For a guy who's only just releasing his second album, Boston-based STEVE MAYONE has quite a story to tell.
Mayone first got seriously into music at the age of 12, when he coerced his brothers into their basement to record his earaly songs with him. In later years, he would attend the prestigious Berklee School of Music and move to Minneapolis to form Raintribe with Michael Koppelman: a name Prince will no doubt know well. After these adventures, Mayone then returned to Boston where he featured in bands such as Hummer and (wait for it) Sticky & The Benders as well as booking up his diary with sessions slots with the well-respected likes of Levon Helm and Dave Mattacks.
Despite such a pedigree, it was actually as late as 2004 before Mayone finally got around to making his debut album, the wryly-titled "Bedroom Rockstar", but in a Michael Carpenter-style fit of total rock'n'roll immersion, he also began working as a producer for the likes of Aretha Taylor (yes, as in James Taylor's niece) around the same time, so it's the best part of two years later that Steve's second album "Unfortunate Son" finally gets to blink in the light of day.
But the good news is that it's been well worth waiting for. Recorded in close-miked, live-ish studio style with a crop of sensitive close associates on board such as Duke Levine (Mary Chapin Carpenter), Lex Price (Dolly Parton) and Jimmy Ryan (Blood Oranges), the sessions may have been done almost 'on the run' in different studios in Nashville, Vermont and Massachussets, but in fairness to all you don't notice the join, and "Unfortunate Son" never sounds less than a cohesive collection of superior, Americana-tinged folk-pop/ rock with more than enough quirks and changes of pace to keep you guessing.
Actually, the way Mayone's songs gently wrongfoot your expectations becomes quite a pleasure in itself. Indeed, taken alone, te opening triumvirate of tunes give you an idea of what Mayone is capable of. The wryly-observed "Beautfiul & Dangerous" (opening lyric : "God bless my Mother, she raised me safely - shielded my eyes from the truth of it all") is a slow and sultry rites of passage tale with descriptive guitar work and "Strawberry Fields"-style mellotron; "Iowa" is stark, yearning and amusingly fatalistic in a Mark Eitzel/ Chris Mills kinda way and the upright piano-fuelled bar room brawler "Black Poison" is a dark tale of heroin addiction with musical shades of The Band.
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In itself that's a great start, but there's far more to come, and indeed Mayone proceeds to excel whether he's employing noir-ish atmosphere of a Chris Isaak/ Neil Finn variety ("You Ca't Look Inside Of Me"), dreamy, pedal-steel fuelled desertscapes (the lingering "Hour Of The Pearl" with its' surprise nosedive into gentle electronica towards the end) or the disarming acoustic confessional quality of "Time To Think" and the mandolin-enhanced "Pocketful Of Promises."
For this writer, though, Mayone stashes his very best for the home strait and "Truckee River" and "A Part Of Me". The darkly amusing, dobro-fuelled narrative of "Truckee River" is arguably the one place where ( I assume) Mayone adopts a third-person approach to tell the tale of a man who's dissatisfied with his three wives and loses them in mysterious circumstances. It''s got more than a hint of Townes Van Zandt, some hilarious lyrics ("She drank like a fish, she ate like a bird - she got what she deserved!") and is truly excellent. The closing "A Part Of Me", meanwhile, is much more in line with Mayone's usual personal style, but is set up by some terrific strident Keefchording, Mayone's vulnerable, almost Stipe-ish vocals and a deep groove which is both a very satisying departure and a tremendous way to sign off.
"It all starts with a guitar or piano, blank sheets and a full bottle of wine," Mayone confesses when asked about his songwriting methodology in his accompanying press release. Well, while some of "Unfortunate Son"s songs may be construed as of the 'glass half empty' variety, the liquid they do contain is of vintage variety. If this is as good as it gets, long may Steve Mayone sup.
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