Feb. 27, 1971: The Beak (Tom Calandra)

 

Another legend. Tom Calandra was inducted twice into the Buffalo Music Hall of Fame – first in 1998 right after his untimely death, and again with the band Raven, which was belatedly recognized in 2009. This interview took place not long after Raven broke up. 

Feb. 27, 1971

The Beak’s Simple Slophouse Style 

“Would you do me a favor?” Tom Calandra asks. “Don’t go talking about the old group. That’s all in the past. Everything now is straight ahead.”

        It’s been four months since the group – The Raven – broke up and Tom, who played bass, has spent a lot of those four months shut in a room in the apartment on Buffalo’s West Side that he shares with Tommy and Sammy Burruano of the band Isaac, just working on piano and writing songs.

        Though he played bass in bands for more than 10 years (his beat-up Fender was one of the first in town), piano is something Tom’s loved and toyed with since high school. Even before the group split, Tom had a piano and was writing strange songs that nobody seemed to understand.

* * *

“I USED to hibernate,” he says. “Just do my stuff and not pay any attention to what was goin’ on. Now I just hope I can make some people laugh and take life easier.”

        Simplicity is the key. Tom’s settled in for as long as he wants at The One-Eyed Cat, Bryant near Main, playing Wednesday, Friday and Sunday nights with drummer Larry Rizzuto. They call themselves The Beak.

        Two days ago they finished the last of 12 Tom Calandra songs for an album on which Tom sings, plays piano and kazoo and dubs in an unobtrusive bass line. Tom says he wants nothing on the record that the two of them can’t do live.

* * *

THE 30-SOME hours of recording sessions at Act-One Sound Studios on Delaware Avenue stretched over a month and were the model of nonchalance.

        Larry, an engineer at Act-One, set up sound levels on the $17,000 console, turned on the tape and ran into the studio to do the drumming. He says you can hear footsteps on the tape before the music begins.

        As for who’ll release the record, there’s negotiations with Columbia (Columbia producer John Hill has advised Tom on the songs) and a couple other companies. It all depends on who offers the best money and the best promotion.

* * *

THE SONGS are real grabbers. They come straight out of Tom’s experiences, mostly on the West Side, and they’re angry, humorous and vehemently straightforward. The titles alone ought to unravel a few uptight record executives.

        There’s “The Toilet Paper Business,” which is what Tom wants to call the album, along with “Don’t Count Your Chickies Before They Hatch,” “What a Mooch You Are,” “Take It All in One Ear,” “Why Don’t You Take a Bath, You Stink,” “Statutory Rape Woman,” “All You Care About Is Yourself,” “You Got a Big Fat Mouth,” “Kid, You Better Run,” “Steppin’ On Your Toes” and “You Make a Little Noise Around Here and the Rent Goes Up Five Bucks.”

* * *

“THE GUYS at Columbia think it’s a little nuts,” Tom says. “A lot of the stuff is dead serious and a lot of the stuff is funny, too. People make it all things, but it’s only music, it’s only sweet music, that’s all it is.

        “It’s just about things I come in contact with, just people I come in contact with, I guess. The people I write about probably wouldn’t even know it’s them. You could take one of these songs and put yourself in that position.”

        “Statutory Rape Woman” is about a 14-year-old West Side groupie who refused to believe that Tom wanted nothing to do with her.

        “Now let’s get it straight,” he sings, “you ain’t nothin’ but jailbait. Why do you even bother, when I’m old enough to be your father?”

* * *

THERE’S no groupies, just a semi-hip cocktail crowd in The One-Eyed Cat, an intimate part-time discotheque where the décor must have been a gas four years ago.

        The new owners, Dick Schwartz and Dick Gullo, bought an upright piano for Tom and it sits in front of the stainless steel dance floor. Next to it, Larry sets up his antique kit – a Civil War field drum and two ancient marching drums.

        Glancing occasionally at an electric metronome, Tom bends over the piano, face nearly hidden in the shadows of his old hat, and sets down heavily rhythmic piano riffs – bom, bom, bom, bada – like a slow boogie, while the drums shuffle and accentuate the beats.

        When the words come, it’s half-talking, half-singing:

        “What a mooch you are, spongin’ off me.

        How loose you are with my hard-earned money.

        I sure like compa-ny,

        But you-ah make a sucker outa me.

        A mooch you are.

        What a mooch you are, always broke.

        How nice you look in all my clothes.

        You lazy slob,

        Why don’t you go out and get a job?

        A mooch you are.

        The next thing you’ll be doin’

        Is-a borrowin’ my woman.

        Mooch you are.

        You sure got a lotta ner-er-er-vah.

        Mooch.”

* * *

TOM plays with his phrases, curling the final words, drawing out the vowels. And in the middle, there’s a growling kazoo break. When you get used to it, you see he uses the kazoo almost like scat singing.

        “The kazoo is a happy instrument,” Tom explains. “It reminds me of happiness. I just like it ‘cause I could stretch out with melodies on it. It takes a while to get the sound I want out of one. Like a gutsier sound. And after I’ve had the sound for a couple months, the paper in it tears. I’m thinkin’ of goin’ down to that factory in Eden to see if they got a better model.

        “A couple years ago, people would think I was crazy if I pull this with the group. But this is the stuff I wanted to do.

        “I call it slophouse style, exceptionally loose. Whatever happens, happens. Everybody starts out playing like that. The more complicated you get, the more you get away from the people.

        “Basically, people are simple. People love simple things they can understand and get something out of. It takes you a long time to find that out.”

* * *

IT’S BEEN hard to find people who understand the music and Tom thinks it’ll take a while to catch on. Tommy Burruano understands. So do the people at The One-Eyed Cat. At least nobody’s complaining.

        And Larry really understands. “At first,” he says, “it took me a night before I could quit laughing so I could play.”

        “I always pictured it with drums,” Tom adds. “I wouldn’t want to get into another group situation. And the songs are a little folkier, not groupy. I don’t have any strain. All I’ve got to worry about is one guy.”

* * *

TOM THINKS the album may be out by summer and after that he and Larry may tour, using The One-Eyed Cat as a home base. He figures there’s an audience for his music and he’ll take things as they come.

        “I could sit home all day and write and be happy,” he says. “All I want is a piano and a little studio on the West Side. You know, you’ve got everything in the world on the West Side. That’s real life over there.” 

The box/sidebar:

Back to Doing That Old Country Rock 

Pertinent and impertinent information about The Beak:

        Tom Calandra, 28, vocals, piano and kazoo, Lafayette High School, attended UB, single.

        Larry Rizzuto, 21, drums, Bennett High, engineer at Act-One Sound Studios, married.

        The two met in November when Tom and a friend looked into Act-One. “He suggested if I ever wanted to do anything, he’d be interested,” Tom says, “and I took him up on it.” They began a month of practicing just before Christmas.

        For two months last summer, Larry had a group called The Ugly Brothers and he had done some studio drumming, but wanted to get back into performing. Earlier, he had drummed for The Road.

        Tom began playing in high school and in 1961 joined Stan & The Ravens, which then was making $125 a night, the highest-paid rock band in the city.

        Whenever the group would break up, Stan Szelest would hop to Toronto to play piano for Ronnie Hawkins & His Hawks, which at that time included Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm, now part of The Band.

        “Style-wise,” Tom says, “I got it from the old Stan & The Ravens – Stan Szelest, Chuck McCormick and Sandy Konikoff. I’m back to doing that old country rock now. It’s in our blood, all of us.

        “The Beak? That’s my nickname, that’s what they used to call me a long time ago. The reason I more or less use it is to have people feel close to me. It’s kinda personal.” 

Tom Calandra finally released the album he talks about in the late 1990s, but that was long after he had a local hit with another one of his songs – “We’re Going to Win That Cup,” which sold 20,000 singles as the Sabres advanced into the Stanley Cup finals in 1975.

Around then, he got that little studio that he wanted, complete with a piano – not on the West Side, but in North Buffalo, tucked into the basement of his bungalow.

From that basement and from the larger studio he created when he bought a bigger house on Delaware Avenue near Hertel, Tom gave encouragement to hundreds of young musicians.

I experienced it myself in the late 1970s when I offered him a song I wrote for the singing commentaries he was doing for Dan Neaverth’s show on WKBW radio. (He also wrote Neaverth’s theme, “Danny Moves Your Fanny in the Morning” and the memorable “Cafeteria Bacteria,” which became a lunchtime anthem for Buffalo high school students.)

You should record it yourself, he insisted.

And so we did.

He put together a few good young backup players, suggested I do a kazoo solo on the instrumental break, and we put it out as a single on his BCMK (Buffalo College of Musical Knowledge) record label, complete with a Ralph Steadman-like cover illustration that I got Buffalo News graphic artist Dick Bradley to do. I still have a few copies up in the attic.

P.S.: Anybody know what became of Larry Rizzuto? I can’t find any recent references to him online.