For Minneapolis based musician, Kevin Anthony, whose musical life experience has brought him from Galveston, Texas, up to Houston, would bring him even farther north to New York City in 1993 and then jetted him to Minneapolis where he has made his home since 2003. He’s been playing with his group, the Twin City Playboys ever since, where their mix of Cajun & Country record made them a local staple. This month he releases North Star, his fantastic new record.
On this eleven-track effort, four songs see reminders of what he brought to his partnership with the Twin City Playboys and the brand new songs fit in beautifully, in addition to bringing a new sound into the fold. Anthony’s smooth voice comes through brilliantly – it’s soulful, warm and lovely, and throughout the record shows not only that he is a gifted singer, but an incredibly talented, straightforward lyricist. And it’s no secret that for a musician, a lot of what you do and who you are comes from where you’ve been. And all those experiences that get you to where you are now bring you to find out what sound you love most.
Quite the road has brought him to where he is today, and some of them, you wouldn’t quite expect from the sounds of this Texas gent who canvasses the roots of Country music with such skill. Back in his NYC days, he made music far from such southern roots with his duo Electroland, as they not only made house and big beat electronic music, but alongside that, facilitated his own record deal with Warner Brothers label F-111 as well as running his own recording studio with his music partner Gene Harper, by day they also created soundscapes for television and advertising for the likes of the United States Navy and the Sci Fi channel, among many others.
While working out of Manhattan, the two would see the tragedy of 9/11 first hand, and would eventually see an amicable dissolution of the pairing musically as Harper would later enlist in the Marines, a story he sings about in the North Star track “Purple Hearts.” Harper would go on to do two tours of Iraq with as a squad leader, later being honorably discharged after injury cut his service short.
So it goes without saying that North Star is a record that really does chart where Anthony has been. As the record starts out with the jaunty, Cajun inspired “Hurricane Ike,” the 2008 storm that did all but completely destroy his hometown of Galveston. The song itself resides in the time-honored category of songs that redeem and rebuild as he sings: “He tried to wash us away but our roots were strong.”
The record as a whole is at times down tempo honky tonk music, sometimes somber, while other times it brings one to swinging on the dance floor as it rounds out with “You Belong,” as the record’s perfect bookend. As it often appeared on Anthony’s efforts with the TC Playboys, the styles throughout North Star are reminiscent of an entirely different time in music while truly refusing to peg itself into any complete genre all while retaining a shimmering, crisp, obviously country influenced sound. The cues it takes from its early background in said genre are steeped richly in tradition while throughout Joe Savage’s steel guitar on tracks such as “It’s Alright with Me,” with its almost side-winding, slow surf sound and onto “Surveyor’s Blues,” with its shout outs from as far as the Rio Grande to Duluth, never does it fall into the clutches of a contemporary radio country sound, but instead has an earthy, organic feel of the back roads to the city streets of America. From the highway, to the barroom, this atmospheric moving forward for Anthony on North Star is far from a turning point in his music, but a well-laid standard for longevity, not to mention simply good-time listening.
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