Welcome to Western Pa.

My standard punchline regarding music is that I don't know much about anything prior to 1980. Sometimes I push that date back to 1975, or even '70.

While I make no secret about my preference for tunes from the days when giants walked the earth - Beatles, Stones, Dead, Doors, etc. - I still appreciate getting to know the music of artists who are alive, well and performing today.

I learned about two such performers this week. When Bill Toms played a CD release show over the weekend for his new "Spirits, Chaos, and a Troubadour Soul," two musicians who were in town opened for him.


First went Erin Sax Seymour, a New Yorker who's raising some eyebrows with her compositions and performing style. I took a quick look on her myspace site to learn a little about her. Here's some of what I found:

Sax started writing songs as a teenager to help her through tough times, and then as a way to record the experiences she witnessed while traveling the world as a documentary filmmaker. … Through it all she understood that there really are just a handful of stories and moods that every person comes across in a lifetime, no matter their circumstance. Her music is the heart of these stories.

She has recorded a CD called "Good Girl" (which features some interesting cover art), and here is a video of the title song recorded at Cefalo's in Carnegie.

Another video shows her playing "New Orleans Rain."

Following Erin was Lorenzo Bertocchini, who - though you wouldn't know it from his mastery of English - hails from northern Italy, where he fronts a band with the intriguing name of the Apple Pirates. ("We just go around and steal people's apples all day," he jokes.) The English-language portion of Lorenzo's trilingual site provides some biographical information:

His live career started in 1990, when he put together a band called The Beer Bellies: a lot of fun, but not a long ride … only a few months. His second band was a guitar trio called The Wanted! Lorenzo wrote the songs, sang and played acoustic guitar and harmonica. The trio was born at the beginning of 1991 and eventually split up at the end of the following year. In December 1992, Lorenzo got in touch with the piano player Roberto Masciocchi and started a new project called The Getaway. The name soon changed to Pirates and then to Apple Pirates. With a lot of hard work and true devotion to their roots-rock roots, the band started building itself the solid reputation it enjoys today in the Italian rock scene. The boys have released a CD called "Greatest Hits" and two songs on a compilation of Varese bands called "Musica Va."

The band has a new single called "Everybody" - click here for video - which Lorenzo performed at Cefalo's with Phil Brontz, saxophone player for 8th Street Rox and Bill Toms' Hard Rain band.

Welcome to Western Pennsylvania, Erin and Lorenzo. Don't be strangers.