Artist: Various Artists
Album: Party for Joey: A Sweet Relief Tribute to Joey Spampinato
Label: True North Records
Release Date: 6.25.21
The Minus Five gets the closest, I think, to the sound of classic NRBQ here. The rickety, anything goes rock ‘n roll spirit of the Q shines like an old, broken flashlight in their performance of “Don’t She Look Good.” But the Five, an R.E.M. offshoot featuring Scott McCaughey, Peter Buck, and Mike Mills, are just one of 14 spectacular artists and groups that showed up and played their hearts out at this Party for Joey. Highly celebrated for his songwriting, singing, and bass playing (Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Bonnie Raitt, etc.), Joey Spampinato co-founded NRBQ in 1965, and remained with the band until the mid-2000s. He’s been battling cancer these past six years, and the proceeds from this Sweet Relief Tribute are intended to help ease the burden of his medical bills.
NRBQ—the New Rhythm and Blues Quartet—are one of those bands vastly important to the fabric of rock ‘n’ roll, but ridiculously under-heralded. The Spampinato-penned gems included in this collection likely won’t change the latter notion, but will certainly shore up the former. They are, in a word, superb.
Ex-NRBQ guitarist Al Anderson (now an acclaimed Nashville-based songwriter) opens the album with “You Can’t Hide.” Anderson’s banged-up, melodic singing and playing, and the spunky little band behind him, set the tone for one heck of a joyful rock ‘n’ roll ride. Los Lobos and the Q grew up during the same timeframe, and the similarities between the two bands jump out in the positively exuberant run through “Every Boy Every Girl,” cut by Los Lobos singer, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist David Hidalgo, sax player Steve Berlin, and Hidalgo’s sons Vince on bass and David Jr. on drums. And how ‘bout this little one-off posse of rockers? Vocalist/guitarist Ben Harper, some guy named Keith Richards on guitar, blues harmoni-cat Charlie Musselwhite, ex-Heartbreakers keys man Benmont Tench, Don Was on bass, and drummer Don Heffington clickety-clack together “Like a Locomotive” indeed!
Among other highlights on the album are Rhode Island alt. folk rockers Deer Tick inserting more than a little twang into “That I Get Back Home,” She & Him (actress/model Zooey Deschanel singing, and M. Ward on guitars and keyboards) being blatantly ethereal on the lovely “How Can I Make You Love Me,” and Bonnie Raitt with the current edition of NRBQ (still featuring Terry Adams on clavinet) rolling through “Green Lights.” Terrific cuts by Peter Case, Steve Forbert, Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale, Robbie Fulks, Penn and Teller, and The Nils featuring Chris Spedding, round out the set.
Joey Spampinato’s wife, fellow singer/musician Kami Lyle, made the plea to the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund. She and Joey bring the album to a close with “First Crush,” their dreamy, co-written tribute to each other. Like a healing salve, it seems to have worked. It’s reported that Spampinato is “recuperating nicely and feeling pretty damn good.” Buy this album, and feel pretty damn good with him.
—Tom Clarke
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