1. Cell phone interview (hence the slight miscommunication) with Bill Locey of the
Ventura County Star, Friday, March 20, 2009.
Deadpan funnyman Adam Balbo, who can use “genuflect” and “cooties” in the same song, will bring his twisted musical wordplay to our beloved 805 this weekend.
He’ll heat up The Furnace in Isla Vista tonight and guest on a podcast from beautiful downtown Fillmore on Saturday. He’s also got a gig Sunday at Beachcomber in Oxnard.
Perhaps he’ll sing the song “Pie or Soup,” which contains the line, “If you can’t deliver me from evil, how ’bout a pizza?” He might even sing a song in Mandarin. Balbo lived and taught in China for many years, where he turned on Chinese kids to his particular brand of “anti-folk” music. Musically, he’s sort of in the same ballpark as Atom and His Package, pretty much a guy and a guitar performing a bunch of catchy, oddball songs.
Balbo’s latest release, “Fix,” is packed with minutelong songs that are over before you can even begin to get tired of them. Before that he released a snappy acoustic EP, “Big Kid Now,” which is certainly an apt description of the artist, who spoke recently from the Bay Area.
What’s the latest in Adam World?I suppose that would be the album I just made called “Fix.”
Where does “Fix” fit into your vast and growing body of work?For this one, I sort of put artificial constraints on myself because I made an album of songs that just lasted a minute.
There are no endless, mindless and senseless guitar solos, so there’s that. Steve Poltz, a singer-songwriter out of San Diego, did something like that with an album called “Answering Machine,” which was a bunch of short, weird songs.That was sort of my idea. It ended up being 19 songs in about half an hour. A couple of them went over.
What’s happening in the Bay Area?Good question. I’m kind of just finding my way around. When I got here a few years ago, I threw myself into the songwriting scene. My place of entry was the Hotel Utah in Selma [sic] on open-mic Mondays. I started going there a couple of years ago and there were maybe 20 or 30 people that would show up. Now there’s 90 people.
Where’d you come from?I’m originally from Fort Wayne, Ind., with a couple of stops in between. I ended up going to Indiana University in Bloomington. I was there until ’02 and I went directly to China to teach English. I was there for a few years.
Wow. How was that?It was a trip. Yeah, it was really exciting. For about half a year, I lived in a midsized city about an hour from the coast, west of Shanghai. There was just a handful of foreigners in the city, a couple of KFCs and a McDonald’s. The people were really friendly.
How did you get started in the music biz?Kind of haphazardly. I started to compulsively write songs when I was maybe 15 or 16 and I just kept on doing it and played whenever. I had regular shows at a couple of bars in Beijing where people would show up to play dice and drink.
They didn’t ask you to play “Free Bird”?No, but I did learn a Chinese folk song that everyone knows. Mostly I just played my own stuff. I had taken a few years of Mandarin before I got there and could barely hold a conversation. Then I learned the language.
So what does Mr. Balbo music sound like?You want me to put it into words? I don’t know. I can’t answer that question.
Where do you suppose you fit into the folk tradition?I’m on the outskirts mostly. The people I copied when I first started to write songs were people like Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Muddy Waters and those old blues guys. Recently, I discovered the vast underground of music — kind of late, maybe, but I found some people I could work with and had a kinship to. I suppose I’m kind of a loner and anti-social, but I’m becoming less so.
Who goes to your shows?A lot of other songwriters and, of course, the ’60s urban folk people loom large, I suppose.
What’s the best thing about being a one-man band?Not having to schedule other people and not having to practice.
2. "Annie" was featured in
Loudvine.com, an LA blog, recently.
3. Review in the
NBT, a German-based blog and podcast:
19 songs in 30 or so minutes, NO!! This is no retro punk surge, or even some novelty out-take throwaway, but rather a collection of discreet and contemplative miniatures.
Playing with the genre of Stripped down folk, Balbo comes at you with an almost shy warm voice, mixing in humor with a side portion of melancholy and sometimes (when it fits) even bitterness. Sometimes the words flicker and flutter out urgent to get to the conclusion, sometimes given the brevity of the tune; they seem to stroll calmly into storytelling land.
Stand out tune for me is the slightly longer than normal (for this set) ‘Forget About The Crease’ which time shifts an intimate relationship, focusing on tiny movements and fragments of dialogue, it seems to be a song about regret, but regret for something about to happen!
And that is the beauty of the writing here, so much is implied, sketched, and it trusts in our empathy to complete the journey.
A Highly Rewarding Listen.