“This one is for the survivors, the dreamers, the leavers and the believers,” said Jesse Malin, of his new double album, Sad and Beautiful World, out September 24 on Wicked Cool Records.
“My music has always been about rebirth and redemption. Sad and Beautiful World is for those who pick up the pieces and find beauty in the madness.” The album is the follow up to 2019’s Sunset Kids, Malin’s acclaimed album produced by Lucinda Williams and Tom Overby.
The vinyl edition of the album will include a bonus song, “The Favorite,” available for preorder. Jesse and his band will be touring throughout 2021, including October 23 at Brooklyn Made in NYC. Tickets are on sale now.
Sad and Beautiful World takes its title from a line of dialogue in Jim Jarmusch's 1986 cult-classic film Down By Law. A lyric in the song “Almost Criminal” gives the double record its theme: Roots Rock Radicals, Malin’s take on a phrase from the intersection of punk and reggae back in the day.
The "Roots Rock” side leans to the sad-eyed ballads, while its companion, the "Radicals" side, roughs things up a bit.
Billie Joe Armstrong once said “New York City is the center of the universe, and there is no New York City without Jesse Malin.”
Malin remained in his shuttered city and made a record. He eventually overcame the anxiety, fear and loneliness by writing. “The sirens, the protests, riots and the darkness outside my doorstep definitely made its way in these songs,” adds Malin. “Everything rose to a boiling point, and we found a way to get through it.”
Recorded in 2019, the slinky strut of "The Way We Used To Roll” now has an extra layer of meaning. Both songs were produced by Lucinda Williams, who also sings backup on “Backstabbers,” and her partner, Tom Overby.
The majority of Sad and Beautiful World was produced by Malin’s longtime guitarist Derek Cruz and Geoff Sanoff. Throughout 2020, Malin created and produced the weekly livestream series The Fine Art of Self Distancing to keep people connected worldwide and dancing on their couches. The show raised money for independent national venues, his band, crew and the Joe Strummer Foundation, and was named one of the best of the year by Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone.
“When I was a kid in Queens, my mother had a sign over the kitchen sink with a flower or something, that said ‘today is the first day of the rest of your life.’ I still feel that way. Growing up here, you find a way to carry your dreams up from the street and out to the stars. I try hard to keep my sense of humor, community and always find a way to dance through the flames.”
Track listing:
Roots Rock
Greener Pastures
Before You Go
State of the Art
Lost Forever
Tall Black Horses
Get Out of Here
Sinner
Dance on My Grave
Crawling Back to You
Backstabbers
The Way We Used to Roll
Almost Criminal
Todd Youth (featuring H.R.)
Come On
A Little Death
Dance with the System
Saint Christopher
Concerts:
Aug 19 Los Angeles, CA The Hotel Cafe
Sept 27 Glasgow, Scotland King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut
Sept 28 Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK Cluny
Sept 29 Manchester, UK Night & Day Café
Sept 30 Leeds, UK Belgrave Music Hall
Oct 2 Leek, UK
Oct 3 Sheffield, UK
Oct 5 Bristol, UK The Fleece
Oct 6 Leicester, UK
Oct 7 Nottingham, UK
Oct 8 London, UK The Garage
Oct 9 Brighton, UK
Oct 23 Brooklyn, NY Brooklyn Made
Nov 2 Paris, FR La Boule Noire
Nov 4 Hamburg, GER Nochtwache
Guitarist, singer and songwriter Steve Conte has found the way back to center stage with his first solo album in five years called Bronx Cheer, out November 5 on Wicked Cool Records.
Known for his guitar work as a member of New York Dolls, as well as former Hanoi Rocks frontman Michael Monroe’s band (with whom he still performs), Steve found international fame in recent years via his collaborations with Japanese composer and artist Yoko Kanno on the soundtracks to several hit anime series, including Cowboy Bebop.
In a prepared statement, Conte explains, "It started with the title, which is a phrase I always liked, but when I was finished with it, I noticed that I wasn’t only writing about those awful hot days in August where you don’t want to do much of anything. I was also writing about getting older and watching the young upstarts, full of hope and goals, pushing hard to get somewhere – and seeing my kids zoom by me with all their energy. At this point, I feel like I can relax and don’t have much to prove, because my work is out there on records, on video, in the consciousness of the public – in my bubble, anyway. And the work speaks for itself."
Of the album's title, Conte says, “A ‘Bronx cheer’ is what we also call a ‘raspberry.’ Sticking out your tongue and blowing air to make a fart sound. The title for this album works on many levels. First is the fact that I moved to The Bronx five years ago – and I’m lovin’ it! But it all came together when I found the photo, which is on the album cover, of a group of high school kids marching down Fifth Avenue protesting the election of Donald Trump. So not only is the lead kid, Theo Fenton, raising his fist in protest, contrasting the word ‘cheer,’ the title also gives Trump a big fat raspberry!”
Bronx Cheer is brimming with the spirit of New York both past and present. "I remember the danger, dirty streets, the garbage strike, sleazy 42nd Street,” Conte recalls of his first visits to the city as a kid in the 1970s. “When I moved here in the mid-1980s it was not all that different – but it’s very different now. Yet somehow, I still love it – and hate it. To me, that’s what the Blues and Punk Rock have in common – complaining!”
The album’s 11 songs were all written by Conte (with one co-written by Brynn Arens). The core of Bronx Cheer consists of Steve on guitar and vocals with bass by his brother John Conte (Southside Johnny & The Jukes, David Bowie, Ian Hunter) and the renowned Charley Drayton (Keith Richards, Iggy Pop, The Replacements) on drums.
“I knew I wanted to make a straight ahead Rock and Soul album with New York attitude, but I didn’t want the approach of the drummer to be predictable or normal.” Steve explains. “Charley brings a certain quirkiness to a track that no one else would think of. And John was the only bass player I even considered having on this record.”
Conte produced the album with Andrew Hollander, who in addition to work with Indie bands like White Rabbits has also composed and/or produced with pop stalwarts like The Chainsmokers and Carly Rae Jepsen. “A lot of times Andrew was the tiebreaker between two different parts of my mind, like when I was wondering if I should play a 12-string solo or use a wah-wah pedal.”
Tracking for the album began in September 2019 at Atomic Sound in Brooklyn. Overdubs were completed by February 2020, and the album was mixed during the pandemic by Niko Bolas (Neil Young, Keith Richards, Don Henley).
Album closer “Gimme Gimme Rockaway” is the one song which had been released prior to 2021, having found success and "Coolest Song In The World" status on Little Steven’s Underground Garage as a 2017 single. For that track, the band consists of Conte with Clem Burke of Blondie on drums and Andy Rourke of The Smiths on bass, with Wicked Cool labelmate Jesse Malin on backing vocals.
Raised in a musical family – Steve’s mother Rosemary Conte is a noted NY/NJ jazz singer – Steve started spending time in New York City as a kid, his father bringing him to his first Madison Square Garden concert, by none other than Chuck Berry. Some years later, Conte found himself playing an entire show onstage in Berry’s band. His own music first gained notice when his band Company Of Wolves signed to Mercury Records, releasing a self-titled album on the label in 1990. Over the years he’s also worked with Peter Wolf, Eric Burdon of The Animals, Willy DeVille, Billy Squier, Willie Nile, Maceo Parker, and even been Paul Simon’s tour rehearsal vocal stand-in.
Conte first met Wicked Cool founder Stevie Van Zandt when the Dolls played Van Zandt’s Underground Garage Festival in 2004. “But my connection with him goes back to Jersey,” he says. “I grew up with his cousins in Matawan [near the Jersey shore], so I had been hearing about his legend for years.”
Marc Ribler, singer-songwriter-musician-producer and music director for Stevie Van Zandt has just released his new solo album 'The Whole World Awaits You' via Van Zandt's Wicked Cool Records/The Orchard.
Mostly written and recorded before the pandemic, Ribler's new music is infused with a sense of hopefulness.
“I started to feel that the world was not coming to an end, more that it was just a major healing crisis,” says Ribler in a press release, about the early quarantine days in spring 2020, when he made his way back to finish the album he’d recorded the bulk of in February 2017.
Most of these twelve new original songs, written between 2005 and 2020, were tracked in the studio during a brief respite from his work as guitarist and musical director for Little Steven & The Disciples Of Soul’s world tour, a multi-year jaunt which ended just months before the pandemic.
Upon hearing the early mixes, Stevie Van Zandt offered to co-produce and release the record on his Wicked Cool label. “Working with Stevie feels like a gift for all the years of blood, sweat and tears,” says Ribler. “It’s like taking a master class on how to conduct yourself musically, professionally and personally in a business that will chew you up and spit you out without thinking twice.”
The mid-tempo rocker “Shattered” was released in late February as the first single from the album. The single came out digitally and in a physical version on seven-inch vinyl with the non-album B-side “Hand Me Down.” It immediately entered heavy rotation as that week’s Coolest Song In The World on Little Steven’s Underground Garage satellite SiriusXM channel and worldwide syndicated terrestrial radio show.
Future single “Fly Away” is an example of a Ribler original on the album which Van Zandt helped shape into its final form. “It had more of a California singer/songwriter vibe and was more piano-driven when I first played it for Steven. He suggested starting it with acoustic 12-string guitar, and making that and the slide guitar be the foundation. Steven wrote the anthemic outro at the end of the last chorus. I felt that was the icing on the cake!”
Album closer “This Is How The Song Goes” is both the artist’s own and producer Stevie’s favorite track on the record. It was written in the wee hours after a day of work spent scoring an independent film.
The last song written for the project was the Latin-flavored “Manzanillo.”
“This is a true pandemic song and production,” explains Ribler. “I recorded an acoustic guitar, vocal and a simple keyboard part. Then I had my dear musician friends and brothers record their parts at their home studios and send them back to me via the World Wide Web. My friend Tom Bowes, lead singer of Tower Of Power, added some background harmonies. Safe, healthy and creatively productive in the heart of a crisis.”
Prior to his role as musical director and guitarist for Little Steven & The Disciples Of Soul over the past five years, Marc served in the same capacity for Darlene Love and longtime Rolling Stones backing vocalist Bernard Fowler. He has performed with Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Carole King, Elvis Costello and Bettye Lavette.
Marc has been in the music business since he was a 14-year-old New Jersey kid. “I started out playing the dive bars, the high school dances and all the storied Jersey shore Rock & Roll haunts like The Stone Pony in Asbury Park.” He graduated to songwriting and production work, getting his first cut as a writer at age 23, then a development deal with RCA Records which went south when the label was purchased by BMG. He co-wrote several tracks on the self-titled 1992 RCA debut album by AOR rocker Mitch Malloy, including two Billboard Hot 100 singles, one of which was the Top 20 Rock hit “Anything At All.”
With live shows returning, the heart of Ribler’s touring band will be the same core of seasoned vets he brought on board to anchor the latest incarnation of The Disciples Of Soul: Rich Mercurio (Sara Bareilles, Idina Menzel) on drums, Jack Daley (Iggy Pop, Janet Jackson) on bass and Andy Burton (John Mayer, Rufus Wainwright) on keyboards.
Track Listing:
1 The Whole World Awaits You
2 I'm Comin' Around
3 The Only Truth
4 War on Peace
5 Shattered
6 Fly Away
7 Manzanillo
8 Torn Apart
9 Without You
10 Who Could Ask for Anything More
11 History
12 This is How the Song Goes
