At the beginning of the show there were exactly three people in the audience who were familiar with the band (my wife and myself and one of Joe’s former producers). After two sets stretched out over almost three hours, it’s a safe bet that nobody leaving the club that night would ever forget Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers. I’ve thought about that night a lot since then, played it over again in my head, smiling, and marveling that a middle-aged man (only slightly older than myself) could still bring such energy and passion to a live performance. After the show I asked Joe what prompted a man to keep on toiling away in a field that had always shown him such indifference. “It’s rock ‘n’ roll” was his reply and it’s all he had to say…
Joe Grushecky & the Houserockers’ Down the Road Apiece Live
If there was a lick of justice in this wicked world – and we all know that there is none – Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers would be revered as elder statesmen of rock rather than as one of the genre’s more obscure cult bands. The Houserockers would be facing the twilight of their musical careers with their walls covered in platinum records and mucho money in the bank. If this sounds like a fan talking, well, I am and have been since I bought that 7” picture disc of the Iron City Houserockers first single “Love’s So Tough” some twenty years ago. The critic in me, however, recognizes that Joe Grushecky truly is one of rock music’s greatest treasures and that in spite of the commercial and corporate indifference that he’s faced during the past two decades, Grushecky still manages to kick out a new album every two or three years.
I can’t help but thinking that this career insecurity has taken its toll, but you wouldn’t be able to tell it from Grushecky’s music. Each album shows a little harder musical edge, the songs featuring more insightful lyrics. Over the course of four I.C. Houserockers albums and five “solo” releases, Grushecky has matured as an artist and performer in a manner that greater career comfort probably wouldn’t have nurtured. At an age when most men are counting their pension funds and looking forward to playing golf three days a week, Joe Grushecky is still following his rock ‘n’ roll dream with a fervor and reckless abandon that young cubs less than half his age can’t muster. All of which is my way of bringing you, gentle reader, to the subject at hand: Down the Road Apiece Live.
For a band that has earned their audience one set of ears at a time by delivering uncompromising live performances night after night, it’s somewhat strange that they haven’t released a live album before now. A few Houserockers performances have found their way into tape trading circles (I have one tape spirited out of WMMS-FM in Cleveland that is phenomenal), circulated among rabid fans. There are also a couple of Springsteen bootleg discs – Paradise By the Sea and Nick’s Fat City – that are really Houserockers performances that the Boss happened to wander onstage during. Down the Road Apiece Live is the band’s first official live set and it sounds, to these ears, as representative of a Houserockers onstage performance as you’re going to capture on disc.
Blood On the Bricks
Assembled by Grushecky and the band, Down the Road Apiece Live is as much a career retrospective as it is a performance disc. Of the baker’s dozen songs that are on the disc, some are from the Iron City Houserockers days, a few are from Grushecky’s early solo career and the rest from his later studio efforts, American Babylon and Coming Home. The album is designed as a straight-ahead rocker, with no fluff and no slow moments – just high octane, turbo-charged street level rock ‘n’ roll. Grushecky has always been known as a populist songwriter in the Springsteen vein, but I honestly think that he brings a working class perspective to his material that Springsteen hasn’t been able to for years. Several of Grushecky’s anthemic “call to arms” are here, including the haunting “Dark and Bloody Ground” and the angry “How Long.”
Other Grushecky originals are inhabited by the kind of literary characters that only a few songwriters can create, such as the memorable Frankie in “Dance With Me” or the star-crossed lovers of “Blood On the Bricks.” Springsteen even drops in for a few songs here, including one of the best Elvis songs ever written, “Talking With the King.” Behind all of these songs stands a band as polished and as rowdy as any rock ‘n’ roll has ever produced. Although many refer to Grushecky’s post Iron City albums as “solo” efforts, they’re really band creations that rely as much on the foundation of original I.C. Houserocker Art Nardini’s bass and drummer Joffo Simmons drums as they do on Grushecky’s taut guitar playing and trademark vocals.
These guys have been playing with Grushecky for more years than the lifespan of many better-known bands’ entire careers and it shows. A Houserockers show is an exercise in musical chemistry and a sincere love of rock ‘n’ roll – after all, these guys ain’t getting rich here, folks! When Billy Toms steps out front on guitar, Joe Pelesky screws up his face and makes a run down the keyboards, Bernie Herr adds some fine percussion touches to a song or Joe G. himself climbs atop your table to kick out the jams, the joy and release that they feel is infectious. It’s what rock ‘n’ roll should be about and for Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers, it always will be…
The Reverend’s Bottom Line
The bottom line on Down the Road Apiece Live: buy it! Forget that trendy new punk rock record or moody, dark-hued album by this week’s “rock rebels.” Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers bring more energy, attitude and sincerity to their music than any of those chart-topping poseurs, kicking out each night’s sets with the same blood, sweat and tears that they did twenty years ago. One of rock’s true original indie bands, Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers don’t get the respect that they deserve but deserve every ounce of respect that they’ve earned. If I had to pick one record to explain to future generations what rock & roll was about, this would be it. That’s all there is to say… (Schoolhouse Records, released 2000)
Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™
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