words by Andy ParettiJourney to the Center of the Breaks
photos by Randy Cremean
The great Western unknown. If you grew up with your eyes on the Atlantic and you listened to enough 1960s rock ‘n’ roll, you could have unwittingly slipped into a fantasy world where California is a magical kingdom of counterculture hillsides and alleyways that clang with the echoes of music, and everywhere in between is some damned mystery that needs solving. Especially when you’re young and the world outside seems so big, the idea of leaving home to trek westward can seem like a sort of wayfaring pilgrimage – a duty to your inner rock ‘n’ roll Jiminy Cricket. Tim Crane, born and raised in Massachusetts, knew that he couldn’t run around handing out fliers in exchange for free records forever.
Crane was an unsuccessful musician who was bouncing around jobs in land surveying, construction, demolition and a lumber yard, where there were “old dudes missing fingers” and “it would be zero degrees outside and you’re stacking lumber and whipping chains around.” But there was something that was following him his whole life, ever since his father would sing him to sleep with Howlin’ Wolf’s “Little Red Rooster” and other old blues songs.
“I was skippin’ school to go hang out at the record store,” Crane said. “The records that were really catching my ear was stuff like James Brown and Ray Charles and Dr. John – just the whole mass of funky sounds, kind of the visceral rawness of it.”
Whether it was his father, the record store, or the shit jobs that had him singing some real blues, Crane decided to buy a special Amtrak ticket that was good for a month, and rode the rails around the country, those mystical places such as Los Angeles and New Orleans and Memphis finally materializing into reality.
One place that seemed to stand out above them all was Austin, Texas.
“It seems like everybody in town here is interested in music,” Crane said. “Young people, old people, … that’s the way I feel about music – it’s a daily thing for me.”
After not too long, it became his stock-in-trade, as well. Adopting the name T Bird and rounding up a massive, 10-person band called The Breaks, Crane rose quickly along the recently forged soul revival path that has been navigated by bands such as Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings and Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears.
With one album, the January-released Learn About It, under his belt and another one being recorded, Crane is not wasting any time in making a name for himself in the very competitive Austin music scene. It’s fortuitous (or maybe it’s destiny) that Crane seems built for the South. His New England cadence already has a bit of Southern drawl mixed in (Breaks guitarist Johnny “Too-Bad” Allison will “blow yur mind every time he picks up a gee-tar.”) and he loves his whisky and bourbon. Check that – he just loves his alcohol: “Man, I like it all! Put it in front of me, I’ll drink it!”
The same, naturally, goes for his music, which he describes with a fittingly fermented metaphor.
“When you get addicted to music and you need a shot, you go find that sound that you’re jonesin’ for, and if [I] have the inspiration to create something, some of what comes out is definitely gonna be influenced by that soul-funk [I’ve] been listening to,” he said.
Crane’s musical tastes span much farther than Motown, though. He muses about collaborating with Beck or Tom Waits, of singing on stage with Etta James, and incorporating his love for hip-hop into his upcoming second album. A big Wu-Tang fan, Crane likes the idea of hip-hop being the next link on the evolutionary chain of R&B music and hopes this flavor can give The Breaks a new angle while still remaining familiar.
As T Bird, Crane has the kind of swagger of a seasoned rock ‘n’ roller, but he remains sincerely reverent to his musical heroes. T Bird and the Breaks played a tribute to Stax Records, the company that unleashed such hitmakers as Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes and The Staple Singers. To Crane and his band, Memphis and New Orleans are sacred temples. But the band is no simple flashback novelty act; they know real soul, and Learn About It smears its soul with anything from snarling rock to Motown R&B. “Juice” opens with a very Dr. Dog-ian piano line before the song flexes its muscle through a funky horn section, organs, and the Breaks’ several backup singers. “Stand Up”, meanwhile, opens immediately with a chugging, locomotive bassline and struts its Curtis Mayfield-style groove. Learn About It is named after a saying Crane and his friends used to use, and it seems to be a philosophy that is bringing them much success.
Crane still thinks about living elsewhere, such as New Orleans or Philadelphia, but Austin clearly has changed him. It has freed him to do something that he couldn’t do before, for people who love him for it.
“At least where I was from, that [positive reception] didn’t seem to be the case, so I was pretty excited to be in a place where music mattered a little bit more to people,” he said.
He sings on “Blackberry Brandy”, “Workin’ hard, hardly workin’ / You can take me out / And put some other jerk in”, possibly to exorcise some of the bitterness of his pre-music career experiences.
“I’ve worked so many shitty jobs,” he said. But then, you can’t keep a good soul man down for long, and Crane later quipped, “I guess if it doesn’t kill you, right?”
Truer words don’t apply to T Bird and the Breaks, who continue to grow stronger with every whisky shot and turned stone along Crane’s sprawling musical journey.
