Summary
"The next day, the Realtor forwarded me a message from him," says [Eric Graf]. "He said, 'I feel like [Graf] is supposed to be here, and I've drawn up plans for how he could use the space.' Now, it's a place where I can reconnect with part of the Pittsburgh music scene that I'd lost touch with." It's also now a rehearsal and studio space for bands such as Local Honey and Graf's frequent collaborators, Chris Cannon and Will Dyer of The Skinks.
A taste of music-biz success proved dizzying for Graf and Boxstep, and when the band's 2001 debut, The Faces All Look On, was received with limited but raving national press, the cycle of tour-and-record set in. It's couched in the lingua franca of love songs, but Graf might as well be addressing those confused days in "Roman Candle," with a little help from W.B. Yeats: "when life decides to roll the die every love must take a chance / and soon we'll know the secret roll, is it the dancer or the dance."Moving to Chicago brought Graf perhaps his finest collaboration - Boxstep's band features musicians from Edith Frost and Devil in the Woodpile, who rehearsed together for the first and only time the night before recording, completing the disc in one session with no overdubs. The result is a disc more immediate, more raw and more beautifully earthly than any of Boxstep's previous recordings. But, as this lineup sings on one of the disc's defining Dylan & the Band-esque jaunts, "I know you're living here, but it doesn't feel like home," Graf knew that Chicago had its uses, but was only a residency.See the full content of this document
Extract
Boxstep
The dancer or the dance?
BOXSTEP CD RELEASE SHOW with HI-FREQUENCIES. 10 p.m. Fri., July 28. Club Café, 56-58 S. 12th St., South Side. $5. 412-431-4950 or www.clubcafe live.comTHE THICK DOORS of Eric Graf's house are like those of a refrigera...See the full content of this document
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