Mark Germino Remembered

Singer, songwriter, and poet Mark Germino passed away this week after a tragic accident. As an artist, he released four critically-acclaimed solo albums circa 1986-95 as well as an acclaimed 1991 album recorded with Nashville rockers the Sluggers. Germino pursued a sound that was part folk, part country, and part rock n’ roll, and although his smallish catalog of music never found a wider audience, he was a well-respected Nashville wordsmith, with songs recorded by artists like Vince Gill, Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, John Anderson, and Kenny Chesney, among others.

I didn’t know Mark all that well, but we hung out a bit in Nashville in the early ‘90s. Introduced to Germino by the late, great Jack Emerson of Praxis International (Jack managed Jason & the Scorchers and Webb Wilder, among other artists), I saw him perform a couple of times and was suitably impressed. Germino’s handful of albums are criminally underrated, and a recent campaign towards “rediscovery” of this worthy had begun before his death. Below are comments from Mark’s entry in my 2012 book The Other Side of Nashville, a history of the Music City rock scene (in italics) along with current reflections on the artist.

Mark Germino – The Other Side of Nashville

Mark Germino moved to Nashville from North Carolina around 1974 and quickly fell in with the street poetry/alt-songwriter crowd that included talents like Steve Earle, Kevin Welch, John Allingham, Dave Olney, and Tom House. Germino began turning his carefully-constructed and verbose poetry into carefully-constructed and verbose songs, and began playing clubs at night while driving a truck during the day.

Germino scored a publishing deal in 1980 and while few mainstream Music Row hacks had the cajónes to actually record a Germino song, a few visionaries like Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, and Vince Gill did so. Germino landed his label deal mid-decade after Earle had opened the door for the first wave of alt-country artists.

Germino’s deal with RCA Records resulted in the release of a pair of pretty decent albums – 1986’s London Moon & Barnyard Remedies and the following year’s Caught In the Act of Being Ourselves. Neither album gained any traction with country radio, mostly because Germino was too original, too eccentric, and too wordy to pen three-minute chart hits. Shunned by Music Row, Germino hooked up with some guys from similar poet Tim Krekel’s band, the Sluggers, and delivered the stunning 1991 album Radartown…  

Radartown is the culmination of Germino’s better than 15 years of hard work, struggle, and flirtations with stardom, a near-perfect collection of working-class blues backed by one of Nashville’s best band of veteran rockers. The original “Rex Bob Lowenstein” from 1987 had earned Germino a European following and a short-lived chart position in the U.K. Here the song takes on a brilliant anarchic quality that appeals to the outlaw mentality, while tunes like “Radartown” and “Unionville” are blue collar odes to hard times. Germino’s smart story-songs, like “Leroy and Bo’s Totalitarian Showdown” display both his talent and wry sense of humor. Altogether, Radartown is one of the best rock ‘n’ roll albums to ever come from the mean streets of the Music City.

Sadly, Radartown fell on deaf ears as major label A&R drones were then hovering over Seattle and the Pacific Northwest looking for the next Nirvana or Soundgarden, not a scrappy pugilist poet from Nashville, of all places. Tom Petty may have written about “The Last DJ,” but Germino’s “Rex Bob Lowenstein” is a more powerful expression of the same theme, something that Mark must have agreed with as he recorded three different versions of the song, all excellent! When Radartown failed to find a greater audience, Germino went back to his roots and recorded 1995’s acoustic Rank & File for Nashville indie label Winter Harvest, part of an impressive roster of artists that included Steve Earle, Mickey Newbury, Mac Gayden, Jonell Mosser, and John Kay (Steppenwolf).  

In between the release of his final RCA album, Caught In the Act of Being Ourselves in ‘87 and the release of the indie label gem Rank & File in 1995, Germino hooked up for a few years with the Sluggers for an album of real poop-punting rock ‘n’ roll music. This one is a fine acoustic set with Germino’s typically well-written, intelligent, and erudite songs that evince more humor than a stage full o’ drunken stand-up comedians. The album also has the third – count ‘em! – third version of Germino’s wonderful “Rex Bob Lowenstein.” After this one, Germino disappeared for over six years, turning his back on music, and writing three novels. He has since come back and is touring with his unique country/rock/folk sound.

Germino returned to the studio in 2021 to record Midnight Carnival for Red Parlor Records, an Americana label which has released wonderful albums by artists like Carla Olson, Dave Olney, Chris Whitley, Charlie Karp, and Eric Lindell, among others. Germino was enlisted by some old friends like guitarist Kenny Vaughan, bassist Tom Comet from the Sluggers, drummer Rick Lonow, and multi-instrumentalist Michael Webb to come down to Southern Grand Studios in Nashville to record Midnight Carnival, and the album is every bit as good as the contributors’ pedigrees suggest it would be.

There’s a long-lost Mark Germino album, recorded sometime during the ‘90s and distributed by the artist to his friends. Credited to “Mark Germino and the Grenade Angels,” the studio line-up included talents like guitarists Will Kimbrough and Rick Plant, bassist Todd Ellsworth, drummers Craig Wright and Willis Bailey (from the Sluggers), and the aforementioned Michael Webb, who co-produced the album with Germino. The resulting album – Atomic Candlestick – never received official release, ‘though there’s still hope as it seems that copies of the long out-of-print Rank & File are being bootlegged and available online.

Mark Germino was a unique and exceptionally gifted songwriter and performer in a vein similar to John Prine and Ray Wylie Hubbard, and although he provided songs and inspiration to a number of country artists in the 1990s and 2000s, he never got the industry attention and accolades he deserved.     

Find out more about Mark Germino & his music at:
https://www.markgermino.com/

Somewhere In The Night: Billy Chinnock Remembered (2007)

While thumbing through the current issue of Rolling Stone, a small but disturbing story caught my eye. Alongside the tragic tale of Boston vocalist Brad Delp’s suicide was a (much) shorter piece about the death of Billy Chinnock. A rock ‘n’ roll lifer whose career spanned Asbury Park, New Jersey; Nashville, Tennessee; and Portland, Maine, Chinnock sadly took his own life on March 7th, 2007 after a long bout with Lyme Disease.

Chinnock launched his career on the Asbury Park boardwalk during the late ‘60s. Chinnock’s Downtown Tangiers Rockin Rhythm & Blues Band included musicians like future E Street Band members Gary Tallent and Danny Federici, Vini “Mad Dog” Lopez, and David Sancious. Although Chinnock was plagued throughout his career with unfair Springsteen comparisons (much like Pittsburgh’s Joe Grushecky), the fact is that both artists were products of the same era and place, subjected to many of the same cultural and geographic influences and listening to a lot of the same music. Whereas Springsteen leaned more towards early garage-rock and the one-hit-wonders of ‘60s AM radio, Chinnock’s music was influenced more by roots-rock and blues.

When A&R legend John Hammond recommended that Chinnock work on his songwriting, the artist broke away from his heavy touring on the Jersey shore rock scene and moved to Maine in 1974, where he honed his craft while continuing to perform and record. Chinnock later migrated to Nashville during the early ‘80s at the prompting of musician and producer Harold Bradley. Bradley had received a cassette of his material and got in touch with Chinnock, and the two subsequently became friends. Chinnock was interested in the renewal of country influence on rock music and was impressed by the energy of the Nashville music scene, so he decided to come down and check it out for himself.

Chinnock integrated himself in the local music scene by jumping in headfirst, playing frequently at local clubs and WKDF-sponsored riverboat shows, as well as outdoor shows at Hermitage Landing. I had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing Billy for The Metro magazine in 1985, and witnessed firsthand his dynamic performance at that year’s “Rock For The Animals” show, which included Afrikan Dreamland, Walk The West, The Paper Dolls, Raging Fire, Hard Knox, Roxx and Bill Lloyd and the December Boys – a veritable “who’s who” of the mid-‘80s Nashville rock underground.

While living in Nashville, Chinnock recorded two landmark albums with producer Bradley – 1985’s independently released Rock & Roll Cowboy, and the 1987 CBS Records release Learning To Survive In the Modern Age, which yielded a minor hit single in the song “Somewhere In the Night.” Chinnock later won an Emmy for “Somewhere In the Night,” which had been used in a daytime soap opera. Chinnock later recorded a chart-topping duet with Roberta Flack which was used as the theme for The Guiding Light television show.

Like many non-country musicians in the “Music City,” Chinnock found a great deal of frustration in Nashville and the local scene. Already a veteran of 20 years of performing and recording, he was more polished and experienced than any of the rockers playing Nashville’s club scene. Although he had a loyal following – mostly blue-collar WKDF listeners – he was dismissed as too slick and mainstream by the local underground. Truth is, Chinnock’s roots-rock style was easily a decade (or two) ahead of its time, and was edgier and had less “commercial potential” at that time than most of Nashville’s more acclaimed “alternative” rock bands.

While I was managing a Nashville pizza delivery restaurant in the late ‘80s, I noticed an order going out to Chinnock’s Belmont Avenue area home. I hadn’t seen Billy in a couple of years and since I was getting off work, I paid for the pizza and drove over to make the delivery and say “hello.” Chinnock seemed happy to see me and we ended up talking for a couple of hours, off the cuff and mostly “off the record.” He expressed a lot of anger over the way that CBS had been messing with his career…Billy had a new album in the can and was ready to have it released and launch a supporting tour. Considering that Chinnock had just won an Emmy and had the highest profile of his career, I can see why he wanted the album released. However, CBS didn’t think the album “marketable” and, after a prolonged battle, dropped Chinnock from his contract.

The CBS debacle, inexcusable as it was, was not the first time that Chinnock’s work had been obstructed by small-minded label executives. Signed by Paramount Records, the label released his debut album Blues in 1974, but shelved his sophomore effort, Road Master, which was produced by Tom Dowd at the legendary Bell Sound Studios in Los Angeles. To the best of my knowledge, the album has never been released. In the wake of fellow Asbury Park rocker Bruce Springsteen’s success, Atlantic Records signed Chinnock to be their Springsteen and released his album Badlands in 1978. When Badlands went nowhere, the label decided to call it a day (after already recording most of a second album); Chinnock evidently got the rights to his masters back and released the 1980 album himself as Dime Store Heroes.

After spending the better part of the decade fighting the system, by 1990 Chinnock had left Nashville in his rearview mirror as he headed back to Maine, where he enjoyed almost 20 years of creativity and performing. 1990’s Thunder In the Valley, released under the name “Billy & the American Suns,” was Chinnock’s last major label album. He continued to record until the end of his life, releasing material on his own indie label, East Coast Records. Chinnock also dabbled in graphic arts and made a name for himself as a filmmaker and video producer, creating the award-winning film The Forgotten Maine.

Chinnock had suffered from Lyme Disease for eight years, the result of a nasty tick bite. The disease defied treatment, ravaging his immune system and leaving him in a great deal of pain. His mother, who lived with Chinnock and with whom he was very close, died ten days before Chinnock. Consumed with grief and suffering from chronic daily pain, Chinnock evidently saw no other way out than suicide. He was 59 years old, still young by today’s rock ‘n’ roll standards.

Chinnock’s sister, Caroline Payne, remembers that her brother was never envious of the success enjoyed by the artist many critics unfairly compared his work to. “I never saw him have any of that,” she told the Portland Press Herald. “I never saw any frustration in him, any jealousy like that. He thought Bruce Springsteen was phenomenal.” Although his vocals could often times sound like Springsteen’s, Chinnock’s music was always original, heartfelt, and genuine, and over the course of a mostly unheralded career that ran almost four decades, Chinnock released 13 albums and entertained a hell of a lot of people.

As usual, John Hammond was right on target when he called Billy Chinnock “the real essence of American music.”