Elvis Perkins

I saw Elvis Perkins in Dearland perform last night. That's his real name, by the way. Their debut disc is "Ash Wednesday" and I listen to it every chance I get. Really mature, intelligent, Dylanesque folk/rock/pop with little Beatles-like twists.

There were only about 15 people at the gig--in a smoke-choked dive that my wife, incidentally, played with a travelling minstrel show back in the early 1990's. Elvis's father was the actor Anthony Perkins (who played Norman Bates in Hitchcock's "Psycho" and died of AIDS in 1999). His mother, Berry Berenson, was an actress turned photographer who had the misfortune of taking an American Airlines flight out of Boston on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. "Ash Wednesday" reflects Elvis' meditations on loss and love that his personal brush with two of the great tragedies of the last quarter century have inspired. There are also touches of the peculiar circus or carny sensibility that must come with a New York to L. A. and back lifestyle. But, through it all, he seems to have emerged a poet. He has a wonderfully resonant voice and a kind of Robbie Robertson persona--charismatic but not concerned about the limelight. His guitar and harmonica playing are distinctive and accomplished. He is the real thing.