First things first. It's a band. Once or twice a week, we head down into the basement and don't come back up for a few hours. What are we talking about down there? What are we talking about now? Mostly, we play Sweeney's songs, banging away at whatever it is this kid has been going on about for a decade now: the allure of the suburbs, the disappointment of upscale eateries, and tales, endless tales of people he used to know who wouldn't cross the street to spit on him now, now that they know what he's like. Whereas he'd cross the street to spit on anybody, just for the experience of saying he's sorry afterwards.
All of us, down in that basement, week after week after week after friggin' week. It's enough to make you sick. But we manage, and the only reason we do is the songs: Simple folk rock, with straightforward narration and concerns as old as time itself. Who will love you? Who wishes you never left? You say you can't believe the eerie beauty of the woods next to the railroad tracks? Neither can we, sweetheart, and it moves us so, we sing about it each and every chance we get.
Him, you probably know. Sweeney used to be in the Barnabys, and they got swept up in the indie-rock boom of 1992. Records out on first-generation SpinArt, fancy instruments, publishing deals. None of it meant anything. Sweeney only came into his own a few years later, with Heartache Baseball (Delmore), which a lot of people wrote a lot of very nice things about. (Since then, Sweeney hasn't done much except advance his writing career; He's a Contributing Editor to Philadelphia Weekly and a frequent contributor to Salon.com, Magnet and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Although sometimes, late at night, just before last call, he gets this glaze that seems to say, 'ask me about my aborted major-label debut!')
Anyhoo, this Trouble thing, this, he's proud of. And how could he not be with that lineup? Howkins, Johnnie-John-John Howkins on the electric guitar, a man with a tone so close to the heart of Sterling Morrison on 'Pale Blue Eyes,' it's scary; Joseph Siwinski, a drummer to whom the terms 'warm' and 'woody' are applied almost daily; Joe 'Joey Key' Mangan plays the bass. (He'll be upset that that's all we said, but whatever.) Sweeney, sorry, that's Joey Sweeney, plays acoustic guitar, harmonica and sings to the best of his abilities. So, yes, that's three Joes, one John, one band. You can imagine the confusion. We might as well all be named George Foreman.
