Jay Strauss chuckles when asked about his singular singing style. “That’s not something I’m going for, that’s my musical vocal range,” he says. “A friend told me to lean into it, so I have permission.”
He’s heard the comparisons for years: It sounds like Lou Reed’s deadpan delivery in “Walk on the Wild Side.” Maybe there’s some of B-52s frontman Fred Schneider in there, too.
Jonathan Richman is evoked for the talk/singy phrasing but also for the stream-of-consciousness lyrics that muse on mundane moments. Richman’s signature song, “Road Runner,” is a travelogue and Strauss covers a few regional landmarks in his tune “Detour.”
The words of several cuts on Strauss’ new disc, Based on a True Story, read like transcriptions of an LSD trip. “Fungi Mike is casting threads and spores/Subterranean bebop, looping beats in 4 . . . Sync the beat and pop up through the forest floor,” he sings in “Drink the Sun.”
But the abstractions are meticulously crafted and contain nuggets of wisdom: “There is no you, no me, only eternity/Beyond the reach of praise and blame and fear.” In “Silo,” he writes, “With thick skull and thin skin, surrenders to his nemesis, umbrella/he floats in a pool of his own tears/Mock turtle blusters through his own fears.”
The lyrics drew a comparison to the Doors after Strauss played “Silo” at one of singer/songwriter Dar Williams’ Write a Song That Matters retreats. “Someone said, ‘Jim Morrison would have been thrilled to write a song like that,’ and I was like, ‘Jeez.’ ”
The succinct description of his music on Bandcamp.com is accurate. “I write songs about things I find interesting. Some are inspired by an event that happened in a flash and stuck with me,” like the retro-poppy “I Never Forget a Name,” which unfolds like an anthropological comedy routine about his inability to remember, so the title is ironic.
At a retreat in 1990, Strauss heard a Buddhist monk say, “I never forget a name once I’ve met someone, but sometimes it takes a while for me to meet someone.” That line is now the chorus of his first disc’s opening cut.
Other songs on the collection “result from a deeper dive into things that demand more of my attention,” he writes, like “Footsteps,” about Native Americans, and “Into the Light,” the result of four months of research into the Suffrage movement.
His wife, Sharon, designed the colorful cover with Timothy Delaney. She’s also a tough editor who preaches that less is more. “I had so many names in an earlier version — she reminded me that I’m not writing a white paper on the subject,” he says. Only four historical figures made the final cut.
Sharon also helps him keep the chord changes, tempo shifts, reggae-flavored interludes and other meanderings to a minimum. “I don’t need 10 sections of a song; sometimes six will do.”
He started writing three-chord folk ditties but chafed at the limitations. His laconic vocal delivery can be reminiscent of talking blues, a style associated with Woody Guthrie and reflected in “A Boy Named Sue,” by Johnny Cash, which repeats a simple chord pattern.
Strauss’ tunes take off in many directions and the 10-song album is a mostly Beacon affair, with Shauna Ward on guitar and Lee Falco on drums. Andy Stack, who produced, played bass, keyboards, guitar, percussion, organ and cowbell.
For a release party held Sept. 7 at the Howland Cultural Center in Beacon, Glenn Sacchi sat in on drums and Randy Bennis played keyboards. They are to be commended for nailing the intricate stops, starts and transitions, along with the abrupt endings.
“Detour” and “The Orange in the Black” give space to the bass and Stack filled in the blanks with busy but tasteful grooves. Ward beamed as the crowd burst into spontaneous applause after her guitar solos in “Detour.”
Strauss’ most rousing song, “Manhattan Howl,” sometimes evokes Captain Beefheart-level weirdness with its odd opening meter and shifts from reggae to a progressive rock bridge to an acoustic guitar section. Videographer Jon Slackman felt it, pumping his fist in the balcony to the power chords at the end.
“With all the crazy changes in the songs,” says Strauss, “I’m so grateful that the musicians locked in as tight as they did.”
To purchase Based on a True Story, see jaystrauss.bandcamp.com.
