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<\/a>Adam Ray’s – The Clown Parade<\/p><\/div>\n
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Before I begin, I want to tell you a story \u00a0\u2013 \u00a0it’s what I do.<\/p>\n
You see, I get caught up with other artists. Having lived my life trotting the boards of the stage myself as a singer and actor, I have been enamored with those who see life through an artist’s eyes. To hear or see their interpretation of things is truly magical. And I am not one of those “it has to be about me or nothing” types. I so hate those divas. It only shows the pettiness and the inner-frailty of what they do. Like the bullies in high school, they carry bravado like armor and will bash anyone who isn’t as great as they see themselves. No, I’m not one of those.<\/p>\n
But I’ve been around enough of them to know it when I see it.<\/p>\n
Having done this for almost the entire half-centennial time I’ve occupied space on the planet, I’ve had the pleasure to work with some truly amazing people. Some were the biggest names in the biz, others not so much though their talents certainly warranted a greater audience. I am the type of performer that actually cheers others on because I know what they do doesn’t take anything away from me. I’ve learned that by watching others who can’t handle it. So instead I love to champion my fellow artists (especially if they’re queer) because the life of an artist, regardless of medium, isn’t an easy one. And those who carry true genius in their craft often come with inner demons and frailties that they work very hard to mask from others. Sort of like we put on makeup, painting ourselves into you want others to see you, rather than embracing what you were given.<\/p>\n
Anyway, to my little story (and it does have a bearing on this review – so I beg a little patience). You see, last week I was caught up in the euphoria of Steve Grand<\/a>‘s pre-release momentum for his debut album (of which I was a Kickstarter supporter). So I wanted to do my part. I wrote a track-by-track review and informed Steve I was going to post it. He was generous and encouraged me to “go for it.” I got his blessing to use the tracks (as sound clips \u2013 not the full tracks) so people could get a sampling of the album that so many supporters and fans have been waiting for. For me, and my humble blog site, it was rather heady \u2013\u00a0like a pre<\/em><\/strong>-pre-release party, albeit digitally.<\/p>\n It’s been a fairly rousing success for everyone involved. Steve loved the review and told me so. It got retweeted between Steve and others to about 80K Twitterites (my term for it). That was rather amazing. My stats went through the roof. So in a way it was a party of sorts – well, in my head if not physically.<\/p>\n So why am I telling you all of this? It’s quite simple really. But to answer that I want to ask you a question (and be honest in your reply – no one is really gonna know but you).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Yeah, well, that’s what happened to me …<\/p>\n It was in the height of that euphoria that Adam Ray<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, who I hadn’t been aware of (looking back I began to think: Jesus, what rock was I under?) before he sent me a simple tweet in the midst of all the tweets going to and fro<\/i><\/b> in the Twitterverse.<\/p>\n It was simply this (my moment of Adam digitally whispering in my ear):<\/p>\n Adam’s digital tap on my shoulder.<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n So to my question: \u00a0have you ever had one of those moments?<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n … Because for me, this was one.<\/p>\n Things were swimming along with people checking out my review for All-American Boy <\/i><\/b>so I thought: why not click it and check it out?<\/em> Little did I know what I was about to experience.<\/p>\n This review hopes to capture how like Dorothy stepping from the sentimental sepia of Kansas into a kaleidoscope of Oz, Adam’s offering to me to sample his song “To and Fro<\/i><\/b>” was a moment where everything in the party came to a stop. The rush of that emotive river, stilled by the plaintive strings and guitar that demanded my attention in the quietest of manners. By the end of the video, which shows\u00a0a simple picture of Adam (from what I can tell) as a boy, the song poured out of my headphones and cleaved its way into my heart \u2013 I wasn’t merely hearing it, this was a consumption that went to my soul \u2013 it burnished<\/em><\/span> its way there.<\/strong><\/p>\n You see, Adam writes about what I write about: the journey of what it is to be a gay man and discover what that means for ourselves. To shed what society puts onto us to be one of them, not to define our own masculinity by what the accepted (if two-dimensional) norm is. Sadly, some of us don’t make it. To and Fro<\/i><\/b> is about that. I went from giddy about All-American Boy<\/em> to tears within the span of a little over four minutes. But since that song is toward the end of this album, I’ll save my full commentary on it when I get to that song in the track listing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So, as with Steve’s review, I’ll give my final summation first:<\/p>\n The Clown Parade<\/i><\/b> isn’t a good album of songs. It just isn’t – and bear with me here \u2013\u00a0you see, what Mr. Ray has gifted us with (and I do mean GIFTED<\/em><\/strong>), is a schooling in how to be a modern day bard. This album isn’t good; it’s not even great. It is so damned superlative<\/em><\/b><\/span>\u00a0that, as a wordsmith, I’ve been wracking my brain to come up with a word that truly encapsulates how fucking brilliant the work truly is<\/b>.<\/p>\n Monumental?<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0Stellar?<\/em><\/strong> Right magnitude, but they’re so<\/em> overused.<\/p>\n Stupendous?<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0Astounding?<\/em><\/strong> So 1960s, don’t you think?<\/p>\n Fantastic, Incomparable, Virtuoso?\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>\u2013 yeah, all easily<\/em> applicable here, but still not on the mark.<\/p>\n Clown Parade<\/i> <\/b>is more of an emotive musical journal of a gay man’s journey \u2013 in this case Adam’s own. But really, so many gay men can relate to it on so many levels because there is so much here that I’ve learned over the years we all pretty much have in common. He presents songs that are\u00a0soul shatteringly explosive and revealing (The Painter<\/strong><\/em>), all the while self-deprecating (Loaded Gun<\/em><\/strong>), often bordering at times on self-loathing (Battle<\/strong><\/em>). To a very great degree it’s what we, as gay men, are taught by those who are not one of us. But that’s not to say this is a downer album. Because it’s not. It may seem that at first blush, but like the Wizard of that grand emerald colored city, Adam has many layers to the curtain he’s now chosen to throw aside. What Clown Parade<\/em><\/strong> is I can tell you best using Mr. Ray’s own words from the song “Wendy<\/i><\/b>“:<\/p>\n You were the light that made the shadows run and hide It is this light that is prevalent (whether metaphorically or by calling it outright (as above)) that he shines defiantly at himself, and by extension he dares us to do so and challenges who we are and what life has dealt us and how well we may (or may not) have done with it all. All of this as his brilliant and well-crafted prose, like dousing us with turpentine, the colors of our lives running into a myriad of emotive \u00a0paints, he dips his fingers into them and paints us in alternating pain-ridden hues, cracked with lost loves \u2013 abusive relationships both internal and external, and forces that put us at odds with ourselves. But as I say, this is not a downer of an album. Actually, it is quite liberating to let this album emotively wash over you and cleanse your soul. Every word may be from Adam’s own past, but damn it if they didn’t have direct correlations to my own. In this way it has an immediacy to it, a base truth, that as gay men, we pretty much all share. We can’t truly escape it. The mainstream heteronormative establishment works very hard, despite growing acceptance in equality, that we are still not part of the “real” club.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Listen up to your roots coming back at you and take heed. Adam brings Country truly home by taking it to its historic roots. And I am not talking as we know it today. I am talking its real roots \u2013 those men from centuries ago who were true storytellers. Men who went from town to town to tell these musical stories. They were our form of social construct – morality tales, tales of strife and of overcoming obstacles. Sounds kinda like what Adam has here, if you ask me. Bards of ages old. Musical tales of the human condition.<\/p>\n The kind of Country music before patriotism and nationalism became a commodity. When being an American actually had some sincerity to it. Where it was about the story that was being woven before an audience that was the point of it all. In a very real way, it’s theater of the most popular kind. This is what Adam truly is, no matter what genre of music he uses, he is a storyteller first and foremost. His musical talents are undeniable, but it would be a gorgeous instrument with nothing to play were it not for his incredible deep-diving often revelatory compositions.<\/p>\n Yet, it is this very thread of truth, of self-discovery that is truly an awesome thing to move about you as you listen to these tracks. And while they may be a gay man’s tale, it is human to its core in ways that I have found sorely lacking in today’s musical “pre-fab” offerings \u2013 something Mr. Ray and I share. I used to think that I was just getting old, that music had moved beyond me. Instead, I see with brilliant men like Adam Ray<\/a><\/strong> and Jay Brannan<\/strong><\/a> (the only other person on my list who I consider a true bard), that it is the music industry that has lost its way. Indie is<\/em> where it’s at.<\/p>\n That Adam does so from a Country format is really no surprise. As I said in Steve Grand’s review, while my own musical journey is from the world of Opera (as well as musical theatre), I grew up listening to and being exposed to musicians from all facets of the musical spectrum. Country was fully present in our house<\/strong>. I grew up listening to the greats of the past: Buck Owens, Loretta Lynn, Lynn Anderson, Freddie Fender, Glen Campbell to Hank Williams (Sr.), Patsy Cline and Skeeter Davis. I knew all of their songs and would join in whenever we were with my dad’s side of the family in upstate Washington, or in Wisconsin and one of my many uncles (Dad had 23 brothers and sisters) picked up a guitar and the country songs started to fly. So, like Adam, I get that. It’s in my blood too.<\/p>\n And as a sidebar, while I do listen and appreciate musicians from every genre, I have to say what keeps me rooted in Country music is that the male singers sound like men. I don’t know why that is. I don’t think it’s a gay thing;\u00a0I don’t. It may be one of the reasons I navigated to the world of Opera \u2013 because I loved the sound of male voices. I’ll take a tenor (like myself), baritone or bass anytime over the ladies. Sorry, just the way I roll, I guess. Maybe that is a little gay, but I seem to favor the lower registers. Not to say I don’t love soaring vocal inflections that rise, like Superman, into the vocal stratosphere. Adam has that and they rise with such vocal clarity and emotive resonance that it rattles my own understanding of the world as I’ve come to know it musically. I appreciate dexterity when it’s done correctly. Adam has that naturally. \u00a0These words and his vocals are my own heartstrings being played back to me, like he’d been watching me<\/em> all of these years.<\/p>\n I am no fool; I know that isn’t remotely true. But I’d be hard-pressed to find a song where I can’t relate to it in some very direct way. This journal could be my own, my husband’s, or any one of my friends.<\/p>\n Adam is truly one of the most gifted singers (and songwriters) I’ve encountered that had me rooted in what he was all about from the moment he took his first breath in To and Fro<\/em><\/strong>. He had me;\u00a0I was hooked<\/strong>. This is not merely a country offering either. Mr. Ray works in musical theater (he is currently touring with “The Book of Mormon” around the country – even stops by in my own neighborhood of San Francisco next month (April) – and after hearing this album, you bet your sweet ass, my butt will be in one of those seats cheering him on, even from a distance, in the dark, with the rest of the fans who came for the show) so his reach is broad and make no mistake, he is adept at it all. But for me, this album has cemented something more lasting: it is the words that he writes, the absolute truth he offers, with all of its flaws and imperfections that will have me clamoring for more. I dare you to listen to this and not find something in it for you. Words and music alone can’t always sway, but Adam’s vocal prowess is undeniable.\u00a0It is meteoric and blazing \u2013 a much needed hug after a long hard day that will lift you up in that you will not feel quite so alone. For me, Clown Parade<\/em> has already joined my very short Desert Island Discs list (music I couldn’t live without if I had to choose); it is simply that good.<\/p>\n Oh, and can I just mention A FUCKING STRING QUARTET<\/strong><\/span> nearly throughout the work! I had a musical orgasm over that one, I can tell you! Who does<\/em> that any more? Class act, Mr. R. Just sayin’ …<\/p>\n So I don’t have an all-encapsulating word that applies. But I do have a word that I love that completely captures what I went through listening to this album: obtenebration. It is an archaic word but it means the absolute point of darkness before you see the light. Adam’s album is that light \u2013 piercing and radiant. His vocals rise and descend with such confidence that you can’t help but be caught up in the journey. The music is so gorgeously arranged and executed by the brilliant artisans Adam chose for the project. He told me in an early email exchange that it was the hardest thing he has ever worked on and one of the things he is most proud of in his life. There is no doubt about the quality and care that is burnished and lovingly presented in this offering. So while I can’t give you a word that truly says everything I love about this man and his works, I can give you that singular archaic word that describes where, even with all of my vast experiences over the half-centennial years of existence on this planet, this work adequately gave me personally, a real-life example of what obtenebration means.<\/p>\n And from the first note, it brought me light.<\/p>\n This is the type of voice my confused 16 year old self would’ve loved to have in my life. Warning me of emotive pitfalls, encouraging me that I am loved, that I do matter. That my journey is a shared one even if it doesn’t appear that way in my day-to-day travels. Gay men’s voices about their lives, about their accomplishments, their foibles, follies and incredible emotional highs. Men who live their lives courageously when the world at large tries to knock us down. You are one of those men, Adam. Far stronger and more brave than you know. Or maybe by now you do? I’d like to think so at any rate.<\/p>\n And just so we’re clear, Adam. You can tap my shoulder and let me know what you’re up to any old time. I’d be all the richer for it. I know that now, you’ve convinced me of such with this brilliant light that is The Clown Parade.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/h3>\n
Have you ever had one of those moments when you’re caught up with something that is so enthralling or exciting and then someone \u2013 usually a stranger \u2013 taps you on the shoulder and in the midst of everything they whisper into your ear something that truly resets your emotive clock?<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/a><\/p>\nBOTTOM LINE –<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n
\n<\/em><\/span><\/strong>You took the mirrors off my walls and made me look inside<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\nBut that isn’t to say that the mainstream won’t get something from it as well. And they should.<\/h3>\n
Nashville, are you listening?<\/h3>\n
THIS MAN IS<\/em><\/span> YOUR FUTURE.
\n<\/span>BECAUSE HE’S SO REMINISCENT OF YOUR PAST.<\/span><\/em><\/h2>\nThe track by track listing:\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n
01 Intro –<\/strong><\/h3>\n