Wiser Boutette still emits enthusiasm

Wiser Boutette still emits enthusiasm

Ypsilanti musician makes move to folkier, more laid-back sound

BY WILL STEWART
News Special Writer

Dave Boutette had to quit playing music full time in order to find his true calling as a musician and a songwriter.

After more than 10 years and a major-label recording contract with Detroit’s hard-rocking Junk Monkeys - the band he formed with school friends just days after his high school graduation - Boutette quit the group, trading touring and recording to finish an aborted college career and, as it turned out, find his way back to his own music.

That was seven years ago and, at the time, Boutette, who performs Thursday at the Ann Arbor Summer Festival’s Top of the Park stage, couldn’t have known that his decision to leave the popular local band would turn into a golden career move.

“The Junk Monkeys experience was like getting on a roller coaster - big hills and ups and downs and thrills and screams,” said the affable, always-smiling Boutette, who played lead guitar and wrote songs on the band’s two LPs and three CDs. “But there comes a time when you’re sick of being 29 and eating macaroni and cheese and working your ass off and having nothing to show for it.

“For all the great reviews we got and all the great shows we played, nothing was coming of it. So I split.”

That was 1994 and, riding what he called a “massive sense of relief” upon his departure from the band, Boutette relocated to Ypsilanti. He re-enrolled at Eastern Michigan University and set about writing songs far removed from the Junk Monkeys’ shambling, Replace-ments-esque rave ups.

“I never had the sense of freedom where I could do whatever I wanted because I was always married to the band,” he recalled. “I just decided it was time to try something new - both musically and with the rest of my life.”

Slowly, Boutette started playing low-level gigs at farmers’ markets and open mic sessions, while honing his acoustic guitar playing and developing a folkier, more laid-back sound.

Then in 1999, his degree completed and looking for a new challenge, Boutette took his new collection of folk-rock tunes into the studio with some musical friends. Months later, he emerged with his solo debut, “Memos, Demos and Hard to Reach Places,” a charming, sweet, deceptively heartfelt collection of songs.

“Dave doesn’t just confine self to pop formulas or your typical theoretical restrictions,” said Crowbar Hotel frontman John Latini, who often backs up Boutette during live gigs on bass and lap steel guitar. “You have to pay attention, because he throws in some unusual changes, yet they fit perfectly into a pop formula.

“And his songs are just great - the same enthusiasm that he shows in his everyday life comes through on all of his tunes.”

With “Memos” came higher-profile gigs, for which Boutette assembled the Old Dogs, an ever-shifting collection of some of the area’s best musicians cobbled together from various other local bands, including Crowbar Hotel (which also plays ToP on Thursday) and Bridge Club. Last year, the Old Dogs went into the studio to record a follow-up CD, “The Old Dogs Songbook,” which picks up where “Memos” left off.

“It was like music camp,” he said of the recording process. “People would come to the studio to hang out even if they weren’t scheduled to play.

“When it was all done, all the guys who played with me were happy with it - and if they’re happy, then I’m happy.”

On the new record, Boutette’s singing is more accomplished and his songs - always hooky and well-constructed - find him a little older and and a little wiser, yet still wide eyed and enthusiastic.

The songs explore lost days browsing record stores; long-lost favorite bands; and, in the record’s prettiest tune, “The Sweeter,” we share a car with a lovestruck getaway car driver as he waits for his friends to pull off a heist.

“When I talk about American songwriting, I’m not putting myself on a farm or singing about moonshine,” he said. “My America is at Briarwood or in a traffic jam at the corner of Packard and State.”

“Old Dogs” is the rare album that’s both streetwise and innocent, rocking yet rollicking.

He couldn’t be happier to be in their company.

“The bar is so much higher here,” he said. “In other towns, I could take a mediocre song and people would think I was the next Paul Simon.

“But here, you have to write a really, really good song just to stand apart from the crowd. It’s great being able to run with a faster pack.”

Dave Boutette: "The bar is so much higher (for singer-songwriters) here,” he says of the local music scene.

PREVIEW

Dave Boutette

What: Ann Arbor Summer Festival Top of the Park show.

When: 7 p.m.Thursday (Crowbar Hotel plays at 8:15).

Where: Top of the Fletcher Street parking structure.

How much: Free.