After a shortage of GSW news and recordings over the last few months of 2009, 2010 begins with tons of hope and promise. Longtime HTer Randy Ray penned an article
More A/V goodness from the May 30th God Street Wine reunion shows has surfaced and I’m surprised at how good the band sounded. As we mentioned a few weeks ago,
God Street Wine guitarist Lo Faber recently answered over 20 questions for an interview over at The Great Southern Brainfart. Faber discussed his influences, the formation of the band, his
Back in 1995 there weren’t many websites dedicated to music and barely any music publications on the ‘net. One of the first online rags was an alternative netzine called Consumable. Consumable was started in Hoboken back in 1994 and published dozens of issues until their final issue in August of 2000.
[Photo by Michael Weiss]
While Consumable focused on the alternative scene, once in a while they would profile a rock band. The April 5, 1995 issue contained an interview with God Street Wine drummer Tomo. Dan Enright wrote this insightful piece and if he’s still out there and wants us to take this reprint down, just have him shoot us an email. Without further ado, here’s Dan Enright’s interview with Tomo from Consumable…
The publicist from Geffen, was right on time. When I answered the phone she pleasantly informed me I’d be talking with Tomo, the drummer from God Street Wine. It took a moment to make the three-way connection to a hotel room in Columbia, Missouri – where the band was scheduled to perform another of the 200+ shows they do every year, and have since 1989 when the band was formed.
With two self released albums and hundreds of performances behind them, the group seems poised to receive the recognition they deserve. The quintet – a collaboration between Jon Bevo (piano, organ, vocals), Lo Faber (guitar, lead vocals), Aaron Maxwell (guitar, lead vocals), Dan Pifer (bass, vocals) and Tomo (drums, vocals) – have just recently released their major label debut, $1.99 Romances, on Geffen.
READ ON for an interview with GSW drummer Tomo from 1995…
The new God Street Wednesday feature on Hidden Track seems to take me down memory lane more than any other column on the site. I guess that’s because for me, God Street Wine’s peak came at a time when I had
nothing to do but blow off classes in college and listen to music.
[Photo by Charlie Watts]
Back in the early ’90s, God Street Wine was just as much a part of the emerging “jamband scene” as anyone including the eventually more popular Blues Traveler, Widespread Panic or Phish. Granted GSW wasn’t selling out arenas the way Phish began to in 1994, but on the “small room” circuit, GSW brought just as much to the table as anyone other than Phish at that time.
GSW had a nice mix of quirkiness – with Aaron Maxwell’s booming vocals adding a little theatrics to the mix – and straight up rock and roll. They may not have been Phish with the extended jamming and 30-minute Tweezers. And they may not have been John Popper when it came to arranging music or wailing out solos. But one thing GSW always did was write a fun song and play the hell out of it live.
READ ON for more of Luke’s essay and some live God Street Wine…
From the success of last week’s debut of God Street Wednesday, it’s clear we’re not the only ones who want to see a God Street Wine reunion. We’ve heard from a number of Winos with tales from the road, posters, flyers, photos as well as videos and audio from the band’s heyday. Look for all of that and much more over the next few months each Wednesday on HT.
[Photo of GSW and Al Schnier from Wetlands on 1/3/98 by Joe Madonna]
Up first this week, we’ve got a quartet of high-quality videos from a GSW show at the Wetlands Preserve on February 16, 1999 filmed and uploaded by our friend Joe Madonna. At this point in the band’s career Tomo and Bevo had left. The band held auditions and replaced the longtime members with Pete Levin on keys and Aubrey Dayle on drums. As you can see in this clip of Wendy, Pete and Aubrey held shit down…
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-PA5S4f5UY
It’s also been a big week for the Live Music Archive’s God Street Wine collection. Seven (!?!?!) magnificent soundboard recordings from Michael Weiss of the band’s mid-’90s glory days have been lovingly transferred and uploaded to Archive.org. So far I’ve listened to two of the shows and the quality of both the playing and the recording are top-fucking-shelf.
I’m particularly partial to what appears to be an acoustic show at Peasant’s Cafe in Greenville, NC on November 17, 1994. This crystal clear tape starts off with Tomo laying down station IDs for Deerfield Academy’s radio station before the boys pick up their acoustics and start the show with a cover of All Blues. Next, they launch into a bluegrass-tinged Wendy that’s completely different from the 1999 electric version above.
READ ON to watch the rest of Joe Madonna’s videos from 1999 and to stream seven of Michael Weiss’ tapes from 1994 and 1995…
At a time when the greater rock world has become inundated with throwback sounds, quickly subtitling everything retro-this and post-that, an improvisational four-piece from Vermont is stepping out from an ominous shadow by reinventing a sound it would have otherwise never outlived.
