Crazy for them

Stone Crazy color the world around them

Mark Edmonds

If you went to Johnny's Grill & Barrel, in Leominster, last Saturday expecting to see Babe Pino and Stone Crazy, you probably found what I did -- a raucous local rock band, grinding through their first set instead of the funky blues-rock fusion grooves Crazy usually deliver. Not the worst thing, but it caused us to wonder whether, in our zeal to make sure we reset the clocks, we dropped a day somewhere along the line.

The doorman, sensing our confusion, suggested we try the club next door. We did, but found no trace of the band, who include Pino's brother Kenny on guitar, drummer Steve Shaheen, and former J. Giels Band bassist Danny Klein. It turns out they'd all gone home hours before we arrived in Tritown, victims of a miscommunication between the club and one of the two people who book their gigs.

"The problem was that we had more than one guy booking us at one time, and the guy who set up this gig isn't with us anymore," explains Pino in his typical Zen fashion the following afternoon. "He'd cancelled the gig but forgot to tell us when he left. So when we got there, we found another band set up, and what could we do? The funny thing was, though, that the manager felt bad, and said he'd heard of me and Danny while he was apologizing for the mix-up."

Therein lies one of the problems Crazy have faced for more than two years now, since they collectively decided to avoid billing themselves as either Pino's or Klein's band. Working to develop a rep as one of the most versatile blues outfits on the regional scene, the group deliver everything from well-worn standards by Freddy King or Little Walter Jacobs to the Southern-fried honky-tonk R&B of Delbert McClinton.

But their name is giving them the development blues. Inspired by the title of a Chess-era Buddy Guy song, the name Stone Crazy often fails to register with fans who'd probably recognize either Pino's or Klein's name on a club marquee. Worse yet, it sometimes even leads a few to think that Stone Crazy, who play Gilreins this Saturday, are a bunch of pierced and tattooed alterna-rockers.

This isn't lost on anyone in the band -- especially on Klein, who spent years with Giels, watching as the public mistakenly took everyone but Peter Wolf and that band's guitarist for sidemen. "The best way to explain why we use a name is because we're four individual musicians working together and not four separate people," Klein says. "Now, sure, it would probably make it a little easier to get work and get people to gigs if we did this another way, but we've decided that this isn't about any of us alone."

Which is true. Crazy are a band that are truly the sum of their parts. Pino blows with a horn player's phrasing, twisting notes in, out, and around whatever groove the group happen to be laying down at the moment before jumping back to vocals, while Klein's bottom-heavy bass playing, Shaheen's in-the-pocket drumming, and Kenny's buzz-saw-guitar lines color the world around him.

It's nice to know that, 25 years after Pino walked away from what may have been a promising career, he's still the same real deal Albert Grossman (Bob Dylan's onetime manager) wanted to sign up some 20 years ago. Citing burnout, Pino decided the grind of the road was too much just as his career began to take off.

"I got tired of all the stuff you had to go through," Pino recalls. "I was working as often as I wanted to on a circuit that included Giels and Paul Butterfield, and it seemed like everybody loved me. But it was a tough life, and I just got tired of it. Finally, one night up in Vermont, we were playing a ski area, and I just decided I'd had enough. So I kind of retired for a while."

Pino returned home to Worcester, but kept playing in various pickup bands he had put together. Oftentimes they'd include his brother Kenny, whenever he wasn't on tour with national blues players such as Houston's Johnny Copeland and Debbie Davies.

Once the two decided to "get serious" about working together, they united with Klein, and later added Shaheen, who seems to fit perfectly. The group now sound as if they've been together far longer than they really have, and they plan to enter the studio this month to record enough material for a first disc.

"The response has been excellent wherever we've gone," Pino notes. "No one else around is doing what what we are -- a contemporary sound instead of that Chicago chunk-a-chunk thing. It's different from a lot of what's out there. And if we're in the right room, people definitely love it."

If they can find it.

Stone Crazy will play Gilreins on Saturday, April 19, at 9 p.m. Call 791-2583.