Thursday, July 06, 2006

There’s something you should know about Peter Gammons’s new disc, Never Slow Down, Never Grow Old (Rounder), which came out on the Fourth of July.

It’s really good.

What, you thought this would just another dilettante's vanity project, an excuse for the unofficial commish to clown around in the studio with some of his favorite Red Sox and bash out a few classic rock chestnuts?

Well, it is. But as these things go, it’s at the top of its game. If, by some extraordinary circumstance, you were not aware that Gammons is the best and most well-connected baseball writer around today, if this CD was somehow your only exposure to him, you’d be forgiven for assuming he was a musician by trade.

Yup, the guy who’s spoken with every team owner, general manager, player, agent, minor league prospect, groundskeeper, clubhouse attendant, and batboy in the baseball universe over last four decades has a hell of a voice: gritty as sandpaper or honey smooth as the song and situation dictate — perfect for the tunes he’s chosen.

He’s no slouch with the six-string neither, charging through the chunky double-stops of Chuck Berry’s “Carol” and the “Promised Land” like it’s nothing at all. George Thorogood adding slide guitar to the latter? Gravy.

The covers are great. A slow-burning take on Warren Zevon’s “Model Citizen.” A version of Alvin Crow’s “Nyquil Blues” that sounds straight out of the Dallas honky-tonk where Gammons first heard it while drinking beers with Pudge Fisk in 1976. And, doing the Clash’s “Death Or Glory” (with help from Sox GM and sixth Pearl Jam member Theo Epstein) Gammons finds an interesting way to elide a certain lyric about randy nuns.

But the record’s most surprising revelation is that this Hall of Famer, a guy who knows more about game than anyone else in the world, in posession of all manner of arcane and encyclopedic baseball knowledge, still has time to be a not-half-bad songwriter. The Gammons original “She Fell From Heaven” is a beaut. It’s supposed to be a tribute to Little Feat’s Lowell George, but it sounds more like a poppier John Hiatt, and that’s not a bad thing to sound like at all.

Bottom line: Peter Gammons better get his ass out of that hospital bed real soon, so we can see him do this stuff live.

We’re sure Jonathan Papelbon, Kevin Youkilis, Trot Nixon, Tim Wakefield, Gabe Kapler, Lenny DiNardo, Bronson Arroyo and “Announcer Boy” Don Orsillo, who all contribute backing vocals to his cover of the Blue’s Project’s “Wake Me, Shake Me” feel the same way.

“Wake me, shake me, don’t let me sleep to long....”

Get well soon, Peter.

Download an MP3 of the Gammo original, “She Fell From Heaven,” order the record, and buy tickets for the next Wednesday’s “Hot Stove Cool Music: The Fenway Sessions,” over at the Phoenix music blog, On the Download.