by David Schultz

Bill Deasy has spent years cultivating his status as one of Pittsburgh's local legends. With his new album, Chasing Down A Spark, Deasy is now looking to expand his audience beyond the Steel City's borders. Deasy, who made his bones on the local musical scene fronting The Gathering Field, is well known to the denizens of Pittsburgh's clubs. The Gathering Field flirted with national success, signing with Atlantic Records and releasing 1996's Lost In America. Poorly promoted, the album unfortunately became lost in the shuffle. Soon thereafter, the label quietly dropped the band. Returning to their roots, Gathering Field hung around for another five years or so before the quartet split, drifting off in their own directions.

Chasing Down A Spark is a tremendous leap of faith for Deasy. Currently unsigned, Deasy is releasing and distributing Spark, which has more heart and emotion than most current major label releases, on his own.

Stereotypically, one expects shoddy sound quality from a self-produced record; however, with Deasy's new album, that is a gravely erroneous assumption. Far from sounding like a recording from someone's basement, producer Kevin Salem gives Spark a slick professional sound. Credit also goes to veteran studio engineer Joe Blaney, who notably mixed The Clash's Combat Rock, for making Deasy's album sound its best.

Employing no studio tricks, Salem and Blaney avoid lush, lavish overproduction. Spark shows Deasy for what he is: a talented performer who offers straight forthright presentations of his well-crafted and well written songs. Deasy keeps the album primarily up-tempo with songs reminiscent of the mid-nineties acoustic guitar rock that gave birth to the adult alternative format. If Deasy were playing these songs at your local bar, he would distract you from your beer for much more than a riff or two.

Spark is a very laid back, loose album. The only appearance of an electric guitar comes on the album's heaviest track, Wishing Well. Best typified by Until I Get It Right, Deasy's songs paint a picture of man trying to find his place in the world and hoping not to cause too much damage before he gets there. With a voice that can be both rough and mellow, Deasy invests songs like Naked and Now That I Know What It Means with bare emotion. Pass Me On, with its banjos, violins and lovely backing vocals, is reminiscent of the hip detached cool of Lyle Lovett. Deasy best demonstrates his talent as a songwriter on Levi, a song containing many nifty turns of a phrase and Dylan-esque character descriptions like "a five dollar whore with a ten dollar name." Levi also contains the best imagery, although Pittsburghers should worry that their native son has written a great song about finding salvation on the streets of New York City. Not all of Deasy's songs reach that level though. Fireflies is an earnest effort, but the lyrics are more appropriate for a high school love letter than song. Don't fear though: the weak efforts on Spark are few and far between.

This album may be a tough one to find as distribution seems limited to the Borders, Barnes & Nobles and record shops of the greater metropolitan Pittsburgh area. Fortunately, there's always CDBaby.com for those who can't make the trip to Pittsburgh to acquire this great performer's album. It may take a little digging, but Bill Deasy is a treasure worth uncovering. This Spark is one that deserves to catch fire.

Labels: Bill Deasy