Pencilstorm Remembers Tom Petty - by Colin Gawel

Monday October 2nd was a shitty day. As the body count was racking up from pyscho-guy shooting up Vegas for no apparent reason, word broke that Tom Petty had passed away unexpectedly. I had been out running some errands when I heard the news so I cancelled whatever I had been planning on doing and ended up sipping a beer with Dan Cochran at his Four String Taproom. We just sorta sat there listening to Tom Petty. 

Anyway, since I play the Four String Taproom every Thursday, I figured it made sense to a do a set of Tom Petty songs. Soon word got out and people started lining up to join me. Nobody was asked, it was an all-volunteer force. It all happened very organically and very quickly. Ricki C. stage-managed the whole thing. There were no advertisements and there was no cover charge. You won't find any footage online as we respectfully asked folks to keep the phones away and stay in the moment. It was one of the best nights I ever had playing music. It was one long Tom Patty sing-along. The only thing missing was a campfire. Below is the set-list and players to the best of my memory. 

Colin Gawel - The Wild One Forever / WildFlowers (solo) w/ Jim Johnson on drums and Rick Kinsinger on guitar: Change of Heart / Listen to Her Heart / Rebels / Straight into Darkness / The Waiting 

Dave Masica - Walls (Colin on Drums, Rick on Guitar) / Shadow of a Doubt (Jim - drums) / Angel Dream / Southern Accents 

Brian Clash - Century City

John Estep - You Wreck Me / Sea of Heartbreak (Herb Schupp on drums) / Kings Highway

Patrick Buzzard - Yer So Bad / Learning to Fly / Into the Great Wide Open 

Dan Orr Project - Breakdown / Don't Do Me Like That / American Girl

John Estep & Everybody - I Won't Back Down / Mary Jane's Last Dance

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Also a couple of my favorite Tom Petty tributes: the first by Tom's contemporary, the great Dan Baird. (I snagged from his Facebook page. reproduced without his permission as they say.....) 

Dan Baird 

For me, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were a rock and roll band that came onto the scene when the pigeon hole genres were taking over. Punk rock, new wave, heavy, hard, prog, glam, etc. There were a bunch of em. Not that they were at all bad. Some great bands came out of those rebranding and fashion trends. I was going along with the times and trying to find music I related to inside those brands, but something was missing for me. 

And here comes this rock and roll band that doesn't apologize for being just that. 2 guitars, B3, piano, bass and drums. Sing along choruses, tight punchy songs, great simple arrangements played by a gang of mo-fos on each instrument and a shaman/believer for a front man and songwriter disguised as an everyman. 

They'd picked up rock and roll and placed it onto a trajectory that seemed like the simplicity of what they were reintroducing had never stopped. It had. Was very close to complete dismissal. Their whole "We just don't need anything new, other than more great songs" was a bold move in the face of the change. Obviously it struck a chord with me. 

Yes they dabbled in new sounds after a few years, but it somehow sounded organic inside the song. Acoustic ballads got more common, but it felt right because of the conviction and honesty of both band and singer (didn't hurt that those ballads contained some of Tom's finest lyric either). 

The live shows could have been a greatest hits for 2 hours. They weren't. Great covers, older obscure numbers, new songs. To me, his North Star might have gotten hidden behind the clouds now and then, but when they cleared, look out, shit was back on. 

Thank you for showing the way to work inside a traditional medium and not sacrifice integrity, heart and soul. 

A rock and roller of the highest order to the end.

And click here to read a story by Annie Zaleski .

Or here for a story by Petty Biographer Warren Zanes .

And this story about Tom's acting career was fun . 

I was lucky enough to catch Tom and The Heartbreakers on the last tour. I was sort of leaving it up to fate when at the last minute I got an invite. As I was watching the show I thought to myself I should have brought my son Owen to this show. He has seen Springsteen, The Who, The Stones, AC/DC, Cheap Trick, KISS, Aerosmith, Foo Fighters and Green Day. For some reason I didn't feel it necessary to bring him to Tom Petty and it was a parenting fail. It is/was easy to take Tom Petty for granted. Tom Petty never demanded attention. He didn't need to. He was focused on earning your respect. Well done.  RIP Tom Petty

Colin Gawel plays in Watershed and fronts The League Bowlers. He founded Pencilstorm and wrote this at Colin's Coffee in between serving customers. 

Colin on WCBE Thursday October 19th, 1 - 2 pm. Tune in or Stream It.

It's the fall fund raising season for WCBE 90.5 and to pay respects, Colin will be riding shotgun on the air with Maggie Brennan and her fabulous show The Global Village on Thursday October 19th from 1 - 2 pm. Talking Watershed, Bowlers, Pencilstorm and all sorts of things along with the great music you expect from WCBE, it should be a fun ride. Tune in and spread the word. Or hit the link below to stream it on the interwebs the kids are so crazy about. 

Click here to stream the show and to learn about how you can contribute to this great radio station.

Official music video for Colin Gawel's "Dad Can't Help You Now." The single is available on "Superior: The Best of Colin Gawel" released by Mike Landolt's Curry House Records. More at www.colingawel.com. Video directed by Wal Ozello, produced by Maria Clark, director of photography Alex Williams, edited and visual effects by Eric "Bing" Ringquist, and features Sam Ozello and Tim Baldwin.

Performed @ Comfest 2017

Colin Talks Cheap Trick "Standing on the Edge" on Archie's Vinyl Analysis Podcast

Longtime Columbus DJ and all around rock n roll aficionado Archie invited me down to the Q-FM-96 studios to be a guest on his kick ass Vinyl Analysis podcast. The conversation started with Cheap Trick's Standing on the Edge record but eventually moved onto other rock related subjects. I had a blast and big thanks to Archie for having me on with him. - Colin G.

Click here to listen to Colin on Archie's Vinyl Analysis Podcast

Colin and Friends Playing Tom Petty this Thursday at Four String Taproom @ 9pm - FREE

This fall, Colin has been playing a residency at the Four String Taproom (985 W. 6th) in Grandview. He plays one solo set every Thursday starting around 9 pm. There is no cover charge. This week he and some of his pals will be performing all Tom Petty tunes and the taproom will be blasting plenty of Petty before and after the show.  So Thursday October 5th, stop by the Four String Taproom to toast the great Tom Petty. Doors 8pm. Colin on at 9pm. Over by 11.

Music, Memories and Shootings - by Anne Marie

I heard about the Vegas mass shooting this morning. As I lay in bed, having hit the snooze button, fighting to drag myself to full consciousness and willing my eyes to remain open, my daughter Caitlin knocked on my door asking whether I had heard about the shooter at the Jason Aldean concert during the Route 91 Harvest Festival, a three-day country music event in Las Vegas.  Her quick recitation of the tragic toll exacted by the lone gunman - more than 50 dead and more than 500 injured - instantly brought me fully awake, my heart pounding.  And now, although I’ve stayed mostly away from the relentless, repetitive news reports, I’ve thought about it all morning.

I have since learned that the death toll, currently confirmed at 58 as I write this Monday afternoon, makes this the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.  I have learned that it is likely that the weapon used was a submachine gun.  I could dwell on how I think there must be a way of imposing reasonable restraints on the availability of such weapons without infringing on anyone’s ability to hunt or defend one’s person or home, but that is not where my thoughts go today.  Instead, I just keep thinking how much it sucks that these lunatics choose music venues in which to carry out terrorist acts, revenge fantasies or whatever other vendetta consume their individual and collectively unbalanced minds. 

I keep thinking about the Paris concert attack at the Bataclan back in November 2015 and the wave of memories that attack loosed in me of a much smaller but still very tragic event in a small Boston club decades earlier.  One thing I and many others who have observed gun violence up close and personal know is that a shooting does not have to be a mass shooting to be tragic. Here’s my memories of that event of July 30, 1987, as recalled back on November 15, 2015 following the Bataclan attack:

It wasn’t until Sunday morning that I first caught a glimpse of the footage of the shootings at the rock concert in Paris on Friday night.  My immediate thought was that’s exactly how it happens.  I registered the familiarity of the scene, an unsettling sense of déjà vu, but did not dwell on it.  I was in the middle of doing something and did not want to get sucked into the 24/7 news coverage or my distant memories.  So I kept walking and moved on with my task at hand.

But then, last night, I was reading the New Yorker online.  After two articles focused on the ISIS attacks, I was tapped out on tragedy.  I scrolled down through all the stories until a picture of a young Tom Petty caught my eye. My sister and I have shared a love of Tom Petty going back to the late 1970s so I immediately opened the related article focused on how Warren Zanes of the 1980s Boston rock band the Del Fuegos came to write Petty’s life story. 

The Del Fuegos opened for Tom Petty during his tour for his 1987 album, “Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough)”. I was attending Boston University at the time and had managed to see the Del Fuegos live at The Rathskeller (known as The Rat and where you had to brave cat-sized rats to make your way in the door), a dive of a music venue right on Commonwealth Avenue in Kenmore Square near the heart of BU’s campus.

In the summer of 1987, between my junior and senior years, I lived with my BU roommate, Lisa, and a music student, Dave, we found from the Berklee School of Music to split the rent and take the tiny extra bedroom off the kitchen in our apartment in the student slum of Allston.  Dave brought a fantastic cast of musical characters into our world – the perfect diversion as Lisa studied to take the MCAT and I prepped for the LSAT.

A number of Dave’s friends were bouncers and bartenders at Bunratty’s, a bar and music venue on Harvard Avenue right around the corner from our apartment, and Lisa and I would go over to hang out and catch some bands.

On the night of Friday, July 31, 1987, Bunratty’s was packed and outrageously loud.  At some point late in the night, one of the guys came up to tell me and Lisa that they’d had to throw out a customer who’d been harassing and blocking the way of the band as it tried to set up.  But then that was forgotten as the band started playing and Lisa and I pushed our way up close to the stage.

What happened next in the early morning hours of August 1st is hazy and surrealistic and literally has always played out in my memory (those few times I let it) in slow motion.  At some point, I became aware of a commotion behind us, then of multiple loud pops and hot air swooshing past.  I remember Lisa pulling me to the ground, yelling it’s shooting, bullets.  But I’m really hazy on the events after that.  I still don’t know exactly how we made our way out of there, at what point I realized our friend Abel Harris, a bouncer, had been shot, and when I learned the further details that Abel had been shot in the head at close range after he jumped over the bar and, with his hands held up in a surrender fashion, attempted to “talk down” the crazed gunman who had returned to the bar some two hours after he was first thrown out.

Abel died nine days later while hospitalized. That week, there were a series of benefit concerts for him at Bunratty’s and Metro.  We were there for the two shows at Bunratty’s and were pressed up against the stage for the closing act, the Del Fuegos.

I guess it’s not surprising that the footage of the Paris rock concert attack could unloose this flood of memories from 30 years ago.  It’s certainly brought the events in France into even starker focus for me and my heart goes out not only to the victims and their families but also to the survivors who will have that night live in the recesses of their memories forever.

And now there's Las Vegas to add to this list: so much music, so many memories, too many shootings.

AML

Bruce Springsteen Finally Breaks Down and Gets a Steady Job - by Ricki C.

(Official Pencilstorm Disclaimer: We have no definitive way to prove it - other than the fact that Ricki C. sent out previews to a couple of his close friends - but Ricki penned this piece in late August.  On September 27th Jon Pareles published a story entitled Bruce Springsteen On Broadway: The Boss On His 'First Real Job.'  in the New York Times.  This either proves that great minds think alike, or that the Pencilstorm editors should run Ricki's blogs right when he finishes them, rather than a month later.)  

On October 3rd, 2017 Bruce Springsteen will commence a series of shows at the intimate (960 seats) Walter Kerr Theater on Broadway in New York City, with the residency concluding February 3rd, 2018.   Right, that’s five shows a week, for FOUR MONTHS STRAIGHT!  In one way, I view this as insanity on Bruce’s part, in another way I think it’s admirable that Mr. Springsteen – who will turn 68 years old September 23rd – has finally decided to get a steady job.

Bruce Springsteen – as regular patrons of Pencilstorm and my earlier solo blog, Growing Old With Rock & Roll are well aware – is my Number One rock & roll hero of all time, replacing Pete Townshend in that role sometime around September 1978, when Keith Moon died and The Who ran off the rails for good.  (But that’s a whole other blog for a whole ‘nother day.)    

However, I find it mind-boggling that in his sixth decade on the planet Bruce would think it’s a good idea to play for four months straight in the same theater, night in, night out, night in, night out, etc. etc., ad nauseum.  I think Colin would agree that much of the attraction of playing rock & roll shows is traveling around the country with your best friends in a van or a bus or a plane (depending on your level of success in the Rock & Roll Sweepstakes), staying in hotels and eating in different restaurants/fast food places every day.  Why Springsteen would choose now to embark on a real job where he’ll carry his lunch bucket & thermos to work every day, punch a clock and play his guitar eludes me.   

Even given that Number One Rock & Roll hero business detailed above and taking in the fact I’ve seen every Springsteen tour since Born To Run in 1976, I won’t be attending the shows on Broadway, for a number of reasons:  

1) The ticket process was/is incredibly complicated, and I didn’t want to get involved.  (Truthfully, I’m just lazy and so damn technologically disempowered that I couldn’t be bothered.  I know it’s wrong, and Luddite-like, but I LONG for the days I could just walk into Sears and buy a Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band ticket for the Darkness On The Edge of Town tour.  Or camp out overnight at Buzzard’s Nest Records on Morse Road to get a ticket for the Born In The U.S.A. tour.  Without one of those campout lines, I would never have met my second-best Bruce Springsteen friend Chris Clinton, and a beautiful friendship in my life would never have happened.  And that fact was FAR more important than whatever ticket I got for that tour.)

2) The tickets range in price from $75 to $750 (or thereabouts).  I cannot, with a clear conscience, purchase a ticket – even for Bruce Springsteen, my blah-blah-blah Number One Rock & Roll Hero of All Time – for more than I paid for my first Fender Stratocaster back in 1973.  And make no mistake, I’m not begrudging my millionaire-many-times-over Rock Hero his cash, more power to him if individuals are willing to pony up that kinda dough, but I cannot – financially or philosophically –  participate in that enterprise.

3) If I WERE going to attend the Broadway residency, I would have a hard time deciding WHEN to attend.  There’s going to have to be some kind of weird law-of-diminishing-returns arc to the Broadway run, i.e. the first few weeks in October and November, I figure Bruce is going to be easing into the process, refining the show, making it up as he goes along, even within the exacting parameters he has planned his sets by since the very beginnings of his career.  Then, by December, I figure  things are gonna be HUMMING along: Bruce is gonna have his legs under him, having discerned how to play that 900-seat theater like Chuck Berry ringin’ a bell, things are gonna be cool, life is gonna be good.  But then I’m wonderin’ about mid-to-late January: is Springsteen gonna start burnin’ out on going to that Real Job every night, every night, every night?  I’d like to think at that tedium-tipping point Bruce might start coming up with Theme Nights: all Wilson Pickett covers one night; all Rolling Stones non-LP b-sides another night; bringing Patti along another night and doing all Steve Lawrence & Edie Gorme, Sonny & Cher, and Serge Gainsboug & Francoise Hardy covers.

Now THAT'S a show I would pay $75 and drive to New York City to see.  – Ricki C. / Labor Day, 2017.