Foursome To The Floor:

Pat DiNizio Explores The Songs And Sounds Of Going Solo

by William Harris

            When a band’s lead singer releases a solo album, the first question that inevitably leaps to the minds of fans is, “Has the band broken up?”

            And, admittedly, the answer is oftentimes “yes.”

            In the case of Pat DiNizio’s debut solo release, Songs And Sounds, however, Smithereens fans may feel free to breathe a sweet sigh of relief. “No, no, we’re still together,” he confirms.

            In fact, as it turns out, within 48 hours of our conversation, the Smithereens signed a new record deal with Velvel Records. “We’re signing the deal on Thursday morning at 10 AM. In fact,” he adds, “that should be the title of the next Smithereens record: Thursday Morning, 10 AM.” He pauses, then, laughing, says, “That’s good. I gotta write that one down. It’s got Smithereens written all over it.”

            The last Smithereens album of new material was 1994’s A Date With The Smithereens, released on RCA Victor, but, despite two collections (one of their greatest hits, one of rarities) released on Capitol, the band found themselves label-less...a situation which indirectly led to DiNizio’s solo album, also released on Velvel.

            “We were in-between record deals, and I refused to do demos for approval at a major label, and the deal (for the solo album) sort of fell in my lap, as it were. I ran into Bob Franke, who’s the president of Velvel; he had just come from running Polygram in Nashville for five years, and he offered me a deal. He didn’t want to hear anything, which I thought was a tremendous boost to my confidence, this tremendous leap of faith on his part to sign me based on what I’d done and what I could yet achieve. And he did the same thing for the Smithereens. So God bless him, y’know?”

            Though Songs And Sounds really wasn’t done as a direct attempt at branching out from or transcending his work within the Smithereens, DiNizio acknowledges that, “certainly, there are moments on the record where I’m in unfamiliar territory...successfully! There were things that I perhaps, in my secret heart, wanted to do musically that couldn’t be accomplished within the world of the Smithereens. But that’s because my interests and musical background are a bit different from the rest of the guys; we’re all different individuals. And I wanted the opportunity to work with several of my musical heroes, and I accomplished that.”

            To explain the last sentence somewhat, DiNizio is supported on the album (“backed” is really the wrong word for musicians of this caliber) by  J.J. Burnel (bassist for the Stranglers), drummer Tony “Thunder” Smiths, and jazz great Sonny Fortune on sax and flute.

            “The Stranglers, next to the Beatles, were my favorite band, and J.J. was one of my early musical heroes. Sonny Fortune certainly was at the top of my list in terms of musicians that I had the utmost respect for; I’d followed his career for 20 years...even before that, dating back to when I was 17 or 18 and going to see his quartet play at the Village Vanguard in New York, when he recorded for the A&M Horizon label. It was an inspiration for me, musically, and I think that a lot of Sonny’s compositional skills as a jazz artist surfaced in some of my writing, at least in terms of the chords and the emotion that the chord would elicit from you upon listening to it.”

            Surely, working in such close proximity to a musician whose work proved so influential resulted in a bit of hero worship, at least at first...?

            “It was a bit uncomfortable, actually,” admits DiNizio, “because I didn’t want him to see me for the three-chord fraud that I really am! I was really out of my depth with Sonny, but he’s a really nice man.” The working relationship with the musicians clicked in rapid fashion, fortunately. “Into maybe the second take of the first track we were attempting to record, J.J. said, ‘This feels like a band.’ And he was right! It’s like another band that I’m in: the Pat DiNizio Foursome and the Smithereens.”

            Songs And Sounds was produced by the legendary Don Dixon, renowned for twiddling the knobs on several Smithereens albums, as well as for being a solo artist in his own right. “Don has a really diverse musical background. He writes, he performs with the best of them, he produces with the best of them, he played bass with Buddy Rich for awhile...he’s been around. He knows what he’s doing. He, in a sense, is the Smithereens’ George  Martin. I feel completely confident in his abilities as a producer, an arranger, and as a sympathetic, objective ear to  what I’m doing musically in the studio and otherwise. We argue like everybody else, and he’s tough, but I trust my career in his hands.”

            With the Smithereens and the Stranglers both still a going concern, it seemed unlikely to hope for the Foursome to tour behind Songs And Sounds, but, in fact, there is a full tour scheduled, tentatively set to begin sometime in the early weeks of 1998 and featuring all the players from the album. “Coming your way,” smirks DiNizio. “It’s a good band, and it’s guaranteed to blow the roof off any venue we play. These guys can really play. Real musicianship. We can go either way with it: we can do a lot, or we can do nothing. You know? And that’s the beauty of it.” A pause. “You know what I’m saying, right?”

            Oh, sure.

            After being quizzed about whether or not the set-list had been properly planned yet, DiNizio confesses to being “pretty meticulous about my career in the sense that I tend to plan things out. I’ve already visualized what the set’s going to be like, the way the equipment’s going to be set up...it’s part of the thrill of being in a rock and roll band. When I was high school, daydreaming instead of listening to the teacher, I was drawing stage set-ups for a band I might have someday on paper. There were little illustrations of Marshall cabinets, microphones, amplifiers, and drums...” Getting back on topic, he clarified that “the set is pretty much going to be the entire new album from start to finish, with certain other detours...like Sonny perhaps doing a couple of sax solos. Tony Smith can take a drum solo with the best of them, and I think that if you’ve got that kind of talent and you can do an interesting, musical drum solo in the context of a rock and roll show, then you should do it. Most people of the new generation of drummers can’t do a solo, and it’s a sight to behold when someone can really do it. It doesn’t mean he’s going to play a solo for 20 minutes and bore you to tears.”

            Yeah, but will his kit do a 360 in mid-air while he’s performing?

            “What, like Tommy Lee?” laughs DiNizio. “Let me tell you something. I learned more about showmanship from watching Tommy Lee at the one Motley Crue concert I went to, in Richmond, than I’ve ever seen before. I learned more from that one performance on how to entertain an audience than I learned from all of the other concerts I’ve seen in my life put together. And that’s the truth! No matter what you think of the band, they were very entertaining. I’m not a fan of the music, but I’m a fan of their live show...well, for about ten minutes, anyway.”

            Continuing, he adds that, in the Foursome’s upcoming live shows, they’ll also “probably do a few of the new songs that I’m writing, which’ll be for the next solo album, the working title of which is Dark Standards. The first album just came out, and I’m already onto the next one! Dark Standards is sort of a play on words. It’s going to follow in the last track of Songs And Sounds, ‘I’d Rather Have The Blues,’ and it’s going to be standards...obscure covers, a few new originals written in that style, and a couple of remakes of classic Smithereens tunes that were written in that genre, like ‘In a Lonely Place’ and ‘Especially For You,’ but interpreted by top-of-the-line jazz legends like Fortune, Elvin Johnson, and Ron Carter.

            “I don’t want to keep making rock and roll albums all the time. I don’t have to. It’s all music in the end, no matter what it is, and the label is generous enough with me that they’ve given me the green light with this project. It’s a real blessing.”

As of this writing, the Pat DiNizio Foursome is rumored to have a date planned for somewhere in the Tidewater area during their tour, possibly Virginia Beach, but no location has been confirmed yet.