Thanks all the same, England, but we’ve
got our own Amy Winehouse. And our version
has twice her soul, with none of the crazy.
While the Winehouse comparison makes an easy
shorthand for what Boston’s Eli “Paperboy” Reed
does, there are big differences between the
Brookline boy and his British, beehived female
foil.
“There’s less irony, less cynicism
to what we do and people can latch on to that,” said
Reed, whose debut, “Roll With You,” is
out today. “What I want to do at my core
is make American music in the grand tradition.
Plus, I’m American and I’m a guy.
I’m not Amy.”
The baby-faced Reed - who opens for Nick
Lowe at the Calvin Theater in Northampton on
Thursday - has spent his 24 years obsessed
with classic Black American music. It began
with his father’s wax stacks of gospel,
blues and r & b and continued when Reed
moved to blues mecca Clarksdale, Miss., after
high school.
“At that time I was all about blues,” he
said from a Los Angeles tour stop. “What
I got was education in r & b and chitlin’ circuit
music. Clarksdale is a really tightknit community,
people would roll down their windows and say, ‘Who
are you?’ So it didn’t take long
before I was playing with people in a practice
space in the back of the Delta Blues Museum
and around town.”
After nine months in Clarksdale, Reed followed
his muse north to the University of Chicago,
where he landed a gig playing piano for ex-Chess
Records’ artist and current minister
Mitty Collier’s South Side congregation.
“I’m Jewish, so the whole thing
wasn’t a religious experience,” he
said. “It was more of a cultural, musical
endeavor.”
Everything Reed learned from Pop’s record
collection and his travels informs “Roll
With You.”
The album is full of originals with the simmering
lust and desperate ache of a ’60s Stax
act that are dressed by his seven-piece band,
the True Loves, in Memphis horns, heavy Hammond
organ and church harmonies. It’s like
dropping the needle down on a scratchy, undiscovered
Otis Redding side.
Boston’s Q Division, which put out the
record, is betting Reed’s on the verge
of breaking big. The label shelled out thousands
to hire Shore Fire - of Bruce Springsteen and
Robert Plant fame - to do Reed’s PR.
“We’re on tour with a van with
seven people and all of our equipment in eight
seats,” he said. “So I’m
taking all these really good opportunities
with a grain of salt.”
Reed plans to pull an Otis Redding-at-Monterey-Pop
this summer and flip rock fans to soul at a
few major festivals. He starts his campaign
at the WFNX Best Music Poll at the Bank of
America Pavilion on May 10.
Eli “Paperboy” Reed and the True
Loves, opening for Nick Lowe, at the Calvin
Theater, Northampton, Thursday. Tickets: $25-$35;
413-594-1444. And at the WFNX Best Music Poll,
at Bank of America Pavilion, May 10. Tickets:
$38.50; 617-728-1600.
