Tag: Tom Petty Full Moon Fever

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Last year, I wrote about the critically acclaimed Northern Idaho-born, Nashville-based singer/songwriter and guitarist Jeff Crosby. Crosby’s work draws from and meshes folk, rock, American and country in a  way that feels and sounds warmly familiar and radio friendly. Dropping out of school when he was 17 to pursue a music career with a touring West Coast band, the Idaho-born, Nashville-based singer/songwriter and guitarist has spent a significant portion of his life on the road, playing night after night, show after show, from load-in until the last drink is poured and the house lights are finally turned on.

Crosby’s material is deeply inspired by the beauty found in his travels and the unconventional stories of the people and places he has encountered along the way, giving his work the feel of being like a page ripped out of intimate and personal diary, detailing the love won and love lost and experiences of someone who has relentlessly kept on the move. Throughout his career as a solo artist, his work has been compared favorably to singer/songwriters like Bob Dylan, Townes Van Zandt and Steve Earle while building up a profile by sharing stages with Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real, Charley Crockett, Widespread Panic, American Aquarium, Niki Lane and a list of others.

For about five years, Crosby lived in a small apartment off Los Angeles‘ Sunset Boulevard. Giving up coffee so that he could pay rent, Crosby played with The Homeless and the Dreamers — and while struggling get to get by, he found a way to thrive and make poignant music. Through a chance encounter, he met and befriended a music editor for the critically applauded TV series Sons of Anarchy and wound up with two of his songs being featured the show. During that same period, Crosby split his time touring with his band and later with Widespread Panic’s Jerry Joseph, which found Crosby traveling abroad to tour the UK, Iceland, Mexico, Colombia and Nicaragua. His experiences in each of those countries helped influence the material off his Gregg Williams and Geoff Piller co-produced album Postcards from Magdalena, an effort that received praise internationally.

Crosby’s forthcoming Geoff Piller-produced full-length album Northstar is slated for release this year. So far, I’ve written about the album single “Laramie,” a deliberately crafted song that that recalls 70s AM rock and Full Moon Fever-era Tom Petty — but with a wistful and nostalgic air. Northstar‘s latest single “If I’m Lucky” is an upbeat and country-tinged rocker centered around an enormous hook and earnest lyrics, written from lived-in, personal experience. In this case, the song is deceptively ambivalent: the song’s narrator expresses the hope to be lucky enough to hold onto love, the motivation to keep on going when things get tough — but there’s also the acknowledgement of time passing by quickly and getting older and of the mistakes and poor choices piling up.

“’If I’m Lucky’ is about getting older and avoiding the inevitable end of relationships I’d neglected while spending the last year on the road,” Crosby told Parade. “I finished the verses watching a couple fight in a Motel 6 parking lot in Sacramento, California. I felt kinda lonely and envious that they at least had someone to fight with!”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Photo Ops is the folk-tinged, dream pop recording project of Los Angeles, CA-based singer/songwriter Terry Price. Price began Photo Ops as a way to find meaning within an onslaught of traumatic and life altering events — a sudden and series medical condition, the death of his father and the breakup of his longtime band Oblio. Naturally, all of those things wound up inspiring his Photo Ops debut, 2013’s How to Say Goodbye. 2016’s Patrick Damphier-produced Vacation was released to critical praise. Several songs off the album were licensed for film and TV, including the trailer for the motion picture People, Places, Things, several episodes of ABC’s Blood & Oil and CW’s Valor — and as a result, the album and its songs amassed several million streams on Spotify. He eventually signed a publishing deal with Secretly Canadian.

Like countless people, Price was shaken and dazed by the 2016 election. He stopped touring for his sophomore effort, went dark on social media and left Nashville, where he lived for 15 years and relocated to Los Angeles. I needed to shed my skin,” Price says in press notes. In fact, the change of scenery became a sudden need both creatively and spiritually for the acclaimed singer/songwriter. “I needed to look outside myself for inspiration,” Price explains. “It’s a matter of survival to know that there is beauty in the world. So that’s my mission now: to show that there still is beauty in the world. I honestly don’t know how else to write right now.”

Slated for release later this year, Price’s third Photo Ops effort, Pure at Heart was partially inspired by Price’s time listening and studying Bob Dylan‘s Sirius XM show, Bob Dylans’s Theme Time Radio Hour while driving through the Southwest. “They were mostly old songs. What struck me was the spirit that was behind them. They’re just people in a room with a microphone, so they would have to self-correct and really conjure a spirit in the moment. Something about that felt so vital to me. It sounds like a time and place,” Price says. And as a result, the forthcoming album, which continues Price’s ongoing collaboration with Patrick Damphier is based around a production that emphasizes a sense of immediacy that’s a sort of Jack Kerouac-like first thought, best thought fashion. Along with that, the arrangements throughout the album’s material are also based around that same sense of arrangement with Price using an intentionally limited set of instruments: one acoustic guitar, one electric guitar, a vintage, 60s Ludwig drum kit, a stand-up piano, a Hofner bass and a small Casiotone keyboard. And although for this album Price is working remotely with the Nashville-based Damphier, the album’s songs were recorded as soon as they were written.

Reportedly one of the biggest and perhaps most noticeable changes throughout the album’s material is in Price’s voice with the Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter at points throughout the album singing in a relaxed, easy-going upper register. “It’s partly an accident of location,” Price explains. “In Nashville, I had a garage. I could go out and make as much noice as I wanted. In L.A., you have to be more thoughtful about your neighbors.” Unsurprisingly, the need to sing quietly opened up the opportunity to experiment with space and restraint. But let’s move on a bit, eh?

Pure at Heart’s latest single is the buoyant “July.” Nodding a bit at Full Moon Fever-era Tom Petty and 70s AM rock, the song is centered around an arrangement of bouncing and propulsive bass, shimmering guitar, a breezy and infectious hook and Price’s plaintive and ethereal vocals. Throughout the song, its narrator sighs with a mix of clinical and ironic detachment and compassion over the end of a relationship. But interestingly enough, the song’s viewpoint doesn’t come from moving on and forward with someone else; it’s actually from the astute recognition that all things end at some point or another, no matter what you do.

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

Musings: Thoughts on Las Vegas and Tom Petty

This morning I woke up to hear the news about some crazed and hateful fool shooting innocent concertgoers at a music festival in Las Vegas, just did me in. If you’ve been frequenting this site or following me through social media, you’d know that besides the Guinness drinking, the Romeo Y Julieta cigars, and the ridiculous exploits here and aboard, that I’ve probably spent close to half my adult life in darkened clubs, DIY spaces, music venues, arenas, stadiums and music festivals either covering music for various publications or this blog — or attending as a fan. And I can tell you that I’ve met some of the smartest, most talented, most passionate, funniest and kindest people in the entire world that I’ve met through music but perhaps more important, catching live music in all of its forms — whether it was a band, a DJ, a singer/songwriter and no matter the genre — has always been one of the safest, most welcoming places I’ve ever known. God, “the warm thrill of confusion/that space cadet glow . . . ” as a song says, and I’ve been chasing that feeling ever since.

Now, like a lot of people, who are involved in music in some way or another, what happened in Vegas feels like a deeply personal affront because we love music so much to make a large portion of our lives. I can’t speak for my colleagues and friends but I can never forget that at every show, concert and festival I attend that for my fellow concertgoers that it may very well be the highlight of their year, if not their entire lives to see their heroes perform their favorite songs live. Ah, the joy and camaraderie of the live music experience; there are few things in this world that can top that. And to have that be destroyed in such a horrible fashion is heartbreaking. Of course, my thoughts are with everyone at the festival from fans, support crew and performers. It should have been a joyous, wondrous night for those catching their heroes.

Then while at my day job, finding out that Tom Petty was in dire shape? What the flying fuck is going on? Full Moon Fever and Damn the Torpedoes are arguably two of the greatest rock records ever. Don’t believe me? Listen to them and tell me how “Free Falling,” “Won’t Back Down,” “Runnin’ Down a Dream,” “Refugee” or “Don’t Do Me Lke That” aren’t classic songs that don’t fit into the “rock canon”? If you do, you’re bullshitting me. Now, I can say that I was very lucky to see Petty and the Heartbreakers many years ago at the Garden with a woman, who later turned out to be one of the worst things that ever happened to me; however, Steve Winwood (!!) opened for him, and Petty came out to do a song with him. Petty did two hours of the hits and even pulled out Winwood for a song –and every one of those songs were songs I had heard throughout my life and have loved immensely. Plain and simple, Petty is a national fucking treasure and while the news reports are conflicting, my thoughts go out to his family, his bandmates, his touring crew and friends at what clearly is a very difficult time. Tom Petty forever, everyone!