RICH IN A TROUBLED TIME - GREGORY BOYD

Gregory Boyd Rich In A Troubled Time

CD Review

February 2001

Jonathan Tabak

Off Beat Magazine

New Orleans, Louisiana

The Steel Pan drums of Trinidad Tobago have rarely, if ever, been associated with New Orleans music-until recently Steel Pan ... drummer vocalist Gregory Boyd, a hidden pearl in the Crescent City Scene, has devoted himself to this unique instrument with its sweet, resonate sound rich in percussive possibilities.With various groups including Charmaine Neville, Jon Cleary and the Absolute Monster Gentlemen. Chief Smiley Ricks and the Indians of the Nation and others, (Cyril Neville, Charles Neville, Michael Ray, Dr John) he’s gratifyingly integrated steel pan into Jazz, Soul and New Orleans funk and in the process he’s highlighted New Orleans’ own Afro Caribbean connections.He’s also emerged as a leader in the last few years and this CD is the first to showcase him as a front man playing pan singing and scatting on his own compositions. An intentionally raw low-fi session it was recorded live to two track at a gig in Austin, Texas creating an almost Garage Rock atmosphere in which Boyd and his cohorts bassist Edwin Livingston of Los Hombres Calientes, drummer Steve Schwelling and percussionist Heart Stearns-emphasize passion over precision. It is really more of a live demo than a complete album but the CD manages to cover a lot of ground with only six tracks. Primarily lyric driven rockers “Common Ground” and “Message To A Friend” and the high energy Caribbean Funk anthem “Is The Pan In The Mix?” are balanced with the more mellow soul excursion “Good Nature” (spiced with a fluid rap scat and a pan solo that would make Tito Puente envious) and “Rajah”, an adventurous jazz instrumental allowing the players to stretch out their chops over hip hop beats, Livingston’s hypnotic bass lines and eerie percussive moans. A surprisingly adept lyricist, Boyd crafts songs that are catchy while resisting clichés. He often sings with the torn and frayed urgency of a soul influenced modern rocker and occasionally this sounds strained, but on the poignant love ballad “Rich In A Troubled Time”-by far the most striking track, he sings with an understated, soul bearing immediacy, his lilt suggesting the more tender efforts of Peter Tosh and Ben Harper.Overall the disc serves as a glimpse albeit somewhat raw and incomplete, of a powerful emerging talent, promising good things to come from Boyd and his pans.

Jonathan Tabak

Offbeat Magazine

New Orleans, Louisiana

February 2001

Review

“Rich In A Troubled Time”

THE MAKING OF COMMON GROUND

COMMON GROUND

ALBUM: RICH IN A TROUBLED TIME

RECORDED 1997

RELEASED 1999

LABEL WORLD GROOVE RECORDS

One summer afternoon in June of 1993, I was in my apartment in New Orleans. I lived uptown on Perrier Street which is a nice place to live its rather quiet but has a funk that is different from the rest of the city. The area that I lived in was rather well to do kinda of a clean funk if you will but like most of New Orleans one does not have to go to far to find something more challenging to occupy ones creative and or wild urges. Such was this day. Some how I just felt that there was some real evil in the world and I thought if we could all just come together as one we could maybe be able to get along. Now this may sound like an old hippie gesture of some sort or even maybe a bit naive. But one has to set the scene: New Orleans until quite recently was a much different place.There was a lot of gang violence at the time and crack cocaine had just arrived which made people all the crazier. In fact there were many nights I could sit on my porch after practising or hanging with some friends after a gig and hear automatic weapon fire like it was the 4th of July or New Years as it is here in Europe. So this bothered me quite a bit. Coupled with the world situation at the time with Rwanda and various other places it was hard not to want to write songs about human kindness and us as a world trying some how to make a collective stand to rid ourselves of a certain degree of self hatred. Sounds kind of large I know but one has to live in a place where there are murders as common as everyday to have this kinda we got to do something attitude about life and there I was smack dab in the middle of this very profile. So I decided one day to write down some words.The first two where "I decide" then "We Decide" then "we are all the same" then "we are common" then "COMMON GROUND" I knew I had something strong when everytime I looked around in the months and years to come I could hear this word be used as buzz word and catch phrase (Clinton even used it quite a few times). So immediatly I set out to find a way to deal with the words in music. Because contrary to popular beliefs sometimes music and lyrics come at the same time. And this is what was happening with this song. When I first put the music down it was nice, a cool reggae sound played on my Ensonique keyboard with some lite pan in the verse and chorus. I showed the song a good friend of mine in LA and she commented that it was real good possibly the kind of stuff that could get on the radio. So naturally I was waaaay excited and continued to work on it. When I got to the point to where I thought the song was finished I decided to perform it. Which scared the crap out of me because I'm a confident person but sometimes there are certain messages that are kinda sacred in a ceratin way and I think this was one of them because it took me a very long time to feel comfortable about the song. Today I am fine with it, but it took a minute......

End of Part one...

Gregory Boyd

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