CD Review: Andy Fitzpatrick. “Rockwood Musichall”

Title: Rockwood Music Hall
Artist: Andy Fitzpatrick
Label: Little Old Lady Records (indie)
Release date: Spring 2006
Available from: CDBaby, CCNow.com
Website: www.andyfitzpatrick.com

I found out about Andy Fitzpatrick through a friend. He’d been raving about this Irish guy who plays piano down on the lower eastside of Manhattan and telling me I need to go hear him. Well my time in NYC is past and I live in the ‘burbs now, but ironically, now that I’m out of the City I can now say that I’ve heard Andy play in a lower eastside club. Andy’s second CD, entitled Rockwood Music Hall, is a live album recorded over three nights at the Allen Street venue of the same name. The recording is superb with a nice balanced sound that doesn’t accentuate any one instrument like some live recordings and the disk really takes you into the club, sits you at a table and even offers you a drink.

To describe Andy’s sound is to look back at a hundred years of smokey bar piano players and their songs of lost souls and city-life salvation. From the first rolling chords of the opening song Fifth Avenue, we’re welcomed into a world of relationships and quick glimpses into an urban loneliness. Andy sings with a furtive out of breath quiver and has a simple vertical piano style. On this CD Andy is competently backed up by bassist Rob Sullivan and drummer Douglas Anderson who add jazz touches to Andy’s lounge style songs.

Besides the originals that Andy plays, he also throws in two Noël Coward tunes and a tip of the hat to an old ‘70s fave “Feelings”. But it’s the originals that are really the focus. Fifth Avenue a sad melodic story about what seems to be a homeless woman ranting on a street corner. The Sun is Down a song about not being able to go back home or even go back in time to revisit what we think we miss. You Care More For Your Hairbrush is a beer barrel song delivered with all the down and dirty gutter melodies of a Kurt Weill or Tom Waits song.

If I had a complaint about this collection of songs it would be that they are almost too simple. The piano arrangements are very four square with only an occasional blue note. But, it’s the whole package we’re looking at and the musical simplicity allows the poetry to be revealed and the songs to open up to possibilities.

~Darryl