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It’s a strange and mysterious combination of talents and skills that elevates an artist from bar tour poverty to household name status and whatever it is, C. R. Avery doesn’t have it. And it’s not like this magical combination is all that rare – pretty much every artist your household could name has it – but it clearly takes more than just being able to consistently deliver a a mind-busting set of clever, creative, attention grabbing chunks of music that rewrite this acerbic existential existence into eye-popping poetry that is positively magnetic to the soul.
You’d think that would be enough, but no, it’s not.
Nor is it enough to have full-colour handbills printed out featuring a clever tagline like “Some Birds Walk For The Hell Of It (which is also the title of your new book of poetry), as Cravery did for the show I saw him perform on October 25th, 2014. Certainly all of these things are necessary parts of the required combination, but to win the lottery one needs every single one of their numbers to come up. Coming close will do little more than offer you a free ticket – another kick at the can that is just as likely to come up short.
Now, where does Cravery come up short? Well, to paraphrase The Beatles, if I knew the answer to that I’d become his manager. That said, I have dipped my toes in the ocean of artist management so I’ll dive in anyway. Here’s where I think Cravery veers away from the path of fame:
Booking himself into an office-space-for-rent non-venue for a Saturday night gig in a major Canadian city and bringing along with him a handful of not-so-interesting burlesque dancers in lieu of a band. Like, I could see a seedy character like the one Cravery projects doing well with burlesque dancers as part of a full-production theatre tour with a baby grand piano and a band onstage with him and perhaps a stand-up comedian opening the show, but at a solo show in a carpeted office encircled by whiteboards, chic wastepaper baskets, and glass-topped meeting tables? Nah.
Also: being generally aloof and unapproachable offstage (one thing working with nero taught me is how connected fans get with a band who is personable and friendly with all interested parties), and most especially: penning songs that gratuitously and repeatedly use some of the more offensive words available in the English language and yet taking gigs that put himself in front of family-oriented crowds on outdoor stages on sunny afternoons. Granted, he only committed about half of these crimes at this particular show, but in my experience these career transgressions were a standard part of his professional repertoire.
I guess the final nail in the Cravery coffin of obscurity is what draws people to him in the first place: Whether by intention or by respectful osmosis, he’s a rough imitation of that most inimitable of artists, Tom Waits, which is a brain-melder to fans of Mr. Waits (which I very much am), but a rather pale imitation he is. Not that he’s not good, on the contrary – Cravery is great, and that’s why I would go see him again and again – but Tom Waits is a Bowie, a McCartney, a Springsteen…a household name even, and as such a character like Cravery can only ever manage the bottom rungs of the tower that Tom Waits sits atop of. And all of us Tom Waits fans – the only ones who are buying what Cravery is selling – can see it, hear it, and feel it.
And so we all end up falling off the Cravery wagon.
Just you watch…just to prove me wrong the guy will get some unlikely surprise hit on the radio somehow and become a household name after all. Or at the least the answer to a one-hit-wonder trivia question, which to my mind is a pretty darn close second place.
I hope so. He almost deserves it.
Todd Man Out 