Ever the lyrical storyteller inspired by world history, Pacheco’s Boomtown features thirteen new tales.
Before delving into the 13 Tom Pacheco-penned originals that grace Boomtown, let us first focus on the black-and-white cover photograph. Direct your eye to the centre of the picture and there’s a man in a checked shirt standing on the right-hand side of the entrance to Café Wha? Taken sometime during May 1966, the then-almost 20-year-old shirted gent is Tom Pacheco. Located on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village, the club opened its doors in 1959 and, over the succeeding half-century-plus, has played host to comedians and musicians of every stylistic hue. Jimmy James, aka Jimi Hendrix, was discovered there, in 1966, by Chas Candler bassist in Geordie band The Animals. Next, cast your eye to the right of the photo; according to the marquee, The Fugs were performing at the Players Theatre, part of the same building complex. Ed Sanders, alumni/songwriter in the latter aggregation supplies the insightful Boomtown liner notes.
In Pacheco’s adopted domicile of Woodstock, NY, his vocals and acoustic guitar were recorded at Karl Berger’s Creative Music Studio, while contributions from Tim Neo (bass), Jack Lowland (drums), Olav Torgeir Kopsland (dobro, pedal steel) and Kai Leland (electric guitar, keyboards) were added at Nyando Studio in Olso, Norway. Leland is, additionally, credited in the liner with recording, mixing and producing Boomtown.
“MacDougal Street Summer 1966” portrays a not-all-that-long-ago time when Greenwich Village was a melting pot of ‘penniless’ poets, playwrights and musicians — a time, according to Pacheco, when “fairy dust fell from the sky.” The lyric recalls “Jimi’s at the Cafe Wha?, Arlo’s at The Gaslight, Van Ronk’s at The Kettle of Fish,” and that the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer In The City” single peaked at #1 Pop that August. According to the closing verse, the onset of the 21st century witnessed a radical change with the now high-rent Village apartments occupied by stock traders and the ilk. Australian born, WikiLeaks founder Assange is the central character in “Julian.” As to whether he’s a “Benedict Arnold or Paul Revere,” you decide! The darkness that Pacheco perceives in cyberspace forms the focus in “Reality’s Virtually Fine,” while in the ensuing “One More Time” the aging narrator seeks love. Based on evidence presented throughout Boomtown, Pacheco will never seek the latter … online.
D. B. Cooper – a media-generated epithet – made worldwide headline news in late November 1971, when he hijacked a commercial flight bound to Seattle from Portland, OR, successfully holding it ransom for $200K. Once in possession of the ransom money, Cooper parachuted from the plane and was never heard of again. The event spawned countless theories and myths. Spanning four decades, “The Lost Diary Of D. B. Cooper” finds the songwriter giving vent to his fertile imagination, suggesting a 9/11 link, and quoting Woody Guthrie. He points a finger at guilty Wall Street financial traders – hell, bankers worldwide – who wipe out multiples of $200K at the stroke of a pen. According to “The Woodstock Generation Passing On,” now prone to “heart attacks and tumours” and kept alive by pharmaceuticals, obituaries – not front page headlines – now fascinate these aging baby boomers.
Harking back to Swallowed Up In The Great American Heartland (1976), Pacheco’s major label solo debut, “The Tree Song” launched a career-long song series whose focus is on the preservation of the planet’s fragile environment. The autobiographical “Boomtown” witnesses the desecration by gas well drillers of the Pennsylvania valley – “the peaceful safe haven” – where Pacheco grew up.
There’s a sonically haunting Middle Eastern edge to the “Homeland” melody, while Pacheco’s words focus upon the plight of refugees, particularly those in Palestine. Tim Berner Lee’s electronic offspring, the World Wide Web, is referenced – negatively! – in a number of the lyrics here, including the online cornucopia that is “You Tube.” “If he were alive today” is the question posed in “What Would Woody Think,” a political diatribe that gives witness, since the 1980’s, to the rise and rise of all-consuming corporate power, and the concurrent shrinking influence of workers’ unions. A cautionary – nay, apocalyptic – warning and album closer “Only One More Night Till Touchdown” envisions the possibility of “the last survivors” abandoning this “blue paradise” just before “the sky caught fire.”
from the desk of the Folk Villager.
