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NJCoast News

Chris Barry's
SHORE WORLD SEPTEMBER 2001!!!
(continued from page 11)
who recently put out his first 9-song solo CD, recorded and produced at Long Branch's Shorefire studios. Performing simply under the name "Leon', Berkowitz is a chiropractor by day who is also s veteran of open mikes at Hooligans, The Java Hut and The Hitching Rail, where he has an monthly Thursday gig

In short, this debut project is truly a labor of love and replete with his own unique nuances and musical obsessions: Leon plays all guitar, harmonica and vocal on the project, and the rest of his session group includes Hal Seltzer on bass, Joey Stann on sax, Lance Stark, percussion and Bruce Foster on all pianos and synthesizers.

'Jersey Shore' kicks off with some squeaky clean Jerzy-branded sax which coils right into the mix, and if you can put up with what sounds like Leon's occasionally neo-flat vocals, you're in for some smoking guitar riffs and a great lead-in for 'Doctor's Daughter', a met-her-one-night tale, with his distinctively quirky, deadpan Joe Friday w/a guitar narrative,.i.e., '.I met her by the sea, one look and she had me', or my favorite, "She let me drive her car..on Thursday'..At some point I realized this was really the moody but mellow Leon, waxing evocatively in a seaside dream. Kind of eerily uplifting in its own way, with a nice fade-out and good timing overall.

Then Leon goes cruisin' and gets funky, as he declares he ain't "Nobody's Baby", and rips it into a supple, vamping guitar run that suddenly lets his bio make sense; I.E., "Heavy guitar influence from Chuck Berry, Keith Richards, Neil Young, Lynrd Skynrd, The Eagles, …Etc' Because it's there, whether you label it one man's mere obsession or a serious creative work in progress.

And regardless of cliché's, you feel some genuinely ah-shucks breathtaking moments in the next "Heaven", an orchestrally tinged, James Taylor-guitar-flav'd instrumental opus that makes you think, if The Eagles were an instrumental lounge band with classical pretensions…Plus, Foster's work here also stands out, and makes a vibrant stamp on the basic arrangement.

While Leon's vocals and guitar seem to get more broken in and effective on each track, as in "Colorado", a feelgood anthem about, you guess it the wonders of the rocky mountain state. With a Tom Rush guitar twinkle and a Kristofferson meets Denver vocal, the production here looks past the guy's surface hokeyness and (continued on page 13)

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