June 27: Tim Easton at Club Cafe

What your ears have here is... the latest album by Tim Easton; Break Your Mother's Heart which definitively stakes his place in the first rank of contemporary rock troubadours. Tim's natural talent is in full view and the songs are expertly played and sung. Sonically, the warmth and feel of the past is evoked. It's the kind of record that just doesn't come along every day.

It's all about the songs. Songs so solidly written they could be textbook examples; like the opener, Poor Poor L.A. for instance, an ode to the city of angels with a rapid-fire lyric that you?ll want to memorize so you can sing along: "Not too many years ago there were hippies killing people/a mile away from the Marlboro Man/Now there's sandpaper pants/on the gutterpunks/and lowriders with their heads in the trunks/or walking in fours and kicking in doors/cutting it up and filling their cup ? You don't have to break your mama's heart to change the world"; Black Hearted Ways is a classic, catchy folk-rocker; The Hanging Tree sports a melody so infectious it'll be stuck in your head for days; Amor Azul is all dreamy and late night, slurred words sort of spilling out of Tim's mouth as if by accident; Then there?s Watching The Lightning, the album's epic with a multi-level lyric, one part dealing with the death of a friend; And on it goes.

Certainly Tim's singing has never been better recorded, and a good part of the credit is due his co-producer John Hanlon, a West Coast engineer/producer whose credits include Neil Young, Grandaddy, and the Beach Boys. Nearly all of the ten songs were cut in one or two takes, with Tim playing guitar and singing live in the same room as the band.

Break Your Mother's Heart features Tim on acoustic and electric guitars, harmonica, mandolin, keyboards, and percussion. He is accompanied by a close-knit trio of skilled session players led by master drummer Jim Keltner whose 40-year career spans sessions with everyone from John Lennon to Randy Newman. Keltner locks in seamlessly with the deep melodic bass lines of Hutch Hutchinson (longtime member of the Bonnie Raitt band) and the exhilarating keyboard work of Jai Winding (most notably an alumnus of Jackson Browne's group). read on...

The Lowdown:
Doors Open At 6PM
$10 in Advance / $12 Day of Show
Tickets available through TicketMaster
Charge by phone 412-323-1919.
clubcafe.com