During the sound check for Jay Bennett and Edward Burch’s July 5 show at Off Broadway, part of the duo’s modus operandi was laid bare. As they ran through “Like a Photograph,” Bennett laughed and said that there was a reason their song was so good: the main riff was inadvertently lifted from Boston’s “More Than a Feeling.”
No act in recent memory has been so upfront about their influences while making some of the best, most inspired, original rock `n’ roll.
Talking to Bennett and Burch before their show, they were happy to be compared to some of their `70s AM rock icons.
“I don’t believe in denying what you grew up on. Why try to squelch it?” Bennett said. He listed Bread, America and another duo, England Dan & John Ford Coley, as subliminal and overt influences.
Burch stressed that their influences “somehow work [their] way into what we like to play or what we like to hear. Not that we’re trying to recreate that type of thing.”
While they may not be solely recreating the past, their concert had many nods to sounds of decades before, with Warren Zevon, Split Enz and even Billy Squire’s “Stroke Me” getting an airing. And like all great bands, they adore Elvis Costello, giving his “Battered Old Bird” and “Green Shirt” a kick in the pants.
All this talk of influences is not to detract from their own craft, which exhibits a knack for harmony and a maestro’s ear for arrangement. One listen to their debut The Palace at 4 A.M. (Part 1) will make this apparent, as tracks like “Whispers and Screams” and “C.T.M.” prove that pop hooks are still the rage.
As fascinating as their music is on its own merit, it is accompanied by an equally interesting back-story. Bennett spent the past five years as the multi-instrumentalist for Wilco, leaving the Chicago band after the completion of its latest album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
The story behind YHF is another article in itself, but for the sake of brevity, let’s assume three points: 1) The record industry is messed up in its collective head; 2) YHF is a remarkable record and 3) Jeff Tweedy is a difficult man to work with, especially if your first name is Jay (just ask Mr. Farrar).
Bennett says he is well past Wilco, yet, he still took the opportunity to give Tweedy a few low blows on stage, bemoaning the fact that Tweedy never returns his phone calls. Neither man has been overly kind to the other in the press, either.
But enough acrimony-back to the music. Bennett and Burch have been friends since college and have been playing together for the past seven years, in between other projects. So why did it take so long for this album to come out?
“When I was in Wilco I wouldn’t give it serious thought. It was only when I became disillusioned with Wilco that I would allow myself to think about it really seriously, in terms of really doing it,” Bennett said.
Burch added, “It was a couple of months before he decided to leave Wilco that we started digging the tapes back out and started working on stuff.”
“I never thought about that – I think that I had the urge to do that must have been subliminal,” Bennett said.
Regardless of how it came about, both men seem happy with their creation and obviously have a good time sharing a stage. And when the liquor and stories start to flow, the audience is brought into the band’s songwriting circle.
This Bennett-Burch show was a chatty, engaging and eventually quite drunken affair. You can forgive their libations, as this was the final stop on their tour, with Centro-matic’s Will Johnson and Scott Danbom playing drums and keyboard, respectively, and Paul Finnley on bass.
The band ripped through some of the best cuts from the Palace record and a number of tunes from the Wilco/Billy Bragg Mermaid Avenue sessions that recovered many of Woody Guthrie’s lost lyrics, a project that Bennett was instrumental in bringing to fruition. Of these, the plaintive “Little White Cottage” and fan favorite “California Stars” were some of the highlights of the evening.
Somehow, between all of the beer, banter and balladry, the band exceeded the bar’s curfew. Luckily the owner begrudgingly let Bennett bash out a cover of Bob Dylan’s “One Too Many Mornings,” a song dedicated to his former friend and songwriting partner Tweedy.
The song summed up their story as succinctly as anything either man could write.
Let’s hope this doesn’t become their epitaph: “You’re right from your side, I’m right from mine/We’re both just one too many mornings, and a thousand miles behind.”
