Senator and The New Republic

The last time singer-songwriter Adam Greenberg performed in Northampton was in 2003, when he still lived in town. He opened for the now-defunct Ware River Club, and the friend-filled evening was memorable for more than just the show.

"We stayed up for most of the night drinking light beer and waiting for Sylvester's to open," he said.

Soon after, Greenberg decided to make a brand new start of it, in old New York. He moved to NYC and is still there, living in Chinatown, bartending in SoHo until the seriously wee hour of 4 a.m., but this weekend he'll return to Northampton for his first Valley show in six years. His band Hey Senator will open for Spanish For Hitchhiking at a free concert at the Basement on Friday at 8 p.m.

Greenberg, who grew up in Stamford, Conn., and relocated to Northampton at age 19 because people there "all seemed so laid back," found his world started changing once he set his sights on the Big Apple. After a show at CBGB's Gallery, an impressed audience member offered to be his manager and kickstart his music career. About a week before Greenberg moved to the city, his manager-to-be was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. She was leaving the city to be with family, and asked Greenberg if he'd apartment-sit her 2000-square-foot place until it sold. So he did.

Then he got hired, fired, married and divorced. Somewhere in there he also moved to a different part of the city and got attacked in his new building, right outside his apartment door, by eleven 15- and 16-year-olds. "They started beating me with metal broom handles and kicking me," Greenberg recalled. "One of them slashed me with a knife. They took 11 dollars, a pack of smokes and my Twix. I love the fact that they took the Twix. Kids do like candy."

Greenberg had also started a new band called Senator. The band personnel kept shifting, but the new songs kept coming, and producer/friend Michael Tudor urged him to "take as much time as the album needed to be made."

Three years later, Greenberg finished Senator's debut album, called "Senator and The New Republic".

"It took a whole lot of sweat to make," he said. "I'm working on the art now and it should be released in December on disc, iTunes, USB bracelet and whatever other medium we can figure out."

The eleven-song record is both spacious and lush, and the crafted arrangements get almost psychedelic in their attention to creative detail, but Greenberg's voice is a magic show of its own. Like Harry Nilsson, he has the ability to richly, beautifully harmonize with himself, and duos, trios and groups of Greenbergs appear throughout - with Jellyfish-like cleverness on "Call My Mechanic," or like a smoky '70s choir on the wordless chorus of "Whistle and Wait," or they hide in the instrumental bed like chameleons on the ballad "For You."

There's a relaxed gorgeousness to the record, especially on the slower songs like "Wasted Serenade," a lazy lullaby-like waltz with little piano figures (from Rufus Wainwright associate Jason Hart) that fall backwards as if under a spell.

There are some thorns hidden along the way, like the sinister soft-shoe "On To Other Things" with its hinge-scraping piano and creepy chord changes. And shoving its way out of the crowd is the quirky rock song "Agoraphobia."

Over a pounding beat, Greenberg lets loose with a syncopated run-on sentence both playful and cutting. "Maybe it's time for a change when relationships bloom from a bag that you bought on the corner / counterfeit feelings have lowered the ceilings / I'm right where I was / I'm leaving because / you, you don't fight fair / I'll be off somewhere."

At Friday's Basement show, where Greenberg will be accompanied by New Haven guitarist Gerry Giaimo and local drummer J.J. O'Connell, he'll be giving away "teaser" CDs with two or three songs from the Senator full-length.

"I love to play and I love Northampton," Greenberg said. "For about 50 minutes or so I get to be the happiest I can, every time I perform. Putting that 50 minutes in a place I love only makes it sweeter." - The Daily Hampshire Gazzete