Tom
Healey Releases Killer Debut Album
Donald
E. Wilcock
BLUESprint,
Albany, New York
The
official publication of the Northeast Blue Society
The first
time I realized Tom Healey takes his blues as seriously as he does was
the night I did a second set introduction for his Good Friday band at
Peggy's in '95. I corrected him concerning a comment he made from a
line in a Buddy Guy song about "chucking coal in a steel mill."
"Buddy
never worked in a steel mill," I said. You'd have thought I'd accused
him of child molestation. He took the comment that seriously. Maybe
it's the beer bottle holder he has welded to his mike stand that also
threw me off. Which comes first, the music or the brew?
The answer
comes across loud and clear on Pearl Street, the debut album from The
Tom Healey Band. He had to change the name from Good Friday because
a midwestem religious group has a stronger claim to it. I suggested
he change it to Ash Wednesday, but he says he's too old for any more
cute names.
Cutting
to the quick, Pearl Street is the best local blues band album I've heard
yet. It doesn't sound like a Stevie Ray Vaughan wannabe. It is neither
overproduced nor underproduced. It doesn't feature every guest musician
Tom could pull out from under a rock. It does have a unique sound that
builds on the heritage of classic blues artists like Howlin Wolf and
John Lee Hooker. (Listen to the runs from "Killing Floor"
on "Lost Dog" and groove to his homage to John Lee on "Hookerfied,")
and it does comfortably fit into everybody's conception of blues. No
genre bending here.
Pearl
Street also profiles Tom as a three-dimensional blues personality, and
a dangerous one at that. His slinky, scurrilous treatment on vocals
is as colorful as the hipster Dr. John with a scratchy Tom Waits decadence
thrown in on "Kitchen's Closed."
"Some
of those songs are constructed stories. Almost like a detective genre,"
says Healey whose day job as an Albany High history teacher doesn't
mix well with lyrics like: "I ain't no 12-step man. Nobody gonna
tell me what to do," from "If You Love It." Or try the
stalking, slithery, sensual, stiletto back alley Bronx mainline R&B
of "Couple Down the Hall." What he hears and sees from this
amorous duo drives him nuts with memories. This is primal blues territory.
I think
it was Bill Wyman who once told me the Bo Diddley beat is a lot trickier
to copy than "Shave and a haircut, two bits." The same can
be said for John Lee Hooker. I'd given up hope I'd ever hear Hooker
done right by a local band after Billy Clayton left Good Friday. Clayton
was the only guitarist I could superimpose over my Kodak moment with
Hooker
where he was backstage with Buddy Guy at SPAC and had two women hanging
off him. Both ladies were trying to outdo each other as to how many
of Hooker's children they'd had. I won't go into Clayton's personal
habits. I don't really want to know, but he had the look and the feel.
At first I didn't hear that bumpy, muddy road guitar quality in George
Deveny's playing, but it's there now on this CD. "He's from central
New York. He's very respected out there," says Healey. "He
plays with the rhythm section of the Robert Cray Band doing some record
out there. He's a phenomenal slide player."
Jason Ladanye
first came to local attention as a 17-year-old child prodigy keyboard
player with Ernie Williams & The Wild Cats. He left to go to The
Big Apple, turning down a shot at one of the big music schools, I think
it was Berkley, only to get bounced around with some national roots
acts including Scott Holt, Buddy Guy's prodigy. Say what you will about
his attitude - and there are plenty of local former mates doing that
- this kid is amazing on "Sick and Tired." How does a teenager
with an attitude from East Greenbush sound like he's been living on
bread and tea, in the Crescent City with Professor Longhair? I don't
know, but he does.
Bass player
Adam Graham is the only American under the age of 70 I've ever seen
who can pull off wearing a beret that doesn't say, "I'm trying
to prove I can French kiss." He's my choice for the person I'd
most like to see "Shadow of The Vampire" with. He fits right
in here. Eight ball in the comer pocket. Andy Hearn on drums and Keith
Pray on sax complete the picture. Nobody runs over anybody. And the
album grooves like hell. I can't get enough.
Special
kudos to co-producer Art Snay whose unheralded Arabellum Studios was
on the cutting edge from a time when 18-year-olds could legally drink
on Lark Street.
