On December 28 I’ll be joining Tom Rush for his traditional year-end Club 47 Concert at Symphony Hall in Boston. Along with band-mates Marshal Rosenberg and Joe Mennonna I am looking forward to another amazing evening of music. Look who’s along for the ride this year!
Ten lost souls in a sad café Prayin’ like hell to keep the devil away Me all alone at a microphone Tryin’ to get my song to the heart of the audience
I was trudging down Broadway in the rain back in 1981, my umbrella in front of me against the wind. When I literally ran into Marshal Rosenberg who was trudging up Broadway. Our umbrella’s smashed into one another and we bounced back on our heels in a real Three Stooges moment. OK, a Two Stooges moment.
“Wow, I was just thinking about you”, he said “’cause Tom Rush needs a bass player and you can sing too! I told him he should call you.” Well, OK then. Eight million people in the Naked City and I literally run into a life-changing gig, just like that.
Marshal and I became Tom’s rhythm section and for the next 15 years we did some amazing shows including the now legendary Club 47 Concert Series. We played at Symphony Hall in Boston, The Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, numerous sheds and festivals, a PBS special and other TV shows. The Club 47 shows featured guest artists like: Steve Goodman, Emmy Lou Harris, Bonnie Raitt, Judy Collins, David Bromberg, Mimi Farena, Maria Muldaur, Christine Lavin, Patty Larkin, Shawn Colvin, Jennifer Warnes, Peter Rowan, even Bo Diddley showed up once. It was a travelling tent show, a veritable who’s who of Americana and we backed up everyone.
Tom had a circle of musicians in his band including David Buskin and Robin Batteau. I had known them from working and hanging out at the various NYC music clubs uptown and in The Village.
Around that time David and Robin landed staff writing jobs with two different music production companies and were about to change the Ad Music landscape of American broadcasting with killer hooks like: “The Heartbeat of America” (Chevrolet), “Be All That You Can Be” (The US Army), “Good Times Great Taste” (McDonalds), “Your True Voice” (AT&T) and so many other campaigns that you’d be hard pressed to turn on a radio or TV and NOT hear one of their tunes.
That success gave them freedom to promote their own careers. Marshal and I tagged along for the ride and the four of us had a ball. We were selling out shows up and down the East coast. What kept the audience coming back however, were not the jingles. It was their songs and their personalities. They are two of the smartest songwriters I ever met: intelligent lyrics paired with glorious melodies and rich harmony. Equal parts vaudevillians and troubadours, their performances can leave and audience in tears of laughter or emotion. Honestly, if I didn’t see it with my own eyes I wouldn’t believe it either! They are eclectic and unique that’s for sure.
Stuff happens, careers evolve and people move on.
Maybe it's my destiny Maybe it's my star Maybe I'm just too dumb to quit
Since those days we’ve stayed in touch and seen each other from time to time. We did the occasional recording session or a show now and then. Marshal was in the Bacon Brothers with me for 10 years. We all stayed in the biz and continued to make music. In fact, for the last five or six years B&B have reunited with Marshal and tour as a trio. They’re out there reconnecting with old fans and finding new ones. They even cut a great new record called Love Remembered, Love Forgot produced by Neale Eckstein.
David Buskin, Robin Batteau and Marshal Aaron Rosenberg out in the the sun “in a field full of folkies”!
Last May they invited me to join them for a show. It was the most fun I’ve had with my clothes on in a long time. So we booked a date at The Turning Point on November 14. I’ll be opening and they’ll join me on a couple of my tunes then I’ll join them for a full set.
Well that old '68 keeps jumpin' the track
And if the women don't kill me I'll keep comin' back
To the only lover I never deceived, the one that I just can't leave
The heart of the audience
- from "The Heart Of The Audience by Buskin and Batteau
I can’t wait to sing and play with my old friends again. Hope to see you there.
http://www.buskinandbatteau.com/
No YouTube video can do them justice but check out classic B&B gems like: “Guinevere”, “When I Need You Most Of All”, “Boy With The Violin”, “Outside” or “These Nights”. It’s songwriting of the highest caliber.
I landed a great gig at Infinity Hall in Norfolk, Connecticut on Oct 26. It’s great for two reasons:
Over the years I’ve been fortunate enough to cross paths with David and his band at concerts and festivals. Most recently at the Tom Rush 50th Anniversary Concert at Symphony Hall last December. There, as on other occasions I got to play bass behind him for his part of the show. For those of you who have followed David over the years you know what an honor it is to be in that exalted position. For a few minutes at least I was in The David Bromberg Band.
David’s a “cat”. I love listening to his road stories, and lord knows he has road stories. No, I will not give anything away here. But I will tell one of my own.
I was on a tour with Tom Rush when his band consisted of me, David Buskin, Robin Batteau and Marshal Rosenberg. It was the mid-eighties and Bromberg was deep into the study of violin making. David was on the bill with us that night. We were all off stage left while Tom was doing his three song solo segment in the middle of the concert. Batteau (who is a violinist) was talking with Bromberg about his instrument. He asked David what he thought of his violin. David took it from Robin. He examined it closely and with a very serious look in his eyes pointed to one part of the body he said: “do you see this part right here”? Then he lifted it to his mouth and bit off a section of the binding. Batteau was speechless. The rest of us were trying to stifle our laughter. Tom Rush looked sternly our way from the stage as we were convulsing. Then we had to go out and play the Robin Batteau opus: “The Boy With the Violin”! Perfect.
At Symphony Hall (2012) with David Bromberg on dobro with Tom, Marshal and me. Yes, that’s Robin holding “the violin” all is forgiven. With David Buskin far left and Trevor Veitch far right.
David is too cool to have an ego about it but he is admired by and even a hero to musicians worldwide. I discovered him through my manager Allan Pepper who, handing me a promotional LP of David’s 1972 self-titled first release on Columbia Records said: “listen and learn”. By then he was already a legendary sideman in the Greenwich Village folk scene for people like Bob Dylan, Jerry Jeff Walker, Tom Paxton and others. He was an in demand session player and had even written a song with George Harrison called “The Holdup” which was on that Columbia record.
What I love about him is his eclecticism. He is a bluegrass picker, a blues man and a rocker. He is fluent in jazz and jug band. He is a songwriter and an amazing entertainer who could hold the audience in a trance one minute and have them in a fit of laughter the next. Many of his records are an unusual mix of live and studio recordings because David was equally at home on stage as in the studio. The studio is never the “sterile environment” critics sometimes claim it can be when David is making music. For him, technology is at the service of performance.
Thanks for letting me open the show David. I hope music lovers within driving distance of Infinity Hall take this opportunity to come out and see what I’m sure will be an unforgettable evening of music.
Photo by: Neale Eckstein
I must have sung on the Bitter End stage a hundred times or more. But every time I step onto that carpeted flat with the exposed brick wall behind me I get a chill. Not the scary or nervous kind of chill but the excited, “I can’t believe I’m doing this” kind of thrill-chill. Yeah, I’ll call it a thrill-chill… there’s a new phrase for you.
Kris Kristofferson compared The Bitter End to the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Like the Ryman it is “the mother church” of clubs. (The Bitter End: Hanging Out At America’s Night Club, page xiii forward by Kris Kristofferson).
Over the last few years, I’ve been invited to participate a series of themed fund-raising events at The Bitter End, which are organized by my friend Peter Bliss. Peter runs the New York Songwriters Collective so a bunch of us sing one of our tunes or cover a song that we think fits the theme of the night.
Mary Ellen Bernard and Paul at The Bitter End – “Occupy Hearts & Minds” benefit.
Seeing all the young songwriters take the stage got me thinking about the first time I ever went there. It was fall of 1969 and I was in my senior year of high school. I went to see John Sebastian who had recently done an iconic unscheduled performance at The Woodstock Music And Art Fair that August. I had never been to see music outside of a school dance or once when the WMCA Good Guys came to Christ The King HS and did one of their Top-40 radio pop shows.
Since The Summer of Love (1967) I had been venturing into Manhattan with some of my music buddies after school and buying The Village Voice and The East Village Other and sneaking them up to my bedroom. I soon found there was another world drawing me across the East River.
One night my new band-mate Dan Daley and I trained it down to The Village. We took the F train to the West 4th Street stop. Coming up from the subway at The Waverly Theater we found our way to Bleecker Street and eventually into the Bitter End.
I don’t remember what it cost or how we paid but I do remember a doorman who has a distinct post beat vibe to him: mustache, short beard and dark rim glasses. He was probably only 25 but seemed to me like an old guy. (Jeez, what must I look like to a high-schooler?) It was not a bar as it is today. It was a coffee house, so no need for us to pull out the fake ID. Instead of cabaret tables and chairs there were church pews lined up in front of the stage. We slid into the second row a few feet away from center stage. A nascent hippie waitress, probably a student at NYU took our order. I’m sure I had some kind of espresso concoction. The word latte was not in the pop culture lexicon yet.
Then I realized I was looking at that exposed brick wall of the stage. I recognized it from the first Peter Paul And Mary album. I used to listen to it in my school library. That brick wall said a lot to me. It was raw and unfinished, always a work in progress. I came from a polite world of trim, clean and finished (some might say faux-finished) things. This was different. I liked being different and being in this place made me different. Immediately.
Then, John Sebastian was introduced. He charmed us with his remarkable songs and musicianship. But there was something else. He talked to us. He told stories. He was hip. And, he was ten feet away from me. It is a cliché but it is true. It was like being in his living room. The intimacy of the experience was something I had never experienced up until that night. I could see his fingers on the neck of the guitar, hear his voice present and clear, watch his face and eyes as he sang and talked. I thought to myself that this is what music is supposed to be like.
I think I’ve been chasing that spirit ever since. I’d like to think that I catch it from time to time in my own performance.
That was the first of many nights I would spend in the audience at the Bitter End. Little did I know that I would also be on that stage more times than I could have imagined.
REVIVAL: (L to R) Paul, Mike Malfesi, Dan Daley, Michelle Conway-Reiff
As it turned out, much of my music career for the next fifteen years was spent within a five-block radius of the Bitter End. As a member of the band Revival (as in folk Revival) or as a side man or band leader I would play at The Gaslight, The Village Gate, Folk City, the Café Wha?, The Back Fence, Kenny’s Castaways and, of course, The Bottom Line.
For me, and many others it started with The Bitter End. What that room has meant to the New York music scene and the world-wide music and entertainment industry can not be underestimated. The list of poets, comedians and musicians who started there or performed there is truly mind blowing. Take a look at Fred Weintraub’s page.
Neil Diamond (1962) in front of the club. Notice The Tin Angel which was a restaurant upstairs from the Bitter End also run by Fred Weintraub and Paul Colby. Joni Mitchell titled a song for it.
Fred was the original owner before Paul Colby bought it in 1974. Paul has a book called The Bitter End: Hanging Out At America’s Nightclub. Check it out too.
Here’s a video of me and Mary Ellen Bernard performing there for Occupy Hearts And Minds back in 2012.
Finally, I post this blog in the memory of Ken Kelly “The Mayor Of Bleecker Street” who passed away on August 13, 2013. “Kelly” manned the door and watched out for everyone at the Bitter End for 26 years from 1987 to 2013.
RIP Ken Kelly – “The Mayor Of Bleecker Street”
Save th
is date! On June 20, I’ll play my first show in the New York area to celebrate the release of Chasing the Moon. I’ll be at The Turning Point in the lovely Hudson River town of Piermont, NY. This intimate room has hosted a lot of great musicians and has been a favorite of area music lovers for many years. See my tour schedule for complete info.
I’ll be joined by the incomparable guitarist Ira Siegel, my old friend and Bacon Brothers bandmate. If you’re anywhere in the vicinity I hope you join me for a great evening. We’re hoping to pack the place so bring friends!
Meanwhile, if you haven’t already sampled some songs from my CD, check them out right here on the site.
My first solo release in many years – Chasing the Moon – is now officially available! It’s already gotten two reviews: in Sound Waves and GeekMom Blog. Downloads and CD’s are available right here on the Music & Store page as well as at CD Baby, iTunes and other online stores.
Chasing the Moon is a mini collection of songs I’ve written over the past few years whenever I could steal time from my other projects: composing and producing music for corporate events; performing with The Bacon Brothers; and teaching at Pace University.
Since we’re a pretty small operation and we have a lot on our plate, we’ll be getting this off the ground rather gradually. But I hope to be performing in a club near you at some point, at least in the Northeast to start. Meanwhile, you can help by: (1) signing up for my mailing list in the News & Gig Alerts box or by clicking here and (2) sharing my site link with a thousand or so of your closest friends or just telling them about my music! Thanks and hope you enjoy Chasing the Moon.
L to R: Paul, Deejay Neil Armstrong, Violinist Valerie Vigoda, Marimbist Brian Slawson.
For my company, Triple Z Music, I composed the score for the press reveal of the 2014 Cadillac CTS which happened just this week. First is the “talking heads” video with my underscore. Then after the executive speech (about 6 minutes in) you’ll see the actual reveal with our 3 musicians performing my piece to some great video. Kudos to our stellar players – Brian Slawson on classical marimba, Valerie Vigoda on electric violin and deejay Neil Armstrong manning the turntables. Listen/watch!
One of the great pleasures of my career has been working with Tom Rush in performances around the country and particularly in his Club 47 holiday concerts at Symphony Hall in Boston. This year Tom revived the Symphony Hall tradition to celebrate his 50 years of music making. Thanks, Tom, for making me a part of this great show with Jonathan Edwards, David Bromberg, Dom Flemons of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Buskin and Batteau, Eric Lilljequist, Dean Adrien, Trevor Veitch and my fellow house-band members Joe Mennonna and Marshal Rosenberg.
“We go round and round and round in a circle game.” – Joni Mitchell
One day, some years ago, I was standing on the corner of 8th Avenue and 38th Street in New York City talking with Brian Connie. He was one of the many performing songwriter-musicians that I was hired to work with at the time. We had just finished practicing in “the music building,” a decrepit low-rent rehearsal loft space just south of 42nd Street. (This was during the bad old pre-Disney days of Times Square.)
We were talking about why we do what we do. Brian said, “It was the Beatles man! After I saw them, that was it! That’s all I ever wanted to do.” Not one to pass up a great song title, I walked back home to my apartment on 101st and West End and wrote a song: “All I Ever Wanted to Do”. They say write what you know… That was a long time ago and here I am. Still loving what I do.
My new web site gives me the ability to keep doing it and to stay in touch with all my friends, fans and music buddies. Stop by and visit from time to time – and please, sign up for my gig alerts!
My deepest thanks and love to my creative partner Mary Ellen for helping to make it happen. And let me give a very special shout out to web guru Lydia Hutchinson for her advice and talent.