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Peter Tork & Shoe Suede Blues take the stage tonight at 7:30 at the annual Long Beach Bayou & Blues Festival, taking place at Rainbow Lagoon Park. For better or worse, Tork is best known for his role as the sweet but dim character in the madcap fake reality TV show, The Monkees. That was a long time ago, though and, for the last decade, he’s been rediscovering the roots of American music. <\/p>\n
“It\u2019s a lot of fun,” Tork said during a phone interview from his home. “It\u2019s just the kind of thing I always sort of wanted.” <\/p>\n
Tork was asked by friends to participate in a jam as part of a fundraising event, and the impromptu band evolved, thirteen years later, into the current line up. <\/p>\n
“We do about five or six Monkee songs. We try to do them about as bluesy as we can. Something about ‘Day Dream Believer,’ you can\u2019t really make it swing very well. But the other three or four songs we do, we do swing \u2018em. Make them a little oilier and a little bit funkier, and thereby wind up giving ourselves a great time. We have a great time with these songs. We do some other covers, and we do some originals. <\/p>\n
“The new CD, called ‘Step By Step,’ has a song I wrote, a song my brother wrote, and a blues song that I first heard on a bluegrass station called ‘Crash Coursin\u2019 the Blues,’ and I just thought, ‘Any song with that title has got to be a blues song,’ so we recast it as a blues song. \u201cStep By Step,\u201d and our previous CD, ‘Cambria Hotel,’ are both available on CDBaby. Oh, and incidentally, ‘Step By Step’ is available for listening for free on PeterTork.com. I highly recommend ‘Your Molecular Structure,’ the Mose Allison song. <\/p>\n
“All through my early pop\/folk days, Mose Allison was this other-worldly creature who played the blues\/jazz, or vice-versa. I had the privilege and honor of being the guy who introduced him to the Long Island Music Hall of Fame, because he lives on Long Island. I think he\u2019s still with us. I was able to talk about how wonderful it was to hear him sing those blues in a kind of a flat perfectly Mississippi-bluesy sound and perfectly white and perfectly bluesy. It was really transcendent, you know? There’s something magic about the man. I was able to say all that, and it was a great privilege. It was really something.” <\/p>\n
Tork penned ‘Glory To The Name’ on the new CD, which developed as he reflected on the friends he’d lost over the years. The death of guitarist Richard Michelson, aka Stretch, who played on the previous CD, inspired the final verse. <\/p>\n
“The line that I wrote, is, \u201cGlory to the name of the Lord,\u201d and I don\u2019t know what to make of it. I don\u2019t know why I wrote that. I don\u2019t know exactly what it means. I don\u2019t know how to take it. If I were listening to it, I wouldn’t know how to take it. <\/p>\n
“I wrote a song on the previous CD called ‘Ain\u2019t Your Fault,’ which I thought was a relatively fresh take on the blues meme. The lyric is, ‘It ain\u2019t your fault that you had to do what you had to do. It ain\u2019t your fault that I\u2019m so blue.’ So it depends on the moment and the time and the song, and what\u2019s happening with me. I don\u2019t have a particular way to go about it. I am trying to stay to the blues. I\u2019m hoping to write more blues.” <\/p>\n
Tork is a self-confessed “City Billy,” and admits that he’s not averse to picking up his five string banjo on occasion. <\/p>\n
“Here\u2019s how far it\u2019s gone: I have made an arrangement of a Motown song with the five-string banjo. That seems to be pretty far afield in both directions; far afield for banjo, far afield for Motown.” <\/p>\n
Given the chords for Jackie Wilson’s smash R&B hit, “Higher and Higher,” Tork began to deconstruct the song. <\/p>\n
“I started with the horns [sings] and I wonder what happens if I try to do that on banjo. Just to play that lick. The chords are simple. They\u2019re one four two one, you know, A, D, E, D and so, when I got around to playing it, I conceived it as a combination for five-string banjo and a rock band. I did it with the Monkees, but I don\u2019t know if we ever recorded it.” <\/p>\n
The song appears on Tork’s 1994 solo album, Stranger Things Have Happened. <\/p>\n
“Anyway, the banjo starts plunkity, plunk, plunkity plunk, plunkity plunk and, at a certain point, the band hits with power chords. It makes you jump. It\u2019s really good.” <\/p>\n
Fans and friends were concerned when Tork faced some serious health issues some time ago, which required surgury, and presented a risk to his ability to sing. <\/p>\n
“I\u2019m feeling lovely, thank you so much. I go in for regular checkups and everything seems to be about as good as could be hoped for. My singing is better, maybe better than ever before. When I had the operation, I was very lucky.” <\/p>\n
Tork’s musical career has seen its ups and downs. At one point he’d left it entirely. I asked him if the shift from major label industry to a more DIY model has had an impact on him. <\/p>\n
“I notice that this is sort of a trend in all things. When printing presses are very cumbersome, very hard to operate, then only the people with big money have any control over the presses. That was true of record companies, and it seems to be kind of a truism across the board. As it become more democratic, more and more people get into it more and more easily, and yet still the very good seems to rise to the top pretty much with the same frequency as it ever did. <\/p>\n
“There are those who are very talented and they don\u2019t know how to operate either the record companies or the social media and they\u2019re not getting much attention, but that was always true. If you didn’t know how to pull the wires of the wheels of power, you couldn’t get anywhere no matter how talented you were. And vice-versa, I must say, even if you know how to operate the wheels of power magnificently, you better have something or it still won\u2019t make any difference. But that\u2019s been true in every direction no matter what, I\u2019ve always thought. It\u2019s notable, but not important, to change from record companies to public, social media vehicles.” <\/p>\n
Tork is looking forward to his performance at the Long Beach Bayou & Blues Festival. <\/p>\n
“I hope to bring something wonderful to the occasion and, believe me, I\u2019m just so charged to be playing that thing, believe me. I\u2019m looking forward to it with anticipation and delight.” <\/p>\n
For complete details about the 27th Annual Long Beach Bayou & Blues Festival, visit LongBeachFestival.com<\/a> <\/p>\n To learn more about Peter, visit PeterTork.com<\/a>. <\/p>\n