The Return Trip

How long can you keep a musical dream alive? In the case of David Kameras, my compatriot through many labor communication campaigns, the expiration date extends beyond life itself.

Last month, through his Random Fill Records, David released the second album by Middlefish Pond, a collaboration with his longtime musical mate, Tom Winter, who was felled in April by long-standing illnesses. “We had been working on these songs for decades, and were working on the album,” David said, “but the pandemic really set us back. Tom got sick and never really recovered.”

“Bonus Tracks” was released as a memorial to Tom, who honed his electric blues styling on multiple guitars, keyboards and harmonicas growing up in Chicago, a mecca for blues in his lifetime. He sings along with David, who plays viola and bongos, and writes clever lyrics that will make you smile, and sometimes laugh out loud. To finish up the new album, David enlisted a group of talented session musicians and conducted long-distance recording sessions anchored by a bazillion musical cuts archived in the Random Fill studio in Tom’s basement.

David always demonstrated a talent for editing copy, so I’m not surprised that he also excels in cutting and polishing musical compositions, including arranging the voices. With his once soaring tenor sliding into a husky baritone, he is joined by a female singer, Casey Burden Tortorello, to lift and accent the harmonies, as well as Mark Gleed on keyboards and Guy Eckstine on drums. Guitarist and drummer Louie Zagoras raises the rock quotient on several tunes.

Of the 14 original songs on Bonus Tracks, my favorite is Black Drum, a bluesy number Tom sings that makes me tap my foot and scratch my head. What’s with this “black drum?” I ask David, the lyrics master. He responds cryptically: “It was inspired by some street poetry I heard on WPFW (a D.C. station specializing in ‘Jazz and Justice’), coupled with memories from a former roommate who introduced me to The Last Poets.” That 1971 album set hip-hop in motion with poetic calls (accented with African drums) for blacks to rise up against oppression in the United States.

More head scratching. This drift seems far removed from David’s Jewish cultural roots, with grandparents from Lithuania, Latvia and Poland. But the siren call seems to have come as much from the ‘70s college scene as it did from the streets. David liked to write poetry, and he liked setting it to music for the coffee houses of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where he was a student at Coe College. That’s where he met Tom, and their collaboration led to a regular gig at “The Pub,” the student snack bar at the Coe Gage Memorial Union. Their friend, Richard Floyd, describes it here.

The lyrical fun in MIddlefish Pond reminds me of the music of Cake, a Sacramento, Calif., band that features John McCrea’s sarcastic lyrics and deadpan vocals, with a mix of musical styles, from country to disco to funk and hip-hop. There’s a little Frank Zappa crazy in David’s skewed view, and also some country-boy charm, a la John Prine.

Following their own muse, David and Tom searched for the magic that would excite the masses. David described the effort in the unreleased epic non-hit, “Playing With Ourselves:”

We shook up our booty, we got down with our funk .. hnh

Went and got us some club dates, but the kids wanted punk

Tried to lively up reggae, mon, but the audience just shrugged

That’s why we finally unplugged

Don’t ever come up and ask what kind of stuff we play

‘Cause where tastes are moving, we’re moving away

It’s not that we don’t try, we just haven’t got  a clue

We’ll play with ourselves, if it’s all the same to you.

This could be the mantra of every garage band who didn’t make it, and I’ve been in a few of those. I thought The Mugwumps would be big, when I was in high school. While Middlefish Pond may not get that Top 40 hit every band wants, it enriched the lives of two young men who grew old happily continuing to create.

I didn’t really know this musical David Kameras when I hired him as an associate editor to report on trade and economic trends for the AFL-CIO News. He was the best choice, a seasoned writer and editor for The Transportation Institute, the Seafarers voice in the union-industry alliance. Later, we worked on Flight Attendants and Mine Workers campaigns when I moved to public relations that promoted labor interests. For a while, David worked for the Teamsters, and his unhappy experiences in several Teamster campaigns in Texas resulted in the savagely cutting, “Texas is a Good Place to Be From,” on Bonus Tracks.

My favorite Middlefish Pond album, “Last Chance to Breathe,” released in 2007, includes classic David Kameras, with his comical take on a new wave of non-activism in the jaded generation, “A Perrier With Just a Twist.”

I thought the ‘60s were exciting

We’d smoke some dope and man the barricades

I still like to get high, but I sure don’t want to die

Don’t pass that joint, I’m scared I might get AIDs

I sympathize with union workers

Yeah! Solidarity’s okay

Still I’ve got to have what’s mine, so I’ll cross the picket line

Those scab-made products are cheaper anyway

CHORUS: This is the dawning of the New Age

No manifesto, no clenched fist

I’ve trimmed my sail to seek the Holy Grail

A Perrier With Just a Twist

“Last Chance to Breathe” is also available via Bandcamp. Check it out here.