If you look around the world right now, it’s not too
tough to find a lot of negative stuff going around. We’ve noted this on
Garagerocktopia a time or two before, but hopefully we’ve also noted even more
quickly that, if you just look around, there’s a lot of good stuff happening,
too. That’s important because all the crap in the news can definitely get you
down if you let it.
That’s why, in this world that seems a little
cray-cray right now, it’s good that Barrence Whitfield and the Savages are
doing what they do, which is making rock and roll that can’t help but make you
feel a little better.
The new band’s album is the magnificent Soul Flowers of Titan. It should be said
that Barrence Whitfield and the Savages, just because of who they are, are
probably incapable of putting out a bad album. That said, the new album simply
rocks like nobody’s business.
With Soul
Flowers…, the ever-present blues and the first-wave rock of Little Richard
and Carl Perkins are right in your face. But Whitfield also listed some other
vibes going into this album.
“I think we all got a little older, a little more
mature and got some ideas in our heads about going back to some of the stuff
we’ve always loved,” Whitfield explained, talking by telephone from his Boston-area
home. A former journalism major is easily one of rock’s most powerful singers,
with a voice that generates megawatts even on slow songs, and his theatrics on
stage have become legendary. Yet, on the phone and away from the stage, talking
to Whitfield sounds more like a chat with a school teacher or an
accountant.
According to Whitfield, there are some really far-out
influences at work on the new album too.
“There was also this inner Sun Ra spirit in our bones,”
Whitfield revealed, “talkin’ about going to Mars. We also added a little more
soul to this album, so it’s not our usual smash in the head.”
The band Barrence Whitfield and the Savages has been
around since the mid-‘80s. Formed along with former Lyres guitarist Peter
Greenberg, whose slashing guitars are also critical to the band’s
take-no-prisoners sound, Barrence Whitfield and the Savages have always been a
go-to for rip-roaring rock and roll steeped in blues, soul and old-school r&b
– in other words, everything that makes rock and roll fun. Most observers will
tell you the band needs to be seen live to 100% get what they’re all about.
Rounding out the band’s lineup is Phil Lenker on bass,
Andy Jody on drums, and Tom
Quartulli, whose gritty saxophone is no small part of what makes the band tick.
“We’re a live act,” Whitfield declared. “We get on
stage, and we take over, and we make the audience forget whatever they were
thinking about ten minutes before. We play hard, we sweat and I do wild stuff
like diving into the crowd.”
It’s hard to believe that Barrence Whitfield and the
Savages are entering their fourth decade of making rock and roll. But Whitfield
gives no indication whatsoever that this gig is getting old.
“It’s longevity, brother,” Whitfield explained, “and
that comes from the belief, having the emotion and the gratitude of what you’ve
done for a long, long time. When you really have something, you want to give it
your all. And when you do that, you get it all back.”
The new album contains exactly zero clunkers and good
luck trying to pick a favorite song.
We’ll weigh in with “Pain,” a torrid rocker with a
strong Wilson Pickett feel underneath. “Slowly Losing My Mind,” covers some of
the same territory but with perhaps a more urgent tone.
The band is no stranger to blues festivals, and many
of the songs border on straight-up blues that even the crustiest purist would
have to enjoy. The aching “I’ll be Home Someday” lays bare Whitfield’s affinity
for Bobby “Blue” Bland, an artist Whitfield specifically called out in our
interview. “I’m Gonna Leave You” is another mid-tempo smoker with Greenberg at
his Guitar Slim-ish best.
If straight-up garage rock is your thing, Soul Flowers of Titan has you covered
there, too. “Edie, Please” would be a strong contender for both Whitfield’s and
Greenberg’s best moment, with Whitfield doing a great Howlin’ Wolf snarl and
Greenberg dishing up perhaps the album’s most memorable hook. The Yardbird-ish
“Adorable” and “I Can’t Get No Ride” are two other fine rockers equal parts British
Invasion and Chitlin Circuit.
“Let’s Go to Mars” unapologetically channels up the
spirit of Sun Ra. It also marks an amazing first. Despite forming at the height
of MTV’s influence on charts and playlists the world round, this is the first-ever music video for the
band. Whitfield revealed the footage for the video was gathered a bit
unorthoxically.
“The footage was mostly made through our smartphones.”
Said Whitfield. “It’s so futuristic now,
yet it was made by guys whose only memory of anything like cellphones
was on the Jetsons.
The message of “Let’s Go to Mars” was what Whitfield
pointed to in singling the song out as the standout track on the new album.
“Everybody just needs to sit back and relax,”
Whitfield advised, “and just get away for a while from the this new
know-nothingism that’s going around. We thought it would be cool to go to Mars
and think about stuff that makes you happy. The important line in that song is “you’re
sending me in orbit and I want to send you, too.”
The band’s previous outing, Under the Savage Sky, was no slouch, but Soul Flowers of Titan earthiness make it one of the group’s best.
Whitfield said the band also changed the creative process up slightly.
“Usually, our
albums reflect where our heads are at the moment we’re making the music,” said
Whitfield. “Peter and Phil are very talented and usually they’ll bring ideas to
me. On this album, we decided we wanted to take it to a whole new stratosphere.”
Chances are, if you’re reading this blog, to some
degree you’ve already turned your back on commercial radio. And if you’re
familiar with the acts we’ve featured on this blog, you probably stopped
listening to over-the-air radio a long time ago, or maybe never got into that
habit in the first place.
But like a lot of us, Whitfield can remember a day
when, even if there was a lot of garbage on the radio, there was just enough
cool stuff – and enough variety – that listening to the radio was actually fun.
It’s a memory that informs Whifield and company’s music to this day.
“You can’t knock the radio stations of the ‘60s, ‘70s
and ‘80s,” recalled Whitfield. “You could hear James Brown, or Donovan, or Dave
Brubeck, or Paul Mauriat or the Beatles without turning the dial. Today, that
feel is not there. Everything’s so geared to hip hop, or country, so you don’t
get that feel of everything that’s out there.”
“This was the stuff we all grew up with, whether we
heard it on the radio or, like with me, listening to jazz with my father.
Whitfield made a point that we here have also tried to
make about today’s musical atmosphere. There’s great ease of hearing any kind
of music, or any artist, with the simple click of a mouse. And yet, precisely
because of that, many adhere to their particular interest at the exclusion of
others. Whitfield praised a time when music appreciation wasn’t quite so
tribalized.
“Our generation
was almost free-thinking about music,” said Whitfield. “It was all there for
everybody to enjoy, so our generation is a bit more enriched in music. Your
parents may not have liked rock and roll, but at least they knew who all the
rock and roll people were.”
“Let’s Go to Mars” is a very cool song with a very
cool message. But Whitfield said we should all remember something before pounding
down Elon Musk’s door.
‘People of the
world, if you have something to say, say it now,” Whitfield advised. “Heed that
Sun Ra call. But also remember this: space may be the place, but we’ve got work
to do on this planet. Just try to forget all the bad stuff going around right
now.”
We have some other features already in the works here at
Garagerocktopia. Artists have been sending us some very cool stuff. As always,
we don’t make any guarantees in stone but we’re happy to say we’ve gotten a lot
of very promising music sent to us, and we’re always happy to spread the word
about about bands that are playing the way-out kinds of music we profile
here. Send
us a line and we’ll talk.
Also, we do have
a Facebook page for this blog. We don’t put
personal stuff on it – no pictures of grandkids or our dinners or politics or
anything like that. What we do post are announcements about upcoming features,
maybe extra stuff about the bands, and any cool music, movies or TV Shows we
stumble across that might have even the most tangential connection with the
music featured here. While we don't spend all day thinking about it, we do like
"likes" if you're so inclined ...
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