Heath Street

Sunday Morning Coffee: Heath Street

http://www.herohill.com/2008/03/sunday-morning-coffee-heath-street.htm

March 30, 2008

Nicola and I are planning a substantial road trip. The type where you are in the car watching scenery whip by, daring you to stop and snap a picture. Part of my job, as usual, is to make sure the music is hooked up. There is something about upbeat folk that seems to be the records we both gravitate whenever the odometer starts turning and we dive deep into the small Canadian towns most people fly right through.

Heath Street is a folk/pop outfit from New York whose influences shine through brightly. The self-titled record starts with Yellow Shoes, and you can't help but think about James Taylor. The weightless finger picking and drums are smile inducing and provide a nice backdrop for frontman Scott Fahan's story. The band supports him nicely, especially when the piano twinkles in the background. The dueling acoustics on Song for Jim Carroll follows the same path, but adds some xylophone and a bit more soloing.

For the most part, it's really easy to let this record play. Really, the only major stumble is when the the band tries to shift into a more radio friendly, pop style. They abruptly change the vibe of the record on piano ballad Falling Softly. While it does force the listener to pay attention to the different sounds, I really think the boys do better when they are in a more 70's inspired folk mode (like the mandolin laced Cambridge Song). Either way, Heath Street is a nice morning wake up call and some of these tracks will be played to death when we get in the car. - www.herohill.com

http://weheartmusic.vox.com/library/post/heath-street.html

April 7, 2008

Heath Street

For my first review with We ♥ Music, I sincerely hoped my assignment wouldn't be too difficult. I'm an American twenty-something. That means minimum input, maximum output, right? What a relief it was to open the self-titled debut album of Heath Street; it's simple, unpretentious and sweet enough for your grandmamma.

Heath Street (named after the Bostonian train line) is the project of smarty pants Harvard alum, Scott Fruhan. A resident New Yorker, Fruhan has teamed up with Karl Huth, Nick Donin and Nick Brown to create a sound they claim sounds like:

If Ernest Hemingway were on a road trip with Peter Crouch passed out in the trunk, and Shooter McGavin were navigating, but the map is an old map from 1923, and the car broke down 10 miles outside of Truth and Consequences, New Mexico, that would make a weird song. Wait, what was the question?

See what I mean about simple and unpretentious? While Heath Street's description of themselves is a little silly, their music is mature and winsome. As a closet (not anymore, I guess) folk-dude lover, I was thrilled to hear traces of David Wilcox and Peter Mayer in these pretty songs. Fruhan's voice is pure and soothing, with that gentle quality you search for in all storytellers.

Songs like "Yellow Shoes" and "Song for Jim Carroll", with their melodic guitars and happy rhythms, bring to mind gravel roads and county fairs. These songs were my favorites as, unfortunately, most of the slower compilations were a tad lackluster. (Although "The Snales" was a good, haunting little tune.)

While I don't envision Heath Street selling out large auditoriums, I almost prefer it that way. Songs like these are best heard in small, intimate places with interjections of funny anecdotes and broken guitar strings.

Heath Street is currently playing shows in New York. The album is available on iTunes and at www.cdbaby.com/heathstreet . For more information, visit myspace.com/heathstreetmusic. - weheartmusic.vox.com

http://joyhog.com/2008/03/19/heath-street-review/

March 19, 2008

Text: Here at JoyHog!, we get A LOT of CDs. Like, a lot. And to be quite honest, we often open them just a couple inches above the rubbish bin, ready to drop it inside if it doesn’t somehow leap out at us. Perhaps I have a certain bias for a band like this one. If I see signs of the Boston music scene, my old stomping grounds, then I just can’t help myself. Heath Street has been around since 2000, playing dorm rooms, crunchy Cambridge coffee shops, and now some of the finer NYC establishments like The Bitter End. The sound has been compared to James Taylor, which, really, is not too far off. It’s a folksy-pop-y blend of guitar, piano, mandolin, drums and bass. It also brings to mind Jake Armerding’s chillness. As for this album, it gets off to a great start with catchy tunes like “Yellow Shoes” and “Song for Jim Carroll,” but somehow the second half lacks the buoyancy of the first. Nonetheless, if an album has six or seven tracks I can listen to on repeat a few times, it’s totally worth it. - joyhog.com

http://eartaste.blogspot.com/2008/04/heath-street-song-for-jim-carroll.html

April 4, 2008

Heath Street - Song For Jim Carroll

It’s been a tough week, and I can’t bring myself to get up and dance tonight. Just want to kick back, have a glass of wine, enjoy the sunset and listen to a guy sing me some thoughtful tunes. Heath Street fits the bill perfectly. This particular song is fun because it has me thinking about Jim Carroll, who used to make me dance frenetically. I don’t know the relationship between Heath Street and Jim Carroll, so I have to make one up. Jim Carroll and I used to run around with the same sorta crowd and our memories had to be cleansed, and Jim did a wonderful cleansing for myself and many others with All The People That Died.

“In the middle of the daylight I'm walking through the valley. In the middle of the daylight, coming around, I hear the good sound”

I’ve created a (false?) scenario in my mind that Heath Street is giving us the other side of that song. What, specifically, happened to all the people that died? What a calm, tranquil picture I receive as I visit with those friends who I miss yet don’t think about as much as I used to 20 years ago.

“In the middle of the daylight I've finally got nothing in my mind. I can even dig the clutter of a hanging cloud and that's a good sign.”

Despite the violence of life in the city streets, the daisies in the graveyard remind me that it is probable that the aftermath of death caused by inappropriate uses of government will still end up the same as the death of folks who were not exposed to the extremes of humanity. I love the line, “I’ve finally got nothing on my mind” that my friend is speaking to me across the dimensions between us.

“The legend rolls on: if you don't know these things, you're gone.” Even in this light-hearted pop tune Heath Street is wise and mature enough to remind me that the scenes in the cities are not gone. There are still children dying daily for reasons very complex and deep – each year there seems to be a way to make drugs cheaper and available to younger and younger children while the authorities turn their face to the issue and pretend it isn’t there. Houston may have sent a man to the moon, but have no will and desire to clean up the streets. They have no desire to stop another generation for needing mental cleansing for knowing “all the people that died.”

Thank you Heath Street. I know I’ve taken a perfectly wonderful song and probably made up a story that was far far from your mind when you wrote it and sang it, but you have no control over the images and how they affect individuals, right? Great song that, believe me, had iot not been for the title, would have simple had me thinking of puppy dogs and warm streets. “Man in blue passing at my back. Crossing too soon, as I pass a schoolyard.”

Shoutouts for The One Time

“The one time I saw your face
The one time you fell to grace
The one time I saw your face
You blew my self away

The one time you heard me cry
The one time I couldn't lie
The one time you heard me cry
I blew your self away”

and Cambridge Song

“They’re doing work on the road outside again
To pave the way to turn a thousand schoolboys into men
I’ve had ugly thoughts, I think I’m not the only one
I don’t intend to see my father told he has no son”

and the powerful meditation of Will’s Song

“Your sneakers made it through
A linen sheet of pale blue
On a bed of wheels . . .

. . . My whole life I've been a fool
In the slow-burning afternoon
Not an hour earned
In the loneliness of time
I'll be sitting drinking my wine
To you, conqueror”

When you are in the mood for contemplation and listening a convincing voice atop some beautifully played instruments reminding you that life has a deep beauty in every single emotion we are capable of, you should have this album on hand. “I know what you're looking for, and it's okay.” - eartaste.blogspot.com

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=scott-fruhan-westinghouse-multiple-sclerosis

Scott Fruhan: From Multiple Sclerosis to Med School--And Music

A 1999 Intel finalist works toward a career in medicine—but don't count out his Boston-inspired rock band

By Laura Vanderkam

Scott Fruhan was always fascinated by how the parts of living things worked. As an eight-year-old growing up in Newton, Mass., he used to carry around a wooden briefcase with the inscription "Scott Fruhan, entomologist". What else would you write on a briefcase full of dead bugs?

In high school, Fruhan pestered a friend's father who ran an immunology lab focused on studying multiple sclerosis (MS) at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) to let him volunteer there. He started out pipetting blood samples.

After awhile, though, he was allowed to participate in actual studies. The lab was looking at certain molecules on T cells—a type of immune system cell—that calm the body's immune response. Whereas normally an immune response is desirable, in patients with an autoimmune disease like MS, T cells can attack the body's own nervous system, causing it to function less efficiently.

MS patients, they learned, appeared to have fewer of the T cell molecules that down-regulate the immune response, which may contribute to the out-of-control immune system attacks that characterize this debilitating disease. Fruhan entered his part of the project in the 1999 Intel Science Talent Search and was named a finalist.

The effect on his career: Fruhan went to Harvard University to study biological anthropology. He graduated in 2003 and spent the next year earning a master's degree in social and developmental psychology at the University of Cambridge in England.

Although he enjoyed his time abroad, he decided that going further in a theoretical academic program wasn't for him, and he returned home to Massachusetts as soon as he finished. He went back to work at the immunology lab at BWH, took pre-med classes at area colleges, and applied to medical school.

What he's doing now: These days, Fruhan is a third-year medical student at Columbia University's medical school. He plans to do a residency afterward and practice medicine—unless, that is, he lands a major record deal for his band, Heath Street.

Not long after Fruhan began walking around with his briefcase full of bugs, he also began playing the guitar and piano as well as writing songs. During his second go-around in Boston, he wrote (and later recorded) an album called Heath Street, named for a Boston T (transit) stop. One of his favorite tracks, "Yellow Shoes," tries to capture a sense of nostalgia, changing love, and the way city neighborhoods can take on emotions of their own: "It's funny how I picture telling everything to you/even as you're standing in your faded yellow shoes/when I'm quiet in my head/I will love again."

These days, Fruhan plays gigs in New York City every few weeks. Although Heath Street's music is pretty laid-back, the visuals on stage are more interesting than those of the average acoustic band. Fruhan writes some of his pieces on the guitar and others on the piano—and to perform, "I pretty much have to be playing the instrument I wrote the song on," he says. This forces his band members to rotate between instruments, as well, meaning, "We all play every instrument at least once," he says. "But this works much better than you think because they're wonderful musicians."

One of those musicians, bassist Nick Donin, has equally high praise for Fruhan's songs. "Because Scott is very well-read and has a genuine interest in writing as well as songwriting, the words really are beautiful[ly] written pieces that tell stories and conjure up images of real life," he says. "It never strikes me as being about a fantasyland."

This realism also sometimes comes into play in the messy world of live music. "I remember one time Scott was performing, and at one point he forgot the words to a verse—and almost instantly, and perfectly in time, he said into the mic, 'Note: learn words to own songs,' and everyone in the crowd started laughing," Donin says. "I think that really showed Scott's great sense of humor, which relies heavily on self-deprecation, as well as his timing." - Scientific American