Barry Thomas Goldberg
Mapleton Memoir
© 2007 Barry Thomas Goldberg (789577538528)
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Americana roots, alternative
tracks
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- THE BATCH: Transistor - Lost Basement Recordings 1968 - 1971
- BARRY THOMAS GOLDBERG: The Last Guitar
- BARRY THOMAS GOLDBERG: American Grotesque
- BARRY THOMAS GOLDBERG: Cottonwood
- BARRY THOMAS GOLDBERG: Empire Moon
genres you will love
By Location
notes
Special limited edition, containing a 10 page booklet with photos and lyrics, tracing one family's journey through time in pursuit of the elusive American dream.
Mapleton Memoir:The narrative
At the beginning of the 20th century an Irish immigrant's son full of hope and promise begins a family on a farm near Mapleton, Minnesota.After the death of his oldest daughter the man loses his faith and hope. The youngest daughter watches as her father gives up on farming and begins bootlegging.He eventually dies at an early age. The youngest daughter sees the corruption and hypocricy behind the fascade of small town America and promises she will break away. She begins her journey and heads to the promised land of California where she falls in love with a sailor who is soon shipped off to the war in the Pacific. The sailor never returns.
Soon afterwards,she becomes pregnant with a saxophone player's baby. They marry in Tijuana Mexico at the end of the war. She then finds out the sax player is already married,leaves him and heads back to Mapleton to give birth to the sax man's son.
A few years later she falls in love with a gambler from the tough northside of Minneapolis. They get married and she gives birth to his son. She becomes disenchanted and divorces him and heads to Las Vegas in the mid fifties where she gets a job at the Sands Hotel encountering gangsters and famous singers,like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. All the while atomic testing goes on in the desert. Of course, she again becomes disenchanted and heads back home to Mapleton up route 66.
The album ends as all the characters parade by in a haunting waltz and finally a gospel flavored funeral dirge.
REVIEWS:
Barry Thomas Goldberg's first recording session was with his band The Shambles at Dove Recording Studios in 1966. He went on to write, record and release several singles with major labels, the best known of which is Twenty Years Ago in Speedy's Kitchen. Later in his career he formed the group The Batch. His solo career began in 1974 with the album "Misty Flats," produced by Michael Yonkers. He did two other solo albums, When the Night Comes (1983) and Absolute Zero (1986). After 16 years, in 2002, he released Empire Moon. Barry Thomas Goldberg has released five critically acclaimed solo albums, including Empire Moon (2002), Cottonwood (2004), American Grotesque (2005), and The Last Guitar (2006). He is also featured on the compilation: Candy Floss - The Lost Music of Mid-America 1967-1969 (2006). Mapleton Memoir, his latest album was released June 12, 2007. For further details, reviews and free MP3's check out Barry's website, Ironweeds.com.
So reads the small but effective profile on Goldberg's MySpace page—but that short run-down of his career and accomplishments don't go much toward explaining Barry's Springsteen-meets-Jon-Dee-Graham voice, his innate sense of patriotism, family, and universal love and concern. Mapleton Memoir is as good a place as any to start digging into this local legend's fantastic catalog of genuinely diverse and eclectic musical styles, lyrical messages, and heart-felt declarations.
A true-blue American from the bottom of his heart and a born romantic in his soul, Goldberg consistently delivers delicious, mostly (sadly) unnoticed contributions to the world around him, among them albums like Mapleton Memoirs—which is chock full of hard-hitting lines like this one from "Main Street,” a stand-out among the 11 other excellent tracks on this album: "Sweet redemption wants to dance/You don't ask why/The ferris wheel and flashing light/The carnival of life...the clown found salvation with the priest/It's the time between the wars, say goodbye to peace/On Main Street." Superb stuff and highly recommended. Check Barry out at www.myspace.com/BarryThomasGoldberg or www.ironweeds.com Don't say I didn't tellya a couple dozen times now!!
—from the Magazine Reveille, Round the Dial: by Tom Hallett
Electric Fetus -
Barry Thomas Goldberg is a Minnesota music veteran who began his career as a local songwriter. He is best known for penning the tune "Twenty Years Ago in Speedy's Kitchen" by T.C. Atlantic. Involved with Dove Recording Studios in the 1960's, Goldberg joined the ranks of local legends Arne Fogel, Gary Paulak, and Michael Yonkers. In 2006, Goldberg helped with the release of Candy Floss: The Lost Music of Mid America, a compilation of songs from Dove Studios and that era. Since 1974, he has been recording and releasing solo albums that highlight his outspoken political views and poetic way with words. Goldberg's latest, Mapleton Memoir, is a musical tribute to his late mother, who passed away in 2006. "I was displeased with my prose writing [and] the obvious choice was to write her memoir as a musical album," he says. The result is a beautifully crafted, limited edition album that includes a ten-page booklet of photos and lyrics, "tracing one family's journey through time in pursuit of the elusive American dream." Goldberg's sound has been compared to the likes of Bob Dylan (circa 1970), Woody Guthrie, and Tom Waits."
TO SEE THE MAPLETON MEMOIR VIDEO GO TO:
WWW.MYSPACE.COM/BARRYTHOMASGOLDBERG