Review: Steve Mayone, ‘Sideways Rain’
Most local musicians know Steve Mayone. Before he moved to New York to make it big, Mayone acted as sideman extraordinaire playing with Bow Thayer, Tim Gearan, Susan Cattaneo, a reformed Treat Her Right and others. Yeah, he also played solo gigs, but not enough of them — too often he was backing someone up.
When you hear his new album, “Sideways Rain,” you’ll wish he was here at home doing a month of gigs at Toad. As it is, you’ll only get one night with him at the Porter Square club — Mayone plays an album release show Tuesday at Toad. At the gig, Mayone will play nearly a dozen new folk-rock songs (or maybe that should be folksy rock songs?).
Mayone writes like Dylan when he’s simple and delicate (see “Time Moves On”). He pens songs that fit somewhere between the Dead’s “American Beauty” and Paul Simon’s “Still Crazy After All These Years” (check out “Rescue Me”). And he knows how to put a top-notch band together that can easily move between roadhouse rough and coffee house tender — the disc features the guitars of Russell Chudnofsky and Lyle Brewer and Andy Plaisted produces and plays drums. If you’ve been missing the Band (or even the Traveling Wilburys), you might want to discover Steve Mayone.