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Dito Montiel
Dito Montiel
NYC based musician, songwriter and author Dito Montiel first rose to fame in L.A. in the late '80s when his alt-rock band Gutterboy landed a $1 million record deal, an extraordinary sum at the time. The band was dropped after one album, and Dito returned east. On his self-titled solo debut for Rhino, the multi-talented Montiel has recorded—with assorted friends and pickup bands—fifteen original songs written over the last fifteen years. A pop-saturated, soaringly melodic street opera, the disc spotlights Montiel's poetic, lyrical brilliance, and musical savvy on stand-outs including "Jimmy & Rey," "You And I (We Burn Like Satellites)," and the single, "Crossing Rivers."
For a man who is just next month releasing the first solo album of his career on April 24th, DITO MONTIEL (Atco/Rhino), the list of DITO MONTIEL’s “greatest hits” is already imposing. This month also sees the publication of Montiel’s second novel, Eddie Krumble is the Clapper (PGW/Avalon), and it joins the recent DVD release of his acclaimed self-directed film memoir, the Sundance Film Festival award-winning A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints.
Since his early teens, Montiel’s taken all the core qualities of rock and roll – the risk and discovery of self-examination, the thrilling rites of passage, the many hurts, accusations, loves and losses of youth, and, not at all least, the classic do-it-yourself mentality -- into an impressive list of artistic disciplines, all successfully. He maintains, though, that music remains the creative root of his many forms of expression. “I’m a songwriter first and always will be,” says Montiel. “The book was simply a song on paper. The movie’s a big one on a screen, and the ones on my album happen to have some music mixed in.”
The songs of DITO MONTIEL, with their raw poetry, indelible choruses and exuberant melodies, span the fifteen years since his stint as lead singer of the punk band Gutterboy, at the turn of the 1990s. The album itself was made in a two-month period with musical contributions from friends and pick-up bands, under recording conditions ranging from the minimal to the relatively luxurious. “I recorded these songs because I wanted to hear them so much, I found a way of making them,” Montiel explains.
Montiel’s ventures into extending his art have been notable for their immediate creative and commercial success: in 2003, he published his first book, the best-selling fictionalized memoir of his early life in Astoria, New York, A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints . He adapted an excerpt as a screenplay, which was chosen for a Sundance Film Festival mentoring program, and the resulting film won Montiel the Dramatic Directing Award, and the cast a Best Dramatic Ensemble Performance Award at its 2006 Sundance debut.
Montiel will continue to rock in all of his chosen art forms: he is currently on a national book tour, and is planning his second film project. “Crossing Rivers” is the first single from DITO MONTIEL .
Tracklist
1. Jimmy & Rey
2. You Were So High
3. Fade Away
4. Crossing Rivers
5. Song for Michael
6. I'm Not the One
7. 1987
8. Helpless
9. Baby Don't Let Me Down
10. You and I (We Burn Like Satellites)
11. You Stay Right Where You Are, Benny
12. Just Give Me Something to Dance To
13. End of the Century
14. Eddie, When Will We Ever Learn to Live With God
15. A Different Kind of Fading Away
TRACK BY TRACK NOTES
1.) JIMMY & REY
Jimmy was a guy named Jimmy Fleetwood who lived in a hotel in Chelsea. Not the Chelsea Hotel. Just one in Chelsea. My good friend Jerry Muller, who is without question one of the best songwriters and maniacs Ive ever known, brought me to Fleetwoods house once. His girlfriend, Rey, was a stripper. Jimmy had a hollow body guitar and played rockabilly songs REALLY, REALLY LOUD while neighbors BANGED on walls and Rey put on her stripper gear. That image never left me. I was about 15 when I was there, and I found that very magical. So I wrote the song with them in mind. The chorus says, when it kicks in it feels like nothings ever gonna be so wrong again. Thats something Rey said when she was getting high.
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