Where to get it
Levi Massie’s album “Sunrises & Cigarettes” is available locally at the Dream Cup coffeeshop and the Buckeye Sports Lodge.
I suppose it was inevitable that Levi Massie and I would become friends.
After all, it’s pretty tough to find one person under the age of 50, let alone two people who attended high school in the ’90s, who really likes the music of ’60s folk-rock icon Donovan.
For the longest time, I thought I might be it.
Certainly, my wife will never be hip to Donovan. She once walked in on me listening to the song “Atlantis” — used to great effect in “Goodfellas” despite its corniness — and it was like being caught watching some bizarre subgenre of porn.
At least that’s the way she made me feel.
We don’t really talk about it, and it’s just easier to listen to Donovan when she’s not around.
But Massie went so far as to list Donovan as one of his influences.
So not long after I wrote a column on the local singer-songwriter in September 2009, we started meeting every so often for lunch.
Funny, we barely ever talked about Donovan. We talked more about Dylan.
But the conversation seemed to always drift back to Massie’s own aspirations — and his frustration at having come home to Clark County from Nashville, broke, in February 2009.
“Every day was a struggle to get through,” he confessed this week. “I felt I’d failed in a way. I had my guitar and a few clothes. I had zip.”
He went to work at the Lowe’s on North Bechtle and — if you need further proof at how far this man had fallen — ended up befriending me.
He burned me an album by his real idol, Townes Van Zandt. I gave him my extra copy of “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” by The Byrds.
So this past summer, when Massie asked me to write the liner notes for his debut album, I wasn’t surprised.
In this era of 99-cent downloads, he might be the last 29-year-old on the planet who’d even think about having liner notes written for an album.
“The days of the great album are over,” Massie sighed.
With the newly released “Sunrises & Cigarettes,” Massie hopes to change that. This is the album that he moved back to Nashville this past March to make with a $5,000 loan from the Security National Bank in Medway.
“I didn’t want anybody to skip over it,” he said. “Everybody’s attention span is so short. From the opening lick of that pedal steel, I think it’s pretty solid from start to finish.”
Amen to that.
Massie, a 1999 graduate of Tecumseh High School, has crafted an album that relies on substance rather than coasting on style.
After all, do you know many 29-year-olds who’d be thrilled to find themselves in the presence of harmonica legend Charlie McCoy?
First of all, find me another 29-year-old who even knows who Charlie McCoy is.
“I’m going to be recording with a guy I’ve read about in books,” Massie remembers thinking this past spring.
Thanks to producer Peter Young — a former drummer for Loretta Lynn who was looking for studio clients of his own when Massie found him on Craigslist — they were able to get McCoy to blow his unmistakable harmonica on three tracks.
This is the same McCoy who was inducted last year into the Country Music Hall of Fame for his session work on such songs as “Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line” (a No. 2 hit for Waylon Jennings in 1968) and “Take This Job and Shove It” (a No. 1 smash for Johnny Paycheck in ’78).
This is the same McCoy who helped Dylan make “Blonde on Blonde,” “John Wesley Harding” and “Nashville Skyline,” his last three albums of the ’60s.
Now he’s on Massie’s first.
“It’s going to give it an air of legitimacy,” Massie said. “He added so much to it.”
On the standout song “Wounded Bird,” in which Massie sees himself in a helpless creature that hasn’t been flying right, McCoy makes it sound all so effortless.
“It was incredible watching him work,” Massie said. “He did it all in one or two takes.”
The album also features noted Scottish accordionist Blair Douglas on one track and some incredibly supple pedal-steel work by session cat Tony Paoletta on two more.
Talk about making the most of $5,000.
“I don’t really care about being a star,” Massie said.
If anything, his voice is more suited for cult stardom.
“I don’t have the best technical voice,” he said, “but I just try to make it real.”
He’s taking his cues from a guy like Townes Van Zandt.
“He’s more popular now that he’s dead,” Massie observed.
As a music fan, and a friend, let’s hope Massie manages to stay above ground for a long time.
Or at least until Security National gets its five grand back.
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0352 or amcginn@coxohio.com.
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