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James Velvet died a decade ago after years of heart issues. He was a key member of the thriving New Haven local music scene of the 1990s and 2000s, not just as a singer/songwriter and leader of multiple bands, but as the founding co-host of the still-running Sunday night “Local Bands” show on WPLR-FM.As a solo artist, Velvet penned heartfelt love songs and ballads, but he also led the reliable party band, The Mocking Birds, which held down a monthly Saturday night gig for years at New Haven’s Cafe Nine for an audience that regularly ranged from Yale intellectuals to rowdy rugby players.
Velvet would insist that the Mocks play not on the Cafe Nine stage but in the middle of the venue as close to the audience as possible. That closeness is still apparent.Velvet’s impact on the original indie music scene in Connecticut was so profound that, when his old friend Shandy Lawson decided to organize something in his memory, the effort grew into a 24-track album of local bands covering Velvet songs as well as a 16-act live show held last month at the New England Brewing Company, for whom Velvet once drove a delivery truck.
(Full disclosure: the writer of this article was a friend of Velvet’s for over 25 years and contributed some liner notes to the “James” CD booklet.)Shandy LawsonShandy Lawson’s cover art for the James Velvet tribute album. (Shandy Lawson)Lawson said he made a list of 27 bands or solo artists in the area, with the hope that maybe half of them would be able to cover a Velvet song for a tribute album.
All but one immediately agreed, each taking care of the studio booking, production and other logistics involved with their recordings.Some of the invited musicians chose to work together: The exquisite solo vocalists Kriss Santala, Lys Guillorn and Ponybird team up for “Purple Moon,” while “I’m Stuck” is given a shouty blues rock vibe by Reale Wolfe, featuring Roger C. Reale of The Manchurians and Brian Wolfe of Ebin Rose.
Only a few of the artists attempt to perform the songs in the uniquely laidback manner in which Velvet originally did them. One of the most touching is a faithful version of Velvet’s rave-up “In My Head” by a group dubbed The Johnnybirds, made up of Johnny Memphis, Johnny Java, John L and Tom “Troutcat” Smith, all of whom performed with Velvet in his various bird-named bands (Mocking Birds, Lonesome Sparrows, Ivory Bills), some of them for decades.Frank Critelli, Velvet’s successor as Rick Allison’s co-host on the “Local Bands” program, gets the honor of doing one of the goofiest and most-loved songs in the vast Velvet canon, “I Got a Shirt.
” It’s a version that is both respectful of the original and suited to Critelli’s amiable folk-pop style.Others put fresh spins on Velvet tunes. Shellye Valauskas & Dean Falcone of the power pop Shellye Valauskas Experience open the album with a bright clean version of the sweetly personal “Spend My Time With You.
” A.J. Gundell, an Emmy-winning composer of music for TV soap operas who had known Velvet since at least the ‘70s, gives a slinky pop shimmer to “Wide Awake.
” The Jellyshirts, who’ve been around since the late ‘80s, bring a sardonic oomph to “Gas Masks & Vaccines.” The inimitable alt-pop duo The Furors, active since the ‘70s and themselves the subject of a two-CD tribute album in 2013, rethink “Lately, I Wake Up Dreaming” as a frisky fantasy. Music scene stalwarts The Sawtelles bring a dark modern blues bite to “John Alley.
”One of the most extraordinary cuts on the tribute album is Barbara Shepard’s dreamy take on “Wide Awake,” recorded with what sounds like toy instruments and sandy percussion with Tommy Skarupa at the Tapeworks studio in Hartford.Kathleen CeiJames Velvet and his wife Nancy Lee Abbey. (Kathleen Cei)Christine Ohlman, the revered R&B/roots “Beehive Queen” and longtime “Saturday Night Live” house band vocalist, closes the album with “I Miss You,” accompanied by guitarist Jim Chapdelaine, a Hartford local band icon who teaches the Hartt School and was one of Velvet’s dearest collaborators.
Some of the new styles and arrangements may seem audacious, but Velvet would have heartily approved.Lawson not only conceived the tribute project and created its cover art (strips of Velvet song lyrics collaged into the shape of a bird in flight) but used to perform with Velvet and has a rare understanding of his songwriting style. He nails one of Velvet’s most personal and revealing songs, “I’m Still Here,” in which the narrator talks about how he “almost moved away” but ultimately settled in the town where he grew up.
Many of the interpreters read Velvet’s songs as country ballads, including Bop Tweedie (“Crazy Rocket Ride”), Stephen Peter Rodgers (“Goodnight”) and American Elm (“She’s Lonely). Anne Marie Menta brings out all the folkiness in “Broom Clean.” Some find garage rock simplicity in the songs, as with Anne Castellano & the Smoke’s “Dark Wind.
”The album release party for “James” was a jam-packed, five-hour affair at the New England Brewing Company tap room in Woodbridge. Sixteen acts played live. Velvet’s widow Nancy Lee Abbey was both the guest of honor and an active participant, raising money for a musician’s charity at the merchandise table and communing with the hundreds of Velvet fans in attendance.
The live event concluded with a rousing finale of “I’ve Got a Shirt” led by Cheshire’s Big Fat Combo with Ohlman, Falcone, Critelli, Santala and many others joining in on an onstage singalong. The event filled the spacious venue and felt like a no-stress school reunion where everyone had hundreds of rock club shows rather than classes in common.The post-punk rockabilly band Big Bad Johns reunited for the occasion, with frontman Detroit Dick making the trip from California.
From the stage, Detroit Dick (whose earlier New Haven band of note was the Dum Dum Boys) reminisced about moving to New Haven as “a young punk” and having Velvet “take me under his wing.” He described Velvet as a “catalyst” for the music scene then, and concluded that “He’s doing it again here today. This is James being James.
”“James: A Tribute to James Velvet” is available for $15 as either a digital album or a CD with a booklet from the Bandcamp site at jamesvelvet1.bandcamp.com/album/james.
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