New music: Marc Delgado reflects on his life in the Central Valley for 'Wildwood Road'
Plus, how Fresno made 'Piano Man' a hit and you're weekly events calendar.
The Central Valley is embedded deep into Marc Delgado’s new album “Wildwood Road.”
It is there in way that are obvious and less so.
Some of it you can piece together from the songs titles; “California,” “The Wild Dogs of the Central Valley,” or “We Drove Out Through the Dust.”
Some of it is hidden inside Delgado’s lyrics.
The song “Mr. Sorrow Strikes Again” references “the heatwaves of August, the bookstore killer, the freeways and The London Motel.”
“A lot of it (the songs and the stories) centers around my life in Fresno Ca. Growing up there,” says Delgado, who was born and raised in the city and barley (his word) graduated from Fresno High School in 1987.
“I reference Marilyn Gay Ward’s murder and the murder of Kimber Reynolds. The stories swirl around these events,” he says.
Ward was killed inside the bookstore Delgado used to frequent. Reynolds was shot outside the Tower Theatre in robbery/murder that spawned California’s Three Strikes Law.
“Wildwood Road,” is a mostly sparse and intimate bit of folk-rock, punctuated with moments of fuzzy guitar ambiance (on “California” for example). The piano-heavy opening of “Conquistador Blues,” brings to mind “Closing Time”-era Tom Waits, while the lyrical phrasing on “Mr. Sorrow Strikes Again” has hints of Leonard Cohen.
Delgado currently operates out of Woodstock, NY, writing songs, but also stories and poems, some of which is being collected for a to-be released booked called “The Black Socks: A book of stories & poems & other stuff that may or may not have actually happened.”
Did Fresno saved “Piano Man” from being a flop?
Last month, Keith Yates posted an almost too-crazy-to-be-true recollection of how Fresno radio was responsible for making Billy Joel’s “Piano Man,” a hit.
Yates does private theater design these days, but in 1974 he worked at record store while playing “rock critic” at Fresno City College Rampage. Which is how he stumbled across, and fell in love with, a copy of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.”
It was an album that had to-that-point gone mostly unnoticed.
Yate’s recounting of events includes a Ray Appleton name drop (he was a rock radio DJ at K-FIG at the time) and a brief history of KYNO and the “Boss Radio” format (which is a story in itself no doubt).
It’s a lengthy read, but totally worth the time, especially for us nerdy Fresnophiles (and also anyone interested in how the music industry used to work).
Events list Sept. 5-11
Jerrod Niemann and Love and Theft, 5 p.m. Sept. 5, Pioneer Village, Selma. $25-$350 VIP table.
Nascar Aloe, 7:30 p.m. Sept. 9, Strummer’s. $13-$15. All ages.
Riff Raff, 8 p.m. Sept. 10, Strummer’s. $18. All ages.
1335, MKC and It’ll Grow Back, 6 p.m. Sept. 10, La Maison Kabob. $5.
Junkyard with Speedbuggy, 7:30 p.m. Sept. 10, Fulton 55. $20-$25.
Marisela, 8:30 p.m. Sept. 10, Saroyan Theatre. $36-$96.
Here’s Lies Man and Sun Umbra, 7 p.m. Sept. 11 at the Homestead, Visalia. $10 at Tower District Record, Boling Barbershop on fuzzfambooking@gmail.com.
Berner and E40, 6 p.m. Sept. 11, Chukchansi Park, $60-$90.
Rock en Espanol Night, 9 p.m. Sept. 11. Strummer’s. Free. 21 +
The Outlaw Mariachi with Leather Serpent and Peligro Brass, 8 p.m. Sept. 11, Fulton 55. $15-$20.
That’s it for this week. If you have anything you think I need to be looking at or listening to, feel free to let me know: jtehee@gmail.com