ARTIST: Richard X. Heyman
TITLE: Actual Sighs
LABEL: Turn-Up Records
GENRE: Rock
TIME: 69:56 min
SIZE: 110,4 MB
RIP DATE: Mar-02-2007
RELEASE DATE: Jan-20-2007
WEBSITE: n/a
Track List:
01. Kenyon Walls 03:24
02. Stockpile 02:34
03. All In The Way You Found Me 04:03
04. Winter Blue 04:14
05. Hung Up Like A Martyr 02:42
06. Mr. Murphy's Son 03:36
07. Twelve Bars and I Still Have The Blues 03:21
08. In A Boxcar 03:54
09. A Fine Line 03:49
10. Without True Love 02:16
11. Rxh's Love In The First Person Blues 02:08
12. Written All Over My Face 04:10
13. Can't Keep Me From Talkin' 03:47
14. The Gazing Moon 04:46
15. I'm That Kind of Man 03:26
16. Hoosier 03:08
17. When Giants Fall 03:37
18. The Gallery 03:38
19. Masquerader Man 03:14
20. Special Love 04:09
Release Notes:
"Think back on it all" - goes the opening line of
Kenyon Walls, the first track on Richard X. Heyman's
new debut-album-that-never-was Actual Sighs, and an
apt way to begin a musical journey through Richard's
past, present and future. One might cheekily observe
that it was approximately twenty years ago today (or
rather, this year) - 1986 - that Richard X. Heyman
released his first indie disc, Actual Size, a
collection of six of his finest songs recorded on an
8-track Tascam machine in a home studio, the same
one on which Richard would subsequently record his
classic album Living Room!!
Living Room!! took on a life of its own after
Richard was described as "an undiscovered treasure"
in a Rolling Stone review of the album, leading to
his signing with Cypress/A&M, who re-released Living
Room!! in '89, and then with Sire/Warner Bros., who
released his second album Hey Man! in '90, which
Stereo Review cited as Album of the Month.
Cornerstone came out in '98, garnering stacks of
praise from the music press, a featured interview in
Goldmine magazine, as well as another Album of the
Month in Stereo Review. 2001's Heyman, Hoosier &
Herman, with Peter Noone crooning the track Hoosier,
had Rollingstone.com rave "hooks galore and
ebullient melodies, and lyrics revealing the
emotional power that pop can pack into its brevity".
Richard's fourth full-length CD, Basic Glee was
called "one of the finest records of 2002" (Listener
Magazine), his "most tuneful and soulful set yet"
(Stereo Review Sound & Vision), "impossibly catchy"
(The Illinois Times). Said The Chicago Tribune: "An
exemplary tunesmith - Heyman creates something fresh
from his influences rather than parroting them."
Richard's fifth, Rightovers, was released to the RXH
fan club only in '03, and via the internet to the
general public in '04. Said the All Music Guide: "at
his best, Heyman's level of craft actually
approaches that of the Fab Fouràa listen to Heyman's
fifth album, Rightovers, offers plenty of evidence
that he is truly one of the past, present and future
masters of smart power popàRightovers is just as
strong and every bit as enjoyable as one of Heyman's
'real' albumsàanyone who loves a great melody and a
killer hook will fall in love with this disc."
A prolific songwriter, Richard has a backlog of
songs that have never gotten their moment in the sun
- not through any dearth of confidence in their
quality, but more due to lack of space, time, money,
etc. There are pages of lyrics in Richard's files
for which (alas) Richard can no longer recall the
tunes and cabinets full of cassettes in the Heyman
household - "work tapes" - with snippets of melody
which have never been turned into full-fledged
songs. But then there are the ones that have lived
on in both Richard's and wife/bassist Nancy's
musical memories, many of them written in the Actual
Size era, that have survived the test of time -- the
ones whose moment has finally come. Richard felt it
was time to give these early works -- plus the
original six tracks from Actual Size --another shot
at the limelight. The royal RXH treatment.
Altogether, they comprise Actual Sighs, Richard's
would-have-been-first album.
So here you have it, the resuscitated, rejuvenated
Actual Size, now rechristened Actual Sighs, boasting
twenty songs - re-recordings of the original six
plus fourteen more newly recorded tunes. Produced by
Richard and engineered by Nancy, the tracks were
mixed by Ed Stasium (an old New Jersey friend of
Richard's who gained international recognition for
his work with such luminaries as The Ramones, The
Smithereens, Living Colour and Marshall Crenshaw)
and long-time Heyman engineer Tony Lewis, who's
mixed Richard's previous three releases.
Here's a nutshell bio: Richard started banging on
things when he was five, got a full drum kit when he
was seven, and was astounding audiences with his
chops by the time he was twelve. He picked up guitar
and piano in his teens, which was also when original
songs started popping into his head. Richard went
solo in his twenties, although he's found time to
lend his amazing drumming skills to such great
artists as Brian Wilson, Link Wray, Jonathan Richman
and the Left Banke's Michael Brown, composer of Walk
Away Renee. He also played keyboards for the
legendary Ben E. King. His influences are as varied
as Bernstein to The Beatles, Richard Rodgers to the
Rascals, and the Blues to the Byrds. On the live
front, Richard leads his own band on guitar and
keyboards.