Remember Scott Turner? Since he moved away from Brooklyn he doesn’t write much, he never calls. But he is coming back to the old neighborhood for a visit and a show. “I’m gonna be in Brooklyn for a few days early in October. The timing’s good for a show and the release of the new RebelMart album. I’m playing two sets at Rocky Sullivan’s in Red Hook on Friday, October 8th. Show starts at 9pm. Lots of new songs, lots of old songs, and the always popular what-was-I-thinking? cover. Could be Tom Waits, could be Perry Como, could be the Spunk Lads.”
Click on Read more to hear more from Scott:
I’ll have copies of this new RebelMart album, Amalgamated Saboteurs Local 21. Recorded in Brooklyn and Seattle, ASL21 is a wobbly-and-determined walk through the songs I’ve written and recorded since the demise of the Spunk Lads. Punk, reggae, ska, Irish, blues, folk and the much-admired rock’n’roll. The lyrics run the gamut from excitement about the future to desolation in the desert to bitterness over Thierry Henry’s infamous handball.*
Seattle’s been, well, exactly like a winding road where the curves always come up too fast. Playing shows, finishing this album, making music contacts throughout the Pacific northwest. Left my mandolin in a motel in the weird (and not because of Twilightian vampires) and slightly-off Olympic Peninsula, only to have it safeguarded in the innkeeper’s safe during the week before I could get back to pick it up. (“This wasn’t one of those usual things people leave behind,” the manager told me. “This looked important, so my husband put under lock and key!”) This week, I took a phone call at work that went like this:
Voice on the line: “Hello. Is this a residence or a business?”
Me: “A business.”
VOTL: “Yes, very good. This is Veronica Jackson calling from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia.”
Me: “Uh-huh…”
VOTL: “I’m very sorry to disturb your afternoon. We are calling for the purposes of reaching private residences. Have a very good day, sir.”
Me: [gulp]
The weather out here is terrible, except those rare occasions that are so gorgeous they prove Perry Como right (“The bluest skies you’ve ever seen are in Seattle“). It’s an old town, Seattle. Only its most recent history involves hi-tech, coffee and stores like REI. Before that, it was an incredibly vibrant, tough, working-class fishing/logging/industrial realm, home to the first-ever Hooverville and long before that, the Duwamish native nation — over whose river my apartment poltergeistishly looks out. Boeing Field-bound planes at eye level, trains sounding their horns, and cargo ship steaming up to the Port of Seattle. Seattle has its Bruce Ratner, of course — Microsoft’s Paul Allen, who’s probably using EB-5 green-cards-for-investment schemes, too. Like Flushing, the local baseball team is a mess. And there’re plans for a five-story drill to bore a tunnel between downtown Seattle and Elliot Bay/Puget Sound…yeah, that’ll go just great.
I miss Brooklyn. The heatwaves and tornadoes and fabulous emergency-ramp flight attendants, the scene at Rocky’s, the newsstands, pizza joints, Freddy’s — poor brave little bar, and everyone I left behind in a cyclone of emotions and desires — the grout and sealants that hold dreams together. This one, anyway…
If you wanna know what coming out here sounds like, the new RebelMart album is a good accounting. Or, you could just listen to Randy Newman’s “Dixie Flyer.”
…and Rain, I’ll miss you.