Eddie Spaghetti – The Sauce
Grant Alden
Posted On May 1, 2004
As it turns out, a lot of the Seattle class of 1992 (or whatever) is still finding ways to make music — whether their mostly accidental swing at the big time hit or missed. As one of their ex-girlfriends said, the Supersuckers moved to Seattle from Tucson because they could wear leather jackets year-around, but they fit in fine.
They rocked and they partied and they invoked Satan’s name with suitable ironic glee, but were always capable of a touch more than that caricature. One hint came with 1997’s burst of punk-country. Then-manager Danny Bland instigated the Twisted Willie tribute, and the band cut a country sidestep titled Must’ve Been High plus a five-song EP with Steve Earle. Then they went back to rocking, thank you.
The country detour was largely the idea of lead singer Eddie Spaghetti. Given time and opportunity, and nothing better to do, he returned to that impulse and spent a couple days cutting a careful selection of favorites for The Sauce with local luminaries Kurt Bloch (guitars) and Mike Murderburger (drums).
Eddie’s rock-roughened voice sounds a little naked in this almost acoustic setting, but he’s wisely chosen from song bags filled by equally idiosyncratic singers: Kris Kristofferson, Billy Joe Shaver, Willie Nelson, Steve Earle, Johnny Casha
Hard to go wrong, given the sources, but Spaghetti’s selections are canny as well, from Kristofferson’s “The Best Of All Possible Worlds” to Earle’s “I Don’t Want To Lose You Yet” to Shaver’s “Bottom Dollar”. He’s more comfortable with the sprightly tempo of “Cocaine Blues” (T.J. Arnall’s song, Johnny Cash’s standard) than, say, “Sea Of Heartbreak”. Two of Spaghetti’s own (“Sleepy Vampire” and the inevitable “Killer Weed”, which could easily be a Bare Jr. track) fit well enough.
It’s not a landmark achievement, nor does it aspire to be. The Sauce is simply friends in a studio playing and singing favorites because they still love the music. As Eddie notes, it’s not like he’s got a record label at his heels, and, anyway, “aI could never have ‘writer’s block’ because I don’t write songs, I just make them up.”
Mostly because he can’t sit still, Eddie has said he’s going to tour behind this album. The suspicion is, he’ll be a better country singer when he comes home, for it takes a while to learn how to sing without a rock band in the mix. But if he runs into Bobby Bare Jr. on the road, ah, then things could get really interesting.
