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Nick A. Zaino,
III: March, 2001
This
Boston, Not A City in Texas that Rhymes Fairly Well With It
February
was an abbreviated month, and here are my abbreviated thoughts,
peppered by a bit of navel gazing.
I spent an extraordinary amount of time this month focusing
on my own music rather than other people’s stuff, getting
out and trying to play again and talking with musicians at
gigs as a musician rather than as a writer. It’s a different
perspective, but I suppose the writer and the musician are
always there, battling it out. Sometimes I picture a tiny
set of Rock’em Sock’em Robots in my head, trying to knock
the other one out so it can stand on that big, yellow platform
all by itself. I know this isn’t a unique position to be in.
Hell, just about everyone who writes for Performing Songwriter
is in this same position. But you wind up having some interesting
conversations.
I found myself talking with Dave Sammarco about alt.country,
comparing record collections and talking about where the music
might eventually lead. Sammarco is a pure country gentleman
with Steve Earle-like grit and twang, starting to get some
well-deserved attention on the Boston scene. He’s just about
to release his second album, the follow-up to last year’s
Unless It’s Yours. He hosts an open mike night at a
local bar, playing his own stuff and mixing it up with cover
tunes from folks like Social Distortion and the Replacements.
That was the setting that led to our on-again, off-again conversation.
We had just decided that Uncle Tupelo is your best friend
after a break-up (his vote is for Anodyne, mine is
for Still Feel Gone), when he said he thinks Boston
might be the new center for roots music. Not sure if he meant
Boston or New England in general, actually. But damned if
there aren’t a lot of us out here listening to and playing
roots music. Ray Mason out in Northampton just released a
new Ray Mason Band disc and a new Lonesome Brothers disc (with
partner Jim Armenti). The Heygoods and the Tarbox Ramblers
are spreading traditional sounds around the city proper. The
Raging Teens and the Bourbonaires are out and about playing
rockabilly and swing just about every night of the week. The
Rivergods, out in New London, CT, are playing fine Reckoning-era
REM rock with a bevy of traditional influences. Alastair Moock
is pushing Boston players to examine their own roots with
his roving Pastures of Plenty series. There’s a lot going
on here.
That doesn’t mean Boston is about to break the No Depression
scene wide open again on a national level. At least I hope
that doesn’t happen. Because that would mean that I’m just
grasping the scope of this diverse scene as it fades away,
as any great scene does shortly after it breaks. But I’ve
run across a lot of these folks in my travels, and I can vouch
for a bunch of them that they are in it for the music, which
is why I believe there will always be a roots scene, apart
from whatever is happening in pop culture. A lot of these
folks like to explore tradition, and then stomp all over it
to see what pops out. (I wonder, sometimes, if this music
could be compared to that last scene in Easy Rider when Dennis
Hopper and Peter Fonda catch a shotgun blast from the guys
in the pick-up truck, if alt.country is the biker or the guy
in the truck.)
But,
there are other scenes to reckon with, and sometimes we swap.
Boston will be losing Bill Small in a few months, as he leaves
Boston to set up camp in the shadow of Graceland. As Vance
Gilbert once said, or more appropriately, screamed passionately,
Small is taking it all to Tennessee, to work in publishing
in Nashville. If his first album, Singin, is any indication,
he should have good luck out there. Small writes with a sheen
shinier than Dolly Parton's teeth, and has a nuanced vocal
delivery to back up the tunes. I guess no matter how good
your scene is, roots folk like to travel.
So where does that leave me? Trying to review albums, some
good, some not, while marveling at anyone who can actually
manage to get the damned things out in the first place. It
takes a lot of will and know-how just to get your stuff committed
to tape (or CD, if you know someone with Pro Tools), which
I am finding out as I try to get my own stuff down. That,
in itself, deserves some respect. But that doesn’t mean that
I don’t want to beat Garth Brooks to death with his own hat,
or that I don’t cringe when I hear about the Country Music
Awards. I guess it just means that I will keep beating the
crap out of myself until I, and they, get it right, and I’ll
keep writing about it along the way.
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Nick's
Reviews: January, 2001
Nick's
Reviews: December, 2000
Nick's
Reviews: November, 2000
Nick
Zaino's Random Thoughts: February, 2001
Nick
Zaino's Random Thoughts: January, 2001
Nick
Zaino's Random Thoughts: December, 2000
Nick
Zaino's Random Thoughts: November, 2000
Nick
Zaino's Random Thoughts: October, 2000
Nick
Zaino's Random Thoughts: September, 2000
About
Nick
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