KARATE, CHOPPED: Glorytellers’ understated, folky feel does without extended displays of virtuosity |
There was a time when it was easy to hate Geoff Farina. Well, maybe hate is too strong a word. After all, he’s a nice, polite, well-groomed, thoughtful, generally likable guy. But in the mid ’90s, he took one of this city’s more promising post-Slint indie guitar-rock bands and messed it all up by adding a bunch of jazz-flavored stuff, from minor-ninth chords to long, modal guitar solos. It didn’t help that he’d been to Berklee. And all of this from a singer/guitarist with an otherwise immaculate résumé that included playing in the quiet, indie-folk Secret Stars with Jodi Buonanno and, in the late ’90s, co-founding the Narragansett Grange Hall in Wakefield, Rhode Island — a living/performance space that opened its doors to artists-in-residence like DC punk photographer Pat Graham and violinist Ida Pearl, namesake of the band Ida. Oh, and Geoff’s sister Amy is married to Ian MacKaye.
“So,” I can’t help asking when Farina and I meet at the Sherman Café, near his current home in Union Square, “when you go home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, Ian’s just there?”
“Yeah, yeah, more or less. But I’ve known him for a while. So it’s not that different. And he’s a regular dude. With Glorytellers he’s been super helpful and inspiring.”
Glorytellers, who play upstairs at the Middle East this Friday, are Farina’s new band, and the reason we’re meeting. As a vehicle for his songwriting, the trio delve even deeper into the jazz Farina, drummer Gavin McCarthy, and bassist Jeff Goddard toyed with in Karate — so much so that iTunes has their homonymous Southern debut listed under “jazz.”
Indeed, Glorytellers goes a long way toward making sense of what Farina was reaching for when he first brought jazz into the Karate fold — in part by doing away with the usual guitar/bass/drums rock line-up in favor of fingerpicked acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and drums, with the acoustic as the focus. It’s a natural fit for Farina’s stark, impressionistic lyrics; and the low-key arrangements complement melancholy imagery like the lone rose in the disc’s opener, “Camouflage,” and the “suicide by cigarettes and Maker’s Mark” in “Awake at the Wheel.” Farina can continue to stretch out — displaying his nylon-string-acoustic chops in “Trovato Suono,” for example — without overreaching. If anything, the acoustic gives the album an understated, folky feel while steering the trio away from extended displays of lead-guitar virtuosity. In other words, all is forgiven.
“It was really never Berklee’s influence,” he says of the jazz chordings that crept into Karate. “It’s always just been the influence of the musicians I was listening to. To this day, I learn from listening to musicians who I love, like old-time musicians and jazz and blues. I try to learn that stuff just because I’m curious about it and then I try to incorporate it into what I do. And there was a time when I was listening to a lot of jazz guitar, fooling around with a lot of Jim Hall ideas. I felt there was some fertile territory there.
“And I always wanted the music I make to be outside of any genre. I think Gavin and Jeff were great about that because we never really felt we were indie-rockers. We had all played different kinds of music, so we had a lot of curiosity and restlessness. Sure, there were times when it didn’t work — we wrote some songs that just had too many chords because I’d want to challenge myself. The things that worked we held onto, and the things that didn’t we let go of.”
So Glorytellers is the next logical step. “I think we had done a lot with Karate, and I wanted to totally start from scratch. I have tinnitus, so it was getting to the point where it was difficult for me to play on stage with a loud rock band. And getting quieter was an impulse that took on a life of its own, because I play acoustic guitar and sing in the band — and the bass is essentially played with my thumb. So the arrangements are totally different from regular rock-band arrangements. It’s the same kinds of songs I was playing in Karate, but it’s upside down or something.”
The links between Glorytellers and Karate remain strong: when Luther Gray’s wife had a child and he couldn’t tour, McCarthy took over on drums. And that seems to be a running theme, since McCarthy is now due to be a father later this year. Farina also recently lost a guitarist, Josh LaRue (of Mice Parade and HiM), to fatherhood, and LaRue’s replacement, local jazz guitarist Jef Charland, isn’t going to be able to make a European tour scheduled for later this year because he too is expecting.
“That’s what you should print about the band,” Farina quips. “Glorytellers have to be the most fertile band in Boston because everybody who joins pretty much becomes a father within six months.”
GLORYTELLERS + JOE LALLY + THALIA ZEDEK + DREW O’DOHERTY | Middle East upstairs, 472 Mass Ave, Cambridge | May 23 | 617.864.EAST
