Howard Fishman - "No Further Instructions"

"Anywhere's better than where we've come from. The future is unknown and that's half the fun" sings Howard Fishman at the conclusion of a song called ‘In Romania’; a song he's been referring to in concert as the "title song" to an album whose title is really No Further Instructions. Fine, but the listener gets what he means. The album is a travelogue of impressions Fishman collected while traveling in Eastern Europe with a childhood friend and the opener sets the tone and pre-defines the whole album with gentle humor and a New Yorker's confused bewilderment. The song begins with something that sounds oddly Balkan and authentic but it isn't because it's written by an outsider: a guy from Brooklyn who went on a vacation and wrote some songs. And it explodes into Fishman's comfort zone midway through as a collection of some of New York's finest musicians burst into a jam so exuberant that its leader can't help but yell "yeah!" repeatedly - an interlude that somehow seems to recall Romania and Manhattan all at the same time. But that one concluding line could easily define the hopes and fears of a post-Cold War Eastern bloc state. In this group of songs, a sense of doom comingles with a sense of peace and a description of a land frozen in time seems oddly relatable. At one point in the song ‘Through the Countryside’ Fishman ruminates about how he could leave the text messaging and wicked city women of New York for the simple green fields of the town he's driving through, but then realizes "there's probably towns just like this in rural Pennsylvania."

I can attest, yes ... yes, there are. And I feel like I can attest to that without having been to Hungary. But I do know the feeling of traveling through Lancaster and thinking about chucking it all to live on a farm. And then waking up to realize as charmed as I am, I don't belong there. I'm not really qualified to vouch for the cultural authenticity of the occasional touches of brass Fishman weaves into these songs, and I have to take his word on what he reports about life in these places he's visited, but part of why this all works is that, of course, Howard isn't all that qualified either. He spent exactly one month abroad and when he acts as a cross between Joseph Mitchell and Studs Terkel by turning the words of the local folk he meets into lyrics, there's a sense of both romantic idolatry and detached skepticism. Back in the states, listening through our iPods and speaker docks, we appreciate the interpretation.

Two songs are named for characters along the way. ‘The Pensione Owner's Song’ defies location by simply and elegantly telling the tale of one man's journey from "never wait[ing] patiently" and "trying to create (or force) opportunity" (parentheses provided in the lyric sheet) to succumbing to the beauty of the landscape of his “pensione” and organically changing his values to those of patience and love. Living on the east coast back home, it's an arc the listener can identify with and smile at. In the second-to-last song, ‘The Farmer's Song’, Howard and his companion are judged: "New York? You living there? Why you living there? There is no life. You live in cages!" and the speaker admits to never wanting to visit America, or apparently, any place off of the farm. You can imagine Fishman's smile as he heard these words, probably accompanied by a smirk and a rolling of the eyes.

Part of Brooklynite and Joe's Pub regular Howard Fishman's genius is that he himself is a farmer that gets his ingredients locally. Some of the best and the brightest and oddly undersung local musicians are part of the collective that jams with him live and on record. Here among the scores of musicians we have stellar NY familiar names as Roland Barber on trombone, Marika Hughes (a favorite of mine from her many projects) on cello and perhaps most effectively, the gorgeousness that is the violin and vocal stylings of Mazz Swift. They move from style to style, old world to new world with deftness and spirit. And they're particularly brilliant when a song can't be pinpointed to one locale. ‘Let It All Come Down’ is the story of two people in love coming together for a moment of romance on "a rainy August night" in a small town that could be anywhere (it could be in rural Pennsylvania!) and with the aid of another New York celebrity, Jim Capilongo on electric guitar, the song is something that I can only describe as three-and-a-half-minutes of popular music joy. A groovy bassline leads us in to the strains of brass, strings, even accordion, and the combined effect leaves us feeling both like romantic teenagers and old folks wishing for a time where we were romantic teenagers. ‘Set Me Free’, a vocal duet with Swift is down and bluesy; a bit of Southern-style gospel from a Jewish man from New York and written somewhere between Romania and the Ukraine and again offset with brass. (Music is certainly a universal language.) Once again, no particular place is mentioned, but the song still feels like it belongs.

There are so many theatrical moments of happiness and yet, like any good reporter, there is the bad. The frightening ‘Baia Mare’ attempts to paint a picture of the worst place on the planet. "What are you doing in Baia Mare where no one's had a careless laugh in recent memory?" populated by "some vaguely familiar faces who would rob and rape and lie and steal and kill." It's almost telling that it's possibly the first song on the album with a dominant sound of somewhere outside, like Tom Waits when he sings about Singapore. My favorite moment of "bad" is a song called ‘Garbage’ about the lack of infrastructure in some of these towns leading to mounds of garbage which the singer would happily just burn. Reviewing this album so close to a moment where the much bigger city government of New York City allowed both snow and garbage to pile in the outer boroughs, the universality of this particular problem hits a bit too close to home.

Mixed in are some sweet instrumentals, and a completely lovely closing love song accompanied especially by Hughes and Swift's strings called ‘Your Voice’ that could melt hearts in any age and national origin. And while the album is available to download in all the usual album-downloading spaces, I'd recommend finding a physical CD because the packaging includes photographs by Michael Benanav (Fishman's traveling companion) putting faces and landscapes to the voices and sounds of the album. The centerfold, in which Fishman sits on a bench playing guitar while, on one end a man with a large moustache scowls and on the other a little girl dances in joy, is worth the price of the CD in and of itself. It also perfectly illustrates the contradictions set forth in this compelling collection of songs.

(NOTE: It should be mentioned briefly that Howard Fishman released three albums on one day of which this is only one. Better Get Right is a similar journey but through post-Katrina New Orleans while The World Will Be Different is a song cycle written by Mr. Fishman at home in Brooklyn. All three are highly recommended by this reporter, who decided to focus his review on the album he found most interesting to muse about, following Fishman's own opinion, as expressed in performance, that each work should be experienced separately.)

CORRECTION: Hellbomb's original posting identified Roland Barber as being "on trumpet" when he is actually "on trombone".