Dan Blakeslee has been a live mainstay along the New England Seacoast for the last decade or so, bouncing between southern Maine, Portsmouth, Newburyport, and Boston. His latest residence in Newburyport has lasted for 2½ years, with a major milestone being this little gem of a record. Lincoln Street Roughs was actually released in September 2007, but having just discovered it through a separate freelance assignment, I’m passing along the wealth to you, lucky readers.
According to a message in the liner notes, Blakeslee owes a lot of this record to his old art school buddy Ron Harrity. The two met on the streets of Portsmouth after more than ten years apart, and it was Harrity who convinced Blakeslee to record Lincoln Street Roughs last year, his first proper album since 1999 (well, outside of his Halloween music, which is a different animal entirely).
In addition to co-producing and co-mixing the album with Blakeslee, Harrity engineered the music and even contributed guitar and tom drums to half the songs. The man deserves serious praise for capturing the fragile beauty in Blakeslee’s voice and the sparse instrumentation used throughout the album. Blakeslee contributes the bulk of the instruments (guitar, bass, drums, accordion), but it’s Juliet Nelson from TigerSaw’s cello work that adds the perfect somber backdrop to these New England tales that seem lifted straight from the long-forgotten era in the faded photos and portraits that make up the artwork.
Blakeslee explores the dark side of folk, and though he lacks the impressive range of Jeff Buckley, his quivery voice often evokes a similar mood, making it another welcome piece in this entrancing minimalist puzzle. “Feverlift” is a perfectly placed opener, with Nelson’s cello punctuating the desperation in Blakeslee’s voice as he pleads, “Are we done with this fever at last? / Are we finally cutting the cast? / To your ship I’ll run steady fast, / Fold the sails and lower the mast.”
In “Dear Ladies of the Night,” Nelson’s cello is replaced with a flugelhorn that casts faint images of Spain, while in “Your Spanish Scarf,” Blakeslee visits the country again, this time through image-rich lyrics of a man reuniting with his love on a train platform:
“I search the hills on the road to Sevilla,
No you cannot hide, your face I spy every mile.
We’ll see Cathedrals of Spain through golden beams,
The olive countryside, Gaudi, poppies and wine.”
There are beautiful stories to be told on Lincoln Street Roughs – eight of them, to be exact. And though he’s an accomplished artist as well (his work is included in the hipster coffee table book "The Art of Modern Rock"), it’s a welcome surprise to see that Blakeslee opted instead for more low-key and mysterious artwork for this album. After all, it’s his talents as a songwriter and musician that are on display here…and they are more than enough to suffice.
Lincoln Street Roughs is available through Peapod Recordings or online through the usual outlets. Blakeslee will be performing his Halloween music as Doctor Gasp THIS SATURDAY, May 24, at the Gulu Gulu Cafe in Salem. The event is called Springalloween and will include a performance by Orange Nichole. It's not the Blakeslee from Lincoln Street Roughs but still a good time, I'm sure.
