STEVE FORBERT
Friday, November 2 • PORTLAND, OR • Alberta Rose Theatre
Showtime: 8 p.m.; Tickets: $20
www.albertarosetheatre.com
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GRAMMY NOMINEE STEVE FORBERT RETURNS, STAKES HIS CLAIM AS A GREAT AMERICAN SONGWRITER
New studio album Over With You, just out September 11, focuses on matters of the heart
LOS ANGELES, Calif. — Over With You, Steve Forbert’s first studio album in three years, is a focused song cycle featuring an earnest account of the often-mixed emotions involved in personal relationships. The ten new compositions combine the plainspoken honesty and insightful contemplations into this topic that perhaps only a man from Mississippi, the home state of both Jimmie Rodgers and Tennessee Williams, could provide. And these songs make the case that Forbert should be considered in the first rank of American songwriters.
Produced by Grammy Award-winner Chris Goldsmith (who has worked with Ben Harper, the Blind Boys of Alabama, Big Head Todd and the Monsters, Ruthie Foster and Charlie Musselwhite), Over With You was released Sept. 11, 2012 on Blue Corn Music.
From the first song, All I Asked of You, with its “sore-tailed cat” and its “one-armed man,” Over With You takes the lyrical brilliance of Forbert, practiced in capturing the essence of human interactions, and pairs it with a cast of accomplished young musicians who add a layer of supple, empathetic support. The result is a rich musical landscape where the emotional depth of the lyrics, and the affinity of the musicians supporting them, is palpable.
“This album is very personal,” Forbert says. “The songs are about what people feel in deep relationships — mainly love and friction.”
Forbert says he wanted the new album — recorded at the cozy Carriage House studio in Los Angeles’ Silver Lake neighborhood — to be musically sparse. There is no bass on some tracks, for example, creating a haunting vibe on the songs and leaving the spotlight firmly on the lyrics.
“I’m not Lady Gaga,” he says. “I went for a much more minimal thing. It’s all about the songs.”
Nonetheless, the musicianship is superb, with Forbert working for the first time with rising star Ben Sollee on cello and bass, Jason Yates on piano and organs, Michael Jerome on drums, and Sheldon Gomberg on electric and upright bass. There is even a guest appearance by another great songwriter, Ben Harper, as a guitarist on three tracks, including a smoldering solo on the upbeat focus track That’d Be Alright.
Sollee, now a solo artist, formed the Sparrow Quartet with Abigail Washburn, Bela Fleck and Casey Driessen in 2005 and has played and recorded with the likes of My Morning Jacket and Vienna Teng. Yates has played keyboards for Harper, Natalie Merchant, Macy Gray, Mazzy Star, Michael Franti and G. Love. Jerome also has his share of credits, playing and recording with Richard Thompson, the Blind Boys of Alabama, and the Velvet Underground’s John Cale. Gomberg is the engineer at the Carriage House studio and has played bass for Rickie Lee Jones, Warren Zevon, Ryan Adams and others.
While these artists all have world-class studio chops, they are primarily known for working as members of various groups or as solo artists themselves, and that background helps make Over With You sound as fresh as Forbert’s debutAlive On Arrival or his 1979 gold-certified sophomore record Jackrabbit Slim.
Forbert calls “Sugarcane Plum Fairy,” the last song on Over With You, “a return to ‘Goin’ Down to Laurel’,” one of the most beloved cuts on Alive on Arrival. He says it’s about returning to a relationship a year or so later and finding everything out of place and the magic completely gone.
As a young man from Meridian, Mississippi, Steve traveled to New York City and played guitar for spare change in Grand Central Station. He vaulted to international prominence with a folk-rock hit, “Romeo’s Tune,” during a time when rootsy rock was fading out and the Ramones, Talking Heads and other New Wave and punk acts were moving in to the public consciousness. “Those styles didn’t really synch with my musical approach,” reflects Forbert. Still, critics raved about Forbert’s poetic lyrics and engaging melodies, and the crowds at CBGB’s club in New York accepted him alongside those acts. “I’ve never been interested in changing what I do to fit emerging trends,” Forbert observes. “Looking back on it, I was helping to keep a particular American songwriting tradition alive at a time when it wasn’t in the spotlight.”
After his first two records came a plethora of well-crafted, unforgettable songs on such albums as Little Stevie Orbit, Streets of This Town, The American in Me, Mission of the Crossroad Palms and Evergreen Boy. His tribute to Jimmie Rodgers, Any Old Time, was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2004.
Forbert’s lengthy discography has established him as an American icon. His music was pure Americana before that genre was recognized. The road and the changing landscape are an integral part of the hard-working Forbert’s life and songwriting. He was a truck driver before releasing his first album and says there’s “romance” involved when he gets in the car after each show and drives to the next gig in another city.
Fourteen albums on, Forbert’s stamp on American music is akin to the legendary footprints of Warren Zevon, Gene Clark, Gram Parsons and other top American songwriters, and he has often been compared to the likes of Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Bruce Springsteen. The former group did not get their due during their lifetimes, and that shouldn’t happen to Forbert. He deserves to be among the latter group.
Now, 34 years after his first album, Steve Forbert is releasing an exciting new one, Over With You. Its ten fresh but mature songs pinpoint a wide range of emotions that color personal relationships — emotions that most listeners have undoubtedly felt and struggled to understand at some point in their lives. “This is an album that has taken a lifetime to make,” explains Forbert. “You don’t just pull these songs out of thin air — you have to live them.”
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Singer-songwriter Steve Forbert had his first major hit in 1979 when he was only 25 years old, shortly after moving to New York City from his hometown of Meridian, Miss where he had been working as a truck driver Thirty-plus years later, he’s still writing acclaimed songs and has released 14 studio albums, including a Grammy-nominated tribute to another Mississippi legend, Jimmie Rodgers. He performs around the world and even finds time to pursue his latest artistic adventure, this time in photography: an exhibit of his cell phone photographs recently opened at a Nashville art gallery.
Born in Meridian in 1954, Forbert began playing on a plastic guitar, graduating to a real guitar and taking lessons in a converted chicken shack for $1.50 an hour. He formed a band called The Epics when he was 14. They had a steady gig performing at dances at the local mental institution on Saturday mornings. From those humble beginnings Steve eventually moved to New York City to focus on his music, and found that his artful mixture of introspective pop, rock, folk, country and soul could not be ignored by the music industry.
In 1978, just months after arriving in the big city, Forbert signed his first record deal with CBS Records. His debut album, Alive On Arrival, showcased his distinctive musicality and became one of the year’s most acclaimed albums. After being compared to folk-based stars like Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan, Forbert still managed to forge his own, more modern path with his hit sophomore record Jackrabbit Slim. The highlight of the album was the #11 Billboard hit Romeo’s Tune: an upbeat song with timeless lyrics sweetened by a poetic sensibility, which has since become Steve’s signature style. Forbert’s intimate verbal imagery, paired with a roots-rocking musical approach, struck a chord with millions of people during the transitional period between ‘70s folk-rock and ‘80s New Wave. His brash-yet-sensitive take on songwriting and his unaffected delivery propelled the album up the charts, leading to sold-out shows and a feature in Rolling Stone magazine and even a high profile cameo as Cyndi Lauper’s tux-wearing, flower-toting boyfriend at the end of the “Girl’s Just Wanna Have Fun” video from 1983.
After a great run on the rock and roll main stage, Steve went looking for new inspiration and found it when he relocated to Nashville in the mid-1980’s, where his new works and his legacy have continued to attract recognition and new fans. Steve was inducted into the Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame in 2006, and “Romeo’s Tune” was covered by Keith Urban in 2007. More recently he has written songs for the Occupy Wall St. movement and has re-released some of his earlier recordings on CD for the first time. While living in Music City, Steve has further honed his skills as a songwriter and performer and continued to blend folk, rock and country into his unique American sound, and has released a series of critically-acclaimed recordings. His most recent release, 2009’s The Place and the Time (429 Records), was reviewed in The Huffington Post as “all prime Steve Forbert, who is writing at his best.”
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“Goin’ Down to Laurel” Forbert live at Hugh’s Room in March 2012:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPEggl6exC8
Forbert in Stockholm in April 2012″
“Blackbird Tune” live, Forbert in Bay Shore, Long Island in May 2012:
And, a little something different: Forbert and Sonny Terry playing “No Use Running From the Blues”
in May 2012:
Performance on stage at World Cafe Live with STEVE along with a little interview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZfs0fKM2Oo
