‘The Little Man in the Boat’ by Stuffy Shmitt | New Album, ‘Cherry’
Exclusive video premiere of ‘The Little Man in the Boat’ by Stuffy Shmitt, taken from the upcoming album, ‘Cherry,’ out February 24th.
A psych-tinged folk-rocker, ‘The Little Man in the Boat’ unfolds a slow-and-steady subtropical groove, propelled languidly forward by an airtight rhythm section.
Gorgeously shot and brilliantly colored, the song’s video comes off like John Waters meets Wes Anderson in a lavender-hued Wonderland. It’s a playful journey deep inside Shmitt’s oddball mind—an enticing visual accompaniment, complete with charmingly bizarre and frenetic dance moves.
In the chaotic shadow of the pandemic, after a tornado leveled his East Nashville, Tennessee, neighborhood and a bomb took out two downtown Nashville city blocks, Stuffy Shmitt released his last album, ironically titled ‘Stuff Happens’ (2020). While that album was admittedly about purging past demons, once the world opened up again, Stuffy felt remarkably unstuck. “It was like we were emerging from a zombie apocalypse,” he says. “I had this incredible rush of freedom. C’mon, let’s go! Let’s color outside the lines. Let’s run and fly and lift this shit up and feel crazy good alive. I felt like everyone needed to remember how to have fun. Remember fun? I needed fun.”
In that flash of inspiration, the eclectic, textured grooves of Stuffy’s new album, ‘Cherry,’ was born, featuring some of the finest players in the Nashville underground, who also happen to be some of his closest friends. “It was like somebody let the boys out,” Stuffy says. “We made our escape, and then cranked it up. ‘Cherry’ is the sound of me and my gang being free and having a blast—not following any rules, trusting each other and being in the moment with the songs.”
The new record is a wonderfully crafted musical crazy quilt, guided by Stuffy’s charmingly off-kilter brain, inviting you to join his party as he insistently chases good times, mischief and electric moments of instant gratification. Opening track ‘The Little Man in the Boat’—a piña colada-smooth ode to the female orgasm—unfolds as a slow-and-steady subtropical groove, propelled languidly forward by the airtight rhythm section of bassist Parker Hawkins and drummer Dave Colella. If you were ever curious what it might’ve sounded like if Harry Nilsson ditched John Lennon and spent his lost weekend in the Florida Keys with Warren Zevon and Latin funk rockers War, look no further.
Up next, lead single ‘Billy Kilowatt’ feels like you’ve hit a hairpin curve at 100mph. The song is a two-and-a-half-minute jolt of manic, punk-tinged Farfisa rock & roll, coming off like a harder Elvis Costello & the Attractions. This is dangerous, Evel Knievel-jumps-the-Grand Canyon kinda fun, crash helmet strongly encouraged. The song’s titular character is the dreamed-up son of ’70s PSA cartoon character Reddy Kilowatt, high-voltage spokesman for electricity generation in America. Billy Kilowatt acts as a sort of superhero alter-ego for Stuffy.
“I have these strange electrical charges in my left frontal lobe that actually physically shock me,” he says. “Used to be I’d twitch like I was having an epileptic seizure, and everyone would applaud wildly. This went on for a while, to the point where I had a neurologist check me out, MRIs and all that. Afterward he was looking over my tests with me, trying to make sense of them, looked me up and down over the glasses on his nose and said, ‘Son, I’m afraid you’re cattywampus.’ I’d never heard that one before, but it sounded about right to me. Anyway, once I accepted my true heritage as the bastard son of Reddy Kilowatt, my condition improved significantly.”
‘Little Brother’—a tribute to Stuffy’s hard-partying, deceased-too-soon younger sibling Danny, who played drums for John Hiatt and Mountain’s Leslie West—shows off some legit funk, while ‘Food for the Mosquitoes’ is bleak, absurdist psychedelic synth folk that would feel right at home on a classic Ween album. A few songs deeper, Stuffy murders with a wistful, heart wrenching gem of an Americana ballad, ‘110 Shotguns’. It’s a classic Stuffy Shmitt tune; a soul-searching and fearless moral inventory in song, a cold steel barrel between the lips of an aging barfly as he replays faint memories of reckless youthful glory—nostalgia cut with regret and longing so potent you’ll need a shot of Narcan. Finally, after laying all that heaviness down, Stuffy dares close the record with a wink and a nod to his Wisconsin roots—a legit, beer and bratwurst-style polka, albeit one that revels in bawdy ridiculousness.
Refreshing and unexpected, ‘Cherry’ is an engaging amusement park collection of songs. “Everybody wants to pigeonhole an artist,” Stuffy says, “which I suppose makes a lot of sense commercially—you know, if you like this tune, he’s got another one that sounds just like it. But I wasn’t going to do that. I was going to do whatever the fuck I felt like. I took more of a ‘no filter’ approach, trusting the songs that came out, and not cluttering up the process with ideas about what the music industry or anybody might think. Who cares? Make art. Dive in the deep end. Turn it up. Go on a supersonic joy ride. I mean, the music biz is nearly impossible to negotiate these days. Forget it. I’m done worrying about it. I just want to have fun making music with my friends.”
This unrepentantly cavalier attitude has always bubbled beneath the surface for Stuffy, who could easily be crowned the definition of untethered independent artist. But this most recent unmasked incarnation was fueled by a conversation he had with his buddy, singer-songwriter Aaron Lee Tasjan. “Aaron played guitar in my band in New York, and we both moved to Nashville around the same time,” Stuffy says. “One night, we were sitting on my porch discussing our music careers, and it was such a depressing rap. I said, ‘well, ok, I guess were fucked.’ He paused, then looked at me and said, “Or… we’re free,” and I thought, ‘Well, whaddaya know about that?’ So, these days, I’m being free.”
‘Cherry’ was produced by Stuffy, Dave Coleman (guitar, vocals) and Chris Tench (guitar), and features the previously mentioned Hawkins and Colella on bass and drums respectively, plus Michael Webb on keys and accordion, Dick Aven on sax, as well as bassist Jeff Thorneycroft and drummer Chris Benelli, who take over as rhythm section on ‘110 Shotguns’. The sessions that led to the album began (under the fleeting moniker The Acorn Club) with the modest goal of recording a two-sided single for kicks—just a party in the studio with some close pals.
“We all went to Dave Coleman’s place in Inglewood, Tennessee,” Stuffy says. “Its called Howard’s Apartment Studios; it’s not an apartment, and there’s no one there called Howard. Everybody was going by phony names—Dave Coleman was Benny Shapiro, and Michael Webb was Roger Wilco. It got really silly, but the tracks and the vibe blew me away. It felt like life. I felt fed.” They recorded two songs that day—’The Hard-on Polka’ and ‘The Little Man in the Boat’—one for the ladies, and one for the gentleman. “When we were finished, I thought, ‘Oh man, this just feels too good. Let’s do some more. I gotta do more.’ So, I sold three guitars, some old coins my dad left me, and emptied my checking account, and we all came back and did the record.”
Through the journey of assorted sounds and styles, a few things tie ‘Cherry’ together like a drunken woman in red lipstick casually weaving a maraschino stem into a knot with her tongue—Stuffy’s unmistakable personality, signature vocals and lyrical prowess, and the genuine camaraderie and infectious enthusiasm of friends riding high on an adventure together.
“The energy and intensity are way magically out front on this record,” Stuffy says. “The vibe in the studio was incredible—all of us big kids getting back to being a basement band. That’s what ‘Cherry’ is all about, really. We recorded live in the studio, with very few overdubs. We just got in there and banged out some noise in the most urgent, immediate, feel-it-in-your-belly kind of way. The music business might be nonsense, but music still lives inside us. It’s a life force. One night I played The Basement East in Nashville—we call it The Beast—and they were handing out stickers that said, ‘Get happier, fuckers.’ Yeah man, exactly, why not be happy? I get to make music, and that’s the best-est, fun-est thing you can do. Making Cherry was balls out, rock & roll. Fearless fun. It’s my booster shot for everything sideways going on in the world.”
Headline photo: Dave Coleman
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