The Chandler Travis Three-O – yes, it’s another band (a quartet) fronted by Cape Cod’s hardest working man in showbiz Chandler Travis – will be hosting what Travis calls a “modest get-together to honor the release of its debut CD, ‘This Is What Bears Look Like Underwater,’ at Club Passim in Cambridge on Friday October 12th at 8pm. The Incredible Casuals and the Chandler Travis Philharmonic is not enough for the bearded, and often pajama-clad Travis. So, is he proud of this work? “We feel it is a good album – very good to mint, actually (JSInk: he’s using coin rating terms), and hope that the “untrained” are tempted to search it out or come to the gig “so that they may attain enlightenment.”
“‘Bears;” is a rather quiet and meticulous affair, completely unlike, for instance, my other new band the Catbirds’ recent debut album, ‘Catbirds Say Yeah,’ which is loud and electric; as luck would have it, there will be a record release party for this one only a few weeks after the Three-O party, this one at Johnny D’s in Somerville on Thursday, Nov. 1st at 8:30. We feel the two albums are excellent antidotes to each other, and that if you listen to both of them, you’ll be somehow protected from everything else.”
Covers include NRBQ’s “Things to You” and the Beatles’ “In My Life.” Men & Volts/Duplex Planet’s David Greenberger designed the album package and co-wrote three of the tunes with Travis.
We’re listening to the subtle pull of the Three-O as we type, meaning we haven’t absorbed it all yet, and as such will defer to Nippertown’s Joel Patterson who writes “what really ropes you in is the awesomely courageous and gentle way Travis explores human emotion. All his many love songs are at the heart of it all meditations on this theme– not sentimental wishy-washy fantasies of imaginary happiness, but site specific stories of two way streets, cul-de-sacs, and dead ends. It’s honest in confronting the tragic aspects, as well as the delirious joys, of falling in, out of, and sideways in love. Not to mention that the Three-O is entertaining, charming, and spell-binding to watch!” Dan DeLuca of the Philadelphia Inquirer callled it “smart, swinging and winningly strange…” Yes, there are little curves around unexpected bends, as in the instrumental, jazzy “Camel, Passing Through the Needle of the Eye.”
47 Palmer St., Cambridge, 617-492-5300 www.clubpassim.org