Benjy Ferree - Come Back To The Five And Dime, Bobby Dee Bobby Dee (From Salisbury Journal)

Benjy Ferree - Come Back To The Five And Dime, Bobby Dee Bobby Dee

5:06pm Monday 30th November 2009

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Artist - Benjy Ferree
Album - Come Back To The Five And Dime, Bobby Dee Bobby Dee
Label - Domino

On the intellectually-stimulating Ferree’s second album, he takes inspiration from Bobby Driscoll, the child star who portrayed Peter Pan in the 1953 Disney film, who was then fired as puberty and a bad case of acne hit.

Bobby Dee struggled to find work and fell into a life-long battle with drugs until ultimately dying homeless and broke in a Manhattan tenement at the age of 31.

With police unable to identify his body, the one-time Academy Award winner ended up in an unmarked mass grave on New York’s Hart Island. “Heavy weighs the burden of Brother Dee,” Ferree sings on the album’s opening track, Tired Of Being Good.

Musically, Ferree mixes rock and roll and Americana like a hopped up Ryan Adams, or a more soaring Richard Swift. With country, passionate blues pounding, Marc Bolan, Freddie Mercury and the balladry of Nick Cave all in there, Come Back To The Five And Dime is a riot of styles and inspiration. Denying genres is paying off for Ferree.

Rating 8/10
Mike Rea

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