Rochester music interviews
We hit up the artists on their way to the ROC
We hit up the artists on their way to the ROC
The legendary New York City rock club CBGB is gone, although it did outlive the Ramones, Television, Richard Hell & the Voidoids, the Dead Boys and Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers. But the spirit continues on, even if the memory is a little shaky.
"To tell you the truth, I'd never heard of Patti Smith until two years ago," confesses Jen Graney, whose band, Hotel Reverie, plays three Smith songs at "Please Kill Me: A Tribute to CBGB," Saturday at the Bug Jar. But to her credit, she insists, "I latched into it immediately."
Graney gets a pass; she's only 27, and being asked to channel a scene that was at its peak in 1977. Her brother John, the drummer half of the Hotel Reverie duo, is 23.
"He really hadn't heard of her until we started rehearsing for this," Jen Graney says. "I'm kind of introducing him to it. He likes underground hip-hop, and the White Stripes."
Saturday's show (Hotel Reverie also has a gig Friday at the South Wedge Boulder Coffee Co.), includes the Grinders with Kevin Wilcox, the Dudes of Earle, Clockmen, the Grievants, the Emersons, Sara Purr, the Depressions (members of the Lobster Quadrille) and the Cheetah Whores.
The music, Graney says, "is just so raw, there's so much emotion in it. I guess that's probably the first thing I look for in any artist." Smith in particular. "Her songs, it's poetry. It's not so much the music as a vibe."
Graney's own music has some of that. She brings a dark, slinky, sexy vibe to the stage. She recently had her eyebrows tattooed, and confesses a love for broken-down, vine-covered buildings.
"Guys and booze," she says are her themes. "Usually first-person stuff." She's not afraid to admit that one of her best songs, "Medicine Cabinet," is her take on her own drug overdose, "one really bad night. It's the most honest thing I've ever written, and I was actually pretty scared to put it out there."
Just as she's been guiding her brother to Patti Smith, Graney's had her guides, a revolving door of boyfriends. They've pushed her into performing in front of people a couple of years ago, played bass in Hotel Reverie when it started out as a trio and filled her ear with bands she might not have otherwise known of.
"I was a little young for the scene," Graney says of CBGB. "I picked it up hanging out with other musicians and started hanging out with boys that were into a little better music, different music. I caught some of it through ex-boyfriends. I owe them a debt for that."
For more, go to www.myspace.com/hotelreverie.
