually be With myspace you’re pretty con-
competed in four to six weeks. stricted as far as creativity goes. A
Is there a standard rate that web-de- website allows complete freedom in
signers charge or is every designer design and function and gives you the
different? ability to create a visual expression
The average rate is about $50 per hour. that relates directly to your music. I
Some designers will charge more, some also think fans appreciate a website
will charge less, but you’ll find that you more than a myspace page. It gives
get what you pay for. Good designers are an artist credibility and is a much more
more expensive for a reason. professional way of presenting your
After discussing the project with a client, music to the online world.
a good designer will be able to give a firm Most musician’s websites will include
estimate on the amount of time and the a page for: News, Biography, Media
amount of money the site will take to complete. The cli- (which can include your Music, Movies, Photos etc…)
ent should expect the designer to be able to finish the Press, Tour, Links, Store, Blog, and Contact Information.
project in a timely manner without any extra charges. It’s also pretty standard to have a music player or a “juke-
Get it in writing in order to keep the designer on task. box” as well as YouTube videos and an area for email
Why should I even bother paying for a website when sign-ups.
I can have a myspace page for free? There are some more advanced features that aren’t quite
A professional website gives you and your music the cred- as common. One example is a podcast. Sending out
ibility that myspace can’t. Myspace is great if you’re just weekly episodes (either audio or video) is an effective
starting out or if you can’t afford anything else. The way of staying fresh in your audience’s minds.
myspace format greatly limits the artistic freedom that a I’m ready to have a website built. What if I have no
website can provide. ideas as far as design and functions are concerned?
Because myspace is free and easy to use everyone has A designer should be able to create a site that captures
an account. There are thousands of bands out there and the music, message and vibe of the artist after spending
if you’re looking to separate yourself from the crowd you some time with them. I’ve had clients that have come to
need to have more than just a myspace account. me with nothing, and after spending some time talking
What if I am just starting out and all I can afford is a with them and listening to their music we’ve been able to
myspace page? How could I make something as create a design that fit them perfectly. I always encour-
basic as myspace stand out? age clients to look at other musician’s websites for in-
There’s a lot you can do to customize a myspace page spiration. Usually by exploring other websites you can
starting with the basics like background colors, font col- get a good idea of how you’d like your own to look. That
ors, etc. You can add expanded music players, slide being said, don’t feel as though you should have every-
shows, videos, links to your merchandise, custom art- thing set in stone before approaching a designer. A good
work and more advanced features like email sign-ups designer will help you come up with a functional, creative
and on-screen comment boxes. website to help you get your music out there.
What if I have great ideas, how can I communicate
them and get the best results?
I’d suggest making a sketch of your concepts for the
designer to check out. Visual aids will help communi-
cate your ideas to the designer and allow them a chance
to give you feedback right from the start. It’s a good idea
to make an outline of what you have in mind. Map out
what you’d like your site to do, what kind of pages (biog-
raphy, tour calendar...) you want and what those pages
will contain. It’s also very helpful to give the designer
examples of other sites you like. Even magazine clip-
pings, images or album covers will help communicate
your visual taste to the designer.
What will I (the client) need to provide?
In order to make a good website you need quality build-
ing blocks. A good bio, professional photos, quality mp3s,
videos if you have them, press clippings and anything
else you’d want displayed on your site. The more a de-
signer has to work with the better the site will be.
What about the back-end of it (updating pictures,
shows, links)? Should I expect my designer to main-
tain the site for free?
Some designers will charge their hourly fee to update a
website. I think this is bogus. I prefer to create a pass-
word-protected admin which enables the user to control
the “back-end” of their website. This will allow them to
update items such as their bio, news, show dates, pho-
tos, mp3s, movies… whenever they choose to. It’s an
artist-friendly way of keeping the site fresh and up-to-
date without the added expense of having a designer do
it for you.
Should I expect to pay any money up front?
It’s standard to pay half up front and half upon comple-
tion, although this can vary from designer to designer. I
wouldn’t recommend paying for the entire site up front. If
you have any issues with the payment procedure it’s
best to discuss them before the designing begins. A good
designer will give his clients a fair estimate at the onset
of the project and be able to complete the work in a timely
manner without any additional charges.
Where should I look for a web designer?
I’d always suggest going with a designer that has worked
for people you know. Choose one that has a good repu-
tation and will be able to get the job done on budget and
on time. Ask to see examples of their work and talk to
people who’ve they’ve worked for.
The best advice I can give is to find a designer that you’ll
enjoy working with. A website is an investment in your
art. It’s a great way of getting your music out there and
can be a huge advantage in separating yourself from the
rest of the crowd. Find someone who is as excited about
your site as you are and is willing to go the extra mile in
order to make sure it comes off looking great.
schramdesign.com
 Billy Syndrome
unsupervised existence
August, 2005. Billy Syndrome cajoled me into escap-
ing Florida for a couple of weeks. I got to see the founder
of Slutfish Records play at Bar Matchless with his
hardcore-psychedelic rock band Brian Wilson Shock
Treatment, and then at Otto’s Shrunken Head to see his
other band, JFK Jr. Royal Airforce, play swirling spacerock
as his longtime partner-in-crime Evil Jim smashed a com-
puter keyboard. Along the way we talked for what seemed
like hours, and his performance as the Shock Treatment’s
frontman made a strong case in favor of his winning the
title role in “The Sky Saxon Story” should Hollywood ever
decide to produce it.
Of course, nothing seemed amiss at the time. But the
following week, just after my return to Florida, Billy
Syndrome’s world suddenly turned upside-down. He tells
it best, though he tells it in the third person:
“On August 24, 2005, Billy Syndrome woke up early to
catch the morning waves at Rockaway Beach. Returned
home around noon, drank some beers and listened to
his 45 record collection. He suffered a surprise brain an-
eurysm/hemorrhage while staring for hours at a frozen
orange juice can marked ‘concentrate.’ He fell down, hit
his head and lasped into a coma. He was found uncon-
scious on the floor of his apartment by Evil Jim Friendly,
who called 911 after the Yankee game ended, and awoke
two weeks later in Bellevue hospital paralyzed on his left
side. His long affliction of the rock’n’roll disease caused
him to immediately start writing his next album. Turns
out the brain hemorrhage was the easy part.”
Syndrome’s creative and philosophical vision, which
crosses the boundaries of AntiFolk to embrace his own
unique hybrid of the best aspects of both sixties acid
and seventies punk cultures, has inspired all who have
been witness to it. Perhaps now it is even more inspiring
to see him retain this vision in light of what’s happened
to him. Syndrome will tell you himself that this vision is
now even harder-won than ever. He has been cruelly forced
by circumstances beyond his control to give up the “un-
supervised existence” he has championed throughout
(he loves you but) his career, and he’s fighting hard to
get it back. Most of his recovery thus far has been spent
inside Park Terrace Care Center in Flushing,
just across from Shea Stadium. It is here,
he says, that he learned a dark secret.
“Don’t vote for Rudolph Giuliani in
2008! If you remember, he’s the cow-
boy who cleaned up NYC. He blamed
everything on homeless people and
targeted the mentally ill. People who
have since disappeared. Well, I
Ray Brazen
found out where they went. They were transferred to fake
mental hospitals where they can only get out if adopted
by the people who abandoned them in the first place –
family, wives, parents. So I’m stuck in a brain trauma
unit full of goons who don’t know if they’re coming or
going. I want a second opinion. I’M NOT BRAIN DAM-
AGED. I remember everything! Our crazy government
spends two trillion a year on a stupid war for gasoline
and without me having any insurance, $8,000 a week to
keep me locked up in a rehabilitation nursing home.”
The cruel irony of Syndrome’s incarceration inside what
he calls “The Park Terrace Don’t Care Center” is that he
was taken from a world which would sneer at him for not
being normal and thrown into a world in which he’s frowned
upon for being perhaps the most normal one there. “It
seems if I agree to be a mental patient they’ll let me out
of here but my priorities are too high. I want to be a rock
star and they don’t want that. They want me to have
‘assisted living.’ I want unsupervised existence. I’m sup-
posed to play obscure punk rock records to a nurse all
day? You don’t miss your freedom until it’s gone.
“I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad idea to force you
indoors for a period of adjustment so you don’t hurt your-
self and relearn to look both ways before you cross the
road. (But) it’s a cripple finishing school and when I’m
finished they’ll let me out. Maybe. There are people who
have been here for eight years or more. I need therapy
but I also need a beer! They’re just wasting my life. I’ve
got more things to do. This is endless summer school! I
want out now!”
Billy Syndrome was AntiFolk long before you were, and
has taken its very definition to extremes you never will.
He was there at the beginning of the Fort and subse-
quently appeared on both of 109 Records’ AntiFolk com-
pilations (reviewed in issue #9 of this very zine) in the
late eighties; 109 also issued his own vinyl debut Vi-
cious Burger around that time, filled with many of his
early hits like “(I Love You But) My Career,” “Kill For Jesus”
and “Since You Sold your Body To Science.” In 1993,
shortly after moving from Fort Greene to pre-yuppiefied
Williamsburg, Syndrome put himself on a steady diet of
macaroni and cheese and put every spare cent he had
into the creation of Slutfish Worldwide Recordings. He’s
produced an impressively large catalog of releases since
then, many of them credited to his full band as The Billy
Syndrome, with the occasional disc by friends pepper-
ing the roster. He’s had a ball over the years releasing
anything he damn well pleases on his own dime, from
early home recordings of his and Evil Jim’s pre-AntiFolk
band Porcelain God to discs of his own sound collages,
and says he’s not going to let partial paralysis stop him
from making new records.
“I’m busy recording a series of ‘environmental’ albums
for Slutfish. More prank cassette recordings of the nuts
in my nuthouse so you will all be able to put on a CD and
hear what a brain trauma unit sounds like. I’m taking it
home and sharing it with everyone. With some luck it
should be available for Christmas 2007. I’m writing note-
books full of songs. No writer’s block here. It’s like JOE’S
IMAGINARY GUITAR SOLOS PLAYING IN MY HEAD.
I’ve started to record some of them. My next album is
called The Garden of Mental Illness about, guess what?”
Allowed occasional supervised excursions back to the
outside world since his aneurysm, Syndrome has man-
aged the occasional live appearance, returning to the stage
for the first time last summer with the Shock Treatment,
and reuniting the Royal Airforce on New Year’s Eve. With
his entire left side currently dysfunctional, making music
has become a struggle, but he’s working hard to get back
up to speed. “Peripheral nerve damage has left me a
cripple. I can’t walk, I have no wrist action. I’ve finally
figured out how I can still play space guitar; a combina-
tion of backwards chords and picking with my right hand
and blind faith my nerves will grow back – and they are –
and I will regain use of my left wrist. In the meantime I
get by with a little help from my musician friends, the
usual gang of idiots. Recuperation is gonna be hard and
a long time coming but maybe with luck I’ll be able to
make a full comeback in five years or so.”
Please keep Billy Syndrome in your hearts and minds
in all you do. As his friend and fellow space rock com-
rade Vic Thrill says, “We need this man in our lives.”
www.slutfishrecords.com
A Poem By Billy Syndrome
well some people have ears
and other people are so so deaf
if you don’t listen
YOU CANT HEAR ANYTHING
WHY do i continue to make music?
because i guess i’m hearing things
vinyl flying saucers rock’n’roll
take THE BEATLES WHITE ALBUM.
SOME PEOPLE HEAR revolution number nine
and some people dont hear anything at all.
they don’t understand it so they skip over it and
only hear blackbird and mother nature’s son.
maybe you weren’t meant to hear helter skelter.
maybe they’re secret messages etched in wax
for a secret audience like crop circles
it wasn’t until Elvis and the Beatles
that the industry started putting music on records
anyway.
before that anything was possible.
 Waking Up with Mike Grubbs
“you couldn’t do better if you tried”
There’s a faint, growing buzz throughout the lower east
side about a tall, Williamsburg-skinny guy that can hush
a room with a single note and plays with such fervidly
that he breaks the bass strings of pianos. His name is
Wakey!Wakey! and if you haven’t heard of
him, you will very soon.
A transplant from Richmond, VA,
Wakey!Wakey! is the newest project from
Mike Grubbs, who was raised by devout
Christian parents and swaddled in music
starting at a very early age. Growing up in a
house that at one point had three baby grand
pianos, his family sang at weekly church
services, sirened hymns before breakfast
each morning and, while driving to Florida on family va-
cations, would look at the license plate numbers of pass-
ing cars and sing those notes on the scale. “We learned
how to speak music as a language,” says Grubbs. A
language that he speaks fluently with pure, raw emotion.
Growing up, Mike was fed a strict diet of Classical and
Christian genres, but that all changed when his best friend
Gabe snuck him a copy of 3rd Bass’ The Cactus Album.
“I remember putting it into my tape player, riding on the
way to middle school with my mom and having the vol-
ume all the way down so she couldn’t tell what I was
listening to,” laughs Mike. When Gabe got his hands on
Michael Jackson’s Thriller, another covert operation en-
sued. Mike went to his friend’s house under the guise of
a church gathering, then immediately ran upstairs, hid
under his friend’s bed and listened to the King of Pop. “I
remember thinking, what is this music, it’s not like any-
thing else.”
At the age of six, Mike experimented with varying sounds
on the piano trying to infuse feelings into the children’s
songs he was learning at the time. “I never stopped to
consider if I enjoyed it,” explains Mike. “It was my so-
Tara McNally
lace.” Solace from his parent’s failed attempts at enlist-
ing him into playing sports and from the traditional edu-
cational path we all walk upon. “I was never really good
at school, so my reward for doing homework was that I
could play the piano for two hours.” What child
thinks of music practice as a reward?
With degrees in music and theater, he moved
to New York in the late 90s and worked as an
actor. Due to his strong vocal skills, Mike was
quickly pigeonholed into doing musicals – a far
stretch from the serious, honest art he wanted to
pursue. So he quit acting and started his first
project, a southern rock jam band called Satel-
lite Kids.
Although the Kids experienced moderate success in
the local music scene, the band broke up and Mike
stopped playing. Six months later, a friend physically
pushed him on stage at an open mic and put a guitar in
his hand - an instrument he learned when he was a high
school senior giving birth to his next evolution, Dirty Vir-
ginia. A traditional, singer/songwriter gig, Dirty Virginia
was a departure from Satellite Kids: a solo project with a
different genre played only on guitar instead of piano.
Mike’s projects tend to be birthed from the negative ex-
periences of the last one. “I look at it and think what
didn’t I like about it and try to avoid it.”
Although Dirty Virginia had released an EP, the solo
effort was not working out as hoped and Mike was expe-
riencing a lot of turbulent shifts in his life. He had lost his
job, ended a relationship and moved from Queens to the
Lower East Side in the same time frame. “With all these
new changes, I couldn’t bring Dirty Virginia.” It wasn’t
him anymore and he was ready to move on.
“I always wanted to be a political writer,” says Mike.
Eventually his political perspectives found their way into
his lyrical content in his song “War Sweater.”

Three questions for Wakey!Wakey!

Favorite venue in New York City?
I love playing Rockwood Music Hall. They care so much about their instrument and they keep it in such good
shape. Ken is a great owner and he also takes really good care of the artists who play there. I also play at
Sidewalk because it’s a communal place. It’s like our house. I love playing at Bar 4. There’s always a huge
audience and they are really supportive.
What band should people know, but don’t?
The Fools. To me those guys are like Prozac. When I go to a Fools show, it’s like a wave comes over me and I can
suddenly breath out and everything is okay. I absolutely love those guys. I tell them & I don’t think they believe me.
Having self-professed falling in love 20 times a day, what is the best make-out song ever?
It depends on the girl… it really does…okay, anything by Jimi Hendrix, Ray LaMontagne or Beat the Devil – they
are so naughty.
 “I wrote this one love song and then realized I (subcon- Wes asked if he’d be interested in being a part of Family
sciously) wrote the whole song about the Records, Liberated Matter’s label division.
government…when Bush was reelected,” explains Mike. As a result of this new partnership, Wakey!Wakey! will
“So I thought I should write all my songs and disguise be releasing his first EP in May, a limited edition, live
them.” This is the inspirational impetus behind the name recording supported by a full band as well as the oft-
Wakey!Wakey!, as in, wake up to what’s happening promised 4-piece string section. Partial proceeds of the
around you. Twice. EP’s sales will support the American Diabetes Associa-
It’s been almost a year since Wakey!Wakey! made his tion, an organization that focuses on educating and find-
debut to a packed room at Rockwood Music Hall, follow- ing a cure for a diabetes, a disease that took the life of
ing two locally-established musicians who were also Mike’s dad.
debuting new sets: Amy Hills was to play with her new Mike looks at these as the best days of his life and,
band and Paula Valstein would present an exciting, never- while he has no regrets from the choices he’s made to
before seen experience. Wakey!Wakey!, promising a full follow this path, he considers, “what if I found out that I
string section and all-new songs, fit in quite nicely. had cancer and I realized that I spent my whole life work-
In general, the hype was a bit exaggerated. Paula ing towards this thing that never went anywhere. It’s so
Valstein’s new set culminated with her not stopping be- hard to keep moving forward at this stage, but then again
tween songs and Amy Hills did introduce a full band, but this is the exciting part.”
only playing for one song. Regardless, the hype still shook http://www.wakeywakeymusic.com/
Mike. Leading up to the show,
he spent two sleepless days
writing new material accompa-
nied by strings arrangements,
but due to a printing mishap at
Kinko’s, he had no charts for the
players. Mike rolled into
Rockwood solo that evening,
right as Hills was playing her fi-
nal song (the one with the band
in tow), a cover of the Beastie
Boys’ “Sabotage.”
“She was jumping on the stage
and the audience was waving
their hands in the air and freak-
ing out. I was like, ‘I am going to
crash and burn. I have these
quiet, little piano songs.” How-
ever, when Mike began his set
the whole 20 feet of the bar fell
silent. “It was amazing to feel
that appreciated,” he said. From
the reaction he got, he knew he
was on to something.
Recently Mike went to hear a
guru speak who stressed the im-
portance of having a mentor;
someone who’s traversed a
greater distance down a desired
path. “I looked around at every-
one in the scene and I always
saw Wes as someone who was
definitely one step further then I
was,” says Grubbs. Wes
Verhoeve, co-founder of Liber-
ated Matter and guitarist for the
Undisputed Heavyweights, met
with Mike, discussing career ob-
jectives. On the fourth meeting,
 The Road to London
…it seems so long at times…
If you took a car down the M1 motorway from Manches-
ter you could get to the capital in less than three hours.
But as a musician, a performer, I have found that England’s
capital can be as elusive as Atlantis.
I visited the grand metropolis that is London as a child
of no more than ten – or, then again, did I? The memory
seems so distant there is a good chance it didn’t hap-
pen. Now, there are people who play gigs in London.
Whilst studying music at Salford University in Greater
Manchester, I would listen, mouth agape, to guys who
told tales of playing gigs in London, laying claim to vi-
sions of a promised land. But London seems to be the
one place the World Wide Web will not reach. Endless
emails go unanswered. You send out a demo CD, a let-
ter, anything via mail and it gets posted off the edge of
the world. You can’t just go to London; you have to wait
for an invite. That’s the only way it can possibly work.
I have been playing my solo acoustic blues/folk songs
around the north of England for just a few months now,
with great success and some praise from both sides of
the Atlantic. I spend part of my day doing a dead-end job
to make ends meet, wasting the rest of it playing guitar,
arranging gigs, contacting people about shows and then
playing out. You see, I love the gigs. I love the smell of
them, the buzz of the room you’re about to perform in
whether there are two people or 200. For me, the gig is
the final outcome, after all the practice, the turmoil and
joy of writing new material, it’s the chance to express
yourself, the chance to hear people enjoying your songs.
I have been trying, since starting out solo, to arrange
some gigs in the big city, all with limited success. When
I was playing in bands around Manchester and Liverpool,
I was not interested in London: too big, too smoky, and
too… big! Now, there is a big acoustic vibe going off in
the UK, and I want to be a part of it. London is what I’ve
been aiming for. London is the big game.
London finally came calling in October, offering me a
November gig in London at the highly acclaimed night
called Electroacoustic Club, situated in the peculiarly
named venue The Slaughtered Lamb. My research told
me this night draws in all the top names on the UK acous-
tic circuit… I’m not saying I’m one of them, but it meant
I had the chance to share a bill with one of them so it
was time to start shitting bricks. And practicing.
The Blue Cat Café in Stockport, Greater Manchester
is a very versatile venue with no particular preference to
what music is played. It’s dark everywhere but the stage,
the owner is a guy who knows his stuff but is still waiting
for the next Happy Mondays or The Smiths to walk in.
I’m not it. Cold and wet, I turned up only to be told the
Gareth Gregory
headliner, US band Baby Strange, wasn’t coming.
The place was empty apart from a guy called Joshua
who once bought one of my CDs. I went on at 9.45pm
and, it was looking bleak. Half way through, though, an
appreciative crowd arrived, clapping. I took five and a cig,
and then put on my trilby to play what I came to play.
The reception was even warmer, after I played some lap-
slide. A few CD sales and appreciative handshakes later
and I felt a whole lot better and kind of glad Baby Strange
broke down in Nottinghamshire. Is that bad of me?
There is a huge swing towards acoustic music in
Manchester at the moment and from what I hear in Lon-
don too, but I sometimes feel I would be closer to Lon-
don if I were in New York.
A few weeks later, and, after finely tuning a couple of
new songs at many of Manchester’s acoustic open mics,
I went to a very big gig in the city centre, supporting
guitar virtuoso Mark Wilson at one of Manchester’s fin-
est acoustic music nights: Acoustic Revolution. It is
held weekly in a venue called Dry Bar. This bar upstairs
plays drum ‘n bass, house, funk, anything but acoustic
music. Downstairs has a very small yet cosy room which,
in my opinion, offers the best sound in Manchester.
It is in this small underground basement that around
100 people were delighted by Mark’s music. Wilson is
an excellent musician, pushing the acoustic guitar to its
limits – literally (he’s confessed that he occasionally
snaps them in half with his percussive playing). Its im-
possible to describe, you would have to see it, but you
would think he had six arms as he plays drum patterns,
bass lines, lead guitar all at the same time. Mark was
exceptional; the night was truly fantastic! Now don’t get
me wrong, I would play to an empty room given the
chance (and I have!), but this gig was electric. You could
almost feel talent in the air. At times the applause was
deafening. There were frenzies of people wanting to buy
your CD when you got off stage. Not bad for a Tuesday
night in a big city.
Have you heard of Tony Wilson? He used to be the
owner of the 1980s label Factory Records that signed
The Happy Mondays and allegedly started the
‘Madchester’ scene in the 90s. Since then Wilson has
been exploring various avenues of the music industry to
do with the potential of Music, Information Technology,
downloads, security and protection and also MP4 tech-
nology. Back in the late 90s he organised In the City, a
chance for musicians, bands, managers and DJs to play
gigs around the city. The main draw of the event is that
all the A&R and big shots from record labels from all
around the UK come to the event to hold Q&A sessions
with bands, host master classes for managers, and find chairs were perfect for some
the next big thing on the circuit. This year’s top features lap sliding (first place I’ve ever
were a band called the Jackpot and Karima Francis. played with appropriate
Francis came to Manchester as a drummer but looks seats for lapslide).
to be leaving as the next up-and-coming singing sensa- Starting off the night at
tion in the UK. Karima and I have shared a few bills around 8pm was Scott Pickey who
Manchester over the months, but in that time, she has had a really nice sound and
escalated in talent and acclaim and is now receiving a made good use of a loop unit
lot of interest from major recording labels in the UK. to build up some very well
Now the amazing thing about the festival this year was worked songs which had
the amount of acoustic artists, acoustic stages and events shades of Smashing Pump-
(Electroacoustic club hired a theatre for the full festival kins. A lot of people were still
for acoustic acts). It was an indication in itself of how upstairs whilst he was play-
huge the whole scene has become here in the UK. ing, but the small, apprecia-
I was playing in the centre of Manchester with an tive audience gave him photo by David Logan
electronica band called Shmoo. The night was fantastic rightly deserved applause. A
though I don’t know what the electronica fans thought of good way to start the night.
a fingerstyle blues/slide player opening up the night but I Second act on was a gentleman called Steve Smith.
still got some email addresses and gave out a few CDs. Steve started of with a lovely little number which used
The In the City festival usually runs from a Friday to a some really nice soft guitar work and cracking harmonica
Monday in October, I certainly recommend any artists playing. All topped of with some very well delivered lyr-
looking into playing there in the future. ics, a meter which was very Jack Johnson but also very
Steve Smith too. With some small tuning breaks and in-
Three days later, and it was time for me to make my
terchanges with the crowd, Steve had the ever
way down the M1 motorway to Hertfordshire to a place
increasing audiences’ attention throughout, and delivered
called Royal Leamington Spa (says it all, doesn’t it?) to
a sterling set. The third act, acoustic duo Creatures of
play at a venue called the Copper Pot.
Habit, seemed to know their audience well. The crowd
Three hours, two toilet breaks and a cigarette later, I
had grown substantially and were loving the boy-girl har-
arrived. The town was quaint with a lovely village square
monies and well-worked soft pop tunes.
and a tower clock and truly earned the title of Royal though
The fourth act on was myself. I’m not going to bang on
I was disappointed to find that the Copper Pot was in-
about me, but I did enjoy the vibe when I was playing.
deed a very loud and rowdy public house (pub). I couldn’t
The audience was attentive and interactive. The sound
hear anything and probably could have played the guitar
on stage was good and the sound guy never went miss-
with my elbows and no one would have battered an eye-
ing, all making for a great place to gig. You did feel that
lid. I learnt a lesson about accepting gigs off the internet
everyone was there to watch and listen. That was great.
and I suppose if I was to take any positive from the night,
The final act and top of the bill was a Josh Geffen. He is
it was that at least the pub had thought at some point
really a very talented fella. Had real control over the dy-
“Let’s put on an acoustic night; everyone is doing it!” I
namics within his songs and he had the perfect crowd for
guess it was just a shame nobody told the punters.
it too. At times, he played at a whisper. Accompanied
The Leamington gig left me anxious, unprepared for occasionally by cello player Anna King, Josh stole the
the big game. November 8. London. Electroacoustic night and I was glad I was there to see it. Overall, London
Club at the Slaughtered Lamb. I returned to few famil- was worth the wait and I look forward to returning.
iar acoustic nights and jams to get the spirits raised be- If you get time, please look up every act and locale that
fore making the 200 mile journey to London. I had a car, has been mentioned. Have a listen to what is happening
a guitar and some company (my girlfriend and her brother). in the UK for yourself. I haven’t touched on any folk mu-
I guess everyone wanted to see the guy topping the bill! sicians because I can honestly say that (depending on
On arriving at the venue at 7.30pm I was horrified to how you determine it) I didn’t come across any folk on
see it was a bar/pub kind of place and thought it was all my travels. All I can say is that, like the British folk mu-
going to happen again and that all the nasty things I had sic of the past (Richard Thompson, Burt Janscht, Martin
ever said about London were true. I walked in and was Stevenson), the influences within their music all differed
greeted by the guy who was running the night. He hur- and so their songs differed. I think that British folk music
ried me downstairs for a quick sound check and on en- has always struggled to find an identity because of its
tering the room, all the bad thoughts went away. lack of classification and genre and so, maybe with the
The room was illuminated by subtle table lights and rising popularity of acoustic nights in the UK and the
made up of old, groovy mix match furniture. There were diversity of influences within each performer’s music that
little nooks to sit in and a great performance area in the maybe this is the new UK folk music.
corner – again, nicely lit. Plus, the old wooden school http://www.myspace.com/garethgregory
 Lowry
always moving
Born and bred in a small town in Kansas, Alexander Lowry was raised “as far away from anywhere as you can get…
a farm without farm animals.” After listening to his Awful Joy and meeting the warm, humble, and strikingly genuine
songwriter, it seems to me that Lowry is from somewhere else altogether. After spending time with this enigmatic
songsmith, I learned more about the man, why traveling is such an important part of who he is, his take on music,
and the path to making meaningful connections with others.
Alex Lowry: I started playing in bands in high school and
so I took that down into college. The whole time I was
there, I played in punk bands at night and woke up the
next day hung over and went to school and football prac-
tice. I got a degree in Biology. For some reason I thought
I was going to become a doctor or something. Ended up
working in radio – still playing. I started the first version
of Lowry in Kansas City. The first two records were very
non-focused. I was drinking a lot, and all this trite shit.
When we first started we were heavily influenced by Phish
and Medeski, Martin, and Wood. So, I went through that
jam band phase.
Urban Folk: I still hear some of those more free-form in-
fluences in your music.
AL: I decided “I either have to separate myself from the
movement, or I’m going to be part of it.” That’s when I
moved here in May of 2003. Originally I came to
Williamsburg, but I moved from there with my girlfriend
out to Hoboken. That’s the girl that I wrote “Taken Away
My Good Feelings” about. That fell apart. Moved back
into the East Village when I started dating Claire (Bow-
man). Then Claire and I, Eric Feigenbaum and Sarah, we
all came out here and found this place. We all moved in,
and we used it as a practice space. Then, the whole
Claire and I thing blew up and the Bowmans started do-
ing their own thing. The core of the band was always
myself, “Crash” (Bryan Winkert), Shawn (Setaro), and
Nicholas (Webber), who
played but didn’t tour with us
until our third tour. Then, we
added Heidi Sidelinker, from
North Carolina, to do some
of the back-up singing.
UF: Is she the one singing
on the new thing you just put
out, Lowry Live in Atlanta:
Unplugged?
AL: That’s still the Bowmans,
and that element is still there
with her singing, except the
sound has become less
classical and is more rock.
Paul Alexander
She brings a little more attitude to it. Sarah is a classi-
cally trained musician, and you can hear that when she
sang behind us, which I think was good for the sound,
but at the same time, we almost sounded too upright. I
think in the end, the one thing that took the Bowmans
away from Lowry wasn’t so much that we don’t see eye-
to-eye, because towards the end we were really starting
to jive musically, but they had a career to go pursue, and
at the same time I had this vision of what I was trying to
translate that was kind of clashing with what they were
bringing. It’s cool now, but there were tumultuous times
there. I mean we did 10,000 miles together – all of us in
the one van. It was a hell of a fucking journey. We learned
so much, and we found out so much about the music
industry in general and about how things really are.
UF: What kind of stuff?
AL: Well, I mean essentially, what you really find out,
when you’re on the road you see everybody that’s actu-
ally touring. You see their tour posters. You watch the
papers. You go to all the major markets; you see every-
body that’s out and about and doing gigs. I mean I was
out, I’ve been touring for two years, and not one single
instance did I ever see Sufjan Stevens out touring any-
where. I never heard his name. I’ve been to all the major
scenes and I didn’t see shit, and then suddenly over-
night here comes this guy – out of nowhere. And I was
like “OK, where did this guy come from?”
UF: And now he’s on NPR
and he’s on satellite radio.
AL: Precisely. What happens
is, what you see, you have
somebody in a high-powered
position who says “OK, we
have a record we can sell,”
and the trigger gets pulled.
Then suddenly they’re every-
where, and they have a his-
tory that was either created
or embellished.
UF: Sure, it’s myth building.
Someone said that to me
somewhere along the line.
AL: We were going out there and we were
playing to big crowds that had no prior
knowledge, no one from the record com-
munity saying, “Hey, you’ve got to see these
guys.” We didn’t have our poster on the end
of an aisle in a music store promoting our
album. But is our art effective in bringing
out emotions? We found out probably the
hardest way you can– burning over 25,000
miles over two years. There are some
people that don’t have to go through that,
and I think, honestly, they lose the grit and
the whole richness of the experience. I
mean, you can make trips; you can even
just take short trips, because those travels
are related directly to your album.
UF: Right; you’ve got to stay connected.
AL: None of it’s glorious as it sounds on paper. I mean
there’s nothing glorious about fourteen hours overnight
from Denver to Denton, Texas, on our first tour to play to
five people. But going from that to a North Carolina show
that was sold out the next night is an emotional roller
coaster. You need to feel it for yourself. It is the core of
what always used to be about, when people did these
grassroots tours. But I think I won’t tour again without
the traditional tour support – it’s murderous. Even play-
ing sold out shows, it’s murderous to have to change a
tire in 105-degree heat on a van full of gear when you
can’t get the jack to work. (laughing)
UF: How do you go about getting such extensive tours
set up without somebody backing you? It can’t be cheap.
AL: It started with Claire and I, sitting in a bar, saying,
“Can we do a three week tour? Can we book it?” Claire
knew how to reach out to fifty people in one sending and
get two people to respond back to a band that has no
history and no clout.
UF: What kind of stuff do you need to know?
AL: You surf the internet, weeks straight all day long.
You reach out to every single club that you can find –
everyone. We chose to go into the heartland, which is
really suicide, because it’s too much driving. But because
I was from Kansas City, I was able to get a first gig on
our tour, so we spent weeks trying to find shows be-
tween here and there. Our first tour was like twenty days,
ramshackle, out to Chicago, down south, through Texas,
and back across thorough the Carolinas. Along with Ian
Thomas it was a triple bill, and keep in mind we did it
without a local act to help us.
UF: You were just rolling through with 3 no name acts.
AL: That’s right, and the Bowmans didn’t have a full record
yet; they both just had EPs. Lowry had just released
Awful Joy, and we went out on this tour.
UF: How’d you do that first tour, as far as people and
how the clubs responded?
AL: Well, we set ourselves up. When we called we said,
“Look, we’re brand new.” Knowing that, they didn’t lose
anything by having us, but they didn’t gain anything at a
lot of gigs on the first tour. We were able
to play to them and show them we’re get-
ting something special to happen. It took
all the first tour just to get the gigs to-
gether for the second tour. We broke even
with merch, but all the money we made
off merch went back into the second tour.
I also sold the truck and a bunch of
pieces of gear to pay the band, and a
publicist who already had a database set
up.
(Enter Lowry’s pianist, Nicholas Webber)
UF: Before you went out on the road I
know you spent some time at the Side-
walk Café. What was your experience
like in the scene here in New York?
AL: I didn’t visit the Sidewalk until April
2004. I was going until three in the morning for two or
three months after that, and I came to appreciate the
scene, because in my mind it is the most cohesive scene
I’ve seen anywhere.
Nicholas Webber: The thing I don’t like about it is it’s a
scene.
AL: (Laughing) What I found was that it was a scene that
had a definite ceiling to it. There were people who had
been playing there for years, and if that’s what you’re
doing it for then that’s great – you should keep doing
that, you should stay in the scene. What I was seeing
was there was this cycle that people would get into where
once you were playing that stage you would be seen as
playing that stage all the time. We played in there with
the band once and it just didn’t translate at all. But it has
an important place – I met Nicholas there.
NW: I don’t remember.
AL: Yeah, I met him there and then he played on Awful
Joy, and then decided he didn’t want to go tour. We had
some friction between our piano players…
NW: There’s no friction, he couldn’t go on the tour. It was
a short tour, so I went on it. Then, I was sorta sold, and
he was sorta out of a job.
AL: Oh yeah, another thing that I wanted to talk about is
what I think the music is. Here’s the thing, when we first
went out they had to have something to talk about, so
Eric, who produced Awful Joy, he wrote a short blurb
which called the music AntiFolk psychedelic blah blah
blah, and in my mind I didn’t see it as that. I knew it was
big music, but didn’t see it as psychedelic whatever he
was calling. To me it was just what we were doing, and I
spent a lot of time thinking about what it was. I was actu-
ally doing, as opposed to laser beams and twangyness
whatever. And in my mind, I thought it was spiritual…
NW: Spiritual, spiritual – I like that. That’s good.
AL: “Triple A Brand spiritual.” Spiritual for the atheists,
agnostic, and altruistic. And I mean spiritualism without
a deity, without a god. And if someone were to call me a
spiritual singer for the rest of my life I’d be fine with that.
www.lowrymusic.com
 Exegesis Department
“Sleeping Is a Sucker’s Game”
Eric Wolfson
“To die, to sleep – To sleep, perchance to dream.” – Hamlet, Act III, Scene I
“Sleeping is a sucker’s game.” – Anticomp Folkilation, Disc II, Song I
In my younger and more vulnerable years, my sister knowing the light of hope. In other words, Virgil lived in
gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my the blissful ignorance of a gray underworld not all that
mind ever since. “Everything good happens to you,” she different from the tunnels of the (hel)L Train.
told me, “after you should’ve already gone to sleep.” She Like Virgil, the hipster princesses who formed my col-
was referring to my upcoming summer as a camp coun- lective muse never saw the light of day where I strutted
selor but, eight years later, I found myself in New York around with the cool boys in the East Village. We were
living those words. Night after night, I stayed out too late the ones wearing denim jackets, guitars in hand, raping
at an open mic or a show; day after day, I sludged through and pillaging songs until they became our own; we were
at retail job, running on iced chai and apathy. the ones reaping the fruit of the labor at a late-night gig,
When you work retail and there’s no line at the regis- slouched in the back and singing the words that we knew.
ter, your mind starts to wander, searching for something, There were four of us to be specific: Vin, the quintes-
anything, to stay fixated on, if only to fight your body’s sential folksinger-songwriter who would be soon only per-
natural inclination to sleep. I have a very religious co- forming with an electric rock band; Somer, the mysteri-
worker who recites prayers to himself; myself, I sing songs ous newcomer about to become one of the central people
– sometimes my own, sometimes someone else’s. One in the scene; Mike, one of the central people in the scene
thing I sang a lot when I was first adjusting to the music to soon all but disappear; and me, fresh off-stage but still
life in New York City was Star Star Quarterback’s “Sing- restless enough to have a beer with the usual crew as
ing Is a Sucker’s Game.”
I had always found the song odd and cloying, but now,
as I spent my late nights watching a revolving door of
five-minute acts play for people waiting for their own five
minutes in the spotlight, something about the situation’s
futility brought me back to the melancholy falsetto of the
song’s refrain: “And singing is a sucker’s game / Such a
shame / To put yourself out on a limb like this.” Maybe it
was fate, maybe it was destiny, maybe it was that I, too,
was beginning to feel like a sucker.
I became obsessed with “Singing Is a Sucker’s Game”
by Star Star Quarterback (a friend of mine who asked to
be referred to as “one Mr. Brooks of Boston”) – it was as
though everything that I wanted to say at that time was
summed up in those five words. I began to play with the
phrase, plugging in different words to try to make it my
own. Them: “Hey, Eric, do you wanna go to the movies?”
Me: “Man, going to the movies is a sucker’s game.”
It sounded hip and cool, yet self-consciously so, the
same way that once only the hippest kids I knew said
“hot,” and then, suddenly, it’s coming out of Paris Hilton’s
mouth. If used at just the right time, it could maybe even
be picked up by all of those snobby hipster princesses
who rode back and forth endlessly between Manhattan
and Brooklyn train, too distracted by themselves to ever
notice me. When Dante summoned his muse for the Di-
vine Comedy, he found Virgil in the mildest level of the
Inferno, his only sin being that he was born before Christ,
his only punishment being that he lived eternally without

we sang along with our mentor, Lach.
There’s something about a sing-a-long – whether it’s
political, like the one in Casablanca, or sentimental, like
the one in Almost Famous – that holds a unique power,
pulling together the meaning of a moment better than a
thousand words of explanation could ever do. I went back
to an eight-line stanza that I had written months before
about all the hipster princesses and stole the chugga-
chugga rhythm of Jonathan Richman’s “Pablo Picasso”
– a song about how women could not resist Picasso’s
stare as he walked the streets of New York – which made
my song’s words snap right into place (Richman had
stolen the riff from the Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray”;
Picasso, of course, stole from everybody). Using the sing-
a-long scene as a pre-chorus, I brought things full-circle
by putting in my own chorus to be sung along with, some-
thing just catchy enough for the hipster princesses but
tough enough for the cool boys in the East Village.
“We are young!” sang Pat Benatar, in another great
“…Is a…” song, “Love Is a Battlefield.” Right around when
Ms. Benatar was singing those words in the early ’80s,
my Mom was putting me down for my afternoon nap. I
lay there, as I did every afternoon, sometimes even for
as long as ten minutes, before I got up and silently played
Legos in the dark once I knew she was out of earshot.
Why sleep when you can stay up and play? It was all so
clear to me then, even before I had the life experience to
articulate it: Sleeping is a sucker’s game.
Sleeping Is a Sucker’s Game
To all the hipster princesses raisin’ Cane
They’re all goin’ downtown
on a Brooklyn-bound train
They’re all lookin’ fer love, but they look in vain
And miss the cool boys in the East Village
They’re all struttin’ past all the tough-guy bars
With acoustic guitars hidden in cases so hard
As if their denim jackets could make them a star
With every song that they rape and pillage
It was a Monday evening
And the crowd was deceivingly
Large for a small room that night
And we sat on the side
In the shadows that hide
Yer face as yer waiting to play
We are young, we are inspired
We got guitar-shaped heart desires
We got a long line of lovers
who’ve never left us the same
We got outer prospects that are slim
Framed by a two-drink minimum
Yeah, we go through life knowin’ that
sleeping is a sucker’s game
To all the day job sweethearts so bored at work
With buttoned-up hearts under half-buttoned shirts
Just cuttin’ off customers cold and curt
40 hours a week to get healthcare
And all the retail romeos workin’ day after day
Just starin’ off into space with nothing to say
They all act like they’re stoned,
or maybe they are anyway
Put the book back where the shelf’s bare
It was a Wednesday night
And we were feeling alright
Drinkin’ brew with the regular crew
We sat slouched in the back
We were listening to Lach
And singing the words that we knew
We are young, we are inspired
We got guitar-shaped heart desires
We got a long line of lovers
who’ve never left us the same
We got outer prospects that are slim
Framed by a two-drink minimum
Yeah, we go through life knowin’ that
sleeping is a sucker’s game
 The American Interzone
new frontier living in the city of three centuries
I’ve been back in New Orleans for a few months now,
and I don’t think I’ll ever leave again. Even if mishap rears
its angry red head, driving us out again, I’d come back.
It’s reasonable to wonder why, I suppose. I imagine that
in this, our grand decline, it would be preferable to hunker
down in one of the wonderful, modern, shiny mega-cit-
ies. Efficient well armed police, vast resources of cash
and goods, space age amenities galore, all in wonderful
semi-gentrification yet just edgy enough for the colle-
giate 21st century urban bohemian. Who knows? In fif-
teen years, New Orleans might be like that – not now.
William Burroughs said that real
life, the good stuff, is found smack
in the middle of the paradox. To
be an artist in New Orleans today
is to court serious chaos from all
sides. I attended the memorial of
an incredible filmmaker – a mother
to boot – murdered by a crack-
head in the early morning hours
at her doorstep. Her animated
films were homemade and unfor-
gettable, and the energy of the art-
ists gathered to commemorate her
was palpable and intense. Robert
Florence, an author and New
Orleans historian, told me once
that he saw a lot in common with
the Berlin he had read about in
school, a city of anarchy, reeling
and moorless after the collapse of
fascism. New Orleans felt like that
to him in the first few weeks after Katrina. The same
electricity in the air, a pervading sense of anything goes.
To this day, there is still a very real atmosphere of other-
ness here, a feeling that we are somehow in the United
States, but not of it.
To add to the isolation, there’s an astounding lack of
corporate presence in my city these days. City blocks
and urban centers don’t look like every other city in
America. Here, it seems, everything seems to spring out
of someone’s weird dirty southern imagination. Clubs and
club owners have become increasingly approachable. The
severe drop in the population has meant that a large chunk
of the cities native musical population has been displaced.
While tragic in many ways, this has also meant that
much of the city’s previous obsession with “New Orleans
Grey Revell
Music” has given way to a more eclectic attitude towards
music and entertainment. Claiming to be a musician is
no longer followed by the customary response of “Jazz
or Blues?” Those genres are still here, and well repre-
sented - but the spaces have opened somewhat. The era
of New Orleans as a “museum city,” with its culture un-
der glass, has given way to a period of exploration, much
more in keeping with the original spirit of this town.
The radio jockeys play pretty much whatever they want.
I’ve walked into two different stations and gotten on the
air within minutes. I was never able to do that on WFMU
or KCRW. Down here, it’s not as
hard. WWOZ broadcasts out of the
French Quarter, and coming down at
10pm for a last minute promotional
actually has an element of hazard
to it, probably because the beauty
of the place belies the menace that
percolates. At any rate, you do get
on the air quite easy down here, and
if you like stations that play Big Band
versions of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
after the Animals’ “Sky Pilot,” then
you’d like it here.
The population of Orleans Parish
is about 40% of what it was on Au-
gust 27, 2005. The ones that have
returned or chosen to stay have ex-
hibited an almost delusional tenac-
ity facing the adversities of post-
apocalyptic New Orleans life. Energy
price gouging, crooked contractors,
government apathy, spikes in crime, have all been met
with classic American stoicism, sarcasm, and black
humor. It puts rich and poor on common ground for a
change. The guy in the columned mansion is struggling
with no heat, bad plumbing and wild animals in his base-
ment, just like the guy in the Gentilly shotgun shack. It’s
the America we grew up watching on newsreels. The
America of the Depression, the Dustbowl, Leadbelly, and
Our Gang shorts. It’s still here. That’s the hook that grabs
me. Here in the middle of the most disconcerting and
discomforting places, far from the streamlined comfort of
the digital, the fast fix, the instant and the safe, I see
something else. Away from the red white and blue who
wants to be a millionaire logo that my nation has be-
come, I think I see its soul. It’s still here.
 What we’ve got here is a nized by artists? What if a place,
21 st Century social Petri rejected by Corporate America,
dish. A city as fulcrum be- written off as a loss, a flood plain,
tween what was, is and was taken and claimed by the cre-
could be. This is a place ative class, the anti, the true left?
existing in three centuries at When I was a younger man, green-
once, and somewhere be- fresh from the San Gabriel Valley,
tween the first and third running down Avenue A with a loin-
worlds, too. We’re not just cloth and a spear, I heard a lot of
acknowledging these eras older types talking about the dan-
and realities – New York and gerous New York, the edgy nights
L.A can do that – but truly of the mid-80s, when rents were
existing in them all at once. cheap and your life was in your
The lamps, streets, shouts, smells, foods, drinks, collo- hands. They had a very large and
quialisms, songs, rumors, dirty jokes and prayers, all cool neighborhood. Now I’m in a City, largely empty, left
span almost a half-millennia, and origins from Africa to to its own fortune. There are truly no maps for these
Spain to Ireland to Cuba and then the Bayous. It’s still territories, as William Gibson said. The Lower East Side
here. Hollower, angrier, sadder… more powerful than has great history, so my elders told me, but what if they’d
before. We’re still here. claimed a whole town? I’ll never really know for sure, but
Studies have been made about the rise of the “Creative that’s all right; here and now, on the perimeters, in the
Class.” I have to wonder, what if a city could be colo- middle of the paradox, I’ve got enough to deal with.
 Get in the Minivan
broken head at mama buzz
or how I learned to hate the bay
Being an independent musician who's more or less con-
stantly traveling around playing songs without the benefit
of a wealthy record company to foot the bill for distribu-
tion, promotion or booking, I've learned over the past few
years to never, ever expect to be treated like some BIG
IMPORTANT ROCK MUSICIAN FROM NEW YORK CITY.
Any body nice enough to open their doors and ears to
hear me and my little folk songs is a blessing. I feel very
blessed to say that I've got friends in nearly every city I've
been to, and every subsequent tour is a whirlwind of too-
brief visits to surrogate family in surrogate hometowns.
I've learned to give the benefit of the doubt to the kids that
set up lackluster shows. Like, "Okay, maybe all the cool
kids in Pensacola really ARE over in Tallahassee, watch-
ing that third-rate Beck cover band." There's nobody to
blame but Kismet in situations like those, and I will al-
most always give any given town a second chance at
redemption.
There is one exception: Oakland, CA.
I had been to San Francisco on one previous tour, spent
three days in the City with Ivan Sandomire, and we were
both immediately infatuated with the local culture: some-
how leisurely and energetic at the same time. The slop-
ing hills that gave us more than one scare when it came
to parking the van. Amoeba Records. Ivan was so taken
by the place that he moved out there not long after we
got home.
When I was going out to the West Coast with Guitar
Bomb last Spring, it was a given that we'd go back to
San Francisco. Taking the monstrous drive down the coast
to Los Angeles, Mikey (Guitar Bomb without the sun-
glasses), who had a friend from high school in the Bay
Area, had the idea to find a show in Oakland for the fol-
lowing day.
Friday night, Mikey, Dan Treiber and I pulled into San
Francisco for a return gig at Coffee to the People. We
were reunited with Ivan, who was sharing the bill with us
and seemed fresher and happier than I'd seen him in
months (of course, I actually hadn't seen him in months).
The show went well, and was exactly what I expected.
We played with good local bands, were treated to coffee
and food, and I unexpectedly ran into Peter Nevins in
Amoeba Records. Some guy stood outside of Coffee to
the People for the duration of the show, talking to no one
we could see about his living conditions (the sidewalk in
front of the coffeehouse). After being taken out to a local
Brook Pridemore
pub for a couple of pints, we stayed the night at our friend
Nicole's apartment, which is spacious, considering the
nightmarishly high rent people pay.
Next morning, in high spirits, Dan and I met with Ivan in
the park, where we had coffee and shot the shit before
Ivan headed off to a wedding in Palo Alto. Having eaten
more than my fair share of Mission-Style burritos in New
York, I went over to the Haight for a Mission-Style burrito
in its home city, and had my last ten dollars picked out
of my pocket on the way. In need of food, and with hours
to kill before leaving for the gig, I treated myself to my
first ever busking experience, making seven dollars and
change in a mere two hours!
If San Francisco is the epitome of the utopian Cali
lifestyle, Oakland is where all of the dirt and grime goes.
In the afternoon, we loaded the van and headed back
across the bay to Mama Buzz Café, a place we had
been told was "The Hottest Club to Play in Oakland."
It certainly was hot. Apparently, all of the nasty sum-
mer heat that doesn't hit San Francisco gets piped into
Oakland. We set foot on Telegraph Avenue to white hot
sunlight and windless air so wet with humidity that you
could practically reach up and squeeze the water out.
The stink of body odor, usually indicative of a cool punk
who could introduce us to other cool punks, wafted over
in a blinding fog from across the street where a hundred
or so punks were rocking out to a local band. This was
obviously the "good" show we weren't able to get on (Mikey
had told us earlier that day that there was a local arts
festival going on, making it hard for us to find any bands
to play with).
Mikey went over and tried to hand out homemade fliers
for our show as kids filed out the door. One of the girls
turned up her nose and said, "Oh, there's ALWAYS a
free show going on over at Mama Buzz." Another kid
crumpled up a flier and threw it at Mikey when he thought
Mikey wasn't looking. Mikey told me later it was all he
could do not to smack the kid.
Back across the street, this older guy came up to me
and Dan and tried to show us this homemade violin he'd
put together. He talked to us (and then me, after Dan just
walked away) about how he lived - and had scrounged all
of the parts for his violin - out of the dumpster, and he'd
taught himself to play it between working shifts down at
the cannery and sleeping - again, in the dumpster.
Looking back, all of this should have seemed laugh-
able. Like, there should be a funny story to be had, but it
just made me angry as hell. And it gets worse.
We ended up sitting around Mama Buzz for about three
hours, waiting for the band we're sharing the bill with to
show up. In the meantime, we made more handmade
fliers that Dan demanded I go and try to pass out among
the hostile punks next door. Two kids who call them-
selves Little Josie and Big Horn, our headliners, finally
showed up around eight PM, and a respectable group of
kids appeared with them. The whole crew of band and
friends waited impatiently outside the club while Mikey
and I played our sets.
At one point, Dan Treiber went out and asked everyone
to come in and watch the show, and he was met with
blank stares from the locals. A few minutes later, I
watched him go back out with our tip jar (actually a pa-
per maché skull that came from God knows where), to
pretty much the same success. With about thirty sec-
onds remaining in my last song, this guy Gibson - I guess
he was Big Horn - came into the room and bobbed his
head to my last few chords, then patted me on the shoul-
der like he's Ed Sullivan: "You've got some real powerful
messages in your songs, Brook." He hadn't heard me
sing a word.
Later, we came to realize that this was the point where
we should have packed up the PA and cut our losses,
flipped a big middle finger at the cool kids of Oakland
and slunk back across the San Francisco Bay with our
tails between our legs. Hindsight is always 20/20.
My guitar barely even back in the bag, Gibson shouted
"IS EVERYBODY READY FOR THE DISCOTHEQUE?"
in a grating, faux German accent. They went on to play
some sort of music, but what type it was I will never
know-I beat it out of the club and stomped around the
desolate streets for what felt like the right amount of time.
Dan retired to the van so he didn't have to listen, and
Mikey braved it, nursing a beer and staring at the floor.
After all of this, we went back in to pack up our PA and
get the hell out of town. Gibson, shit eating grin on his
face, said something stupid like, "Hey man, I hope this
wasn't too painful for your first show in Oakland." He in-
vited us to hang out with him and his friends, at which
point my jaw kind of hit the floor, and I mumbled some-
thing about seeing what the other guys feel like doing.
Driving back across the bridge, stuck in traffic, motor-
cycles sped between the lanes of cars to avoid gridlock.
We got some small amusement out of flashing them with
our high beams as they pass and railing against the
shitheaded artsy kids of Oakland. We always extend an
invitation to other bands we meet on tour: If you come
through New York, you have a place to stay. We fanta-
sized about convincing these kids that they should come
to Brooklyn for a totally awesome show, and have them
travel cross country to an empty room. And a towed car.
And no fucking clue how to get around New York.
One final indignity and I'm done. The heat and stress
and all of the yelling and everything combined, I set foot
back into Nicole's apartment in SF and ran straight to
the bathroom, heaving for quite a few minutes. When I
finally recovered, I saw blood in the toilet bowl.
Sitting here now, I can't remember all of the people who
have heard me tell this story. A good portion of those
people have asked me what was so bad about the town
that I would refuse to ever go back there.
Here's the best I can come up with: The events that
went down at Mama Buzz Café, taken individually, or
even as a group, could be excused. To a certain extent,
we should have been prepared to have a lackluster expe-
rience that Saturday, given the arts festival that had most
of the kids in town preoccupied. Also, this was our first
foray into the surrounding Bay Area towns, which predi-
cates a certain level of shakiness.
When I think about the main thing that makes indepen-
dent touring successful, though, I see us going into new
towns and seeking out the kids that are into experienc-
ing alternatives. I see, in essence, people who are on our
side - people who are open-minded about new music,
welcoming, and generous (or at least one of those things).
In the kids of Oakland, I
found a closed-mindedness
that ran deeper than the av-
erage bigoted redneck with
a Dixie Horn in his pickup,
and a total lack of warmth.
At the end of the evening, we
hadn't even scrounged
enough change to pay the
toll back across the bridge.
Here was a group of people
that, by all stretches of the
imagination, should have
been on our side. Instead,
our experience in Oakland
was a matter of Us versus
Them, with them, in this
case, being more of Us.
 Record Reviews
Send to J. Berger - 1119 Longwood Avenue - Bronx, NY 10474
Butch Ross
The Moonshiner’s Atlas
Ross, one of the first fellows in Philadelphia AntiFolk, left
his city and AF cred to move to Chattanooga and play
mountain dulcimer with his wife, Christie Burns. Now he’s
released his first folk album, The Moonshiner’s Atlas.
You know it’s a folk album, because of the first track, “I
Like Singing Folk Songs.” Though somewhat tongue in
cheek (“Say I’ll never get rich? Shows how much you
know / just yesterday I booked me a great show / 25
bucks for one night in Juneau”), the song admits to Ross’
recent romance with what he used to react against. He
explains: “For a
while now I’ve been
of the impression
that if I’m going to
play ‘folk’ music, I
oughta know what
the fuck folk music
is.” Only three
songs on this album
are written by Ross,
the rest being cov-
ers. Well, covers
and trad numbers.
What’s the difference? “ 91 dollars,” Ross explained.
Probably the best traditional number is the second track
on the album, “Moonshiner,” which uses a riff I swear I
know from Tom Nishioka’s old “Up and Under.” Did Trad
steal from him? Probably not. It’s a killer sound, though.
Also great is “Atlas” by Russell Wolff, featuring the cho-
rus, “I got my road atlas / I feel like Charles Atlas / though
I’m not new at this / neither are you.”
Another original is “Lousy Boy,” whose lyrics suggest
that it might be a transgendered tale, but probably is
more about maturing, accepting inadequacy, and grow-
ing past it. It’s beautiful. It’s music that adults make.
The songs selected all sound sweet, and, while some-
times there’s additional instrumentation, mostly it’s this
guy Butch and his mountain dulcimer. “A guy discovers
me playing in Cork, Ireland and says ‘If you record an all-
dulcimer album, I’ll produce it and put it out on my label.’
It is at once the path of least resistance and the opportu-
nity to be the coolest kid at church camp,” he laughs, “I
know, my point exactly.”
Someone once called Ross the Bela Fleck of the moun-
tain dulcimer. I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m willing to
say that he’s definitely the Debe Dalton. I don’t know if
he should get this whole traditional thing out of his sys-
tem, or if this is the best route for him to follow. But
there’s a lot of good material here - even for the an Ur-
banite. (Jonathan Berger)
butchross.com
Chris Maher
Some Songs!
“Love is a rumor, and
it’s one that will per-
sist,” goes part of the
endlessly changing
and repeating chorus
of “mE=mc2,” the
opening track on
Chris Maher’s teaser EP of songs from his long-in-the-
works debut full-length. It’s the changing/repeating lines
that provide most of the charm on these songs, and
maybe part of that charm extends to the waiting for these
songs to see the light of day. Multiple recording ses-
sions on both coasts? The best things come to those
who wait.
In terms of sound, the first point of comparison to Some
Songs! is I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, the ‘country’
album Bright Eyes made a couple of years ago. Then I
think, “Wait: I really like Chris Maher. His songs don’t
suck even a fraction of the ass that Bright Eyes do.” So
maybe that’s not a fair comparison. A more accurate point
would be to say that this stand up next to David Dondero’s
South of the South, mostly in the slightly country instru-
mentation and the personal-but-not-too-much-information
subject matter. Vocally, Maher sounds a lot like Dondero
as well, singing in an emotional, seemingly just about to
crack affect. “Soft Sewing Strings” has the feel of a down-
home bluegrass jam, although the minor chord and
Maher’s rough-edged singing makes one feel like the jam
might really be a crazed mob, ready to carry unsuspect-
ing bystanders off into oblivion.
I think the strongest song on this EP is “The Happy Kind,”
the closing track. A simple voice, guitar and harmonica
song not unlike something off Paul Westerberg’s Ste-
reo, the stripped-down performance captures the sad-
ness of the lyric, and lets Maher’s voice really come out
into the front.
After listening a couple of times, I hope that the proper
full-length album isn’t too far away from my grubby little
hands. This is strong promising stuff. (Brook Pridemore)
http://riylrecords.com/
Citizen Worm
Tape From Caledonia
On the back of this brit disc is a scan of a postcard that
reads: “Citizen Worm, No Fixed Talent, No Fixed Abode,
Caledonia – Being the flawed genius of Phil Ochs as
refracted thru the jaundiced prism of Auld Scotia.” Now, I
have to admit that I have no clue about who Citizen Worm
is, and I have only a passing interest in Phil Ochs’ body
of work. However,
when I saw Tape
From Caledonia, I
thought, “Wow, a Phil
Ochs tribute band?
That would never play
at B.B. King’s.” I
thought it would be a
good introduction to
Phil Ochs music: a
way to get in on the
ground floor by going
in the back door.
Turns out I was mostly wrong.
Having never heard most of these songs, I found myself
instantly trying to make comparisons between Citizen
Worm and other bands. “Phil Ochs,” the one non-Phil
Ochs song here (actually adapted by Billy Bragg from an
old folk song called “Joe Hill”), sounds like a lost Herman
Düne song: all freaky horns and guitar lines, it’s a prom-
ising opening – as I thought this was going to be a col-
lection of Phil Ochs songs done in a sort of cheeky way
– rock versions of folk songs? Sounds great.
However, with the exceptions of Citizen Worm’s rendi-
tions of “Cross My Heart” and “I Ain’t Marching Anymore,”
both of which are heavily amplified and transcend the
folk-cover-of-folk-song stigma, most of these covers sound
like pretty staid and conservative versions of the origi-
nals. Plenty of these songs consist of one lead male
vocal and spare accompaniment by autoharp and/or pipe
organ, what I’d expect from Ochs.
The bottom line is: there are some seriously cool rendi-
tions of great folk songs on this disc that have fallen out
of public memory. There is not enough new stuff here to
make me interested in either Ochs’ catalog or Citizen
Worm’s potential. (Brook Pridemore)
David Shane Smith
love songs
wintertower
I have two David Shane Smith albums. Both came in
origami slipcovers made from old magazine pages. love
songs is written in red pencil on the first disc. The sec-
ond reads wintertower. If you asked me to pick one to
keep and one to give up, I’d have a hard time choosing.
Many musicians follow a slow evolution from one album
to the next, but these two are different.
love songs has a timeless quality that makes it difficult
to pin down. Each song has a striking sense of imme-
diacy, but remains unbranded by a specific period or style.
Lilting melodies contrast sharply with haunting narration.
Insomniac poems are punctuated with acoustic guitar,
bells, and timpani.
Smith does an
about-face on
wintertower, a slip-
pery electronic hy-
brid of looped beats
and manipulated
sounds, where the
territory between
rap and spoken
word becomes too
tangled to navigate.
This is a risky ven-
ture for someone perceived as a singer/songwriter. Smith
embraces it and delivers an absorbing work. On love
songs, most of the vocals were fragile and restrained
while wintertower teems with rumbles, drones, and
squalls.
Each disc holds nine songs. I listen to track seven on
wintertower, which shares the album’s name, a stormy
collage of electric guitar and manufactured sounds. Then
I skip back to love songs and listen to track seven, “in
your night,” a dark lullaby punctuated with barely audible
whispers. (Jessi Robertson)
myspace.com/davidshanesmith
Dibs
Dibs Bleeds Books
Dibson T. Hoffweiler has grown a lot as a musician over
the last couple of years. As one quarter of Urban Barn-
yard, he’s cut his teeth on dance-y rock, and as one of
the multitude of guitarists who come and go in
Huggabroomstik, he’s proven that he can find rhythm and
melody in even the greatest chaos. His solo CDs, though,
have always seemed a little rushed-through. Like maybe
a little more care could have been taken, that second
take could have been used… a little extra guitar here
and there, who knows?
On Dibs Bleeds Books, that extra care was obviously
taken, and the change is drastic. Drums and omnichords
and harmonies abound, building up into a kind of acous-
tic psychedelia not unlike demo-era Adam Green or the
first Neutral Milk Hotel EPs. On “Kite Strings” and “Caf-
feine Eyes” especially, this psychedelia makes me want
to throw out all of my old Pink Floyd records and trip out
to the sounds of multilayered vocals and angular, finger-
picked guitars.
The music always kind of takes the lead here, mostly
because Dibs’ singing isn’t something the listener latches
onto easily. I’ve always thought of Dibs as sounding a lot
like Transformer-era Lou Reed, where he realized he didn’t
have the widest singing range, and concentrated more
heavily on the arrangements. Further kudos to Dibs here:
 Stolen Brown Evergreen and friends cd release party
@ Goodbye Blue Monday - Thursday, May 31 at 9 pm
featuring Watersports, Stolen Brown Evergreen, Kansas State Flower, Deborah T!!!
while Mick Ronson was the mastermind behind the sound
of Transformer, Dibs played most of the instruments on
Bleeds Books himself.
That might be the great-
est testament to home
recording yet: forget
huge recording budgets,
esoteric movies about
The Wall, and banging
heroin with the producer
just to get through the
day. Dibs Bleeds Books
is as good a testimony
as any to the fact that
cool psychedelic music
can be made at home
with a tape machine and
(only) a little help from
your friends. (Brook Pridemore)
http://dibson.net/dibsbleedsbooks/
Huggabroomstik
Ultimate Huggabroomstik
Ultimate Huggabroomstik is a monster of an album. It
features 26 tracks, which range in duration from just un-
der two minutes to just over 14. It spans two CDs, and
lasts a little over 120 minutes. It hops genres from acous-
tic singer-songwriter (sort of) to indie-rock (sort of) to
electro-pop to experimental noise jams that border on
free jazz… the list goes on and on. It’s tempting to call
Ultimate Huggabroomstik a perfect album. It’s not, but
it’s definitely a masterpiece.
If Beck’s Stereopathetic Soul Manure knocked up The
Beatles’ White Album, this is sort of what the offspring
might be. The bleep-bloop lo-fi noisiness and schizo-
phrenic randomness of the former album is gleefully mated
to the double-album scope and, well... schizophrenic
randomness of the latter album.
For the uninitiated, the Huggabroomstik sound is sort of
like an audio clusterfuck. The two main components of
the group are Neil “MaSheenGun” Kelly and Dashan “Se-
cret Salamander” Coram, but the handsomely home-
made-looking booklet that accompanies the album lists
the album’s contributors as numbering 18 folks. Some-
times these folks are playing conventional-type rock or
pop “parts,” and sometimes they’re all just jamming out
and making a ruckus. There’s a constant layering of noise
on every track. Even in the more straightforward moments,
you can expect the ZAP of a child’s laser toy, the tin-
kling of a xylophone, or the rumble and peal of a theremin.
Ultimate Huggabroomstik’s two discs are loosely orga-
nized by theme. The first disc is titled “Time,” and kicks
things off with the most accessible tunes in the set. For
example, looking beyond the standard-issue fuzz, feed-
back, and wail of “The Sun Warms It’s Self” (AKA “In The
Sun”), the song is essentially a pop hit with a sing-along
chorus of “bah bah bah”s and a brass section.
Things don’t start to get really strange until “Duck Hunt,”
an epic, frequently mutating noise jam which, if it’s not
the best song on the album, is certainly the boldest.
Velvet Underground “Murder Mystery”-type voices dead-
pan different statements simultaneously into either of your
ears, Cookie Monster and Elmo giggle, a duck call
squeals out and makes a sound like a baby crying or an
Ornette Coleman solo, the drum machine kicks in, a pri-
mal violin (which also recalls Ornette Coleman) stabs at
the air. It’s trippy shit.
The second disc is titled “Space,” and it is the slightly
“farther out” of the two. It kicks off with a 13-minute slice
of noisy quirk rock called “Automatron” that sounds like
Pere Ubu if they were a late ‘60s psychedelic band, closing
with the David Bowie-esque “Message From Space.”
One of the main things that keeps two hours (plus!) of
noisy noise-rock from being insufferable, even as the band
indulges in a needlessly long nonsense track like “Tickle
My Time Machine” (itself reminiscent of Frank Zappa’s
needlessly long nonsense track “A Little Green Rosetta”),
is an overall childlike attitude. In addition to their frequent
use of toy soundscapes, Neil and Dashan always sing in
an open-hearted, unforced style that is immediately dis-
arming. “Throw Your Own Heart Away” kicks off with the
ultra-memorable lines “I hate to be a heartbreaker, but I
don’t know what else to do/So I won’t hesitate to cut
your heart in two,” delivered by Neil in a deep-voiced croon
so sincere-sounding that you can’t help but forgive the
guy. The lack of self-conscious snark when singing “It
was totally gay/In a cosmic way” during the chorus of
“Lesbian Prom Night In Space” successfully undermines
the 12-year-old-boy silliness of the line and allows the
listener to appreciate how catchy it is.
Ultimate Huggabroomstik is not for the weak of will, weak
of heart, or weak of stomach. It’s bold and crazy. It’s
hard to listen to. It’s brilliant. (Justin Remer)
www.huggabroomstik.com
Joe Cassady & The West End Sound
What’s Your Sign?
This is one well put-together album, and it should be.
The copyright credits on the songs date some of this
material back to 1999. All but one self-penned, Cassady’s
debut album is one of those life-time best ofs that start
out a recording career. The time he put into the disc was
 worth it, though: the
artist’s strengths have
been emphasized by
well designed
soundscapes and a
crackerjack band,
and his weaknesses
disguised by glorious
backing vocal parts
and restructuring of
the material to best
effect.
Cassady’s voice is
not a particularly limber one, but the choruses that rise
through “I’d Rather Be You” and “If I Wake Up” make
everything sound great. And the space-rock of the epony-
mous “What’s Your Sign?” prove the epic scope of what-
ever mythical tale Cassady describes in the lyrics.
The lyrics are something else. I’ve heard this guy lots of
times before, and I never realized the wealth within so
many of his songs. The literary references and the lyrical
ones both show that this Joe knows stories. “Sixteen
Coaches” is a deep blues rewrite of “Mystery Train,” al-
ready a pretty bluesy little number itself. “Mad Woman,”
the earliest written track here, seems to wittily evoke
Jane Eyre, saying, “I’d be the mad woman in the attic / If
I weren’t just this man in a one story house.” “Warren G.
Harding” reminds us of the Teapot Dome Scandal, as
well as Passover. How does Cassady do it? He’s obvi-
ously well read, and makes me want to be a more edu-
cated man. There are religious references in “St. Jude,”
as well as “What’s Your Sign?” There are mythological
references and puns in “Prometheus Bound” (with Ob-
jectivism subtly name-checked, to boot), historic and
political references in “Parrots & Napoleons,” pop cul-
ture references all over “Tonto’s Blues,” and “Can Opener”
is just great. There’s a lot to recommend this. While not
the hookiest songs in the world, they open, yielding fur-
ther benefits with each subsequent listen. (Jonathan
Berger)
http://www.myspace.com/joecassady
Misha
Mermaid Magic
Still Life
If you’ve ever seen Misha at an open mic, you’d probably
remember her. Amidst the six-string-strumming, Y-chro-
mosome-having would-be balladeers, Misha stands out
because... she’s a woman with a bass (and she’s not in
a rock band, either).
If you’ve ever heard Misha play more than a song or two,
then you know her real instrument of interest isn’t that
bass, it’s her voice. Strangely chameleonic, her voice
changes from a sensual Eartha Kitt purr to a harrowing
Diamanda Galas howl to a Stevie Nicks growl. Usually
she sticks with one approach per ditty, but sometimes

Peter’s Pick
Kelsey Bennett
CD-Sampler
Kelsey Bennett has a new album out, Follow the Swan, a raw, sharp follow-up 2005’s Pucker. Its single features
“People Know” and “Maybe Someday.” On the CD is the link to Kelsey’s myspace page where, in addition to the
beautiful graphics attached to her new album, I found a picture of her playing at Sidewalk and heard a soulful piano
song, my favorite so far, called “About Bein’ Certain,” recorded live. The next myspace selection, which is on the
CD single, is called “Maybe Someday.” In it she reminds us that the work required for two people to maintain a
relationship can become a chore.
The other song from the CD single is, “People Know.” Completing the sentence is the phrase, “what I’m talking
about.” I liked the lyric that acknowledges winners placing first and last in a spelling bee. The song loops out on
the question: “What am I talking about?” Answer: “Just what I’m talking about.”
Rumor has it that Kelsey’s grandfather is the inspiring Tony Bennett. He’s a ubiquitous fellow, continuing to define
(has it already been 80 years?) what it means to lead a full life. He paints, he sings. I have his 78s. He sang at my
parents’ wedding. He recorded that great crooner ballad, “I Won’t Cry Anymore,” and the indelible “Because of
You,” adapted with impressions by Sammy Davis Jr., as well as some great covers with Count Basie, and so
much else since 1958 that I simply haven’t heard, revealing my limitations to make any astute comments about
his monumental contribution to jazz singing.
The Bennett family is following a music tradition, with the Bennett recording studios in Englewood and the Frank
Sinatra High School of performing arts in Long Island City, a school which I know (from working with one of its
students) is producing some singing stars of the future. Hopefully crooner training is in the curriculum because the
only person I know currently devoted to that tradition is Adam Green. In fact, we all can take a hint from the illusion
of soft singing; it can be singing at its most intense.
Kelsey’s other myspace selection, “Nothing Grows,” from Pucker, actually sounds more middle-of-the-road “atti-
tude” pop. The newer material suggests a rawer side, like she’s developing and regressing in leaps and bounds,
which is what I would call very promising. I look forward to seeing her in a live performance. (Peter Dizozza)
myspace.com/kbsongs
she tries out a juxtaposition of two. Whatever she does,
she does it to wring the emotion out of every line of her
songs (in fact, her niftiest trick is that when she occa-
sionally sings a little off-key, you expect it’s from being
overcome with emotion
rather than technical
inexactitude).
On “My Song” from
Mermaid Magic, Misha
takes the somewhat
laughable concept of
an ode to oneself – “I
love you, Misha,” she
declares and later
mentions, “No one’s
writing any songs
about me, so I’m writ-
ing this one about myself” – and instills it with so much
truthful emotion that the solitude of the piece trumps the
silliness. Similarly, the dirge-y “Lowly Bassplayer” takes
a simple musician’s lament and drenches it in melodrama,
making it memorable. Overall, Mermaid Magic has a
homemade lo-fi sound, which is to its advantage. When
Misha’s voice overmodulates or the bass crackles, it adds
to the overwrought atmosphere. The earlier recording Still
Life has a much smoother sound, which is in some ways
disappointing, but has its own benefits.
While Mermaid Magic’s strength lies in its focus – nine
sharply written and performed songs, lasting under 40
minutes – Still Life is an excellent chunk of mood music,
sprawling out to an hour. Apart from the bookend ver-
sions of the quite good ballad “Low,” and a few other
scattered tracks, it’s hard to completely focus on Still
Life. The howl and growl are gone; she mostly settles for
an otherworldly croon, reminiscent of the atmospheric
work Julee Cruise did with David Lynch. For this reason,
Still Life is too ethereal to listen to actively. Still Life is
better suited to “soaking in,” while you’re cooking pasta
or reading Camus and drinking wine… or whatever the
hell it is that you do. (Justin Remer)
www.myspace.com/mishabass
Tim Emmerick and Cold Front County
North
Tim Emmerick’s North is an album full of stories. That’s
probably one of its key strengths. Emmerick packs
enough evocative detail into his lyrics that he tells a story
with every song, even if it’s not explicitly a story-song.
The drawback is that, if you don’t read the lyrics sheet
handily stuck in the packaging for the CD, it’s easy to
lose the thread of the words.
North kicks off (somewhat deceptively) with a rip-snortin’
bit of butt-rock called “Black River Bridge,” which deliv-
ers its tale of underage hot-rodding thrills with the help of
a searing lead guitar that brings to mind the classic South-
ern-fried rock of Skynyrd or the more recent country-rock
forays of Waylon’s boy, Shooter Jennings.
Even though Emmerick and his backing band Cold Front
County turn the amps up now and again throughout the
rest of the album, the majority of North is far less con-
cerned with butt-rocking. Sticking to mid- or down-tempo
introspective tunes, Emmerick plumbs much the same
alt-country territory as Ryan Adams.
Unfortunately, like Adams, Emmerick is sometimes in
danger of losing his listeners because of his refusal to
whip his songs into shape. While not exactly lacking
structure, the songs on North seem hookless.
Emmerick’s storytelling usually leaves no room for
conventional pop-music choruses, and with the average
tune clocking in at a little over four minutes, it is frankly
hard for the casual listener to latch onto the narratives
Emmerick tries to tell. I had to listen to the album three
times before anything besides “Black River Bridge” took
hold in my memory, and even then, I couldn’t sing you a
line off the top of my head.
That said, “Storm” is an effective piano ballad in the Ben
Folds mold, and “Intentions Fade” hits the right note of
clap-along barn-dance Americana, standing as two of the
album’s highlights. Meanwhile, the album-closer “Mercy”
strives for the scope of a “Tuesday’s Gone”-type ’70s-
rock yearning epic, and almost pulls it off. (Justin Remer)
www.timemmerick.com
Various Artists
Crowin’ at the Creek and the Cave
Hot on the heels of February’s Anticomp Folkilation,
Public Records has released its own acoustic comp, like
the Lach’s AntiHoot al-
bum from ten years
before, this latest al-
bum has a narrow fo-
cus. Crowin’ was re-
corded exclusively at
the Tuesday night LIC
open mic, featuring 19
tracks from open mic
regulars, including
past and present Ur-
ban Folk contributors
Jon Berger, Paul
Alexander, Brian
Speaker and Debe Dalton. Dalton, in fact, reprises her
track off of Anticomp, “Ed’s Song.” It is not just the only
song Dalton has released, but the only one she’s re-
leased twice. The grim laughter she adds to certain lines
separates this version from last month’s.
Tom Drake, head honcho of Public Records, recorded
multiple Tuesdays for podcast. He contributes his own
“Everytime We Shake Hands.” The sound on that track,
and several others, is inconsistent, unsurprising for a live
album, but several tracks sound wonderful. Best Blanket
on “The Way it Used To Be” and Zach James’ second
number “I’m on Fire” are stellar, and the best recordings
I’ve heard from them - and the only ones. Brian Mathias
 The ARTIST WORKER ACTION LEAGUE & URBAN FOLK
present Wednesday, May 16 th

DIGITAL RADIO NEWS

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is in great voice. Perhaps the best benefit of this album (technically true; you can do the math). Most of the line-
over other scenist comps is that there is utter absence up has changed dramatically over the years, but new
of celebrity. The most famous person on the disc is prob- addition Jude Kastle (another LES stalwart) keeps the
ably Debe Dalton – and she ain’t moving copies (though harmonies (always a vital element of Wurschum’s com-
that’s not so important at Public Records, which offers positional style) elegant and exciting. Always at the fore-
its recording for free download at the website. You can front though, are Wurschum’s high vocals, pure pop in-
pay for it, but you don’t have to). Crowin’ at the Creek and
stincts and a bubbling darkness. Think 70s California,
the Cave is mostly free of politics; it’s the best songs byflavored with some prog rock.
the best artists, according to the tastes of A band that looks back for its influ-
the bossman at Public Records. Or so he ence, the Voyces sometimes re-
told me; and I have to believe it. I’m the last prise old material. Some of the
act on the album. (Jonathan Berger) cuts on Kissing Like it’s Love
publicrecordsaudio.com harken back to earlier ages for the
group. Not that therre’s anything
The Voyces wrong with that. “Hair up High” is
Kissing Like it’s Love heart-breaking. “Call it Home” is
Finally, all the world can learn of the maj- heartening. “Lovers in the Sky” is
esty of the Voyces. Toiling in East Village heavy, more of an idea than a
obscurity since their arrival in 1999, this song. “You’re in Charge of Driving
group (previously the Voices; also known as the Narcotics Trolley, and You’re
majority DOG, and, for a very short pre-New Doing an Excellent Job” is a hell of
York period, Zelig) has signed on to the small a long title.
but substantial Planting Seeds Records. It’s a good thing. The ten cuts are a fairly quick listen. You should do it,
The group, led by mainstay songwriter/guitarist/vocalist preferably with headphones. It’s definitely best to hear
Brian Wurschum, has produced some excellent sweet the Voyces in your head. (Jonathan Berger)
pop that small crowds have enjoyed for two millennia thevoyces.net
 Out Now!
The Undisputed Heavyweights
((stereo))

the bootleg series volume 1

The Undisputed Heavyweights Live From New York City
Money \ Lartigue \ Bitches Be Trippin' \ Roll Your Windows Down \ Back To You \ Just For Laughs \ A Girl Like You
Live From New York City (FR-001)
This first release in The Bootleg Series captures
a scorching live performance. Limited edition, 20%
of proceeds go to The Sowbackya Illam Children's
Home in India and The National Breast Cancer
Foundation. The Heavyweights have a residency at
Joe’s Pub June/July/August. BetterThanElvis.com
((family records))

Cross-Pollination: The Mixtape

The Mixtape Vol. 1
Volume 1 (FR-002 / Digital Only)
Features free, exclusive downloads from some of
the most exciting past performers that were part of
the weekly Cross-Pollination concert series at Pianos.
Includes My Brightest Diamond, Jeffrey Lewis, Kevin
Devine, The Undisputed Heavyweights, Matt Singer,
Wakey!Wakey!, Jay Mankind, Cloud Cult and more.
((family records))
Download now for free at LiberatedMatter.com

Jeff Jacobson (FR-003)

The long-awaited solo debut of Jeff Jacobson of
The Undisputed Heavyweights featuring 10 of his
best songs. Partial proceeds will go to City Harvest.
“Jeff Jacobson is clearly one of the best in the scene.
Intricate rhythms, poignant lyrics, and a dynamite
vocal delivery.” - Gabriel Levitt (Jezebel Music)
Jeff Jacobson JeffJacobson.net

Also from Liberated Matter

Cross-Pollination : A weekly concert series featuring some of the most exciting talent New
York has to offer. Two artists each play an individual 40 minute set, followed by a 3-song
collaborative set, leading to unexpected and often spectacular musical results. Every Tuesday
at Pianos (158 Ludlow St. by Stanton, 8-10pm, FREE! 136 weeks and running!
For info on releases, music placement, concert promotion and more visit LiberatedMatter.com
(c) & (p) 2007 Liberated Matter. All rights reserved.
((family records))