My friend Josh Wachtel won't play just one kind of music. In fact, they told him outright at The Raven's Nest that he wasn't welcome anymore because he didn't stick to playing the blues like everybody else. (The truth of the matter is that not even the house band did -- but Josh was persistent about it.)
The name Josh and I arrived at to describe the music he and his band play was Crossover Music.
Radio Free Earth will do a song of any sort from any source as long as it's the right song. It does songs that go back a hundred years, songs that were written yesterday, and songs from every decade in between. Along the way, it might throw a Latin beat, Congo style guitar, or Tuvan throat singing into a song that didn't used to go that way.
The aim of the band is to have a good song for every circumstance. From credit card debt to used chewing gum. From love gone right to life without parole. From being a defensive lineman in the NFL to running wild on the Internet. From racin' with the Devil on a rocket through Hell to invasion from outer space by a rogue vegetable intent on feeding her hungry brood.
And where a song has been needed
to fill out the Big Picture -- say, one about fighting a land war in
Asia
or remembering where you dropped your key -- Josh and I (sometimes with
Josh's brother Ben) have brought an old song up to date, put a new set
of words to an old tune, or written a new song for the occasion.
