Area
blues band up there with best
By Donald
E. Wilcock
The Record, Troy, NY
A band most
have never heard of and one that I never thought of as even a contender
has just put out "Pearl Street," the best local blues album
I've ever heard.
You
know them as Good Friday, but a few months ago, bandleader Tom Healey
learned about a religious band in the Midwest with the same name and decided
to switch rather than fight.
Now
they're called The Tom Healey Band, and their CD-release party is Saturday
night at the Ale House in Troy. "It was a band decision, not an ego
thing," says Healey about the name change. "Besides, I'm getting
too old to have a cute band name."
The debut
album avoids such usual pitfalls of a local release as flashy production
-- or little production at all, numerous guest cameos and slavish devotion
to a mentor such as Stevie Ray Vaughan.
In fact,
I'd stand "Pearl Street" up next to any of the recent releases
from independent labels such as Alligator and Blind Pig and argue comparisons
with the masters at larger labels such as Telarc and PointBlank.
A scruffy,
rain-soaked mongrel sniffing his way through caked mud on the back cover
captures the tone of this dangerous CD. The photo captures the feel for
the will to survive in the face of adversity. "Ain't no 12-step man,"
sings Healey on "If You Want It," a reference to programs like
Alcohoiics Anonymous. "Nobody's gonna
tell me what to do."
Like the
dog in the picture. Healey comes across as a stubborn, determined survivor
in his songs. Largely responsible for his own sometimes-sorry state, he
makes no apologies to the world and adapts to his own self-administered
pain. "I get lonely. I'm livin' like you never left."
This is
classic, down and out blues reminiscent of early post-war Chicago electric
blues as sung by Mississippi Delta transplants whose painful honesty about
their human condition was counteracted by the hypnotic beat and uplifting
dance-ability of the music. He may he self-destructive. but he loves life,
booze, women and song too much to allow death to steal his joy.
This is
very personal stuff. "It is and it isn't," says Healey. "When
you think about it, some of those songs are constructed stories, and that's
what they are. To me almost it's like a detective genre, some of it."
A history
teacher at Albany High, Healey is concerned about his image as the only
blues singer in the capital region to have a built-in beer bottle holder
on his mike stand. "Church, God and family," he says, slurring
the words like white gangsta rapper.
Healey's
been playing music for 30 years, since he was 14. He's only been teaching
since he was 30. "I love history, and hadda eat."
Unlike most
young white musicians in waiting, Healey was notinspired by the British
invasion hard rocking blues wannabes. Instead, it was a series of blues
concerts at Siena College that turned this Watervliet native around.
"The
rock influence in blues and the English guys never really grabbed it lor
me. At an early age, we got exposed to some phenomenal people from Otis
Spann, you name it.
"We
heard it all, and we loved it. And when it was up the street, it was unbelievable.
It seriously was an epiphany. You know, George Harmonica Smith, my God.
There were things there that were devastating.
"It
was unbelievable -- Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, Big Mama Thornton --unbelievable.
I can remember she sat behind the drums, and we were, 'Holy cow!' And
I was a young kid. So, it was quite a thing. That was my thing. I never
got into older contemporary music. Some of it I love, it floats my boat,
but... "
The early
orientation to the roots of the style rather than the derivatives gives
Healey's music strength. You can hear the references to Chicago blues
master Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor" on The Tom Healey Band's
"Lost Dog" and his homage to John Lee Hooker, "Hookerfied,"
captures Hooker's deceptively simple beat, which most bands can't come
close to. Special kudos to lead guitarist George Deveny for his understated
work on this cut and throughout the album.
The entire
band is uniformly strong. Adam Graham, the quiet lurking Nosferatu of
the bass holds the rhythm in the pocket with drummer Andy Hearn. Saxophonist
Keith Pray never steals the show from Deveny's lead guitar but tastefully
supplements the sound. And child prodigy Jason Ladanye is transcendent
on keyboards. How a teenager from East Greenbush with an attitude can
sound as if he's been living his music for decades in the Crescent City
is beyond me. But Jason does it. Listen to his runs on "Sick and
Tired," in particular.
Healey and
crew have picked up one important trait from their mentors, dynamics.
"The thing with this band," says Healey, "is that we can
stay quiet and get off on the quiet dynamics of numbers that call for
it.
"We'll
bring brushes sometimes, and you're working with two 15-watt amps that
me and George have so we can get quite. We get into a quiet groove. I'll
tell ya', we get off on that. The thing about this band is we always get
off. We get off on the different dynamics.
"There's
no need, it's such a magic thing. No need for that crotch-rock-hero feeling,
and there's a certain kind of dignity to it that I just love playing with
these guys."
Finally,
kudos go to Art Snay, whose unobtrusive Arabellum home studio on Sand
Creek Road has turned out some wonderful, unheralded local work for decades.
While he's less visible than the more ostentatious big studios such as
Cotton Hill, his years of experience with local alternative and experimental
bands shine through on "Pearl Street."
The Tom Healey
Band's "Pearl Street" changes the pecking order of the local
blues scene and demands re-examination of Healey as a creative force to
be reckoned with.
With this
album, he becomes much more than a hard-drinking gin mill band leader
who scrapes bands together to cover old John Lee Hooker songs.
Like
Ernie Williams, who celebrates his 70-something birthday this Saturday
night at the Crown Plaza, Healey now becomes a serious contender as
a real-deal leader of a blues band with something to say.
Healey,
by the way, was in Williams' band in the 80's when they played Clinton
Avenue dives before being discovered by a young white audience.
