Category: Artist Interviews

The Power Popaholic Interview: The Posies

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The Posies

The Posies performed to a full house at City Winery on January 25, 2018. The show was a dazzling acoustic party that even had custom wine for the occasion.  Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer joined with me before the show to talk about their remastered albums coming out on Omnivore Records this spring, Big Star and Alex Chilton, plus how cool it was to have Ringo sing one of your songs. We had a great casual conversation (14 minutes)

The Posies are celebrating 30 years of making music in 2018, and will be re-releasing our classic 1990s albums Dear 23, Frosting on the Beater and Amazing Disgrace and all are double CD/double LP sets. The CDs contain the original album and a full CD (and more) of bonus tracks, most of which have never been released — not even on the out-of-print box set At Least At Last. Check it out here: The Posies Pledge Campaign

 

 
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Tommy Keene, Power Pop icon 1958 – 2017

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Tommy Keene, a veteran power pop singer-songwriter has passed away. His website made the announcement, gives no cause of death and simply states: “Tommy Keene 6/30/58 – 11/22/17. Tommy passed unexpectedly and peacefully in his sleep.  Thank you to all his friends and family who he loved very much.”

I had the pleasure of interviewing Tommy in 2011, prior to his release Behind The Parade and it was one of my most memorable experiences. Tommy knew his audience and the state of pop music well.

His musical history is long, and over the years he collaborated with a number of stylistically similar artists. As early as the mid-197o’s Tommy played alongside Nils Lofgren (opening for his band Grin) and then while attending the University of Maryland he joined up with Richard X. Heyman. Then he formed a new band, The Razz who opened for such notable acts as the Ramones, Devo, and Patti Smith. Tommy joined several bands before finally going on his own in 1982. Then in 1986, Keene tapped Beatles producer Geoff Emrick for Songs From The Film, a classic power pop masterwork.

From there Keene’s music career took off, but he never achieved the recognition or stardom many of his peers felt he deserved. He’s played with Velvet Crush, Paul Westerberg, Guided By Voices and many others.  But other than power pop devotees and fellow musicians the general public barely knows him. If there was ever an artist who deserves a bigger box set retrospective of his career, its Tommy Keene. I hope more people discover him, as he was a special talent that is now sadly gone — and he will never be forgotten.