Bobby Fingeroth

He's got the dark, good looks of a GQ model, the soul of an artist and the brains for working in the corporate world.
No wonder Bobby Fingeroth was confused after he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997 and returned home to New York City.
What to do?
He got it all wrong for a while. First, he took acting classes. He got a line in a soap opera, and a part in an off-Broadway play.
"But, soon, I saw it wasn't what I wanted," Fingeroth said. "When I decided to stop doing that, I was lost. Most of my friends were at law school or in other cities. I was living at home with my parents, so it wasn't a particularly good time."
He took solace in the music he listened to in college, particularly the Dave Matthews Band.
"I started listening closely to all the different instruments and what they were playing, and how it all fit together," he said. "I'd never really done that before. It kind of inspired me to want to learn how to play guitar."
He took lessons. Within six months, he'd written his first song. But Fingeroth figured he still needed a "real" career.
"Most nice Jewish boys don't become musicians," he said, with a laugh.
So, he took one corporate job after another at assorted companies, including Showtime, though he never stuck with one too long. He wrote strategy briefs, he sold sponsorships, he did accounting. None of it thrilled him.
Fingeroth can put his finger on the precise moment when the boardroom nearly bored him to death. Thinking he just needed a more creative job, he took a position selling sponsorships in New Jersey. That meant a 90-minute commute.
"I lasted six months," he said.
That was his last job. He plunged into music -- writing songs, befriending musicians, playing gigs. The result: "Dilettante," his stylish 2004 debut, which isn't entirely folky or guitar-driven. It's laced with strings, including mandolin, as well as keyboards, banjos, tablas and some resonator guitar.
"I felt the songs were good enough -- and I had a talented enough producer -- that we ought to do the best we could, and not shortchange them,"Fingeroth said.
He's earned airplay on more than 50 radio stations, and assorted Starbucks are featuring his tunes. Now he's on the road -- playing solo -- including a free gig at Erie's Borders tonight at 7.
Playing at Borders sure beats working a boardroom. Even his folks have come around.
"I don't think this is the life they imagined for me. They would have liked me to have a more stable career,"Fingeroth said. "But, at the same time, they want me to be happy." And he is.



- Erie Times-News

“Although his voice brings to mind contemporary singers like Live’s Ed Kowalczyk, Matchbox 20’s Rob Thomas or Adam Duritz of Counting Crows, what is so distinct about Fingeroth’s compositions is that whether it’s a farmer worried about a lack of rain (‘Rain Down On Me’) or a guy feeling like everyone’s got a girlfriend except him (‘Better When The Morning Comes’), the subjects seem, in spite of the odds against them, to be filled with hope.”

- Amplifier Magazine

“Dilettante is produced and polished beyond recognition. It's quite amazing, really, that an unsigned, unknown artist from NYC could put together a project so immaculately produced, performed and arranged that it could easily have been the result of hundreds of thousands of major label dollars. Fingeroth sometimes sounds almost exactly like Ed Kowalcyzk from Live, but the similarities end there: Fingeroth and his crew use a lot of fiddles and other instrumentation to expand their sound…” - Splendidezine.com

"Bobby Fingeroth's reedy voice and sentimental, earthy lyrics give his new record, Dilettante, a stripped-down Rusted Root-y feel."

- Time Out New York

“Fingeroth has written a brilliant, poetically insightful, and emotionally witty tune (Against The Grain) with magnificent riffage, and roots-wise vocals.” - Independentartistscompany.com

Bobby Fingeroth’s recently released Dilettante aims—and on the whole succeeds—at the goal of all singer-songwriter debut albums: It raps at your door, invites itself in, and reveals the artist’s inner landscape. Fingeroth, who only took up guitar and composition after his 1997 graduation from Penn, delivers 10 songs (all but one at least partially his own), and most of them are so earnest and articulate that you’re glad he stopped by.

Reminiscent in its musical warmth and lyrical directness of Jeffrey Gaines’ self-titled rookie record (another chronicle of early manhood’s dreads and exhilarations), Dilettante mixes mostly seamless production from guitarist-collaborator Riley McMahon and sweeping McMahon arrangements of violin, mandolin, keyboards, and guitar for a pleasing, predominately soft-rock sound, punctuated by such occasional stylistic detours as the semi-rocky “Better When the Morning Comes.” That cut explores familiar terrain for this album, the often-tortuous search for love. In “Violet,” the sole non-original, Fingeroth spins McMahon’s edgy tale of a relationship begat by a classified ad; his singing is enhanced by effectively eerie dynamics and background vocals, performed by Jen Middaugh. In “Venus,” the singer seems to appeal to the goddess of love for help with a stormy woman. Oddly, both the “V” ballads make use of the “F” word, which may keep these strong efforts off the radio. (Frankie Avalon never had that problem when he turned to that goddess for help.) Another musical standout is the leadoff tune, “Rain Down on Me,” which bounds out of your speakers screaming “recommended radio cut” with its driving guitar flourishes underscoring sincere vocals and words, even if a few lapse into cliché. That occasional tendency also mars Fingeroth’s heartfelt tribute to his grandmother, the reggae-accented “BSF,” which is saddled by some lines (“the Great Depression wasn’t fun”) that could have been improved. But sincerity usually trumps pretentiousness, and more often than not, Fingeroth turns his emotional honesty into a winning hand. A perfect example comes in “Separate Ways,” which reconstructs, with a melancholy that brings to mind some of David Gray’s music, the hurt of being left behind with equal measures of emotional courage and honest despair (“I’m lucky if you return my calls at all”).

Fingeroth may portray himself in the self-effacing title cut as a dilettante. But when it comes to music, it looks as though he plans to stick around.





- Stuart Michaelson