The Sidewalk Boys
BIOGRAPHY
The Sidewalk Boys are half folk, half raggy blues, and half crazy adding up to more dirt than came out of the hole. This band of original musicians, each with separate realities, sprang from the first RPM Challenge and have stayed the course. Blogging along with the album creation threw another artistic element onto the heap. The goal here, of course, is to end up with a three dimensional junk pile of words and music, complete with all the inspirations and scrapbook images. If a few metaphors are abused here and there or one or two alliterations are held hostage, that’s just the cost of doing music. Metaphors are expendable, and cheap.
“Old Sidewalk” Tom Richter has laid down a foundation of folk, from ballads to blues, for the last forty years using only acoustic tools to handcraft his tunes
“Chunkabilly” Brian Goetz lives on the front porch swing all day and sips lemonade while writing songs that can snap you back home in the turn of a phrase
Dave Lemieux is a finely tuned Steinway in the middle of the wilderness. His tunes have the awesome power of passion and simplicity
Together they are the Sidewalk Boys, with shovels in hand, playing music that springs from the latest holes dug trying to find their way out of another American ballad.
BAND MEMBERS
Sidewalk Tom Richter - Vocals, Guitar, the Tierneycaster "tone 45", Banjo, Harmonica and the bl...ap
"Chunkman" Brian Goetz - Vocals, Guitar, percussion, engineering and the concrete floor
Steinway Dave Lemieux - Mandolin, guitar and Bessy the upright bass
Buster and Rosie - Bones
YEARS COMPLETED
2006,2007,2008,2009,2010
GENRES
Alternative,Americana / Roots,Folk
OTHER BAND SITES
http://www.chunkabillymusic.com
http://www.myspace.com/thesidewalkboys
Completed Albums
Something Shiny(2006)
The SWBs set out on their first great adventure and find "Something Shiny."
Grundles and Trinkets(2007)
The Sidewalk Boys load the bus with "Grundles and Trinkets" and head east to the "World Party"
Under the Bare Lightbulb(2008)
Congress convened in the basement during February while the Sidewalk Boys threw color at the walls, trinkets at the barren rocks of rhythm. Chunk played the cracked concrete floor along with every other heavenly object in the room. The Old 12 spoke aloud in a jingle jangle voice blurring the edges of distinction while Old Sidewalk’s voice was cracked and broken from too many freeze thaw cycles. The Mandolin’s voice, pure and unspoken, was urged to sing out by the muzzle load. The Little Boat tacked back and forth across the great sump searching for a shorter route to Ontario. Then it was time for the Boys to sing like birds.
The Muse arrived to help carry the gear and the dogs out the back bulkhead. The songs were then trudged unceremoniously up the rickety stairs with little fanfare. The myth was just that. In the end the songs become ballads with the Boys becoming balladeers; better for the beer and richer for the rubble.
Steering Wheel(2009)
The gigantic steering wheel is complete. It has been welded to the train and is turning slowly. Massive steel wheels crunch into rock and stone as the train carrying the entire month of February leaves the tracks. The Sidewalk Boys are committed now. Ever since the constitution was trampled in Federal Dollars Town the Sidewalk Boys are committed to giving everyone a banjo upon birth. Soon a class of banjo players will steer the train in new banjo directions. That’s how it works. You are whatever banjo song you happen to be playing. The song dictates how the track shall be taken up from behind and laid down in front. There’s no looking up. Without the tracks we will all have to pay attention to where we are going. Blind Boy Grunt once said, “to live outside the law you must be honest” but I’m not sure I always agree. Driving the train off the cliff is something I’d rather not repeat. The risk is real and high while the profit is low. Nevertheless the gigantic steering wheel is complete. It has been welded to the train and is turning slowly.
Hundred Million Billion (RPM Release)(2010)
The Sidewalk Boys, a wandering folk band from Old Earth’s Golden Carbon Age, conjured up the various myths by which they leapfrogged gazebos and music pubs alike in the old northeast coastal region of the then North American continent. The famous and oft misunderstood fossilized rock stratum is a testament to the musings and many passages by the Boys and their followers. There appear to be many impromptu recordings of seeming musical arrangements, or something in approximation thereto by today’s standard. Also a sort of camaraderie was evident in the logs left by the scribe of the band, who, by all accounts had a warped sense of humor and wit. Not only were ballads collected and sung they were also created and lived as the band moved through the busy century. If history was changed a little nobody seemed to notice because of the high entertainment value. In those days the Great Corporations were warring against the smaller governments of the planet so anything was fair game. Advertising quick gratifications never seemed to fail for the corporations in a Barnum and Bailey sort of way. Based on the ancient record the band seemed to oppose the raiding of public treasuries for political gain but no information survived to support the theory that it made any difference. So it is written in the chronicle, in the Handbook to Indigenous Planetary Musics: 98th edition. 1254 HS