Not quite halfway through Aloha Steamtrain's first set, svelte singer-songwriter Lord Russ suddenly peels off his shirt and ambles through the college-age crowd, his king-size mic cable in tow. Launching into “Red Delicious Love,” Russ eases over to a table of innocent females (lured into the room by Russ's rendering of “What's New Pussycat?” a few minutes earlier) and delivers the song's lascivious lyrics point-blank. As the evening progresses, Russ occasionally straps on a Strat and makes several more sojourns into an increasingly rabid audience — but the shirt's gone for good.
Not your typical night on the town. But then again, this band from Northampton, Massachusetts, isn't your typical modern pop outfit. On its second album, Now You Know the Aloha Steamtrain, the four-year-old quartet shows just how much it's learned from such British bands as the Who, the Beatles, and the Zombies. Skillfully crafted at nearby Slaughterhouse Studios (with an assist from hired guitar hand Joe Boyle), Now You Know is a forum for the song stylings of Russ, whose vocal delivery and acoustic-based chord progressions invite comparisons to Ziggyera Bowie, and whose up-front stage persona takes its cue from the original sultan of sex.
“Watching Elvis at work has always been the single biggest influence for me,” admits the artist otherwise known as Russell Brooks. “The passion that he put into his performances is so mesmerizing. Getting completely into a song like that is very liberating — the stuff I've kept pent up all these years tends to just come out when I'm on stage. It's a very safe place for me to do it.”
Bassist/cofounder Henning Ohlenbusch and drummer Brian Todd add a spontaneous energy to such beautiful and lecherous themes as “Many a Wonderful Thing That Gets Me High” and “Tiny Blue Dress” (with help from guests Boyle and keyboard man Ken Maiuri). “If you go to our shows, you'll never know exactly how we're going to approach the songs,” notes Ohlenbusch. “In fact, a lot of times we don't even know ourselves until we begin playing.”
While an abundant student population in western Massachusetts has given the band a natural base of support, gigs in Boston and New York have become a regular part of the Steamtrain's itinerary. “We've been building a following all over,” says Ohlenbusch, who keeps tabs on new recruits through the band's well-stocked Web site (www.alohasteamtrain.com). “There are a group of folks in the Hartford area who call themselves ‘Steamheads’ and have come to shows as far up as Vermont. We know that western Mass. is not enough — but for now, it's great.”
Selling ‘60s-style theatrics to a repressed modern audience isn't always an easy task for the members of Steamtrain, who by their own accounts have spent many an evening “getting off to a slow, coughing start.” But that's never been a deterrent for Russ. “In a way, it just makes me even crazier,” he says. “If we're not connecting right off the bat, I'll often immediately jump out into the crowd and approach one woman and start singing to her — and that usually gets people going. I love to get right into a room and be a part of the audience — or shock them if need be. I mean, we've played plenty of gigs where people are probably thinking, ‘What are these guys all about, this is kind of different.’ But more often than not, by the end of the night we've won them over. It's great when that happens.”
David Simons is a New England-based music journalist.
To hear a clip from Aloha Steamtrain's new CD, go to
www.onstagemag.com
and click on ONLINEEXTRAS
ESSENTIAL FACTS
Aloha Steamtrain
Home base: Northampton, Massachusetts
Recordings:
Girl Planet (Strong Ave. Records, 1998); Now You Know the Aloha Steamtrain (Strong Ave. Records, 2001)
Web site:
www.alohasteamtrain.com
