Press
December 07, 2007
The magnificence of Bret Mosley
Though I’m a huge fan of the late soul special blues infused singer songwriter Chris Whitley and the loop-happy quirk works of singer songwriter Keller Williams, I am NOT a huge fan of lazy music criticism that avoids being descriptive of an artist by invoking the names and styles of better-known artists. But that’s exactly what I’ve gotta do right about now, because, with the best of intentions in mind and the highest of compliments intended, Bret Mosley reminds me so strongly of these two musicians.
I’ve just returned from the Bearsville Theater, where Mosley was celebrating his record release for “Light & Blood,” which has just come out on Woodstock Music Works. Sandy and I stumbled across Mosley previously in this very place earlier this year when Woodstock Film Festival hosted an off-fest screening of “Before the Music Dies.” I won’t speak for Sandy, who tomorrow morning will be filing an online “official” review of the show we just saw. But from the moment Mosley took the stage so many months ago, I have been hooked on this guy. Tonight only confirmed what I already knew, only reminded me again why I became a music critic in the first place 10 years ago.
It is such a privilege to have the opportunity to get to hear hardworking, ass-kicking artists like Mosley. The kind of artists that aren’t being force fed to mass consumers. The kind of artists that deserve the kind of audiences pre-fab products posing as musicians garner.
And it’s a damn shame, I tell you, that more people in the Bearsville Theater tonight didn’t make the most of the $10 cover charge and actually LISTEN to what was being offered from the stage. SO much talking. SO much distraction. SO little respect. As we left the venue, I couldn’t help wishing I could kidnap Mosley and ride off in a WayBack Machine to, say, 1999. I’d land that dream craft in Tribeca, and drag Mosley and his roots rockin’ ways to Wetlands Preserve. I’d introduce him to Chris Zahn, Jake Szufnarowski, Pete Shapiro. And then maybe I’d get to see and hear this guy in the kind of setting where people… diehard dancers and fearless fans of Music with a capital M… would absorb and give back all the love this guy’s throwing out there.
Bret Mosley deserved better than Woodstock gave him tonight. That (bitchily, preachily) said, without you Woodstock, this album I now hold in my hands wouldn’t exist. Without you, Woodstock, I wouldn’t have heard the guy in the first place. And for that, I sincerely can’t thank you enough.
—Robin Rothman