Nashville brings out Frank Black's best Good therapy: Successful Pixies reunion and hot solo album revive his slumbering career By Richard Cromelin Los Angeles Times
Most concert tours are designed to help sales of the performer's records. In the case of the Pixies, the 1980s Boston band whose ongoing reunion has been a huge success, there's no new band album to promote, but now there is a compact disc that stands to benefit from the Pixies' cachet.
The band's leader, Frank Black, has just released a solo album, ''Honeycomb,'' and for the first time since the early days of his increasingly obscure solo career, people beyond his small audience actually seem to be paying attention.
''I couldn't have asked for a better setup, even if it is my former shadow looming once again over me,'' Black, 40, said this week. ''I was able to start working with a top-notch publicist. My name is fresh on every editor's brain just because of this Pixies thing.''
This Pixies thing has been a revelation. The group had long been admired and acknowledged as a major influence on the alternative rock that rose in the '90s, but when Black and his three bandmates got back together in 2004 after a 12-year hiatus, they were greeted by audiences that vastly outnumbered their original following.
The acclaim and activity, it turns out, helped pull Black out of a career and personal hole. At the start of 2004, he looked ahead and saw few prospects. His stature had dwindled from indie-rock hero to minor cult figure.
His latest group, the Catholics, had ended badly, and so had his marriage. He'd moved from Los Angeles to Oregon, where he didn't know a soul, and while there was a new girlfriend, the excitement of the relationship was balanced by the chaos of its growing pains. ''I remember at the time telling my therapist that it felt really good to be down, to be in pain or whatever,'' said Black in a phone interview from his home near Eugene, Ore. ''Because it was kind of like, 'Oh yeah, I am human.' Not that I was devoid of emotion before, but to go that far, that deep, it's like, 'Wow, this is what it's like to be human.' In some sick way it felt good.''
The Pixies would soon help remedy that, but before the tour started in April 2004, Black headed to Nashville, Tenn., and recorded ''Honeycomb'' in four days, accompanied by some revered architects of classic soul, including guitarist Steve Cropper, a member of Booker T. & the MG's and co-writer of Otis Redding's ''(Sittin' on the) Dock of the Bay''; keyboardist Spooner Oldham, whose credits range from Percy Sledge to Bob Dylan; and singer-songwriter Dan Penn, whose home studio in Nashville was the site of the sessions.
The album came out in July, having gathered dust through the distractions of the Pixies tour and Black's search for a new record label. It's being released by Milwaukee's Back Porch Records, a roots-oriented company that's distributed by EMI.
The musicians, who also include David Hood, Buddy Miller, Reggie Young, Anton Fig and Billy Block, play with a deceptive, understated ease that masks their utter command, and a simplicity that belies their sophistication. After decades spent backing the likes of Dylan, Redding, Aretha Franklin, Paul Simon and Willie Nelson, they know how to lay back in the service of singer and song.
''They're so good,'' says Black. ''There are times when they're playing when it's just, 'Oh my gosh, these guys are like the Rolling Stones or something.' It's pretty stunning.''
But give Black some credit, too. These songs mark a startling transformation for the musician, who sets aside the stream-of-consciousness and quirky pop-culture allusions of his Pixies and previous solo work for direct, heartfelt and real-life themes. Accordingly, his often ranting vocal style has been replaced by a husky baritone that brings a conversational approach to accounts of his ups and downs.
''Strange Goodbye'' closes the book on his marriage and features a vocal by his ex-wife, while ''Violet'' is a love song to his new partner. ''My Life Is in Storage'' describes the transition, and Black throws in a few curveballs, including ''Song of the Shrimp,'' sung by Elvis Presley in ''King Creole,'' and Penn's classic guilt ballad ''Dark End of the Street.''
''I did start down that path some time ago,'' says Black, alluding to some of his work with Frank Black & the Catholics in the late '90s. But he feels that the personal approach needed the recent emotional turmoil to really flower.
''It's just, you gotta pay your dues if you want to sing the blues. Not that I've never paid dues in my life, but I just paid a lot in the last couple of years. What can I say? It just gives your songs a whole lot more legitimacy. Or it causes you to write better songs or something, I don't know.''
