Casey Neill, Brooklyn Bridge (In Music We Trust, 2007)
I think we have a copy of every CD available from this awesome singer-songwriter. You can certainly find other glowing reviews of his work on GMR (see, for example, Cat's write-up of Live on 11th Street and Camille's of a show Casey and the Norway Rats did at the Mission Theater in Portland, Oregon, in May 2007)! Cat asked me to review this release, which has been sitting on my CD review shelf for a while. It happened that Casey just did a solo gig at One Longfellow Square in Portland, Maine, giving me a good reason to move this review to the top of the priority list.
Brooklyn Bridge is Casey's tribute to the eponymous borough of New York, where he lived for a few years before heading back to the West Coast. Although the CD is a relatively recent release, the tracks were actually recorded a few years ago. In fact, the producer is the iconic fiddler Johnny Cunningham, who died in 2003. Johnny even played on one of the tracks, 'Storyline.' I should also point out that a few of the songs on this CD duplicate those on Live on 11th Street, which isn't really surprising, since the live recording was done around the same time Casey and company were laying down the studio tracks for Brooklyn Bridge.
There's 50 minutes of hard-driving music here, a total of 12 tracks, featuring Casey's gravelly voice and biting lyrics; however, the package doesn't include the text version of these, and on some tracks they aren't entirely intelligible. On this CD, Casey reminded me in particular of Bruce Springsteen from the Darkness at the Edge of Town period. Except Casey hasn't managed to capture the attention of the record companies the way Bruce did. 'Tis a pity, but there's something to be said for obscure artists.
In addition to Casey, an impressive array of additional performers (two dozen musicians and back-up vocalists, including Phil Cunningham and John Wesley Harding, as well as Casey's usual band members Hanz Araki and Zak Borden) make guest appearances on one or more tracks of Brooklyn Bridge. This yields a wall of sound effect that I found somewhat overwhelming at times -- I noted, for example, the presence of heavy bass and drums on 'We Are the City.' I also noted that the personnel changes from one track to the next resulted in some rather disorienting stylistic variations. For example, on the title track, which is also the opener, I observed some similarities to Gene Clark's No Other, particularly in the use of the pedal steel guitar; on 'The Holy Land,' the combination of accordion, banjo and tin whistle immediately brought the Pogues to mind.
After this production overload, I must confess I was looking forward to seeing Casey in person, by himself, with just his guitar as accompaniment. And that's what we got on Friday, April 25, 2008, at One Longfellow Square, an intimate venue in downtown Portland (that's Maine), just a short drive from our house. Portland is a small market, One Longfellow Square is booking live acts several nights a week, and Casey is relatively unknown hereabouts, so we weren't entirely surprised when only 20 or so people turned out for the show. I hope they weren't disappointed. I certainly wasn't!
Stopping only for a very short beverage break and on his feet for the whole show, Casey played for roughly 90 minutes, loud fast songs, soft slow songs, his own material interspersed with a couple of traditional Scottish songs and one golden oldie, Del Shannon's 'Runaway,' on which he asked the audience to sing the chorus. The set included a few songs from Brooklyn Bridge, among them 'Philadelphia Girl' and 'Holy Land.' His introduction to the latter included an almost convincing explanation for his reference to the Tigris (rather than the Jordan) River flowing through the Holy Land (i.e., it sounds better, the character telling the story didn't know his geography, the Tigris is in someone's Holy Land). He also sang one of my favorites, 'Lowground,' and fielded a request from Cat for 'Sisters of the Road.' His stirring rendition of 'Riff Raff' got everybody moving! I was (not surprisingly for me) less impressed with the ballads, including 'Stonewall' and 'Emma's Garden.' I always have a hard time staying awake at concerts, and slow music just doesn't hold my attention very well.
Nonetheless, Casey is a pleasure to hear in a small club. He's got a great voice, and I was very much impressed by his skilled guitar work. I never had the opportunity to see the late Robbie Basho perform, but I imagine that Casey's guitar playing is comparable to Robbie's. About the only real negative aspect of the show was the persistent squeak of the plywood flooring on the stage. Every time Casey shifted weight, I could hear that squeak -- it was about as annoying as a piece of chalk squeaking on a slate board. It was, of course, less noticeable on the loud songs than on the quieter ones.
You may have noticed the name of Casey's current record label, In Music We Trust. I did! It's a small indie label, based in the West Coast Portland. The company also publishes an on-line review 'zine (gee, that sounds familiar!) primarily focused on the needs and interests of small local bands. I have a lot of respect for an artist like Casey, who makes his living writing and performing his music. It ain't an easy life.
