Simpson (7)

From Columbia Records' INSIGHT Magazine: Every so often somebody decides to get serious about what goes on in the regions of the heart and then tries to turn it into music. Often the end result is pompous pseudo-poetry set to melodramatic musical clichés. You can probably count the real poets of popular music on one hand. Now there is Simpson, and you can definitely start on the next hand. Simpson is both a group - of four extraordinary musicians - and a man, Bland Simpson, an extraordinary singer/songwriter. From both a musical and a lyrical standpoint, his work is uncommonly whole - a paragon of inventiveness, economy and insight. Simpson's is a particularly Southern and rural vision, Bland Simpson having been born and raised in small-town North Carolina. The lyrics are pictures out of an untroubled Nineteenth-century landscape: trains and sideshows, church bells and poker games. The music, itself, has a solid country flow, with a straight four-piece acoustic sound (piano, acoustic guitar, bass and drums), but with none of standard country’s often-boring metrics and predictable chord changes; every musical step a Simpson tune takes is a surprise. From rather public beginnings as a freshman class president at the University of North Carolina, Bland Simpson withdrew gradually into the private sphere of his songwriting ambition. By the Fall following his senior year, he was in New York working listlessly for a book publisher and planning his real career. Soon enough the commitment came to him. He quit work, and he started putting his material together full-time. When he finally came to Columbia Records with an album's worth of tunes, it took one very short audition to convince the company that a major talent had come to them. Bob Rothstein, from New Rochelle, New York, has played bass with many New York groups, but never really found his spiritual home till he joined Simpson. As you'll hear on the album, he’s an unusually distinctive bass player, as much a melodic element as a rhythmic pulse to the band. David Olney, from Rhode Island (with a long sweep through North Carolina where he and Bland began playing together), plays acoustic guitar and harmonica. David emphasizes the blues and funk facets of the band and provides a counterpoint edge for Simpson's mellow piano. On the album, his “Black Betty” and a remarkable guitar improvisation on “Dixie” show you pretty quickly where his roots are. Rhode Island or not. Steve Merola, also from the New York area, is the man underneath it all, pounding forward motion into the music. Drummers like Steve are rare. Think of it: a drummer who always keeps the beat, who never ego-trips off into fancy-fillsville and who, despite his modesty, plays like a real musician. Bland Simpson says in “Cemetery Hill,” "As a Single fire in the western sky at the end of a dying day, here I sit with a grin in my hand, and I’m trapped into going my way.” One hopes he doesn't really feel trapped, but we can be glad he’s going his way. It’s a rewarding journey. - Tom McNamee