JOEL CAGE "NOBODY" Big Sixteen Records

I ducked into a friend's store a few months ago to say hello. "Here," he said, "listen to this." "This" turned out to be "Streets," Joel Cage's take on U2's smash hit from 1987, and the only cover on his debut CD "Nobody." I thought it seemed an awfully ambitious tune for a folksinger to do, especially when my friend said he often performed it live. To say I was taken aback when I heard it is an understatement. In fact, I was very nearly speechless at the end. I said to my friend, "You've got to book this guy." My friend is Chris Jone, producer of the Jones Hill Concert Series in Bradford, VT, and he told me that he had indeed booked Cage the moment he finished listening to the CD just once.

Cage's performance a few weeks later at the Colatina Exit was so good that Chris immediately booked him again for an October gig. And yes, he did "Streets" to such effect that I was once again left speechless. Needless to say, I picked up "Nobody" on my way out. During Cage's solo performance he played every song on the CD, and it was interesting to compare him live with this well-recorded CD. There's not much difference.

On "Nobody" Cage plays with a great deal of emotion, accompanied occasionally by one or two excellent musicians and very little overdubbing. Instead, his strong voice and powerful, dynamic guitar playing sound only a notch or two below his incredibly energetic stage performance. This isn't to say that "Nobody" will leave you gasping for breath.

Cage knows how to write and deliver a sensitive love song. In "Reason" (all songs on the CD have one-word titles) Cage tells a poignant tale of a love that has faded, and wonders aloud why it has. "There's always a reason," he sings, but concludes, "I don't know if there's a reason for everything." In contrast, "Wander" is an almost giddy song about a brand-new love, wherein Cage promises his new love to "run, shout, tell all the world of your love," and later to "cook, clean, run the house, dust, sweep the yard." He continues, "I never will wander. No, I'll never be blue. No, I never will wander, wander from you." Wow! Talk about commitment! But Cage's engaging style and and a rolling cadence to the song keep it well away from being silly. I doubt anyone else could ever cover this song without sounding sappy; happily Cage avoids it. "Nobody" has a few songs that boast a real bite. In "Fatman" Cage sings, "Welfare and food stamps only get you so far. You got to find yourself a place in the working world." And in "Goodbye," a farewell message to a former love, Cage tells her, "You say there's no connection between sex and love but this I don't believe and if you do it's safe to say there's no hope for the things you are trying to achieve." If "Nobody" is one of the things Cage was trying to achieve, he has succeeded admirably.

Nobody" copyright 1998 Big Sixteen Music,