Pat's peak

Smithereens' DiNizio is on his own

by Mark Edmonds

On one hand, Pat DiNizio is totally hip: he's assembled an ambitious cast to back him up on his first solo album after 17 years with the Smithereens. He's enlisted fusion-rock drummer Tony Smith (Jan Hammer, Lou Reed), punk bassist J.J. Burnel (the Stranglers), and saxman Sonny Fortune, a jazz master who played with Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. On the other hand, he's a complete square: he's over forty, dotes on his daughter, and knows his fans are moving into a second generation because they bring their kids to gigs. Remembering Republican Congressman Sonny Bono, DiNizio talks as a literate rock and roller, citing Bono's valuable contributions to music as a songwriter in the late '50s for Specialty Records and his work with legendary producer Phil Spector.

But he's quick to add, "being the father of a child, of a lovely little girl, my politics are more in line with Sonny's than most of the people in the music industry. I think he had a lot to contribute, and he was just starting his life out, even though he was 62. He had found something he was really good at. How many people can go from rock and roll to politics, be good at it -- and be sincere?"

DiNizio, who appears next Thursday with his trio at the Iron Horse, still lives in his hometown of Scotch Pine, New Jersey, where on occasion his mother brings him ziti and marinara for dinner. The Smithereens are still a band -- they play about three gigs a month and will regroup this year to record their sixth album, this one on Velvel Records, the independent label that released DiNizio's trio debut, Songs and Sounds.

The release is predictable in that the songs sound very familiar, three chords and his one-of-kind voice, a velvety, compelling tenor perfectly suited to his manic-depressive mix of perfect pop tunes. Inspired by '50s and '60s greats and fueled by the early-punk scene, he writes punchy hooks that work their way into your pores. Most of the songs could be Smithereens songs too, he admits.

Yet Songs and Sounds is unlike any Smithereens project. The players, hand-picked by DiNizio, never played together before. They don't come from similar backgrounds. There are punk and fusion and jazz, percolating below DiNizio's rock-solid vocals and guitar. And Sonny Fortune, in a league by himself, raises songs to fine-art status.

"In the way that Robert De Niro was the Brando of my generation, he was my Coltrane," DiNizio says of Fortune. "I would go see him in New York City at the Village Vanguard nightclub and sit through all three sets whenever he'd play. He influenced my work in some ways that even I am not completely aware of."

Don Dixon -- who produced many of the "alternative-rock" era's most influential records, including R.E.M.'s Murmur and three Smithereens albums -- produced Songs and Sounds. An old friend, Dixon helps DiNizio draw out the most-appropriate sound on his records, no matter what musicians he's recording with. "Don makes it easy for you to make the record that you want to make; you can focus on your performance and the parts you've got to play and not worry about anything else," DiNizio says. "He's a very humble man, but he's massively talented."

DiNizio's group plan a 28-city tour with, for the most part, Burnel and Smith. Fortune will appear at several East Coast gigs, but eschews the standard rock bus tour. In Northampton on Thursday, it will only be the trio.

The Smithereens first recorded for Enigma and then Capitol, where the group cranked out FM classics such as "A Girl like You," "Only a Memory," and "Top of the Pops." Capitol dropped them, and RCA/BMG picked them up for one album, 1994's A Date with the Smithereens, their last release. Velvel, however, is planning a release this year.

Ironically, Velvel recently convinced BMG to distribute its music. That's all cool with DiNizio, who's ready to settle into a pattern of releasing a Smithereens album every other year and doing a solo record in the off years. It could go on indefinitely. "We have not lost any of the fury or the intensity and the aggression that we always felt on-stage. I think it's more focused because we're older." Now if they could just convince their label to see it that way for the indefinite future, they'll be all set.

The Pat DiNizio Trio and the Maggies play at 8:30 p.m. on January 22 at the Iron Horse, in Northampton. Tickets are $10. For information call (413) 584-0610.