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The Real Chris Kaz offers little comfort in ‘ The Bed I Made’
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Victor D. Infante
Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
Worcester singer-songwriter The Real Chris Kaz lets you know right upfront that his recent album, “The Bed I Made,” is going to be an unconventional piece of work. Kaz – who will be performing at 6 p.m. Dec. 29 at BirchTree Bread Company –begins the album with “Creation,” a song that is almost a meditative intonation, the words stretching out into infinity, accompanied by bird song and understated flow of notes, eventually giving birth to a sprawling guitar line. There are really very few lyrics here, but there's something magnetic in the tone, something ineffable that invites the listener to sink into the music, and the themes which he's exploring — “creation” and “salvation.” Despite the smoothness of the music, neither are easy, as illustrated by the lyrics of the next song, "Wake Me Up (2.0),” and its opening lines of “Loneliness is when the healing begins.”
Kaz's voice is warm and soulful, and he brings an R&B depth of feeling to everything he sings. “Wake Me Up” is a plaintive and wounded song, and he never disguises that fact, even as the album escalates and threatens to overtake his voice. It never quite happens, and the feeling of neardrowning it creates is bracing.
Much of the album's power comes from its tight orchestration, and the mix by Aaron Bellamy. The band – which includes Kaz on vocals and guitar, Christian "Catman" Tremblay on keyboard, Bellamy on bass and Ben Silverman on drums –creates a soundscape that falls on the listener like fog, each moment charged with emotion, especially in a song such as “Into the Blue,” where every note serves to accentuate the feel of Kaz's vocals.
When the album moves on to the next song, “Seal it Off,” with its tempo changes and its classic soul-styled vocal modulations, that sense of accentuation is broken deliberately at the bridge, the guitar overtaking everything in a manic explosion, before the melody reasserts itself, fading into a low drone. There's a beat of silence, and then the first tentative falls of percussion as “Catch My Breath” begins.
In a lot of ways, this is a slightly more conventional love song, albeit one tinted with the rest of the album's sense of loneliness. “I've got nothing left,” sings Kaz, “Will you leave me now?” The question resonates with both hope and fear, which informs the next song, “Long for Love.” Kaz's vocals stretch into falsetto without losing any of their depth, which is impressive, and the effect is an absolutely heartbreaking wail, an ache that leaks into the more low-key, “Ojai.” For a song that's pretty much a slow burn from start to finish, there's something inexplicably jazzy about both the bassline and the vocals. It's not something that draws attention to itself, more of a subtle detail as the album's flow continues.
Indeed, that sense of flow is what carries the listener from song to song. It commands a certain sense of surrender, letting the current take the the listener to wherever it goes, in this case, a triptych of songs which lead the listener through the persona's sense of despair and loneliness, through the songs “Heart Punch,” “Rose Colored Eyes” and, finally, emerging into “You Remind Me to Love.” The sense of love's re-emergence in the latter song is palpable: It's filled with a vigor, even as – as the title denotes –the persona realizes that loving isn't a thing that happens. It's a thing that you do. Kaz and company follow this moment up with a cover of Bill Withers' sweet-spirited “Just the Two of Us,” a lovely oasis of unadulterated joy. (Note, this song does not appear on the Bandcamp version of the album.) It's a perfect moment, and naturally, it doesn't last.
There are a few beats of silence before the album's title song, “The Bed I Made,” begins with the lyrics, “I (expletive) up today,” delivered with the gentleness and sense of rich emotion that's permeated the album. The song shows off Kaz's impressive vocal range, with jazz runs and soaring high notes, but none of that obscures the song's unsubtle message: “I Made my bed/I gotta lay in it.”
There's a thematic shift in the penultimate song, “When Will We Get to Live?” Here, Kaz transmutes personal heartache to social and political pain: “He gets to hold, AK-47s/Some put a hold on your credit/Some just hold the world's attention/ Yet,/The moment we step just an inch out of line they define/ The way we get to live.” The song simmers with the anger and pain that's been prevalent in recent years, but it also exudes a sense of exhaustion. Musically, it's a beautiful song, but there's something about the hurt inherent in it that settles into the listener's bones.
In the end, Kaz leaves the listener on a hopeful note with the stirring “I Can,” a song which feels like light just beginning to break through the fog. It's a short song, but it brings the album to a conclusion that feels both honest and earned.
The Real Chris Kaz’s most recent album is “The Bed I Made.”
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CONNELL SANDERS
There’s no such thing as a cover-up tattoo at Zaza Ink
Sarah Connell Sanders
Special to Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
I have a regrettable tattoo on my left foot. Nothing vulgar or offensive — just a bad decision I made when I was 19 at the urging of a manipulative nitwit.
Every day, when I pull on a fresh pair of socks, I shudder at the sight of the hideous mark. The tattoo is a constant reminder of a time when I thought of myself as no better than a branded mule. It has taken me decades of my life to learn to love my body in its natural state. I can accept the scars, the wrinkles, and the pimples, but I will never get used to that tattoo.
Last spring, I decided it was the right moment for a permanent change. I emailed a halfdozen tattoo shops and no one got back to me. Blame the pandemic and the “great resignation” — I know everyone is short-staffed right now. Still, it felt like another roadblock standing in the way of reclaiming my own skin.
This week, I finally had a bite. Joe Peterson walked me around Zaza Ink, his West Boylston shop. Peterson went into business in 2000, the same year tattooing became legal in Massachusetts, but he’s been honing his craft for far longer than that. At age 16, he bought tattoo equipment from an ad in the back of a magazine. Soon, he became his own canvas.
Peterson is known for realism and portraiture, although he doesn’t like referring to himself as a specialist. “I don’t necessarily agree with specializing in only one style, because then you’re telling everybody else you have no interest in their wants and desires,” he told me. “That’s the standpoint we take here; we all try to work together.”
The team at Zaza Ink is made up of six full-time artists. “I bring on people who don’t tattoo for their own egos,” said Peterson. “We tattoo for our customers and we spend a lot of time advising on the front end.”
“Good,” I thought. “The last thing I need is another man’s ego intruding on my body.”
Peterson explained he would snap a photo of my current tattoo and begin the design process digitally so I could see what the finished product would look like. “That old tattoo is never going to go away,” he acknowledged. “The term ‘cover-up’ is wrong. If we just try to cover it up, after a year or two, you’re going to see the old one as clearly as the new one. What we have to do is take the existing shape and turn it into something else. I think we can be pretty creative.”
I liked the idea of taking ownership over my tattoo and making it my own by transforming a flaw into a badge of honor.
“We’ll work together until you get to that moment when you say, ‘That’s it; that’ll do it!’” Peterson promised me. For the first time in 15 years, I looked down at my left foot and smiled.
Zaza Ink is located at 287 West Boylston Street in West Boylston, Massachusetts. Inquire about booking at (508) 835-6559 or by emailing zazainktattoos@gmail.com.
Owner of Zaza Ink, Joe Peterson, surrounded by an eclectic array of gifts from his tattoo
customers. PHOTO BY SARAH CONNELL SANDERS
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NEW ON DVD
Two-faced Tom Hardy returns in ‘Venom: Let There Be Carnage’
Victor D. Infante
Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
A superhero sequel starring Tom Hardy in dual roles tops the DVD releases for the week of Dec. 14.
“Venom: Let There Be Carnage”: Hardy reprises his role as San Francisco journalist Eddie Brock, who is also the host body for an alien known as Venom. This time the villain is played by Woody Harrelson, a serial killer on death row transformed into Carnage by a drop of alien blood.
“The sequel doesn’t have that sense of joyful discovery and gleeful mischief that the first film did, because it’s obviously now a comedy on purpose,” writes Tribune News Service critic Katie Walsh in her review. “But the Venom/Eddie dynamic remains the best buddy action comedy going these days.”
ALSO NEW ON DVD DEC. 14
“The Last Duel”: Ridley Scott’s historical epic, which stars Matt Damon, Adam Driver, Jodie Comer and Ben Affleck, recounts the final trial by combat in medieval Europe.
“The Card Counter”: Oscar Isaac plays a pro gambler haunted by his past as a former military interrogator at Abu Ghraib in this thriller written and directed by Paul Schrader.
“American Sicario”: Crime drama about the rise and fall of the first American-born drug kingpin in Mexico.
“Dangerous”: A reformed ex-con breaks parole when head heads to a remote island to investigate his brother’s death in this action thriller. With Scott Eastwood, Mel Gibson and Tyrese Gibson.
“Holler”: Rust Belt-set drama about a young woman who joins a dangerous scrap metal crew to save up money for college and the chance to make a better life for herself.
“Language Lessons”: Natalie Morales and Mark Duplass star in this drama about a Spanish teacher and student who develop an unexpected bond following a tragedy.
“Manifest: Season 3”: Drama series about the passengers of a flight that reappears five years after going missing. NBC canceled the show earlier this year after Season 3, but Netflix has picked it up for a fourth season.
“South of Heaven”: Jason Sudeikis stars as a convicted felon who gets paroled after 12 years in prison and returns to his childhood sweetheart, played by Evangeline Lilly, who is dying of cancer.
“The Auschwitz Report”: Historical drama based on a true story about two Slovakian Jews who are taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942 and manage to escape two years later, but still must return home.
“The Mitchells vs. the Machines”: Netflix animated feature about a family road trip that gets derailed by a machine apocalypse that threatens humanity.
“Vengeance Is Mine”: A man unable to move on after his wife and child are murdered finds new purpose and clarity after discovering the whereabouts of those who killed them.
“The Waltons’ Homecoming”: CW movie commemorates the original holiday film that launched “The Waltons” TV show. Starring Logan Shroyer, Bellamy Young and Ben Lawson, with Richard Thomas reprising his role as the adult John Boy and narrator.
“Pond Life”: Coming-of-age drama set in 1994 about a small mining town and the legend of a giant carp.
“The Wolf of Wall Street”: 4K Ultra HD release of the Martin Scorsese film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, featuring a new film transfer supervised by the director.
Tom Hardy plays both Eddie Brock and the high-maintenance Venom in the superhero sequel “Venom: Let There Be Carnage.” SONY PICTURES
OUT ON DIGITAL HD DEC. 14
“The French Dispatch”: Wes Anderson’s latest film, inspired by the New Yorker, is set in a fictional 20th-century French village and features vignettes that make up an edition of a fictional American magazine.
“The Bridge of San Luis Rey”: 1958 TV movie adaptation of the Thornton Wilder novel about a friar in 18th-century Peru who is tried by the Inquisition starring Judith Anderson and Theodore Bikel.
“Circus Boy”: Documentary about a gay man who tries to reconcile with his mother after he and his husband adopt a boy he’s training for circus school.
“Range Roads”: An actor estranged from her family returns to her rural Canadian hometown after 20 years when her parents are killed in a car accident.
Leicester’s Jared Colby releases debut album with Second Spirit
Rob Duguay
Special to Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
Even when you move far away from your hometown, it’s good to recognize your roots. It’s important to hold on to where you can from so you don’t lose your identity within your current surroundings.
Leicester native Jared Colby grew up in Worcester’s hardcore music scene during the turn of the millennium and even though he’s currently in the country music mecca of Nashville he still honors that formative time in his life. His one-man hardcore project Second Spirit is his way of paying tribute to the area he grew up in. On Dec.17, that tribute will have a physical emblem attached to it with the release of the debut album, "The Weight Of Just Living."
Colby’s project was originally named Bloodsport, but when the owner of the record label discovered a possible conflict, a name change was in order. Luckily his wife helped him out with a new name that came out of his current relationship with his abided musical style.
“When I turned this album in to the record label and publishing, the owner of Trash Casual Records out of Brooklyn, Aj Tobey, informed me that there was another band called Bloodsport already in the United Kingdom,” Colby says on the name change. “They’re a pop punk band and they’re doing pretty significant numbers, so to avoid any conflict at all, he suggested I change the name. If I didn’t, it could create a lot of issues on digital streaming platforms where sometimes they don’t know the difference between the two bands and one of my songs could end up on the other’s profile and vice versa. "It immediately made me think back to the early 2000s where a band called American Nightmare got sued for their band name and basically they were in court forever and it completely used up all their money, their resources and everything so I wanted to skip that altogether," he said. "As far as the name Second Spirit goes, I have actually over the years been hating naming bands and
Jared Colby. SUBMITTED PHOTO
any band I’ve ever been in I’ve left that up to somebody else.
“Since this is a one-man project, I was kind of stressing out that it was going to completely fall on me but luckily my wife stepped in, she was helping me brainstorm for one and she came up with the name Second Spirit,” he adds. “That has a lot to do with the fact that this is definitely my second go-around with hardcore music. Growing up in Worcester that definitely was the thing that I did at all times, I basically lived at The Palladium and I was in multiple hardcore and metal bands back in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. I haven’t really been in that genre in around a decade so this is kind of my return to it and therefore my spirit for the music and all that it entails has been rejuvenated with this project.”
While at Trapdoor Studios in Leicester, Colby recorded all of the instruments and vocals for the album in completely DIY fashion. Tracks like “Brotherless” and “Pig Farm” highlight amazing intensity, syncopation and audio quality in an undertaking that brought a few obstacles.
“It was a challenge, for sure,” he says about the making of the album. “Back when I did it, it was fun and it was something that I wanted to really do. It was always a goal of mine to play all the instruments on a record and be able to perform all the vocals as well. Naturally, at the time I was working with the resources I had so I recorded it myself because I didn’t really have any money for a producer; it was very much a passion project. I was at the studio doing work every day and in my spare time when I wasn’t working on other people’s records I was working on my own. It was cool but it was one of those things where I didn’t grow up playing drums or anything so when I was writing the songs I was using a program called Reason and basically I just programmed the drums and played the drums on a keyboard.
“Then I had to practice the real drums to be able to get up to a fast enough tempo to be able to play all those songs,” Colby adds. “It was a four-month process of playing the drums for about two to three hours a day every day to be able to get it to where I felt it was good enough to get it onto a record.”
When it comes to living in Nashville, Colby has learned a lot as a musician. This includes the art of songwriting and honing his skills on guitar.
“I’ve definitely learned a ton about other genres of music and I’ve really learned so much about the craft of songwriting,” he says. “That is something that is so important in Nashville, everybody around there says that it always starts with a song. It’s kind of a played out thing to hear, but it’s really true, and I think about applying that to a hardcore band where I know I wrote these songs before I moved there but I’ve always gravitated more towards the type of hardcore that you could really hold on to with some repeating parts and it’s more about the songwriting process. That’s always been a major influence, and once I got to Nashville, I started paying way more attention to the craft and the craft of just playing guitar in general. Some of the best guitar players in the world live in the city and you really can’t go out and see a bad musician there.
“You might go to a club and think that a particular band isn’t for you but what they do is still very good,” Colby adds. “In the 10 years I’ve lived in Nashville, I don’t think I’ve actually seen a band that was horrible, so it’s made me really get serious about playing the guitar in general rather than getting stuck in a box. There’s no reason to move so far from home if you’re not going to take what you do very seriously and work on it every day. That’s definitely what this place has inspired me to do.”
To stream and purchase Second Spirit’s "The Weight Of Just Living" when it’s released, visit secondspirithxc.bandcamp.com.
