Tim Young

"RED" : Stunning New CD From Hell's Kitchen Rocker Tim Young

by Eliot Camaren
-The Clinton Chronicle

Hell's Kitchen Rock & Roller Tim Young has a new CD out, titled RED, and it delivers
the goods. Many in the neighborhood know Tim from his regular gigs at the Electric Banana
and other venues across the city. Through these sessions Tim has honed his musical style
to a razor-sharp edge, playing hour after hour for a live audience; the way performers used
to do it before prefabricated computer junk took over the music scene. Just when I despaired
of ever again hearing tight, passionate, honest, slam-bang ROCK, along comes this new CD
from Tim Young.

His hard work of performing up close before actual audiences - plus an extra heavy dose of
real talent and taste - add up to an hour of jammin' music on RED, Tim's new CD. It rocks,
it winks, it nods, it wails and it laughs - RED tells 16 stories of life etched into song by an
artist who has seen a thing or two in his time and knows the ways of the world. Lenny
Bruce said that the job of the artist is to look at life and report back. It takes guts to do it;
to expose your inner mind to the world. Tim sings about exactly this predicament in
"Maybe You." "It's so hard to be myself," the song begins. but Tim pulls it off in a style that
rocks the roof.

RED starts out with "Work Today" in which Tim proudly announces, "I ain't going into work
today, I'm sick of making my pay." But this is an irony, because Tim then spends the next
hour working like hell, delivering an astounding array of music.

Among the 16 tracks, all written by Tim, there's "Lori," which tells of life, love and loss in what
starts out as a simple love song and then, just like that funny old dog life itself, veers off into
questions that cannot be answered and actions that have no explanation.

The exuberant "New Orleans" is constructed along traditional blues lines overlaid on a rock
core. It is a complex musical fusion that sounds deceptively simple but it takes real talent
and skill to pull this off as Tim has. With this song Tim delivers the kind of earthy music
Eric Burdon and the Animals might have made had they taken the time and effort to stick
it out and grow.

The haunting loneliness of "With You" is palpable, hammered home by a driving acoustic
guitar determinedly running through the tune like a monkey on the back that you simply
cannot shake. "Torture" is five minutes of rock poetry musing on the meaning of life, no less,
rounded off by a crying-out-loud guitar solo that absolutely ranks with the best of them.
"Torture" is followed by the lyrical, hopeful "Dreams." So who said life was easy? It's
enough that in the right hands, life rocks. "Disaster" is the gut-twisting cry of a talent that
knows, correctly, that it is far better than most of what passes for success in today's culture.
Yet "Disaster" never swerves into self-pity though it unflinchingly explores that enticing
option. Anger, puzzlement, incomprehension, impatience...it's all there on this track. Why
not? That's life and "Disaster" faces life's unfair disappointments square on and rocks like
hell while doing it.

With RED, a large talent grabs you and puts you right inside his mind to share the world as
he sees it.

The trip Tim takes you on in RED gets the feet moving and the blood roiling. You just don't
get this kind of stuff every day. It comes from a talent that has worked out in the "gym" to
develop itself, and a maturity that reminds you just what personal rock and poetry are all
about. Tim Young is the real thing.

- Clinton Chronicle

From my former weekly gigs at the Bellevue Bar comes this clip of three songs shot by Rob Safuto of podcastnyc fame.

Please check out: 'Take Me Back(Kerouac)'; 'Ain't Nothin Like it Was Before'; and from my cd RED, 'Outta Here.'

http://podcastnyc.blip.tv/file/4822 - Rob Safuto

INDIE ROUND-UP

REVIEW BY JON SOBEL

CD: TIM YOUNG, RED

If you pine for a time when people could simply write songs and sing them, not caring whether someone called them rock, pop, folk, blues, country, or psychedelic...you'll particularly appreciate this batch of heartfelt songs from New York City troubador Tim Young. Young's unschooled, urgent vocal delivery and lo-fi aesthetic combined with his solid and energetic guitar playing and fertile creativity places his music at the intersection between urban folk, heartland rock and outsider music.

...Tim Young is impossible not to like. Many of the songs are well-crafted; all illustrate the human condition in its complicated glory and shame. - Jon Sobel

RED

It sounds terrific! I'm getting to be a big fan! You have no idea how little
contemporary music I listen too. Naturally, I avoid all the top 40 crap manufactured by the big labels; but serious rock, with sound and lyrics that send the listener into the mind of the artist is a rare find these days. You are in that tradition. I listen to your music, it is not there as background when I play it. It exists for a reason. You are communicating with a language.
--Eliot Camaren, Contibuting Editor, Clinton Chronicle, New York City.

...I've really enjoyed seeing this album come to life and I appreciate the fact that allowed me to have some input and live vicariously through you...You are a GREAT songwriter and I can't tell you how much I enjoy working with you.
--George Grant, Co-producer of RED.

LIVE AT THE ELECTRIC BANANA--
I was particularly amazed by the way you grabbed the audience on 'Disaster.' At the start they are all over the place - by the middle to the end they are right with you. An amazing lesson in showmanship that i would urge anyone who is thinking of performing real rock before a crowd to hear and learn from.
--Rob Ward, Producer, songwriter. - Clinton Chronicle, NYC

Greenwich Village is for many a living memorial to the artistic greats; its with an air of reverence that one walks down the street and visits the hideouts that served as home to the crop of horrendously talented youths in the 1960s. One cannot help but be inspired by this atmosphere, and Tim Young is one such man. Born in Pennsylvania, he moved to the Village in the late 1970s, where he says one ‘could still feel the cool vibes from when Dylan and company ruled on MacDougal Street.’ Further showing his admiration for his idols, he mentions time spent at the Kettle of Fish pub, an old haunt of Bob Dylan and Jack Kerouac before him.

Although he has now moved his gigging focus to Mid-town's renowned Hell’s Kitchen, Tim Young’s song writing skills clearly benefited from immersion in the Village’s musical heritage. His 2002 release, No Stranger, was a well-received instrumental but his real gift seems to be in spinning a yarn or two. And that’s what he gets to do on 2005’s Red, sixteen songs that dare the listener not to get involved. His voice is one of his strongest assets, commanding yet empathetic as he invites the listener into his world. Of course, it does not hurt that his message is backed by skilled musicianship. Highlights for me include ‘Dreams’ and the NPR featured ‘On The Road.’

I won’t lie; at first I was confused that a singer-songwriter was calling himself the Hell’s Kitchen Rock ‘n’ Roll Legend. But I was forgetting one of rock’s fundamental elements: honesty. After all, it’s all about laying out your heart and soul and Young clearly does this in every song. It does not matter how hard you bang the drums, if your hearts not in it, the audience will know. In this way, Tim Young truly is a rock ‘n’ roll star.
---By Kate Flavin--- - Northeast In-Tune

Drifting Past Pain and Becoming a Renegade: A Review of Tim Young Band’s ‘The Cost’
By Liz Singer

Tim Young Band’s ‘The Cost’ is the perfect summertime soundtrack. It feels best to listen to it while sitting in front of a campfire, surrounded by company but alone with your thoughts. Every fleeting idea of pain, loss, and confusion come to full circle on each track, bringing to light the themes we all need to spend time thinking about.

The single “The Cost� tugs right at your heart-strings with fully-charged, emotive lyrics like “Now the night is sawin’ at my heart...nobody knows the cost of losing you.� Moving forward from the pain of loss, this twang-y, sorrowful lament about heartbreak infuses country-western rock to create a catchy melody. “Outta Town� adds the electric guitar and makes you imagine what it would be like to just run away from all your problems as Young lists daily hassles we all deal with, such as traffic, landlords, and stresses from work.

One of the strongest songs, with the best intro, is “Drifting Cowboy.� With sliding guitar riffs, the vocals slow down, providing a nice tune to meditate to, amidst your confusion. While listening, you can actually envision a cowboy alone on the ranch, gazing out at the flat land ahead, wondering where to go. Creating an original story on this track, Young tells the tale of a young cowboy from Alabama who quit school: “Rejection filled his cup until he landed on the stage in Nashville.� As Young switches to first person with “I’m a drifting cowboy,� we have to wonder if Young himself is the drifting cowboy. Either way, the story is nothing short of riveting.

“Just For You� has a nostalgic feel to it, bringing Elvis’ generation of country/rock back to the mainstream music scene with strumming guitar and wailing, honest vocals: “I’d shine every night just for you / I can see just what I need to do.� “Remember� certainly has an Elvis attitude, with its “bad boy� tone shining through: “And even when I write these words / I don’t understand the past.� The track presents a concept any listener can understand: being at a crossroads of the past and present, trying to decipher what’s happened before in order to know where to go in the future.

On “Hangin’ In,� Young sings the blues, country-style, telling middle class woes of trying to get by, while inspiring listeners to keep their heads up: “It’s a long road every day / everyone I know says they’re hangin’ in.� Shifting the album’s tone, on “Cold Wind� Young introduces the theme of being, as Bob Dylan sings, “Blowin’ in the wind�: “Cold wind keeps on blowin’ me around; cold wind spins the truth right through the ground.�

“Renegade� fittingly closes the album, since after moving from a wandering cowboy, to a lost soul, to the dust blowing through the cold wind, Young advances to a renegade: a proud, brave man advancing forward through nature and city scenes alike, ready to dominate whatever environment he finds himself in. Without looking back, and with his eyes always set straight ahead, Young proves the ability that we all have to completely move on past the painful yesterdays and transform ourselves into powerful individuals that we never thought we could become. Then, truly, the cost of the pain becomes inconsequential; all that matters are the rewards reaped from the incredible growth process that we all are able to enter and emerge from.

‘The Cost’ forces listeners to ask themselves, “Where am I? Where have I been? How does it all make sense?� And more importantly, “Where am I going?� But by the time the CD stops spinning, you realize, thanks to the Tim Young Band, that, no matter what the answers are, everything’s going to be all right.

- MusicDish.com