Also in this Issue
- The Provocateur He obfuscates the present. He fabricates the past. His record label has released 180 albums in the past three years. Agitating for a new aural order with Matthew St-Germain. (Cover Story)
- Defying Death What's a death-metal mogul to do when the world becomes as macabre as his music? (Arts Feature)
- The Road to 'Redemption' Chris Sattinger Returns to the Minneapolis That Made Him Timeblind (Music)
- More articles from this issue...
More Music Articles
- Nightmare Before Xmas Dan Scott Makes Unmerry With a Night of Melancholic Christmas Tunes (Dec 12, 2001)
- No Rock Stars Need Apply A Hangdog Comeback From the "Other" Dylan (Dec 5, 2001)
- Rave UN2 the Joy Fantastic DJ Echo Attends Warehouse Parties, Experiences the Ecstasy of God (Dec 5, 2001)
- Rock 'n' Roll Grade School (Dec 5, 2001)
- The 'Son' Also Rises (Dec 5, 2001)
- Sub Pop Anti-Pop Consortium Return Hip Hop to the Art of the Rhyme (Nov 28, 2001)
- Feather Weight (Nov 28, 2001)
- Pump Up The Vol. Number (Nov 28, 2001)
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Talkin' Dylan Blues With Folkster Martin Devaney
What About Bob?
"I laughed so hard I almost threw up my lunch": Martin Devaney
Image by Tony Nelson
Devaney sports an ambitious poet-boy 'fro, a very sincere face, and a proper dimple. He's wearing a red and black flannel shirt, drinking coffee, and carrying a composition notebook. I don't know what "the revolution" looks like, but Devaney seems ready for it.
"Do you know Ryan Adams?" Devaney asks after I sit down. "Here, let me grab a City Pages and I'll show you." He's back in a flash with the paper, which features a photo of Adams in the A List section. "There's always pictures of him like this where he's looking sad and staring off into the distance, brooding. I know chicks are totally diggin' it. There's another picture of him where he's wearing these smart-guy glasses, so sometimes I take my friend's glasses and put them on and mess my hair up and look really sad. Anyway, last week I got Rolling Stone and there's a big, whole-page picture of him with those glasses sitting at the exact same typewriter that I just bought. I laughed so hard I almost threw up my lunch."
Devaney may make a good Ryan Adams clone, but his albums suggest that he's more interested in developing his own image. The 21-year-old outgrows songs like junior high kids outgrow jeans. Last January he released Whatever That Is, a self-produced, eight-song collection of folk rock. In this first collection, Devaney seems to be working through the basic recipe of his music. His Dylan homages--"Talkin Brian Jameson Blues" and "When You Get Back"--are songs you could use to woo a girl who buys her dresses at Global Village, but probably not one who buys her coffee at Bob's Java Hut. Devaney's vocals are familiar, sweet, and clumsy--like the mood of a dorm party before the gathering turns drunken and bitter.
The songs he's written since the release of Whatever That Is are what he calls "a Blood on the Tracks for twentysomethings." He's planning to release them sometime later this winter as two separate (currently unnamed) CDs. As he further revisits Highway 61, Devaney seems to be finding his own voice. He trades in some of his conversational tendencies for something like actual singing. His sound may not exactly have a legato line, but it does have a sort of raw, honest charm and lyrics that offer skillful internal rhyme (i.e. "fiction fairy" and "Dictionary").
Like Dylan, Devaney considers songwriting a vehicle for poetry. Also like the Hib-bing Chamber of Commerce's Man of the Epoch, he's working out his musical kinks at the 400 Bar--a gig he says he got by "hanging out there and drinking their beer."
I'm not necessarily sure that we need a new Dylan. As my old college friend Stump once said, the old one is still kinda kickin'. Even if we don't need a new one, we might need the guy Martin Devaney turns out to be: one who is indeed worthy of his own smart-guy glasses.
About Sarah Sawyer
From the Archive
- I Can Do Anything With My... The Many (Musical) Powers of Local Queercore Band Punky Bruiser (Music - Nov 7, 2001)
- Have Score, Will Travel New-music composer Jeffrey Brooks has paid for his education over a card game, survived for months off stolen tuna, and lived on an Amtrak train. So what's he doing raising two happy kids in a house in south Minneapolis? (Bringing It All Back Home - Sep 5, 2001)
- Welcome to the Dollhouse Maria Åhrén Brude's original dolls are startling in their period costuming; Davora Lindner's are engrossing for the anatomy underneath (Arts Feature - Aug 1, 2001)
- More articles from the Sarah Sawyer Archive...
