Open Book: No Time to Cry
By Thomas Staudter of The Gazette
April 2006
Four years ago the folk-rock duo known as Open Book released their debut album, Out of Time, and I remember thinking back then that this was one of the coffeehouse acts here in Westchester ready to break out. Michele Rubin and Rick Gedney are both excellent songwriters with strong, distinctive voices-hers is an alto of discovery, his announces a gentle understanding-and their ego-less approach to supporting each other musically was impressive in its sincerity.
They also spent a lot of time helping other musical artists around here, with Rubin becoming everybody's favorite harmony vocalist a la Lucy Kaplansky, and Gedney adding his guitar strum and warm background singing to the work of Susan Kane, Dan Bonis and Dave Murphy. But time moves quickly in the music business, weeks and months can slip by between gigs, and momentum is lost. Getting the music and financial resources together to make another recording consumes time, energy, patience, friendships, sanity, existential marrow-you name it.
On top of all this Rubin and Gedney were getting divorced from their respective spouses-and falling in love with each other as their professional music lives became more entwined. Anyone who'd listened closely to his or her songs had probably already figured this out, said Gedney. "We are, after all, an open book to a large extent," he said.
"It's actually rather easy keeping our personal lives and art moving forward now," said Rubin, "especially after spending so much of our lives putting our passions on the back burner."
Appropriately enough, the duo's new album, The Things We Keep, which is being released this week after two years of recording sessions and is titled as such from a line in Gedney's song "New Direction Home" is about "life events-adulthood, careers and families vying for the same mental space as the artistic dreams we've had since childhood," said Rubin. "But learning how to hold on to what's important creates a real life of value, one that is full of meaning and short on regrets."
Produced by top-notch guitarist Billy Masters, as was the preceding disc, The Things We Keep opens with ambling electric guitars and fitful percussion introducing "A Way Out," a hard-bouncing number sung by Rubin that is swelled with Hammond B-3 organ and sounds like it would have fit into the Grateful Dead's repertoire circa Shakedown Street. Gedney follows with a glorious ballad, "Open Your Eyes," and then the two singers arc heavenward together on "Go," a midtempo anthem that signals a new peak in their collaborative achievements: instead of merely supporting each other as background singers, here they create a forceful identity that's a sum of everything lived and loved for.
The big advantage of having two co-leaders in harmony and agreement rests on the spectrum of influence and experience each brings to the table. Open Book is a folk-rock duo, yes, but depending on whose songs are being performed the group's sound will veer toward delicate acoustic arrangements here and toward amped-up declarations there, the songcraft and soul-filling vocals of sterling quality regardless.
"What we have together is so unique," said Rubin, "but the best part if that Rick and I feel as if we're just starting out."
Born in Yonkers, Rubin started singing when she was two and writing songs while in grade school, she said. "My father got me interested in guitar and clarinet early on, too, and he had a reel-to-reel tape machine to record with," she noted. By adolescence she was also an inveterate poet-"some of those lyrics and idea still read OK," Rubin boasted, and while attending Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua after her parents divorced Rubin remarked that she was the "chick with the guitar" playing on the lawns around school.
Rubin then went off to study journalism at the University of Hartford, had several low-rung publishing jobs after graduation, and then landed at Rolling Stone in the advertising department. Did she ever take Jann Wenner aside and sing one of her songs to him? "It seemed everybody at the magazine played in a band or was writing songs," she cracked, "and it was best not publicize your musical ambitions as a result."
She got married, birthed a daughter and kept writing songs, her musical dreams kept at home for the time being.
Finally, in 1998 Rubin started playing at some of the open mic nights in the area. "I was dying to do something musical, and, in fact, even auditioned to sing in a wedding band at one point," said Rubin. As coincidence or fate would thus dictate, Gedney was dipping his toes into the music scene around Westchester at the same time.
"I'm a product of 1950s rock and roll," said Gedney. "The folk boom was starting up as I was getting into music, but all I wanted was to be Chuck Berry." Originally from Port Chester, Gedney said he begged his parents for an electric guitar, but money was tight, and so he got a paper route to raise the funds for a Sears Silvertone and some lessons. Eventually, he played in a band called the Lonely Souls that was part of the county's mid-1960s rock scene, receiving enough notice that RCA Records was on the verge of signing them before the draft and Vietnam War took away one of the members.
Gedney forfeited music to study art at Franklin College in Indiana, worked as a painter for a while, got married, and taught in a music store before moving back east in the early 1970s.Teaching jobs were scarce for musicians, so he got a job as a teller and slowly moved his way up in the banking industry. He raised two kids and occasionally taught guitar in adult ed classes before wanting to get back out playing music 'live.'
Which brought the Open Book duo to the Common Sense Café, the gone-but-not-forgotten Port Chester folk music hang, in 1999. Rubin heard Gedney play mandolin there and asked if he was interested in work as a side musician for some of her upcoming gigs; he returned the favor and inquired whether she'd sing backing vocals for him. Their tandem support for each other continued until 2001when Phil Ciganier, owner of the Towne Crier Café in Pawling was faced with a Solomonic decision: he needed an opening act and both Gedney and Rubin fit the bill. "So he asked us to perform as a duo," said Rubin, "which we both thought was a great idea, but we had to come up with a name for 'our group' as soon as possible."
Since then Open Book has gained a large audience between Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, opening for bigger acts and traveling the coffeehouse circuit. Listening to The Things We Keep it's obvious that Rubin and Gedney are nearing something bigger for their music: several of the songs, like those already mentioned plus "No Time to Cry" and "Sing Me Love," have a summertime radio vibe. Magical interactions often put a sparkle into sound in a way that's hard to understand, but simply offer a dynamic that's usually lacking in the "monolithic singer-songwriter approach. Open Book's common ground, their acknowledged sharing and journey, is where their charm comes from, and so it'll be interesting to see how far this second album takes them.
"I think we're tapping into a need out there for music that people who are 35 to 65 can relate to," said Gedney. "But where is all this taking us? We don't know. It's easy to answer, though, why we're out there playing music: because it's what we love."
Open Book will celebrate the release of their new CD with a show on Saturday, April 22 at the Lost and Found Coffeehouse, located in the Bedford Community House, 74 Main St., Bedford Hills, NY. The show is at 8 p.m. Admission is $12 and guarantees a free CD. For more info call (914) 666-7004.
