Tim Avram’s Elastic Fantastic,
Auto-erotic, Folk-Roots & Roll Vision
Modern Spirituals with
One Foot in Hell
Tim Avram is
a tattooed and spanked “take me home and make me like it” punk rocker disguised
as an under the radar country roots musician, a wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing.
For the last nine years, Avram has fronted various incarnations of the last
great punk band - The Mongrels. It may be surprising to some but to me it makes
perfect sense that Avram grew up learning the mandolin from Zydeco Ziggie while
grandma played the banjo as she spit chew tobacco and drooled a gooey stream of
unseemly profanity. Yep country punk was born.
Avram has modestly big plans that zoom in
close yet back up to a safe wide angle distance. Hell he just wants to get his
damn CD released. It’s not too much to ask if you have nothing else to do. He’s
been working on it for a few months with the help of James Ross from JAR Music
and his posse of Sean Drysdale , Charlie Klein
and Don Zuzula. Avram plays the
guitars, banjo, mandolin, lap steel, and drums and sings like Tom Waits
channeling Johnny Cash .
For the
newest CD Avram wrote several originals but his first release was a remarkable
remake of Solitary Man. It gives the song a gravitas that Neil Diamond never
imagined when speed dialed this formulaic Brill Building pop song. Avram gave
it a realism that colors the heartache more accurately in plain sepia tones.
One of the best overhauled pop songs I’ve ever heard
This is new
millennium soul music that is in stark contrast to the business controlled
Living Dead music business that is connected to life supports by flash drives
that control and disseminate bread and circuses to a public quaking with
eternal ennui while being spoon fed pharmaceutical solutions to problems that
don’t exist… or not.
Pick it up
and Pass it on
The Tim
Avram Interview follows:
What led
you to an interest in music?
Oh, that’s a hard question. I think it was my dad.. He had a collection
of all these great records, and they were more fun to play with and I liked to
put them on the record player and just listen and put other records on the
turntable just to change something. I liked music.
Do you
recall the type of music your dad was playing?
Oh, lots of Credence and Pink Floyd and Cat Stevens and Zeppelin.
When did
you first realize you had a facility for playing music, for singing and
playing?
You know, it must have been when I was in elementary school I tried playing
all kinds of things when I was six years old until I was in middle school. I
tried piano, and I tried violin, and I took all these different lessons and you
know, just because I thought it was cool. I remember taking lessons at Whitehead
Music way back.
What was the first instrument that you used, that you really had a
facility for?
I think it was probably the
guitar. I got a Harmony guitar for
Christmas. By the time I was 15 or 16 I was playing the mandolin. Most of the
instruments I played when I was a teenager were because we needed it for the
band, and nobody else played it, so I learned them. In my first band, we had
four guitar players and a drummer. We figured we needed a bass so I just
stopped playing guitar for a few years and just played bass.
What was the name of the band?
Bluefield Daisies. The band
consisted of Tom Rafferty, Ray Torres, Hymie Torres,Todd Patrick and me. It was a pretty good band. We played school
dances and we played at coffee shops and one bar in Midland. It was at the Midland Lounge and Lanes.
Essentially it was a bar in a bowling alley. We were 15, so we had to play and
leave right away. The patrons thought it
was great. They thought we were the next Led Zeppelin when we were kids.
(Laughter). Tom and Ray sang most of the stuff. I wasn’t singing at that point
So, were you staring to play a lot. Were people
starting to know and support the band?
Yeah, yeah.
We played this open mike night at this coffee shop like every week or whatever.
They started paying us to be at the open mike and play because people would
come out. We didn’t even have to book shows. We just knew we would show up
there.We did at the Coffee Factory a lot. It was right on the corner by
White’s. The Bluefield Daisies also played at Jamestown a few times, it felt
like it was really taking off
Well, what happened next?
You’re a kid
and you have stars in your eyes. Actually I stopped playing in the band, and
they went on to play whatever shows they were doing. I was still close with all
the guys in the band, so we all started listening to bluegrass a lot and we
created a bluegrass band called the Haly Quartet. We thought it was great because there were
five of us, and we called it a quartet. We thought it was hilarious.
What was the lineup?
Tom Rafferty
and Ray Torres both played guitars, Nick Young played bass, Brian Hartland
played banjo, and I was on mandolin. I took lessons from Zydeco Ziggy for about
a year and then jumped in this band.
What was your first real successful band?
The Mongrels.
It had to be. We formed that band in
2002 with me, Chris Phillips, Matt Nyquist, and Patrick Shell played drums. We
got Patrick out of necessity because we didn’t have a drummer, but we had shows
booked. On his first show - and he was in the band for two years - every show
we played he said, “This is going to be
my last show, guys.” He hung on for two years, and then that’s when Shane Swank
joined the band around 2004..
Who were some of the members that flew through
your band?
Oh, Josh
Jeckel was in the band and Dan Castrava was in the band. Jeckel played guitar
and then he played bass for a little while. Castrava played second guitar and
then Scott Saxton played a little bit with us. He played lead guitar for a
couple of shows, I think. Later he was in Astra and the Flash Mob. And then we
had Marx on bass. Marx split and now Don Zuzula (of the Tosspints) is playing
bass. We’re still around once every six months.
How many Mongrels CDs did you release?
Oh gosh. I
think, I honestly think there were just like two just self-titled ones and then
there was one that Scott and I had
together that was Old Ship, New Ship, Live Ship.
What were your favorite Mongrel songs?
I think, if
any of them, it would…a lot of the old stuff I liked. I liked Mafia at least.
When the band started, I didn’t know how to write a song, so I just kind of
made words that rhymed. I don’t actually have favorites, but some of them mean
things to me. You know, One Last Day, was kind of a sad suicide song. A lot of
friends that year decided they couldn’t handle it anymore, so then I wrote a
song about that. The songs, none of them are favorites, but some of them are
important to me. One of them was Try Everything. I liked that one.
My memory of the Mongrels is that you were gigging
a lot. You were huge at Wise Guy, Pete Crawford’s Bar. Then you came into
White’s Bar and kicked it in high gear. You were really popular. So you gigged
a lot. Where did you perform? I mean, what other states did you perform in?
Oh, we played
in Chicago, we did a lot in Detroit, and Kalamazoo. We did some Lansing. We did
Cleveland, and other parts of Ohio, New York. I think those were the big
places.
You were really getting out there. Why do you think
you didn’t have more success, because I thought you were going in that
direction. You had some managers, as I recall, or people that thought they
might be. …There was a dude that wanted to be your manager. I forget his name
and ended up not doing a whole lot. Remember that?
Yeah, I can’t
remember his name. He was the tour manager for, oh what was the name of that
group? He was kind of a washed-up tour manager. You know, he wanted me to say I
was 19 years old and not drink. He wasn’t doing anything right. I think things
like that kind of took a lot of thunder out of our drive. You get so many
people saying, “This is what you have to do.”
It’s like after a while you don’t believe it, and you’re just like,
“Screw it.” We had a booking agent who got us into some of our big out-of-state
shows. I was never the business man. Shane knew all that stuff.
Do you recall a particular performance that you
thought was just great, that was notable, that you kicked ass, and all
cylinders were firing?
You know, I
think one show. We were tired for this show. We’d just gotten back from New
York, and we had done a couple of shows in Michigan, and we went down to
Chicago. We were all exhausted, but we chilled this club in Chicago. It was
like 2005 or something like that, but that was one of my favorite shows. I
think we just thought of something. It was just one of those doldrum days and
as soon as we plugged in, we were all just high.
What was it like to play CBGBs?
Well, that
was great. That was great. Other than that, that week it was really boring. You
know, as exciting and hustle-and bustle New York is, when you’re waiting to
play at a club you’ve been wanting to play at since you knew who the Sex
Pistols were, nothing’s magic until you do that. That was an act. That was
great. There were opening acts. I think one of them was Call Of The Road and
the Or Us. We were the last band on that Saturday night. The band that played
right before us, as soon as they finished playing, an A&R guy came and
signed ‘em and left and didn’t listen to us.
How was the crowd for you at CBGB’s?
It’s not as,
you know it’s not as glamorous and outstanding as you might think. We weren’t a
big signed national act. It was just like a random show and a random club. There’s
regulars that hang out there.
You and
Shane talked about trading off shows with other bands
Yeah, we did
that a lot with the Whiskey Diaries in Detroit. We’d go down there, and they’d
come up here. We did that with Johnny Mohawk and the Assassins. We would swap
shows in Ohio with them, and they’d come up here. We did that a lot, I mean like every weekend,
one or the other. We’d be in Ohio or we’d be in Detroit or they’d be up here.
That was those two bands. We did a lot more than once or twice.
I thought that you were connected to Cash O’Riley and
the DownRight Daddies.
We did a lot
of shows with Cash O’ Riley. Festivals around here like the Back-to-Schoo Punk Fest and the Cash
O’Riley’s Secret Stash Fest, things like that. We didn’t fit well on the venue,
but we enjoyed each other’s music, so we just kind of … Who cares if we fit? I
like listening to you, and you like listening to me.
You started a solo career a few years back…
I feel that
when the atmosphere is just right, you know, yeah you start, you become a singing
comedian sometimes or even more than that. It’s like when you start getting
comfortable and it starts being hanging out in the living room with your
friends, but they’re all strangers, you know.
Tell me about Eric Summer. You know, he’s really cool, a
great singer, picker and all that. How did you connect with him?
I’d been
doing Tuesday nights, the acoustic shows, for six years by the time I met Eric.
Somebody had said, “There’s somebody else on the marquee. You should go look
into it.” So I went, and I met this weirdo, this old guy, you know, in his 50s.
I was like, “Oh, okay,” you know. This was in the afternoon. I said, “Well,
I’ll be back in a few hours and we’ll play a show. No big deal.” I get back to
the bar, and there’s 10 amps and 7 guitars on stage for this one guy. I’m like,
“What the hell’s this guy going to do?” I saw him, and I was blown away. I
still play that guitar. That night I was like, “You’ve got to sign my guitar.”
I still play that. We’ve been, you know, that was years ago. We’ve been friends
since and swapped shows.
Recently he got us pretty much a headlining show at the
Johnson City Folk Festival in Tennessee.
We went down
there, and that’s a story in itself with how the band became a band, you know
with that Johnson City show. He and I would swap gigs, he’d play in Saginaw, and I’d go down to
Kalamazoo and stuff like that. I didn’t
have a group until I found out about Johnson City. He said, “You’ve got to come
down. You’ve got to play this folk festival.” I said, “I should put a band
together for it.” He said, “That’s cool.” That’s when I got a hold of Charlie
Klein and Sean Drysdale and said, “Do you guys want to be a band and play this
show? “ They said, “Sure,” so we practiced for months, went down to Tennessee
and got an awesome response from everybody, came back, and we’ve been a band
two years now. We were supposed to be for just one week. We became the Tim
Avram Band.
We’ve been
recording. We’ve, you know, kind of as a band. You know we play as a band, but
in the studio we just, we’re our own little entities. We just play our thing.
Like me and Sean have put together the first Tim Avram CD. That went pretty
well. Right now Charlie Klein and I are working on the second CD which has a
lot of our new songs…that’s why we started the second one and then that’s when
the record label JAR Music came along and has been representing me since. James
Ross is the CEO he has a couple guys, hip hop guys out of New York on this
label, and then he’s got one of the guys from PM Dawn which was pretty big name in the ‘90s for R&B, hip
hop. He said, “Look, I’ve got this label. I want you to be on it, you know,
because you’re good.” I said, “All right, let’s do it.” Now next month I’m touring out towards that
way and I’ll be doing a bunch of New
York shows.
Solo or with your band?
I’m still a
solo show. I’m going to promote this new CD we have and a lot of it, it’s not
going to be totally done by the time I go out there. I hope it will be done,
but it probably won’t. A lot of the songs will be on iTunes and on the label’s
website and stuff like that. They’re out there right now. Yeah, everything that
we record, I pass it on and it goes right on iTunes, and you can download and
we can wait until the new CD comes out. We just got permission from Neil
Diamond and Sony music to record Solitary Man.
I was going to mention that. I loved your rendition
of it. It gives the song a deeper sense of something, like loss. You’re
devastated, but you’re also pissed. It’s a different feel that Neil Diamond’s
rendition of it. What do you think?
Yeah, I think
Neil Diamond’s rendition kind of has a silver lining in that dark cloud of a
song, and I think it’s just the way we recorded it and then the way that I sang
it, it turned out to be hopeless. (Laughter)
Your voice has changed through the years. You had
this really nuance, kind of raspy voice, you know deeper, and I think it’s just
a great voice. So your voice has changed. Is that because of age, cigarettes,
or are you just trying a different style out?
I think all
of those things really. I can’t sing in the voice I could sing in years ago. I
crack now, and I hold notes differently, and it has been working because it
wasn’t working. When you’re singing out of key and so on, trying to, you know…I
smoked a lot of cigarettes, and I drank a lot, and I got older.
You
have this facility to mix humor and pathos. You know, it’s like a modern
reality. It’s dark, but there’s hope there too. Is that kind of the aim of your
new music?
Yeah, yeah. I
think that happens. You have ups and downs. I do a lot of stuff in minor chords
so a lot of it’s down, but there are ups involved. Love songs, things like
that.
Love songs,
yeah. You know I started focusing on writing songs instead of music, and I look
for one clever line and I put it in there, and then I base a song around it.
Just whatever. Depending on what line that was, it’s either a sweet love song
or a song about robbing banks or, you know, hurting somebody. Well, I think I
just wanted to stop making rhymes and start telling stories.
I like to be
able to listen to the whole song and not just, “Oh, listen to this part.” It’s,
you know, you really have to listen to the words, like “What’s going to happen
next?” I like, even if they stop rhyming and it just turns into whatever. I
want a story with some music behind it.
What’s next for you?
Next? Finish
this CD and we’re going, well I am, I’m going to promote the upcoming album at
the end of April on the east coast. Then sit back for a little bit and go at it
again.
He and I are
doing another show together in Rochester, New York on April 26. It’s going to
be wild. It’s kind of a hip hop club. I’m going to do my show, and he’s going
to do his show. Hopefully we can get
together and do a couple of tunes together
Any advice you can give to budding musicians, some
young man or woman that aspires to get involved and they’d ask you about it?
What would you say to them?
I would say,
“Call me because I’m always looking for people to play with.” (Laughter)
What do you think of open mic nights?
I am
intrigued by open mic. I’m glad you brought that up. It seems to me that there
are times when there is a lot of interest in younger and even older people
coming in and playing and singing their songs and all that, but it’s variable. I
think like any business, the weather has something to do with it. For two weeks
I might have one night a 30-minute set to play and the next night I’ll have a
45-minute set to play because there are musicians there, and they’re taking up
the rest of the night, and then the next week I could play for four hours
straight. It’s rolling dice every week.
Any last
comments?
Not really. I
guess not other than thanks to you for 100 years of support and doing things
like this for me. Yeah, it’s fun and sober. It’s better. You know as much as I
thought I was creative and being creative and like that, it was nowhere near
what it is now. You know, with a clear head you can do way more physically and
mentally.
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