Jamie Cohen's artful storytelling over Rick Boston's hepcat grooves is a satisfying amalgam of a Stan Ridgeway vibe, stylistically in harmony with Baz Luhrmann's "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen.)"
Rick Boston and Jamie Cohen are two longtime music vets who collaborated for the first time on this digital-only EP, All The Way From America.
Rick, a former member of Low Pop Suicide, Hand Of Fate and The Januaries, has played with and/or produced Rickie Lee Jones, Alice Cooper and P.J. Olsson.
Cohen, meanwhile, is a onetime A&R kingpin who signed Red Hot Chili Peppers, Human League, Madness, The Thompson Twins and more; he’s also worked with Bootsy Collins, Taj Mahal, Aretha Franklin, Carlos Santana, Ringo Starr, Chet Baker and too many more to mention.
When Rick and Jamie got reacquainted after years of not seeing each other, Rick was inspired by Cohen’s stories, including drunken trips to Ireland to hook up with Van Morrison and acid trips at the Pentagon. Boston suggested that they record some of these stories, and that’s what appears on All The Way From America.
“Levitate” tells the real-life tale of then-15-year-old Jamie Cohen’s trip to Washington, DC, to protest the Vietnam War. As the story goes, a get-together was organized by Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Allen Ginsburg and Timothy Leary that day to gather enough people to surround the Pentagon, arm and arm, and do a group meditation to try and raise the building off the ground using only their minds.
Club mixes of “Levitate” were recently done by Kiran Shahani of Bitter:Sweet and Supreme Beings Of Leisure, The Newton Brothers, Kathie Talbot and DJ True:129.
