A Conversation with Sarah Borges (continued)

PM: At the recent Basement show I had one of those all-too-rare experiences where in a thirty or forty minute set you actually get to liking all the different people in the band. That was very unusual.

SB: [laughs] We all have interesting personalities.

PM: Not only that, but they actually emerge. I'm not used to seeing that--

[laughter]

PM: --on a regular basis. Usually the front person has the personality, and the rest of the people just kind of do their part.

SB: We have this running joke where it's sort of like we're this band full of front men. But Binky, our bass player, is a laugh riot.

PM: He's unbelievable.

SB: He went and sat in the crowd, which he's wont to do, quite often. And he freaks me out sometimes. He jumps off things. Or sometimes we can't find him. At that theater show I talked to you about a minute ago, we all get up on the stage, there's all those people, God damn it, we can't find him anywhere. He was locked out of the building cause he was out smoking grass before we played. So now it becomes this huge joke. He's been in bands forever and ever. He was in a band in the '80s called Likkety Split. But he writes his own songs and he's got his own stuff he does. And Jake has his own thing. And Mike has been a guitar guy forever, and he's a road hog.

PM: Well, he's a real guitar hero [Mike Castellana], you can tell he's done it up and down.

SB: He went on tour with Eddie Kirkland for a long time.

PM: The Jazz giant?

SB: Yeah. He's sort of a jazz/blues guy, but he can do a lot of things well.

PM: I dug Binky, I relate to a short cat with a Mustang Bass.

SB: He's a riot. And that's really his true personality. We stay in hotels sometimes. He only sleeps in the van, because it's like his traveling living room.

PM: He'll only sleep in the van, not in the hotel room. [laughs]

SB: He likes to stay up late and smoke some cigarettes, talk on the phone, watch DVDs on his DVD player.

PM: That's rock 'n' roll. He'll only sleep in the van.

SB: Yeah, we go to bed too early for him. We're the old farts. It's funny. I first met him, we were at a party, and I don't know anyone, and it was late, late. He was wearing a brown velvet smoking jacket, drinking whiskey, and he invited me to join him. He said like, "Hey, doll, I haven't met you yet, but I bet I'll know you better after this whiskey." Like he's just a love.

[laughter]

PM: Unbelievable. So tell me about Mike Castellana.

SB: He's our newest guy. We've only had him about a year. We found him through the pedal steel player who's on our record some of the time, Steve Malone. Mike is on the record, too, but he sort of came in at the tail end of making it. Mike was Steve's pedal steel teacher. And Steve moved to California, and we needed a pedal steel player. Boston isn't exactly rife with pedal steel players.

PM: That's believable.

SB: So he was the next logical guy. And he has the added benefit of being a guitarist, too.

PM: That's an understatement. [laughs] And even though he's seated, he puts out an immense amount of juice and personality for a guy that's obviously just the guitar/steel slave.

SB: Yes. It wasn't a conscious effort to sort of establish that element of shtick, but it just happened--we call him Papa Yawna, he's sort of our Zen guy in the corner.

PM: Yeah. Is he from the Boston area, or did he move there?

SB: He is from Long Island. And he went to Berklee.

PM: Well, when I first arrived at the club, I ran into Jake, because I was hoping that Jimmy Ryan was in the band. [See our reviews of Jimmy Ryan, here and here. Alternately, you can use our search link to track names, nouns (like banjo) or other notions.]

SB: Jimmy is our good friend. He plays with everybody, and he's on the record. But he has just come back recently from touring with Laura Cantrell. He was out with her for a while.

PM: It's a good gig.

SB: Yeah, I think it was good for him, because music is his livelihood. continue

print (pdf)     listen to clips      puremusic home