THE FIRST NEW STUDIO RECORDINGS BY MEN & VOLTS IN NEARLY THIRTY YEARS!
(NOTE: A limited number of CDs will be available at live performances)
Men & Volts continue and expand upon their signature brand of rhythms, blues, and rock ‘n’ soul. The band now features founder Philip Kaplan on guitar and vocals, with Baba Grantley Smith on traps and percussion, Jon Cohan on drums, John Mulrooney on lap steel and dobro, Mike Pyle on guitar, and Sam Potrykus on bass guitar and vocals. Co-founding bass player David Greenberger continues in his capacity as artistic consiglieri, contributing lyrics and art direction to the project.
The first name listed in the writing credits is Ken Eglin (1915-1984) whom David befriended when he was working at the Duplex Nursing Home around the same time that Men & Volts was starting. A music fan back to his years of hanging out in Boston jazz clubs in the thirties and forties, Ken’s love of music became a column he’d do with David called “Ken’s Corner” that appeared in The Duplex Planet and elsewhere. Ken’s liner notes appear on the band cover of Men & Volt’s second release, Hootersville. The words for “Swing Walked In” came from a letter Ken dictated in 1982 upon hearing that David’s father had suffered a stroke. The themes of walking, striding, strolling, and sauntering, appearing as metaphors for pushing on, onward and outward, to life and to love, weave a common thread throughout the EP.
“The yin ‘n uh, yang balance out like a pair o’ trained pork buns on a seesaw; unlikely beauty that’s invented by melding weird guitar passages to hooks as big as Mainland China. Funny, rockin’, technically ass-pounding. You want? They have.”
— Byron Coley, Forced Exposure
“Phil Kaplan’s songwriting is filled with some of quirkiest hooks around…, he owes a lot to the feel and looseness of Delta and early urban blues artists such as Slim Harpo or Howlin’ Wolf, or re-interpreters of the form, such as Capt. Beefheart and Lowell George. Like an especially delicious musical spring roll, entwining lines into intricate webs of guitar… just a sheer joy to listen to these guys play.”
— Richard Cromonic, Sweet Potato
“From hillbilly licks to easy-going lopes, Men & Volts pay homage to just about every kind of folksy native music that ever sprang out of a six-string. They defy all categorizations.”
— Janice Kaidan, The Noise
credits
released August 14, 2022
Phil Kaplan: guitar, gui’tarode, vocals
John Mulrooney: lap steel, dobro
Baba Grantley Smith: drums, percussion (1, 4, 5)
Jon Cohan: drums (2, 3)
Samuel Potrykus: bass, backing vocals (1, 2, 4)
David Westner: bass (3)
Mike Pyle: guitars, backing vocals
Erica Rodney: backing vocals
Produced by Philip Kaplan
Tracks 1, 4, and 5 recorded & mixed in 2022 by David Westner at Woolly Mammoth Sound, Waltham, MA
Tracks 2 and 3 recorded & mixed in 2022 by Jon Cohan at
Buttermilk Sound, Stow, MA
Mastered by Scott Anthony at Storybook Sound, Maplewood, NJ
Cover design by David Greenberger
Painting by John Nichols Haapanen (1891-1968)
Active in Boston from 1979 to the mid-90s. Five albums released during that time (Rhythms & Blues, Hootersville, Tramps in
Bloom, The Mule, Cheer Up), as well as single and compilation tracks. 5-LP box set (Honeymoon Luggage) released in 2015, and a live album from 1979-80 (A Giraffe is Listening to the Radio) in 2017....more
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