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Music
SOLID GOLD Eccentric multi-instrumentalist Harvey Gold talks about his solo debut
By Jeff Niesel
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A SELF-DESCRIBED OLD GEEZER on this and want as many people as hipster, multi-instrumentalist possible to know about it, whether Harvey Gold released his solo they buy it or not. It’s my first and debut, It’s Messy Vol. 1, last week on probably last full solo record, so it’s Smog Veil Records. “I hope to make kind of a big deal to me.” as much noise as I can with this,” Gold recorded four of the songs Gold says of the eclectic album that with the Waitresses’ Chris Butler and includes a tribute of sorts to the late Gold’s Half Cleveland bandmates. Akron-born sax player Ralph Carney. Gutiarist Dan Auerbach (Black “I just feel that there are some great Keys) and Chris Hillman (the Byrds) people, performances, and if I do contributed to the album as well. The say so myself, some decent writing original three members of Tin Huey 20 | clevescene.com | July 29-August 4, 2020 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
“Miami” and worked on Inner Visions and Hotel California, so it was an offer we couldn’t refuse! There are other songs that came to this album down other roads, but, to be honest, I simply didn’t want to leave it to someone else to mix and master them if I keeled over!
I love the title. What inspired it?
Well, in answer to that, my wife Dolli recently said, “It just seems you always came back to that. It applied to everything from world view to what we were having for dinner.” And it totally applies to my way of writing music. I’ve always been considered to be really eclectic. I mean look at the Tin Huey albums, Contents Dislodged During Shipment and disinformation. I always say you are what you eat, and I’ve eaten a lot of interesting stuff. So there are the four songs recorded quite recently with Half Cleveland and another four with Bruce Hensal. We added some tracks and removed some tracks and remixed and remastered, and there are these other pieces, old and very new. In a way, the album is kind of messy.
My biggest takeaway from the experience of making this album is how amazing it was to work with Jeff Koval at Sta-Level Studios. He came from the band The Fifth Wheel, left town and worked as an engineer in Nashville for 13 years. His mixing and mastering helped make this an actual album. If I say, “I need to hear it like this,” he makes it happen without ruining the mix. He’s just the best. I know albums are kind of out of date. I know people download individual tracks. I’m happy with all the tracks, and I’m happy with it as an album.
“The Fence” came out a few years ago. It’s about “a hard, hard world.” Talk about its theme and why you wanted to donate proceeds to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“The Fence” came directly as a result of Donald Trump’s election. It’s a real reflection of the dissonance of my life here. I’m so happy with my wife, and my family and my friends. My life in micro is fabulous, but I look out at the rest of the world, and it’s chaos and, here in America it has been careening towards being an openly terrible place.
There’s a battle that needs to be fought. You have to get out there and tilt at the windmills. Things have changed because of resistance and opposition, even if on the surface it appears it isn’t doing anything. But seemingly suddenly, the Berlin Wall falls, or Nixon resigns, or we get out of Vietnam. I can’t always speak to the cause and effect, but if you don’t try, how can you live with yourself? The song speaks to that conflict. It’s about how happy I am as an individual and unhappy as a public person.
Our home was built as a schoolhouse in the 1860s and has an brown picket fence around it. The song served as a great metaphor for this struggle between what’s on either side of it. At my age, I’m not out throwing Molotov Cocktails… not that anybody is, Mr. President and your Storm Troopers. We try to give money to forces of good, and speak to the issues that are important to us. Frankly, I’m not expecting to earn money at this stage of my life from being a musician, so why not get out there and donate everything I make from “The Fence” to supplement the modest amounts we can offer. I picked the Southern Poverty Law Center because so many efforts have failed us legislatively that much needs to happen in the courts.
“Eidola” is dedicated to the late Ralph Carney. What did he mean to you?
I still have trouble with Ralph’s passing. I loved him unremittingly and deeply, and he was like my little brother. It was not written for him originally, but it is indeed about our time passing and my reaction to all the ghosts I’m collecting as it does. I was doing an experiment in writing lyrics in reverse haiku, as a response to a challenge from my brilliant New York friend, Bianca Bob Miller. I laid them over an analog synthesizer track, something I hadn’t done since my Huey days. About two weeks before Ralph passed, he had suggested we do an album together. He had just done one with Chris [Butler], Songs for Unsung Holidays, really fun and funny, and I think he very much liked the idea of collaborating with his old Tin Huey boys. About a week later, I sent him “Eidola.” It wasn’t meant to do as a song with him. We would just send tracks to each other. He responded, “I love this.” And that constituted our last conversation. That’s why I call it “inadvertently for Ralph.” I added a quick “ghost” of a couple of tenor saxes. If you don’t pay attention, you don’t even notice it. That was for Ralph. He and our lost comrade, [Tin Huey bassist] Mark Price, each influenced me as much as The Beatles, The Velvets or any other band or artist.