New England Music News

Boston music news: September 21, 2007

Notes on Chris Brokaw and Session Americana

By JIM SULLIVAN | September 18, 2007

Chris Brokaw

For the better part of a decade, CHRIS BROKAW was best known as Thalia Zedek’s guitar foil in the local band Come (and the guy who played those slo-core drums for Codeine). In the years since Come’s last hurrah (1998’s Gently, Down the Stream), he’s played with dozens of bands. But his newest project is likely to be his highest-profile yet: he’s been retained to help Sonic Youth’s THURSTON MOORE tour in support of Moore’s new solo album, Trees Outside the Academy (Ecstatic Peace). Moore had asked Brokaw to do some work on the album itself; Brokaw had a prior commitment, a European tour with 11th Dream Day. But when Moore was assembling the touring band that he’ll bring with him to the Museum of Fine Arts on September 27, he got back in touch. “I have a lot of stuff going on,” Brokaw admits, but he couldn’t pass this up. Brokaw joins SY drummer Steve Shelley, violinist Samara Lubelski, and bassist May Heyner in the band. Later this year, in November, another of Brokaw’s projects, DIRT MUSIC (with Bad Seeds guitarist Hugo Race and ex-Walkabouts keyboardist Chris Eckman), is releasing an album. And next year he’s got an acoustic CD with GEOFF FARINA featuring what he calls “pre–World War II country blues.” He also plans to record a new solo album in January. And somewhere in there, he’ll play some West Coast dates with EVAN DANDO, opening for the Jesus and Mary Chain.

SESSION AMERICANA, the folk-rock roots band started by singer/guitarist RY CAVANAUGH, moves from small clubs to the Brattle Theatre with a gig on October 4. And the BEANTOWN SWING ORCHESTRA will make their cinematic debut as an upscale wedding band in Bachelor No. 2, which stars Dane Cook.