The following is a sneak peek from the Summer Music Guide in our May issue, heading to newsstands now.
Saw Black’s “Water Tower” will be released on May 18 on Crystal Pistol Records. He performs at Friday Cheers on June 1. (Photo by Joey Wharton)
Like the blind man with the elephant, your view of Saw Black may differ depending on which part of him you’ve heard first.
I first encountered the singer-songwriter through his light-hearted pro-pot pop song, “Criminal Cigarettes,” which was augmented with a public-access-cable-quality music video, in which Black interacts with stoned sock puppets amid trippy camera zooms. The song is straight-up Brian Wilson via “The Beach Boys Love You” — goofy, childlike, woozy — and the video is unapologetic cheese.
Black’s song “Tell Me What You Want” introduces another musical persona: angry folkie. The accompanying music video sees our man wearing goth makeup in front of green-screen footage of riots and fire, miming to a song about hate. “You would burn down all the trees, just for the heat,” he sings to an unnamed entity.
But you might assign the curly-headed troubadour to the country genre if your first impression is another song, “Rosie’s Comin' Home.” In the video for that one, a forlorn Black cleans up, sings, paces and waits patiently for his beloved to arrive, and he’s still waiting by song’s end. The tune is both low-key and direct, the singer and an acoustic guitar operating on the softer end of the Neil Young spectrum. But “Rosie’s Comin' Home” grows out of its initial obviousness to become something more complex. Is this a statement or a plea?
“Black makes the monotonous sound comforting,” writes reviewer Sammy Maine on the U.K. music blog GoldFlakePaint. “He makes sitting on the sofa and watching your favourite shows with someone you love sound fulfilling and rewarding; he’s unafraid in declaring his need for another person.”
On a drizzly Tuesday in early March, Justin “Saw” Black welcomes me inside the two-story home in Woodland Heights where he’s recorded most of his music (and filmed most of his videos). Birdie, the friendliest dog in the world, trots along with us. There are instrument cases stacked next to the living room couch, and conspicuous photos of country singers Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris watch from the walls.
“In my high school in Powhatan, everybody liked country music,” he says, sitting us in chairs next to the console that he used to record “Cigarettes,” “Rosie” and other songs from his 2017 debut release, “Azalea Days.” “And we hated country music. And then I’d say four or five years ago is when I really started getting into Americana ... and proper songwriting. And I was like, ‘Oh, being a songwriter is what I want to do.’ ”
With all of its different looks, “Azalea Days” made a local impression — it became independent station WRIR’s most played disc of 2017. “The album is sparse, but it’s beautiful,” says Enzo Adimari, WRIR’s music director.
Black produced the album himself, at home, with his antiquated analog reel-to-reel (that only partially works).
“I was totally over the whole digital studio thing,” he says. “When I would record, it never sounded the way it did in my head. It was too polished, and sometimes recorded to a metronome, all the stuff that takes the life out of it.”
Black’s new album, “Water Tower,” slated for release this month on a label he co-founded, Crystal Pistol Records, contains none of the previous disjointed angst, and the goofy pop is mostly gone, too. While clearly from the same artist who released the lo-fi, schizophrenic “Azalea Days,” this release is a brooding soundtrack of rustic existentialism that takes off from the mournful ambiance of “Rosie’s Comin' Home,” adding psychedelic outros and snippets of field recordings to its acoustic-based sound bed.
Photo by Joey Wharton
Instead of a catchy pop song extolling drugs, there is “Melted,” a frank and mournful tale of a friend’s addiction. The heavy preaching of “Tell Me What You Want” is gone, too; instead there are selections like “Blackbirds,” all about how a love song on the radio can change your life. Recorded with various members of Black’s band, “Water Tower” sounds mature, confident and expansive. “In the 21st century, Saw Black defines the term ‘Americana,’ ” Jonathan Frahm writes on the For Folk's Sake website in an advance review of “Water Tower,” calling it “a fitting, and glorious, follow-up to his underground debut.”
For the new album, Black recorded three songs at his home, seven songs at the Virginia Moonwalker studio in Mechanicsville, and four at Richmond’s Montrose Recording — on analog tape. “It took me a year,” he says.
“For Justin, I think it’s been a process of making it all his own,” says his brother Parker, who drums in his band.
“Not necessarily finding himself but finding his sound, and discovering where that’s rooted.”
Black has already tasted something close to musical fame. And he comes from a world of music and recording studios.
“My grandfather was a jazz piano player, Jimmy Black. He had a trio, and then he eventually got into Dixieland jazz. The James W. Black Music Center at VCU is named after him.” When his grandfather died, Black explains, a family friend, philanthropist Bill Singleton, donated money to build Virginia Commonwealth University’s jazz school in his grandfather’s name.
Grandfather Jimmy gave him a guitar when he was 10 or 11, while younger brother Parker got some drums. “We would jam with him,” Parker Black remembers. “Our grandfather was larger than life.”
“I think his grandfather inspired him, and inspires him to this day,” says Pete Curry, the multi-instrumentalist who co-founded Crystal Pistol with Black and plays in his band.
“Black makes the monotonous sound comforting.” —Sammy Maine, reviewer for GoldFlakePaint
While in high school, Black and Parker were members of an energetic, punk-pop band called The Half Jeffersons. The group won a small slice of national popularity in the mid-aughts. ”We did a little bit of touring,” Black recalls. “The main singer and keyboard player [Franklin Massey] was four years older than me, and my brother was four years younger than me, so there was a big age difference. I wasn’t the singer at first. I would do background vocals.”
Their uncle Terry Stroud manages In Your Ear, one of Richmond’s standout recording studios. “And so our first thing, Terry set up a session,” Black says, “which we were not ready for. We went into this huge studio, and it just didn’t sound like us. The engineer was like, ‘What the hell?’ We were so young, we were like changing tempos and stuff, screaming and yelling.”
“I would concur with that,” Stroud remembers today. “They were in the early stages. But that’s how you learn.”
The group’s songs somehow made it to some producers at MTV, and The Half Jeffersons’ music was featured in episodes of “Newport Harbor: The Real Orange County” reality show. “Essentially, they were looking for bands they didn’t have to pay,” Black says with a laugh.
“It’s nothing that we would want as part of a legacy,” says Parker, who has gone on to forge his own musical path in Richmond hardcore outfit Holy Land and the hard-industrial band Prison Religion. “If anything, it was just us dipping our toe into the industry ... seeing how the industry was, how the music world worked, how bands worked, it was almost like going through training.”
The airings won the group a fan base, and their music was downloaded all over the world. “People used to come see us at Alley Katz and Canal Club and places just to see my brother behind the drums. He was so little,” Black laughs. “We sold out the Camel — I mean, we had a thing going. But it didn’t last. One guy was graduating from college, and my brother was still in high school and getting into some heavier music, and we were tired of playing the same songs.”
“I don’t think he liked being a part of consumer culture, selling products like that all the time,” says Parker of his brother’s reaction to their MTV experience. “It’s probably why he wants to do things his way today.”
While studying art at the University of Virginia, Black played music at house shows for fun — “rock ‘n’ roll type stuff” — but when he returned to Richmond, he became inspired by the Neil Young album “Harvest” and wanted to try music again, another way. His warbly, idiosyncratic voice has drawn comparisons to the Canadian rocker, and he doesn’t hide Neil Young’s stylistic influence. “My dad was always listening to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young; my mom also loved Neil Young,” Black recalls. “But ‘Harvest’ was it. It was the lyrics and the sound of the acoustic [guitar] and the drums. When I heard it, I said, ‘This is what I want to do.’ ”
He met Curry in 2014, and they started Crystal Pistol, initially playing together in a roots-rock group (with Parker) called Black Water Gold. “We were both having trouble getting labels interested in our music,” Curry says. “So we figured, we’ll just start our own label.”
“It was pretty much, ‘Let’s release each other’s records,’ ” Black echoes. “So we just started working odd jobs on weekends and put money aside, and we put out his record. I played bass in his band for a year while we were pushing that record. And I was simultaneously recording my first record.”
By the time Black finished and released “Azalea Days,” Crystal Pistol had issued Curry’s debut, “All About Love,” on vinyl, as well as CDs and cassettes by numerous other area bands — The Nude Party, Dharma Bombs, Deathbirds Surf Club and more. “ ‘Azalea Days’ was the 11th release on Crystal Pistol,” he says, laughing.
The other bands on the label are mostly friends “and people whose songs we like,” Curry says. He and Black are realistic about the venture. “It’s a good starting place, a good place to realize how it all works, and how to put out a record. But we’re two songwriters and musicians, and that’s our focus. We’re not two businessmen ... which is what you need [laughs].”
For now, Saw Black is concentrating on touring behind “Water Tower” — including an appearance at Friday Cheers on June 1 — but he’s already looking ahead. “I’ve started recording my third album at Montrose. I’m going all digital for that one. I really want my third album to be as polished and poppy as it can possibly be, and sound really big.”
Black employs a loose-knit group of players that includes Curry on bass and keyboards, brother Parker and Austin Tekamp on drums, lead guitarist Doug Fuller, and Matthew Kuester and Curtis Wayne Patton on pedal steel. ”I feel like it’s hard for me to ask four guys to be fully committed, so I have seven or eight guys that I can draw from.”
