Photo courtesy Harvey Gold
MUSIC
SOLID GOLD
Eccentric multi-instrumentalist Harvey Gold talks about his solo debut By Jeff Niesel A SELF-DESCRIBED OLD GEEZER hipster, multi-instrumentalist Harvey Gold released his solo debut, It’s Messy Vol. 1, last week on Smog Veil Records. “I hope to make as much noise as I can with this,” Gold says of the eclectic album that includes a tribute of sorts to the late Akron-born sax player Ralph Carney. “I just feel that there are some great people, performances, and if I do say so myself, some decent writing
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on this and want as many people as possible to know about it, whether they buy it or not. It’s my first and probably last full solo record, so it’s kind of a big deal to me.” Gold recorded four of the songs with the Waitresses’ Chris Butler and Gold’s Half Cleveland bandmates. Gutiarist Dan Auerbach (Black Keys) and Chris Hillman (the Byrds) contributed to the album as well. The original three members of Tin Huey
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appear too. In a recent phone call from his Akron home, Gold spoke about the album, a terrific collection of offkilter New Wave- and punk-inspired tunes. You have been pretty busy, what with Half Cleveland, Harvey in the Hall, Fancy Legs, the HiFis and Golems of the Red Planet. What made you want to release your first-ever solo album? The bands I’m in right now have material sources. Chuck Keith is the cleverest of songwriters, and doing his material in the HiFis allows me to concentrate on becoming a better piano player. The music of John Zorn is the repertoire for
Golems of the Red Planet, a band in which I get to just worry about arranging, creating, trying to be a better guitarist. But I had these songs, this music. I recorded four of them with the guys from Half Cleveland, originally formed by my mate in Tin Huey, Chris Butler and myself. We had done our Live at the Wi-Fi Café album, but as far as a studio album, we weren’t headed in that direction. There were also some spontaneous sessions with Debbie Smith Cahan from Chi-Pig and that Wif-Fi Café iteration of Half Cleveland, and Bob Ethington, who drums with me on almost everything, produced by Bruce Hensal on a trip into town to visit family. Bruce produced Chi-Pig’s
