Says Repoz,
I bet Gammons doesn’t sound like The Remains…but he certainly looks like ’em!
From the Boston Globe’s Meredith Goldstein.
On a soggy Friday, just before Peter Gammons’s Hot Stove, Cool Music benefit, the 60-year-old host of ESPN’s ”Baseball Tonight,” sometimes called ”The Commissioner,” was laying down vocals for his first rock album, which is being recorded at Q Division, a studio in Somerville.
In the sound booth with headphones on, Gammons, an inductee to the Baseball Hall of Fame last year and a lifelong Red Sox fan, gesticulated matter-of-factly, as though he were making a point on ”Baseball Tonight.” Occasionally, he played some mean air guitar.
”Peter, you totally warmed up on that one in the second half,” said Mike Denneen a co-owner of Q Division who is in charge of Gammons’s album and has produced artists such as Aimee Mann. ”Let’s do another.”
Clad in jeans, New Balance sneakers, and a gray shirt that looked as comfortable as pajamas, Gammons sang the same line over and over again. He nursed a cold with a tea from Dunkin’ Donuts between takes.
For seconds at a time, Gammons sounded like Neil Young on his latest album — thoughtful, weathered, and sometimes wounded. Then he sounded like what you might expect Gammons to sound like, a baseball commentator making emphatic statements over background music.
Gammons talked about a song he’s working on with Bill Janovitz for the album, ”like Lennon and McCartney.”
”It’s this whole thing about a couple with a screwed-up relationship,” Gammons said. ”And Juliana [Hatfield] is going to sing the chorus.”