Tyler Moore in Geoff Wilbur's Renegade Newsletter
Welcome aboard the jetway to Pawnshop; if it's your first time here, please get comfy. The trim and vivid gentleman on our right, captured mid-song and under concert lights at New York's Acme Underground club, is Sean Smith, singer/songwriter and mastermind of the multi-headed beast that is Pawnshop. The other members of the band are arranged below on the rest of this page. Pictures speak loudly, and Pawnshop's music speaks louder still -- listen in with us to the band's debut CD, the roaring Three Brass Balls, on shelves in finer record stores across the country, and jump aboard this band's wagon while we're still gathering speed.
Pawnshop formed in the early 90's and has been winging around the East Village and points abroad for many years and in many different forms, always with Sean Smith at the center of the musical turbulence. The band has been an evolving process, driven by Sean's unique voice and his unflagging pop-rock sensibilities. Over the years Pawnshop has encompassed an immediate and ever-changing chorus of personalities, shifting and growing and defining its sound as fluidly as a Scorpio in moon season. The gorilla has come home to roost at last, as it were, and pop-rock's newest indie voice is emerging strong, firm and loud.
G. Gone, President, IndepenDisc Music Club
Shirtless Keith Golden, pictured at left in part of his shirt, has threaded his way in and out of Pawnshop since the band's earliest founding days. He's made way over the years for bassists John Abbey (Dog's Eye View, Block, many others too numerous) and Pedro Moreno, whose work is recorded on Three Brass Balls, and now that he's back he's back in force, with an authority that is hard to resist and impossible to ignore. Keith is soft-spoken, elemental and as inevitable as a glacier (but warmer and much more fun in the van).
Drummer Ned Stroh (Dick Dale, 22 Brides), the newest member of Pawnshop, hit the ground running with the band, never even breaking stride. Ned completes the band's powerhouse rhythm section, singing backing vocals and grounding the charge as he and Keith rumble out matching platters of in-the-groove beats, precision flourishes, liquid fills and thrumming bass runs.
Three Brass Balls brings together a grand relation of musicians and
crams them into a dozen shifting, joyous songs of celebration, confession,
contemplation, hope and love. Joining the basic Pawnshop siblings
for this album are drummer Mark Hutchins (Block, Johnny Skillsaw), bass
player John Abbey (David Poe, Dog's Eye View), and a heavy-weather system of
guest guitarists: Chris Seefried (God's Child, Joe 90), Charlie Carroll
(courtesy of Home Office Records recording artists RAW Kinder), and Mark Nilsen and Steve
Fontaine (both of bluecowboys, one of Pawnshop's bedfellows on the
Burner compilation) all play on this CD with style, personality and
distinction.
Pawnshop previously contributed four favorite tracks to the Home Office Records' 1997 Burner compilation of eclectic new East Village music. Before then an attractive green vinyl 7" record and a cassette were released on Sean's vanity label, Superheat Records. You can check these out in the Flea Market section of the HO on-line store, at admirable prices. These early versions of some of the Three Brass Balls songs show the growth of the band, from its starting sensibilities to the polished, experienced group it has become.
Easygoing and confident on stage and in person, Pawnshop thrives on music. The band devours musical developments of all stripes, picking up a notion here and a concept there, gleefully devouring records by artists as diverse as Everlast, Joe Henry, Grant Lee Buffalo, Method Man, Tom Waits, Marilyn Manson, Beck (both), the Chili Peppers, Bob Mould, The Beastie Boys, Radiohead, Spoon, Ani DiFranco, Cotton Mather and the classic mainstays of Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, The Clash, The Jam and more. All the spicier, the musical gumbo: Pawnshop listens with eyes and ears wide, appreciating the flavors of reliable and passing fancies; then pops it all in a pot, simmers long and well, and serves up a music that is uniquely their own.