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Fresh music that's home-grown
Three local acts add eclectic flavors - from alt-rock to world beat - to the weekend music menu.
By GINA VIVINETTO, Times Pop Music Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published September 5, 2002
[Publicity photo]
Alt band the Boats plays a mix of jazz and rock.
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Some of the area's finest musicians -- staples of the local scene including rootsy singer Ronny Elliot, the eclectic Flash Gordon's Adventures and Tampa alt-rock act the Boats -- are performing music this weekend from recently released compact discs of original material.
The Boats' music is not your average MTV fare. The band plays a hybrid of jazz and rock that features sprawling instrumental sections, off-kilter time signatures and evocative vocals. Todd McBride, the band's bassist who also sings and plays guitar, is thrilled about The Boats, the band's second full-length release.
"A long time ago a very good friend of mine told me, 'Your music makes me feel like I'm moving forward,"' McBride said. "My first thought was, 'That's better than moving backwards.' Then I thought about it and that's really what it is, moving forward, the project and the music."
After seven years of writing music together, McBride says, it's this fascination with moving forward that keeps the music fresh.
"We as a band are always motivated by the next thing," McBride said. "The next song we write, the next album we record, the next show we record. That comes through in the sound. . . . While we're playing, it's 50-50: 50 percent appreciation of the note you're playing and 50 percent excitement about the next note you're about to play."
McBride says The Boats is the band's first recording featuring on every song trumpeter Jeremiah Leonard, who joined the act three years ago. Some moments, McBride says, are magical.
"You ever been standing somewhere outside, at the beach or just in your back yard and all the sudden everything hits you just right?" McBride asks. "The temperature, the color of the sky, the sounds around you and so on? It usually only lasts for a couple of seconds but the memory of it stays with you. We try to get that from the music."
Performing live in front of a diverse audience gives the music dimension, even sometimes dramatically changing the tunes, McBride says. "We have quite a few sections in our music that are different every time we play those songs."
The Boats perform with the newly reunited Tampa alt-rock band Helium Bomb.
Ronny Elliot, another Tampa favorite, released his latest Magneto, earlier this year. It contains more of the singer's twisted tales told in honky-tonk and rootsy rock. Elliot's songwriting is rich in stories.
Elliot sketches characters who are distinctively Southern, often troubled, like the creepy but lovable folks in a Flannery O'Connor short story. Magneto's batch includes a man who dreams he pals around with Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis, another who counts backward in Spanish to avoid giving in to the bottle, and various tunes that mention Hemingway and Picasso in the same breath as Hank Williams.
Elliot performs with the Nationals, his longtime backing band featuring singer Natty Moss-Bond, guitarist Steve Connelly and bassist Walt Bucklin.
Flash Gordon's Adventures, from Clearwater Beach, will also treat fans to new material from the recent Good, a disc filled with Flash's signature oddball optimism and folksy eclecticism. The tunes, and the live show, will be steeped in Eastern instrumentation, percussion, flutes, piano and horns.
PREVIEW
The Boats and Helium Bomb, 10 p.m. Friday, New World Brewery, 1313 E Eighth Ave., Tampa. (813) 248-4969. $5.
Ronny Elliot & the Nationals and Flash Gordon's Adventures, 8 p.m. Saturday, Skipper's Smokehouse, 910 Skipper Road, Tampa. (813) 977-6474. $6.
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