Video Premiere: Phil Gammage “Speakeasy Blues”

Here’s the latest single from New York-based Texan singer-songwriter Phil Gammage.  Gammage’s rich, deep baritone draws us into “Speakeasy Blues”, a weary tale about the folks who frequent a seaside bar.  Alongside Gammage’s guitar and lonesome voice, Johnny Young supplies jazzy, rhythmic keys and plodding, atmospheric bass, designed to make you sway, with an undercurrent of Roger Stoltz’s subtle percussion.  Plaintive harmonica from David Fleming also contributes to the timeless music and typically moody sound.

For the video, footage of Gammage and his collaborators filmed in one of their favourite haunts, New York City’s 11th Street Bar, is interspersed with retro footage of the seaside resort of Cape May, New Jersey.  In black and white, with a grainy, vintage feel, the video supports the song’s story and reinforces the atmosphere.  It’s a story that draws inspiration from Gammage’s life as a musician, historian, and fiction writer and blends the past and present.

Gammage told AUK about the song and video: “The narrative tells a story in the backroom saloon of a faded and weather-beaten seaside town. Enter the characters portrayed by Marina, Brana, and Johnny. Time has stood still for them with their days and nights having joined together to create one continuous never-ending round of song and drink. Johnny’s fingers at the piano coax sad haunting late-night ballads and the melancholy music of broken dreams for two women who have slipped through the cracks of life. They sway to the music, caught in the drift of memories of missed chances. Their lonely laughter is jagged and hollow like the town itself. Outside they can hear the distant sound of crashing waves murmuring through the bar’s cracked windows, a reminder of a forgotten life that once shimmered but has since slipped away.  There is no beginning and there is no end in their dimly lit backroom…it’s a world of forgotten promises and ghosts that never left.”

This single is the follow-up to Gammage’s album “Redeemed”, released earlier in 2024.  Check out our review of the well-received record here.  Check out the album, but first lose yourself in this trip into the past.