Singer-songwriter Brent Kirby scratches at his three-day-old beard as he watches a family walking out of frame at the West Side Market Café. Between bites of hash brown and over-easy eggs, the longtime Cleveland resident and Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, transplant ponders why roots rock in his hometown is a big deal.
“I guess you might expect something angrier,” he says, alluding to the Cleveland area’s post-industrial years. “But there are a lot of genuine, like-minded and hard-working people here, and that, coupled with the Springsteen vibe permeating society here, means something.
“I don’t think a lot of people realize there’s so much stuff going on here; it’s a great scene… I guess you can say it’s the Midwest, but what you feel in the music… that honesty and feeling of real life is a big part of what makes Cleveland such a great scene for roots rock.”
Those good ol’ roots have kept Kirby – a 25-hour-a-day, work-at-club, stay-at-home dad and guitar tech-handyman – extraordinarily busy. Busy enough, in fact, that unlike some of the characters he may sing about on a given night, he actually quit his day job in cellular phone sales.
“There just wasn’t enough time for a day job with that schedule and family life vying for minutes,” Kirby shrugs with a laugh. “It took too much out of me, and too much away from what I’m doing musically.”
All in the Moment
Scene hoppers are sure to recognize what Kirby has been trying to do musically over the last several years. Now, Kirby’s affable demeanor, sandpapery voice and allegories can be found on stage nearly every night of the week.
Kirby plays with five different local bands at the moment, performs solo and just last month had “a total of 23 gigs,” including a lot of double shows.
He and fellow guitar slinger Bobby Latina lead The Jack Fords through rollicking rock tunes that recall everything from Springsteen to the Old ‘97s. The Fords just released a new disc called The Way Things Should Be, which was produced by Eric “Roscoe” Ambel (Bottle Rockets, Del Lords, Freedy Johnston).
Kirby’s also in a band called The Shapeshifters; drums in singer-songwriter Chris Allen's group called The Guilty Hearts, and does holiday gigs with The Ohio City Singers, an all-star lineup of musicians at Prosperity Social Club, where he hosts a monthly “anything goes” show called Songwriters-in-the-Round.
He also does a little shindig called The New Soft Shoe, a low-key musical revue (read: spontaneously combustible roots revival) with Shapeshifters pals and others at the Happy Dog.
The tunage tips the hat to alt-country forefather Gram Parsons and his work with The Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers and as a solo artist. The gigs have met with some high praise.
“It’s a seat of our pants gig,” says Kirby. “We don’t really rehearse; we just show up and do it all in the moment. But we do take the music very seriously. People who show up are pretty diehard about his stuff… maybe even fanatical. So it’s important to do it right, and I think we do that.”
Preaching Parsons was never really a mission, but Kirby’s love affair with the late, great singer-songwriter inspired him to delve into that “gilded palace of sin,” so to speak.
“It’s a good time. I’ve got this great band together already and have been singing a lot of Parsons’ songs already. It seemed like a really fun thing to do. I don’t think it’s something that will ever be a huge focus, but it’s a good outlet.”
In a Class All By Himself
What has been a huge focus for Kirby recently is his new solo disc. The aptly-titled Last Song on the Soundtrack is part John Hiatt’s Bring the Family aesthetic and approach, part storybook romanticism and all heartfelt Americana, splayed across six strings.
And it sounds exactly how Kirby imagined it would.
“I didn’t want to drown myself in guitars, but still wanted to layer the melodies,” he offers, with a nod to “my guitar band,” the Jack Fords.
“The thought was really to augment that stripped-down acoustic guitar sound with a lot of my favorite instrumentation and to do it all live.”
The premise of the 11-cut disc was “to let the songs and characters in them speak for themselves, and have the acoustic guitar anchor the songs,” Kirby relates, between sips of coffee. “Setting the scene and painting the picture is a great part of writing songs; songwriters just can’t do what they do in that second- or third-person voice.”
To wit, the characters of Kirby’s songs all live very much in the moment.
“This album is a true expression of me, and I’ve always liked story songs,” he says. “I like ‘I’m Just a Man’ and ‘Don’t Cry For Me’ for that reason. Those songs are as much about the images as they are music and words.”
Of his latest batch, “Silently Stepping out Surreal” might be the best of the lot, fortifying country-fied shuffle-n-jangle with Al Moss’ weepy pedal steel, Chris Hanna’s minimalist piano musing and a handful of restless souls searching for their path.
Fittingly enough, it’s also one hell of a road tune – fitting for a man who loves a good story and the open road.
LISTEN: Brent Kirby - "Don't Cry for Me"
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This Thursday, August 5 at noon, he performs on 90.3FM WCPN’s “Around Noon” show with his pedal steel accomplice, Al Moss. Later that day, it’s a rollicking set with the Jack Fords for the “Dundee Outdoor Concert Series” at Playhouse Square at 5 pm. The following Thursday night, Kirby and friends do “The New Soft Shoe" at the Happy Dog, at 9 pm. Keep up with Kirby (and his crazy schedule) at www.myspace.com/brentkirby or www.myspace.com/jackfords
