High-caliber talent flies below the radar in Western PA

By Regis Behe
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, March 27, 2005

During a recent interview, lead singer Chris Allen of Rosavelt expressed admiration for the local music scene, noting that his hometown of Cleveland failed to match Pittsburgh's diversity.

While I'm not familiar with the breadth or quality of music in Cleveland, I do agree there is an incredible range of talent in this region. New faces, such as Emily Rodgers, a young singer from Lawrenceville, emerge every week, it seems. Rodgers and her band, Her Majesty's Stars, have the ability to become a regional, if not national, touring act.

For every young musician of promise, however, there are three or four who have quietly been producing music for years. Take Tom Breiding, Tom Duda and Mike Sweeney. They aren't the best-known musicians in Western Pennsylvania, but they are among the most accomplished. All have recently released CDs that deserve to be heard.

Breiding, who lives in McMurray, Washington County, has quietly built an impressive body of work with releases including "American Son" and "Two Tone Chevrolet." His new CD, "Guitar and Pen, Vol. II," finds him going the solo acoustic route, with great success. Breiding is an excellent storyteller, and on "Guitar and Pen" his vocals are reminiscent of John Mellencamp's: simple, direct and affecting.

Duda's "Instrumental Telepathy" is the polar opposite of Breiding's CD. As the title indicates, the songs are instrumentals and range from the cocktail lounge feel of "Blue Moon Serenade" to "Funk 'N Pie," which sounds like it could have been an outtake from a Tower of Power session. The blues-drenched "Charlane's Allure" features some tasty organ and piano courtesy of Chuck Leavell, who's toured with the Allman Brothers and Rolling Stones. Duda, of Latrobe, plays guitar and bass throughout, but he generously shares the spotlight with musicians such as saxophonist Eric DeFade, keyboard player Bill Hubauer and Pete Freeman on pedal steel guitar. When Duda does step forward -- check out his solo on "Rocket Sled" -- he shows himself to be one of the area's better, if somewhat anonymous, guitarists.

Sweeney, who lives on the South Side, is a musician's musician, having worked with Breiding, Shari Richards, Glenn Pavone and numerous others in the area. Two CDs he recorded with a loose aggregation of musicians under the name Hoodoo Drugstore indicate he's an excellent composer of bluesy, barrelhouse rock with strains of country and zydeco woven into the mixes. Sweeney wrote or co-wrote all the songs on "Misfits, Murderers & Madmen" and "Root Doctor" and played bass. He enlisted two fine vocalists, D.C. Fitzgerald and Robert Peckman, for the vocals, and if you didn't know better, you'd think these CDs were recorded in Memphis, Biloxi or some other port of call beneath the Mason-Dixon line.

None of these discs is going to hit the Billboard charts. Sales probably are measured in the hundreds, not thousands. But all are worth a listen. As Duda writes on the CD cover to "Instrumental Telepathy," "The next good thing is often overlooked while waiting for The Next Big Thing."

 They got this stripper,
  She weighs 300 pounds.
  Big ugly bouncer going 15 rounds.
  They got these hoods
  Hangin' out at the bar
  They call them faces,
  I call them scars.

Other highlights include the horn-driven "Deliver Me" and the Stones-like "Hi-Heel Blues." And though, in my opinion, Duda's vocals aren't especially strong, that weakness is mitigated by muscular songwriting and some delightful backup vocals by Yolanda Barber and Dannie Vasser, especially on the reggae-tinged "Love's A Four Letter Word."