by Whitney Youngs
In a picturesque town, bordering the Hudson River in Upstate New York, there’s a street paved in between the dense forests of birch, maple, oak, and cedar trees named Fred Short Road. Its namesake sounds as generic as any Anglicized street name in America, but the spirit of Fred Short transcends street signs, orbiting the creative sphere of pianist and singer Marco Benevento.
Benevento happens to live on Fred Short Road, records in a home studio he named after Fred Short, and has a new album entitled, “The Story of Fred Short.” How’s that for a legacy?
Short, a Native American from the Zuni tribe, made his way from California to New Mexico, and ultimately settled in the Catskill Mountains.
“I’ve always been curious to find out more about the guy,” explains Benevento. “Fred Short was a shaman and had these huge music parties on his land.”
As for Benevento, longtime fans remember him as a jazz pianist, but since those early days in 1999, after graduation from Berklee College of Music, Benevento has added a new instrument to his repertoire: the voice.
“It’s been a slow door to open,” explains Benevento. “I’ve had to learn how to sing, how to write lyrics, how to maintain the voice on the road, but I absolutely love it.”
At first, Benevento was self-conscious. He hated his voice, “it’s too nasal,” he thought, but fans and friends reassured him.
“I started singing with my friends more often, and I started listening to tons of different music,” remembers Benevento. “Singing wasn’t foreign to me, my parents and uncle love to sing, but I got deep into the piano and the singing fell by the wayside.”
Aside from “The Story of Fred Short,” the only other album to feature Benevento’s vocals is 2014’s “Swift.” Benevento hopes to balance out his four instrumental albums with four vocal records. He recorded “The Story of Fred Short” with his band: bassist Dave Dreiwitz and drummer Andy Borger, and also enlisted the guitar stylings of Brad Barr (The Barr Brothers), which marks a debut for the guitar on any Benevento album.
The A side of “The Story of Fred Short”contains four deeply grooved and buoyant tunes with parts that borrow from a spectrum of genres, from electronica and rock ‘n’ roll to world music and jazz. The album’s B side semi-fictionalizes the story of Fred Short, narrated in a seven-part musical suite.
“It’s a bit of a concept record,” says Benevento “I spent a night in the studio, where I improved for a an hour and half and that became side B, after trimming the fat.”
Benevento will perform an album release show of “The Story of Fred Short” on April 1 at the Bootleg Theater in Los Angeles.
