Blame it on Rioja

Hugh Crickmore in 2006. Photo: Carol Hartsell

One of these days someone should devote some serious research time looking into why so many people who are really into wine (and food) are also really into music, either as aficionados or musicians.

It probably has a lot to do with the sensually transportive nature of food and wine, the appreciation of which is largely driven by the olfactory sense, and how a great gastronomic experience in the right company can turn a simple human necessity into an emotionally gratifying moment far removed from the daily grind, or even from the simple passage of time.

Music can do the same thing, only the principal sense is different, of course. Both music and smells can also have a profound effect on our emotional memory. Just as the smell of chimney smoke can take me back to the winters of my youth, so too, can the right song, so long as that song is not on some Lite FM permanent rotation. I can still recall what it was like to be sitting at the bar at the late great Village Idiot one night a few years ago and hear the Bellamy Brothers’ “Let Your Love Flow” come in on the jukebox. Suddenly I was eight or nine years old, and it was summer, and I was hanging out with my brother Patrick, and the last bit of a Sugar Daddy candy is sticking to the roof of my mouth, and we’re about to watch our other brother Mauricio pitch in a Little League game. Pretty amazing.

I’ve been pondering this link for a couple of days now, ever since I got an email from Hugh Crickmore announcing the upcoming show of his new band, Black Swan Green, at Glasslands in Williamsburg next week (see details below), which I hope to attend. The tracks I’ve heard on the band’s MySpace page are quite good–atmospheric, driving, and layered quasi anthems, rewarding multiple listens. I particularly like “Waxwing” and “Santa Cruz.” Crickmore sings and plays lead guitar, and his music sounds a little like a mid-career Billy Bragg (esp. “Cindy of a Thousand Lives” on the 1991 album, “Don’t Try this at Home”) fronting a band made up of members of the Stone Roses and Yo La Tengo, all of which is very much a compliment.

Crickmore is also the beverage director and a partner at Mas (Farmhouse) in Manhattan’s West Village, and a very accomplished sommelier. His wine list at Marseilles, where he was sommelier in the early part of this decade, was astounding in its depth and surprise; I remember being so blown away by it during a 2002 visit that I asked to meet him.

A few years later I asked him to sit on a tasting panel for an article I was writing for Wine & Spirits Magazine, and I found his palate as honed as his manner was polished, soft spoken and unassuming in an industry where posturing and oneupmanship are considered sport.

Could it be that the music brings him peace?

Black Swan Green plays Glasslands on Tuesday, August 12, at 9pm, 289 Kent Ave, between South 1st and South 2nd Streets, Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 7:05 pm and is filed under General, Music, New York City. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.