Around Hear
Jim Strahm medical fundraiser number two takes place this Saturday, May 13, with a star-studded lineup at the City Market, featuring Southern Culture on the Skids, Alejandro Escovedo, Parlay, a reunited Billy Goat, and an acoustic set from Paw. For more proof of Midwestern Music mainstay Strahm’s historic involvement in the scene, Paw’s Grant Fitch offers this brief but telling recollection: “I bought one of my first guitars from him.”
I like girls who wear Hennessey and Fitch
Speaking of Paw, original vocalist Mark Hennessey is back in the fold after a brief hiatus during which Season to Risk’s Steven Tulipana took his place. Now, however, Lawrence’s legendary Paw is gearing up for a new release, the first collection of material in almost five years, and Fitch couldn’t be happier.
“Mark and I fell in and out of love periodically over the last 11 years. It’s happened a couple of times too many, but we’re remarried and going to live happily ever after,” Fitch says, noting there was no ill will toward Tulipana that prompted him to take up with his former partner again. “I think when this record deal came around, it was clear that Mark and I had some unfinished business, and we’re excited to finish it together.”
That unfinished business will be released in August and is titled Home is a Strange Place. It’s actually been in the can for about two years now, dating back to when Paw was still affiliated with A&M, the label that released its first two records, Dragline and Death to Traitors. “We had originally recorded the tunes as demos, but A&M was on its way out at that point and the writing was definitely on the wall,” Fitch says of the days before it was released in the Great Label Massacre of early 1999. “We sort of held on to our guns, and another year passed, and another year came, and I started listening to them and I thought, ‘Man, these are really killer tunes, and the basics are really happening.’ So I set to work on finishing up the vocals and doing some overdubs, mixed it last spring, and then I started shopping it.”
Koch International was the label that ultimately picked up the record, which, oddly, makes Paw labelmates with the Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA. “Michael Koch is no dummy,” Fitch says. “He’s wanting to do hardcore urban, and he’s wanting to do hard rock, and he doesn’t want to mince words about what’s in the middle. He doesn’t really want the alternative, and he doesn’t necessarily want folk. They’re trying to get a vibe going like in the Def American days, where they had Rick Rubin working with Beastie Boys and Run-DMC, and then he’d work with Slayer — sort of all over the place, but very meticulously all over the place.”
Fitch says he’s fairly certain that the outlook is good (even though the band is still on the lookout for a permanent drummer), especially compared with the shoddy treatment Paw got at the hands of its former label. “Mark and I were in New York last week for some label meetings and a photo shoot, and it was kind of weird. We went into the perfunctory roundtable boardroom with the president of the label and the head of A&R, and they hashed it out. They put the CD on and talked about the single, and they talked about their plan,” he recalls. “It was supposed to come out in July, and I think kind of all at once everybody looked at each other and said, ‘We really need to make this work; let’s push it to August.’ If I had been 20, I probably would have pounded my fist and said, ‘No, dammit, we want our record out.’ But being 32 and coming up on 12 years in this, I was very happy to hear them say, ‘We want to really set this up.’ It made me feel good about the label; they’re really thinking about it.”
Home is a Strange Place isn’t the only Paw record Koch will be serving up. The label has given the green light for Paw to start working on some brand new stuff and is going to re-release Death to Traitors, which didn’t get much of a chance on its initial entry into stores. “My running joke is if you listened hard enough, you could almost hear the record not coming out. The record came out in the beginning of August ’95 and … all the posters and flats and stuff weren’t even printed until September. It was clearly a label that was on its way down,” he explains. “When Dragline came out, A&M was on the upswing of Soundgarden, Sheryl Crow, Gin Blossoms, Sting — a lot of success. I think the powers that be all watched their personal stock go through the ceiling, and they one by one sort of filtered away. By the time the second came out, we were working with the B crew — a lot of people who really didn’t know how to work a record label, and a lot of people who shouldn’t have had jobs there in the first place.”
That’s all water under the bridge now, though, and Fitch says that he’s mellowed out a bit and is trying to stay focused on what’s important. “I used to be really hands-on, and some would even say a control freak, but I swear to you I just don’t care anymore. You can sit up all night and worry about what the label’s going to do to your single, you can read through 15 treatments for a video, you can kick and scream about where they’re going to place your ads, and you know what? It doesn’t matter at all. They’re either into it or they’re not,” he says. “It sounds very un-indie, but at this stage in my life, I’ve got a lot of other stuff going on. It’s okay for me to say, ‘Okay, I want to write great rock and roll songs, I want to be heavily involved in the production of those songs, I want to make sure the artwork is representative of where we’re at’ and other than that, just let people deal with their jobs, and hopefully they’ll do them right.”
With that said, Fitch is still thankful to get a do-over. “I feel very lucky that Mark and I have another chance to not only work together but to make another record,” he says. “It’s interesting to get together and to be writing again and playing again and looking at each other like, ‘This is really still a vital partnership, this is going to be good.'” The Hunt is on
Those who have been waiting almost seven long years for blues/jazz lady Kelley Hunt to put out record number two have somewhat of a treat coming up. Not only will they get it in June, but they also can be there when it’s recorded.
“I think the idea of doing a live CD for me is real appropriate, because I play so much and I’m real comfortable in a live setting,” Hunt says. “I think it just gives a better representation of what I actually do. It’s different than being in front of an audience, kind of a different level of adrenaline and, you know, you tend to improvise more.”
She’ll be joined at Grand Emporium on Thursday, May 11, and Liberty Hall the next night by The Kelley Hunt Band, of course, as well as alumni from her first self-titled record, tenor saxophonist Lon Price, Mike Finnigan on Hammond B3, and other special guests who’ll fly in just for the event. “I thought it would be fun to bring in the players that I just love to work with and have worked with me before and that can bring something to the music to make it real fun for the audience,” she theorizes, adding that what you hear will be what you get. “When I say live, I mean absolutely live. There will be no overdubbing, no fixing, no re-singing, nothing. Just me jumping off the cliff.”
Between the shows and the disc’s release, Hunt will still keep herself busy playing everywhere she can and collecting residual checks from the flick Shall We Dance, which featured one of her tunes. In addition to those duties, this summer she’s taping a segment for PBS’ Backstage Pass.
“They’re going to film me at a place in Lincoln, Nebraska, called The Zoo Bar,” she says. “It’s got history up the wazoo, and it’s been there forever. It’s not very big; it’s kind of what Grand Emporium was fashioned after, only now Grand Emporium is twice as big. The Zoo Bar is this funky old blues place with a great vibe and wonderful audiences and the stage is teeny-tiny.” Now how’s that for a reason to support public broadcasting?
Bowing out
There will be a tinge of tragedy when The Joey Skidmore Band takes the stage at The Waldo Bar on Friday, May 19, since the show will be a tribute to late keyboardist Joe Terry, who died on April 11, 2000. “He played with us for a year, and he’d been playing since the ’70s,” Skidmore says. “He played in a bunch of traveling bands in the ’70s and ’80s and kind of did a little bit of everything. I know he played in kind of a Spandex heavy metal band, and he played in one all-black band down south.”
Guitarist Mike Costelow was the person who first suggested that Terry hook up with the group early last year, Skidmore says. “He was jamming with him on a side project called The Redcoats — they were kind of like a ’60s cover band, and he kept hitting me up with the idea of getting him into the band,” he recalls. “He got Terry over one time, and Terry sounded good, and we had this private party outside of Chicago that weekend. He sounded so good we invited him along. He was with us pretty much ever since.”
That is, up until last month, when Terry decided it was time for him to part company with The Joey Skidmore Band. “He was like, ‘You know, if you ever need me to do a session, or if you have a big gig that you really need a keyboard player for, I’ll be glad to do it.’ He didn’t burn his bridges or anything, but he said, ‘I’m just having a hard time keeping up with the band and work right now,'” Skidmore remembers. “He was a pharmacy supervisor, and I know they were really working his ass off. I know the week he died, a friend told us he had worked, like, 70 hours or something.”
Terry’s death has been determined accidental. “He was a real nice guy and a real easy guy to work with, and we were real sorry to see him go,” Skidmore says. BCR, Skidmore’s other project, also will honor Terry at the show.
Send local music information to Robert Bishop or J.J. Hensley at thenote@excite.com.
