Bluegrass Byron: Friedman masters music minus melody

BY MARK GRABOWSKI

Finding an intro to a piece on poet and artist Andy Friedman is a task akin to stabbing yourself in the cheek with a fork, real deep. Not because the performer causes you any pain apart from some occasional existential angst; in fact just the opposite. His stories and spoken-songs, backed by his group, The Other Failures, run the gamut from chuckle-inducing to heart-string pulling. The problem, good citizens, is how to put a catchy spit-shine on something that is brilliant on its own.

"There's plenty of things you can do for free, you can ahh, you can look at bricks," begins "Things You Can Do For Free," off a recording of Friedman's Missoula, Montana performance.

Since March of 2002 the Brooklyn-based Friedman has been on a continual national tour. He's a modern one-man band of sorts, where instead of knee cymbals and a back bass-drum, he supplies slides of his photographs, paintings, and drawings with a wit and lyrical poise that has won him critical acclaim.

Friedman's current tour is in support of his new book, a collection of Polaroids and writings called Future Blues, but I got my introduction to the man with his first literary outing, Drawings & Other Failures. Composed of intricate drawings, Polaroids, and a brief literary opus, that work, like his more recent, radiates with monstrous talent.

Friedman recently garnered the assistance of the upright bass, drums, and other instrumentalists that make up The Other Failures (making his work eligible for analysis by this humbled music critic), whose bluegrass-themed backing rambles on behind the poet's yarns and guffaws.

"In certain towns I'm waiting and no one's coming in, I start thinking no one's coming in, no one's into this. Would I be into this if I wasn't me?" begins "Morning Blues." Friedman continues, "Who am I? Then I realize you never get anywhere when you ask a question like that…"

Friedman isn't emulating beat-poets in his performances&endash; he seems to decry relying on any sort of rhythmic pattern to emphasize his words. But his backing group does aid in the promoting of an identity that the artist has espoused since he first started performing, a traveling troubadour, rucksack on shoulder, steeped in country blues and a deeply American identity.

Andy Friedman & The Other Failures perform with Natalia Zukerman at Gravity Lounge, January 11. $5, 8pm.