By MICHAEL HOCHANADEL
When singer-songwriters Stephen Clair and Michael Eck shared a New Orleans apartment, they tag-teamed a two-man poetry workshop on the same typewriter. One typed by day, the other by night. A tattoo of that typewriter on Eck’s arm marks that connection.
The two will tag-team again Sunday, Feb. 25 in WAMC’s Live at the Linda Live series, a tasty two-fer for fans of incisive songwriting and post-punk performing. The shared show celebrates a decades-deep musical friendship with shared stops on America’s musical map, but different paths at times.
Both have played live on the radio, both came up in Albany’s punk-rock scene, both have recorded with bands and solo. They’ve played in each other’s bands and together often, including with their hero Pete Seeger.
Another hero, one-man rock show Hamell on Trial, inspired both to play solo in area clubs and coffeehouses in the 80s. Eck – who has played electric guitar with a power drill – calls this approach “maximum solo acoustic,” where intensity and insight combine.
Early on, Eck and Clair collaborated “only in the most ridiculous ways,” as Clair said by phone from Beacon recently. “We would jump onto one another’s shows to both complement the show and make a mess of it.”
“I don’t think we’ll be sabotaging one another’s sets at The Linda,” he said, sounding innocent but playful.
Stephen Clair – Hillary Clements Photo
Each will play solo, Eck going first since Clair has the most recent album, the all-solo “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.” Clair said, “I’m really looking forward to this show because I think it has something to do with making this record.”
Playing live on radio suits both lovers of music on the air. One of Eck’s several active bands is the Lost Radio Rounders, and he produced and hosted “Performance Place: Live Concert Radio at WAMC.” As a teenager, he eavesdropped on punk-rockers the ADs in his Slingerlands neighborhood. “When I heard the ADs on the radio, I realized these were the guys I heard playing in the basement – and they’re on the radio,” Eck told me last year. “I realized you could do this, in your community.”
In Albany’s do-it-yourself music community, Clair played briefly in Eck’s band Doubting Thomas while Eck played in Clair’s punk-rock trio Glaze. Surprisingly, Glaze landed a remarkably rare appearance on mainstream radio power-house WGY-AM which seldom paid attention to music in general, even less to local acts.
Neither Eck nor Clair stayed local. Both pilgrimaged to Austin as well as New Orleans, then their paths parted for a time. After recording his debut album “Altoona Hotel” (1997) with members of Oneonta rock band Subduing Mara, Clair earned an MFA in writing. He moved to Brooklyn and left music-making for a writer’s life. while Eck drifted back to Albany to start a family.
Clair resumed recording with “Little Radio” (2003) in Queens with friends. The album,“got what for me was a lot of attention,” he said. “WFUV started playing it in heavy rotation,” unusual attention to a completely independent album. When the New York station broadcast interviews with Clair and and live performances, “I was kind of riding high.”
Although made with a band, Clair’s “Little Radio” ride launched solo tours. In Texas, rich in stages and stations open to solo troubadours, he recalled, “Pretty much every live show I would do, I would also do a live on-air at the local radio station that day or the day before.” Playing live on radio, Clair found, “There’s the illusion of a concert in front of a live audience, physically, while also being on the radio.”
After touring with Texan Robert Earl Keen, Clair borrowed Keen’s band for “What Luck” (2007), and he worked with producer Malcolm Burn (a colleague of Daniel Lanois) on “Strange Perfume” (2019). By then he’d moved to Beacon, started a family, opened a music school and formed a regular band: Daria Grace, bass; Aaron Lapos, drums.
New geography brought a new sound. “I got away from the rootsy thing and it’s this bridge that I’ve constantly been straddling my whole life,” he said, “the singer-songwriter who’s also a little bit rootsy, but simultaneously a little bit like New York, punk rock 70s too – all rolled into one ball.”
Making his new album “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life,” he said, “took getting to the point where I felt brave enough, and had songs that were interesting enough on their own, when just laid bare like that.” He wrote 100 songs to feel confident he had 11 keepers. He recorded each song live, without edits.
“Some days I would do a dozen takes of a song, and it just wouldn’t be hitting and I’d walk away,” he said. “Then I would work on other songs for a few weeks and then I would come back to that song…Of course, no single take is perfect…These recordings have fully exposed warts – which I’m 100 percent fine with.”
Comfortable with playing solo, Clair now feels he’s reached a new level. “People come up to me and thank me for being so generous,” he said. I think it’s because I’m completely myself when I’m onstage.”
Clair added, “When you perform solo, it’s like you’re giving a talk or telling a story; those elements are more at the forefront than they are when you’re playing with a band… it’s really so pleasing and so energizing to just engage with an audience over these songs, so these songs feel almost like an excuse to be able to have that opportunity. It’s really, really great.”
When not performing, writing or recording, both Eck and Clair work musician-appropriate day-jobs.
Clair founded and runs the Beacon Music Factory; his “full-time side-hustle,” he calls it, “a music school that lives a double life.” By day, it offers private lessons, mainly to school-agers. “Then at night, there are all these adults who come in and play in these adult rock band camps, or a string chamber group or a saxophone quartet,” said Clair, proudly noting how these ad hoc bands build close friendships. “That continues to be a huge inspiration to me in running this place.”
Eck has reviewed music and drama for the Times Union, worked in publicity for the Proctors Collaborative, then wrote promotional information for a west coast instrument maker. While a stroke, COVID and other health challenges curtailed day-job work, Eck continued to perform. Sitting to play initially, he performs regularly with the Ramblin Jug Stompers, the Lost Radio Rounders, Good Things and a duo with percussionist Brian Melick that grew from the all-star band Tin Can Alley. He has also curated performance series at Caffe Lena, WAMC’s The Linda, Union College and Borders, and produced recordings by Jim Gaudet, Coal Palace Kings, the Plague and others.
Michael Eck – Lori Van Buren/Times Union photo
Eck was inducted into the Eddies Hall of Fame in 2022 and his Lost Radio Rounders (a duo with Tom Lindsay) are nominated as Folk/Traditional Artist of the Year in the 2024 Eddies Awards (awards ceremony April 21 at Proctors), honors Clair would likely have harvested if he still lived here.
Both have raised creative offspring; Eck’s are twins and older than Clair’s. Eck is delighted his daughter and her husband live in his childhood Slingerlands home, where his first bands rehearsed and down the block from where Eck eavesdropped on the ADs. Clair notes his younger child Schuyler will surpass him as a musician, or already has.
A few days after we spoke, Clair Facebooked a concise new mission statement: “Making songs filled with longing, love, chickens, drugs and flowers into records and hitting the road with a vengeance since the 90s, with more than ten studio albums, and at least that many fans.”
On that same (unnecessarily) humble note, Eck borrowed the words of Northampton area rock troubadour Ray Mason to proclaim, “I play the same show in front of four people as I would in front of seven.”
Stephen Clair and Michael Eck play solo at WAMC’s The Linda (339 Central Ave., Albany) on Sunday., Feb. 25 in the “Live at the Linda Live” series hosted by Peter Hughes, 7:30 p.m. $25. 518-465-5233 x158 www.thelinda.org
FURTHER ON, DOWN THE ROAD
Stay tuned for details on Eck’s plans for an ensemble show with guests on Friday, April 19. He’ll celebrate his 60th birthday and introduce his new album “Fermata,” his sixth. Eck recorded “Your Turn to Shine,” his previous release, live and solo in the studios of WMHT (for its “AHA” program) and WEXT.
Hoke's Jukebox 