Rainy Day Saints, Cold Cold Hearts, Dreadful Yawns @ Beachland Ballroom 4/8

With its relentless focus booking an eclectic range of touring bands nearly seven days a week, it’s a rare thing for the Beachland Ballroom to devote an entire night to local music, but that’s exactly what the club will do this Friday, when it showcases the talents of four Cleveland bands. The line-up is a fitting, if slightly off-kilter blend, representing the new face of the old guard, up-and-comers and a band that mixes a bit of both. Headlining the evening is the Rainy Day Saints, the latest project of rock and roll Renaissance man Dave Swanson. Although best known for his assorted instrumental roles in a head-turning array of Cleveland bands, including the semi-legendary Death of Samantha, as well as Cobra Verde, New Salem Witch Hunters and Speaker/Cranker, Swanson long harbored a songwriting jones. He finally let it out in 2003 under the Rainy Day Saints moniker, releasing an entirely self-penned, self-played and self-sung album on Pittsburgh’s Get Hip Recordings. The one-man recording project eventually morphed into a full band, and now Swanson occasionally plays out with a line-up whose collective Cleveland rock pedigree can almost rival his. Expect power-pop stomp, touches of psychedelia, Stones-inflected ballads, and oversized hooks.

The Cold Cold Hearts are another band manned with a number of familiar faces, especially that of singer-guitarist Frank Vazzano. As ringleader of Quazimodo, Vazzano burned a lurching, drunken swathe across Cleveland clubs in the 1990’s, with shows that always seemed to teeter on the edge of chaos. Since the band’s demise, he’s been slinging guitar in Cobra Verde, but with his consummate rock star look, it’s at center stage where he seems most at home. The Cold Cold Hearts touchstones are similar to Quazimodo’s – there are hints of the burned-out decadence of “Exile”-era Rolling Stones, shimmers of Big Star’s perfect pop and the raw stomp of a host of bands that never made it out of the garage. Topping it all off is Vazzano’s ragged rasp of a voice, giving every song a jaded authenticity and hinting at insight gained the hardest way possible.

With a new record due out on Bomp! Records in June, the Dreadful Yawns have all the fresh-faced indications of a band on its way up. The band’s live sets alternately soar and crawl, with songs that deftly blend the rock-tinted country of Gram Parsons with high-flying psychedelia and droning indie rock. It’s music you could easily trip out to were you not brought back down to earth by its often-melancholy lyrical content, or the buoyant bounce of the group’s more straightforward songs.

Opening the show are the Short Rabbits a high-energy, coed four-piece that includes This Moment in Black History guitarist Buddy Akita, and Charlie Ditteaux of legendary punk band Easter Monkeys. An amalgam of new and old, the band slams out short, punky songs with a kinetic force.
from Cool Cleveland contributor Leslie Basalla lbasalla77@msn.com

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