Local country-rock band set to debut new music in area show this weekend
One of the year’s nicest surprises has been the recent word that The Swinging Steaks, the South Shore’s nonpareil country-rock and Americana band, is not only playing some winter shows, but they also have new music ready to go.
The Swinging Steaks have never totally broken up, just moved on as the members’ families required more time and their various day jobs and other commitments made touring and performing every week a burden. But ever since their late-1980s and early ’90s heyday, and their signing to major label Capricorn Records in 1993, they’ve held a warm spot in most local music fans’ hearts.
They were often seen as precursors to the Americana scene that permeates so much of the music scene now, a band that was simply twenty years or so ahead of its time. But the Swinging Steaks continued to perform several times a year, whenever all the members’ other jobs allowed them to get together.
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Debuting new album
On Saturday night, The Narrows Center in Fall River hosts a special Swinging Steaks show, as they will unveil the music from their forthcoming album, “Yoyo.” The first single off the new album, “Daydream,” is already available on most streaming services, like cdbaby.com, or Apple Music, and Spotify. It is their first new music in more than a decade, and is the result of about three years of work that started during the pandemic.
(The Narrows Center is located at 16 Anawan St. in Fall River, close to Battleship Cove, and the show begins at 8 p.m., with tickets $28 in advance and $30 at the door. Check narrowscenter.org or call 508-324-1926 for more information.)
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We caught up with Steaks keyboardist Jim Gambino, the Quincy native now living in Brockton, over the weekend to talk about the new music. The other members of the band are singer/guitarist Jamie Walker, of Needham; singer/guitarist Tim Giovanniello, from Holbrook; bassist Paul Kochanski, a former Sharon resident now living in western Massachusetts; drummer Andy Plaisted, of Boston; and multi-instrumentalist Steve Saddler, of Boston. The new record also includes pedal steel guitar from Cody Nilsen, of Scituate’s Ward Hayden and the Outliers.
“The album was 99 percent recorded at Woolly Mammoth Studio in Waltham, with David Minehan co-producing with us,” Gambino reported. “I also did some keyboard work at 37’ Productions in Rockland, and Andy added some horns at his own Electric Andyland Studio. We did the work over a three-year period, so we did take our time, but we had a blast doing this one. Steve Saddler had some health issues, so we enlisted Cody Nilsen to add some pedal steel, and I don’t think we’ve had that much pedal steel since our first record, so in the end we were grateful for the through-line that it provides.”
Songs to be released in stages
The songs on the new record, which will be released in stages, a few songs at a time before the entire dozen tunes are released as an album, range from the full-bore rock of “The Show” to the warm soul ballad “Love You Right,” to the rollicking boogie-woogie of “She’s Too Good For Me.”
Normally, Walker, Giovanniello and Gambino all bring original songs to the mix, with a song’s main author usually taking the lead vocal. But in this collection, Giovanniello has the lion’s share of the material. Longtime fans know the biggest factor in limiting Steaks reunion gigs is that Giovanniello now lives in North Carolina, where his wife is a radio station executive. Giovanniello also leads his own Eagles tribute band that performs all over the Southeast, but his occasional trips back to New England are always cherished by his bandmates and music fans.
“Tim has more songs on this album, definitely, and that’s because he went on a real writing spree during the lockdown,” Gambino explained. “We wanted to capture all the elements of our sound, and we are rockers at heart, but we all love Americana. There is a lot of variety, but that wasn’t our intention—we just kept going and this is what we got. We put this album together song-by-song, over three years, and I feel like this record captures us as close to our live shows as we can get.”
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That first single “Daydream,” is a breezy Giovanniello tune about chilling out, and about as close to mainstream pop as the Steaks have ever come. Yet the album ends with “The Show,” an exhilarating charge that is as rockin’ a tune as they’ve ever done.
Channeling Cheap Trick
“I think ‘The Show’ is Tim’s best Robin Zander take,” Gambino laughed, referring to the Cheap Trick vocalist. “The funny thing is that Tim claims he presented ‘Daydream’ to the band years ago, and we all said no. Now it seemed like the best way to start off the album, and it is really catchy.”
Elsewhere, the banjo-dominated “If Ever There Was A Chance” shows a bluegrass tint, although it grows into a muscular guitar jam, and “Medicine” is a bold rocker where the singer is declaring his love, amid the kind of stellar vocal harmonies Steaks fans have grown to adore.
“We like to think vocal harmonies are our calling card,” said Gambino. “That’s another Tim song, where he sings lead. One of the best things about The Beatles was that you were never sure who sang lead on many of their songs, and we’ve always admired that approach.”
Walker’s “Same Light That Shines” is an exuberant anthem to people coming together, uniting for the common good. It’s not too far from his previous standout “We’re All In This Together,” which also hoped the things that bond us can outweigh things keeping us apart.
“What you hear in ‘Same Light That Shines’ is simply Jamie Walker’s essence,” said Gambino. “He’s always looking for the light, and his songs usually tend to be hopeful and upbeat, even when soul-searching.”
A pleasant surprise
Bassist Kochanski seldom sings lead for the Steaks, but his stepping up on the country-rocker “I’ve Been Looking for You” is another superb surprise. Kochanski has a busy schedule beyond the Swinging Steaks, as he also plays with Lori McKenna, bluesman Ronnie Earl, and the rootsy Stone Coyotes. His lead vocal came from another of his many musical alliances, with NRBQ’s Al Anderson.
“That song is an Al Anderson tune Paul has done with him,” Gambino noted. “The rest of us are doing our Jordanaires backing vocals behind him. People are amazed – ‘Paul can sing?’ – and we have to laugh, because we’ve always known he can sing and has a fine voice. We try to have four of us singing on as many tunes as we can, and make those vocal harmonies a major part of our sound.”
Gambino’s star turn comes on the silky-smooth ballad “Love You Right,” which has the Quincy native also playing soulful electric piano. The tune is also enhanced by a horn section, comprised of drummer Plaistead on trumpet and Boston veteran Paul Ahlstrand on sax. It might be unexpected on a Steaks record, but is a neat slice of Memphis soul.
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“I had cut that song years ago in a much different style,” Gambino related. “This time Paul Kochanski suggested turning it into a horn ballad, and I love that song more than ever now. I had written it originally on acoustic guitar, but we went for a real Muscle Shoals (Alabama) feel this time, and those horns add a definite Muscle Shoals sound.”
Giovanniello’s tongue in cheek tune “Weed ‘Em Out,” a loping rocker about the need to perhaps edit one’s life to focus on what really matters, has been a staple of live shows for years, but never made it onto any previous Steaks records.
“Weed ‘Em Out’ became kind of an inside joke with us,” Gambino pointed out. “We had recorded it before, but never got it to where Tim felt we got it right, like he’d envisioned it. Whenever we’d be recording and needed another tune, someone would suggest that. It has always been a great tune for us to play live. This time I think we really captured it well, and we still love to play it live.”
A new responsibility
We joke that Gambino has become “the artist formerly known as Jim” since his role as father of Brockton High flutist-extraordinaire Nina Gambino has taken precedence. And now Nina has even gotten her dad a new gig.
“Nina is playing with the Brockton High Advanced Concert Band,” he said. “And they are doing a symphony by Shostakovich in the spring. When they began rehearsing, the director noted that there is accordion in the original symphony, but since they had no one to play accordion, they could just skip that part. Nina spoke up that I could play accordion, so they asked me to sit in. I’ve had some interesting gigs with the Swinging Steaks over the years, but playing accordion in a classical symphony is certainly going to be a first for me!”
This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: The Swinging Steaks will debut their new album, 'Yoyo,' this weekend
