8 minute read
City Voices
DON LANDGREN CARTOON
WORCESTERIA
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Sam James talks ‘Voice,’ Tik Tok, Hanover show
Victor D. Infante
Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
“VOICE” LESSONS: Worcester musician Sam James fully admits he doesn’t watch “The Voice” much anymore, even though he was on the show in 2012, but he has caught the most recent local “Voice” competitor, Ryleigh Modig of Spencer, on another platform: TikTok. “I think she’s so (expletive) talented,” says James, in a recent phone conversation. James said he had discovered her when she came up in his “Recommended For You” feed, and that when he discovers an artist he likes there, he follows them and then follows their Instagram, which is when he discovered she was local. “I had no idea she was on ‘The Voice,’” he says. “I think she’s so herself … she is an original. sometimes you hear people and they’ve got it. She’s not trying to be someone she’s not. She’s not copying anyone, she’s doing interesting flips on songs. She’s going to go so far.” James admires that sense of authenticity, admitting that a lot of his time spent on “The Voice” and later “Songland,” he was spending too much time worrying what other people were thinking, and that letting go of that and just being himself is what’s allowed him to have some measure of success in his post-”Voice” career, both as a songwriter whose work has been song by the likes of Dolly Parton and Bebe Rexha, and as a performer whose been going viral on Tik Tok with somewhat surprising material: Acoustic guitar covers of hip-hop songs.
GOING VIRAL: Covering
FIRST PERSON
Search for new hobby goes into uncharted territory
Joe Fusco Jr.
Special to Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
When you retire during a pandemic, you need to find ‘hobbies.’
One of my retired friends is learning to play guitar through You Tube lessons. Another is re-reading every book in her home-library alphabetically. Still another just stays on
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Some pandemic hobbies are more suitable than others ... PEXELS
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James
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hip-hop songs isn’t actually new for James. “When I was doing five or six nights a week playing in bars, I’d throw in a hip-hop song once in a while,” he says. “It just kind of clicked. A friend said, ‘You should put this stuff up on Instagram,’ and I did, and it started blowing up … I said, ‘I guess I’ll stick with this and keep going.’ I have a raspy, twangy voice … I guess what people conceived as a country dude in a weird hat and a flannel shirt playing a Drake song, that resonated with people.” In addition to Drake, James has posted covers of songs by YNW Melly, DaBaby, Nicki Minaj, Brockhampton, Megan Thee Stallion and The Notorious B.I.G. It should be noted that these aren’t novelty covers, they’re just adapted to his own style, and James thinks that might be the key to their success. “It’s really cool,” says James. “I love that I can go and write a country song for some big artist, and then do my own thing online.” James says his recent cover of Brockhampton has over a million views. “It’s an interesting platform,” he says, of Tik Tok. “It’s kind of fickle. Shorter videos kind of win, but it can’t be too short. The algorithm likes videos that get played all the way through, and which people comment and like on … It’s all the algorithm. There’s no human sitting at Tik Tok saying, ‘I want to put this on everybody’s “For You” page.’” James says Tik Tok is a great platform for breaking new music, but it can also be frustrating: “You can post 10, 11 videos over two or three weeks, and they’ll get 5,000, 6,000 views, and then one – you can tell right away … it’s never a slow-burn on Tik Tok – you have 25,000 views in the first couple seconds. I don’t think there’s any rhyme or reason to it. Sometimes the videos go, sometimes they don’t.”
BACK TO REALITY: As the pandemic winds down, James admits he’s looking forward to live music again, even if he’s spending more time in recording studios than he is on stages. One show he’s definitely set for – COVID-19 restrictions willing – is opening for his fellow Worcester “Voice” alum, Ricky Duran, Sept. 18 at The Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts, a show that has been rescheduled four times because of the pandemic. Tickets are currently available on the Hanover’s website. James says he’s “going to play all my new stuff, and it’s going to be really different. It’s a lot of energy, a lot of hip-hop in there.” He admits that he’s not sure what people who used to go see him play Worcester bars are going to think of it, but that’s where he’s at now. As with the Tik Tok videos, “I’m just being myself.”
Sam James of Worcester performs on NBC’s “Songland” in 2019.
FILE PHOTO/NBC
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Facebook all day and rants politically.
I’m into Senior Grooming!
My hair is longer and curls around my ears that I pluck nightly. My feet enjoy a monthly pedicure. I strive for that permanent 5 o’clock shadow that Ben Affleck and Tom Brady model. Like 62% of men surveyed, I manscape below the belt.
I’m also considering ‘Scrotox.’ Scrotox is a Botox injection into the testicles. Supposedly, it decreases sweating, reduces wrinkles, and makes your junk look larger and hang lower.
“It improves aesthetic appearance and enhances sexual activity by increasing self-confidence” according to Dr. Krem Bortecen, a proponent of the enhancement.
Scrotox takes about four minutes and is an out-patient procedure. You can go to the gym or senior center the same day!
Each injection cost $500 and should be done quarterly so there goes my stimulus money!
During my 50-year career in the supermarket business, a few bosses proclaimed that I had really ‘big balls’ to question their decisions. How prophetic of them.
One of my daughters who is a professional photographer does boudoir shoots. I mentioned that Scrotox plus my other grooming fixations might open some Senior Dudeoir possibilities for me. She disagreed quite emphatically.
My wife of 34 years who has seen me dabble in yoga, voiceovers, competitive eating and ballroom dancing over the years has only one piece of advice on my search for a new "hobby."
“Try woodworking.”
Joe Fusco Jr. is a poet and humorist living in Worcester.
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LETTER TO THE EDITOR Climate change a threat to our survival
Climate change is arguably the greatest threat to our survival. Top scientists are in agreement that we only have until the end of the decade to act to prevent the worst impacts of climate change from becoming reality. Aside from Massachusetts already seeing the impacts, with coastal erosion causing the rapid disappearance of North Shore beaches, I come from Connecticut, which experienced the impacts of Tropical Storm Isaias last summer, and I saw firsthand what it did to my community: downing trees and leaving people in my hometown without power for up to a week. In addition, it caused similar damage to Massachusetts residents. Knowing what we do about the impacts of climate change, the Massachusetts state legislature must pass the 100% Clean Act, which would transition the state to 100% clean electricity by 2035, and to 100% clean heating and transportation by 2045. Transitioning off fossil fuels is the only path forward to save our communities from the most devastating impacts of climate change, and to protect the younger generations, as well as future ones. The state can lead on this issue, but only if we choose to act before it is too late. —Alex Kawa is a student at Clark University in Worcester.
POETRY TOWN ‘Shining City On A Hill’
Tony Brown
It is as broken as Troy or Fukushima.
As crumbled as numberless cities still unfound and unnamed.
No beauty to it now as if it were Atlantis still thriving under pressure and without light. If it is even real, it is no longer within our reach if it ever was.
Do you hate this lament for it? I do.
I longed for it as we all did.
Embarrassed now to say that
I once sang of how it could be found, entered, made into a home, but it was bait. It was only lure, only decoy. While I chased it it slipped away and something different rose on its site that stank of whitened bones and old massacres. I looked for it on a hill while they built it
in a charnel trench. They knew me well enough to know how I could be fooled, and I was so fooled. My song for the city became a scream, a death metal horn of rage. My angle on the angles of the buildings and roads turned sharp and bloody. It became impossible to inhabit my body and say it belonged there.
It’s just a nowhere form. It’s a frame for loss.
They keep building their city, marketing Troy, tell us to keep praying to the ghosts of Fukushima.
They insist Atlantis will reveal itself, rise from the nuclear waves if I will just wait.
That city I see them drawing up from the waves?
Not Atlantis, but R’lyeh, and yes, they always knew.
Tony Brown is a Worcester poet and the frontman of the Duende Project.
“No beauty to it now/as if it were Atlantis/still thriving under pressure and/without light.” ENRIQUE MESEGUER
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