Z•E•S•TFOR LIVING
Taking listeners on his personal journey
Latest release from
Fair Haven musician
tells ‘bittersweet story’
By gloria stravelli
Staff Writer

CHRIS KELLY Fair Haven resident John Padovano has lived a life in music and chronicles that journey in his recently released CD The Return of the Rainy Day Hobo.

Their stories are intertwined: the fiercely independent blues singer whose community has changed around him and the character invented by John Anthony Padovano who can’t seem to find his place.

The Jersey Shore blues singer/songwriter has just released his seventh collection of songs.

The Return of the Rainy Day Hobo is a folk-blues opera about a wandering laborer/musician, and is in large measure autobiographical.

"I’ve done about everything you can think of, every kind of job. I’ve driven trucks, been a laborer. I’ve done a bit of everything," said the Fair Haven resident. "That’s what this CD is about. It tells the story of a musician who does odd jobs, so it’s partially based on my life."

On the new CD, on which he is accompanied on drums and piano by his son, John Paul, Padovano brings back the itinerant character introduced in his debut 1990 release, Set in November.

According to Padovano, Rainy Day Hobo "is about understanding and human individuality. The character is a hard-working man who pursues peace in his life. He lives his life as honestly and as simply as possible.

"I tried to express the common human yearning in us all, a wanting to be accepted as unique individuals," he said. "My songs aren’t cynical or sarcastic."

Padovano grew up in Belford in a household where music was a part of the background of daily life.

"Music was playing in my house all the time. I started writing songs when I was about 9 years old," he recalled. "It just came out of me."

Padovano’s earliest instrument was the harmonica, and he still accompanies himself on the mouth harp as well as the guitar. He cites many influences, particularly blues songwriter Lightnin’ Hopkins — "my favorite blues artist" — as well as silent screen actor Charlie Chaplin, who created the character of the Little Hobo.

"I’ve been a fan since I was a child," he said. "In a way, this CD is my modern-day City Lights (a Chaplin film)."

After graduating from high school, Padovano formed a duo with friend Tom Hays, and the two performed as Anthony and Hays at clubs and cafes around the Shore area. With Hays on piano and Padovano doing vocals, the duo performed at local venues throughout the late 1970s and into the early ’80s.

The Shore music scene at that time, however, was not a good fit for where Padovano’s music was taking him.

"I was discouraged by what was going on. It was a bar scene, and it didn’t suit my music," he explained. "My style is more subtle."

While he continued writing songs, Padovano stopped performing for a period of about five years.

When the coffeehouse scene began to take shape locally, he returned to performing.

"I went back again when the coffeehouses were just emerging, around 1990," he said. "From then on, I began to develop as a performer."

The scene at House of Coffee, then on Monmouth Street in Red Bank, and at Café e Dolce on the Asbury Park boardwalk, was the milieu where Padovano honed his roots-blues style.

"I’ve had people tell me that the blues I play is not the usual blues they are accustomed to hearing locally," he explained. "I don’t do roadhouse blues. It’s more of a jazz-blues with folk-blues mixed in. That’s my voice."

Meanwhile, he kept working at odd jobs to support his family.

"I just kept doing what I had to do. Did I make a living? I’ve never been able to rely just on my music," he said. "But I believe it’s possible."

As a solo performer or a member of the group Blues Station, Padovano has performed extensively throughout the Shore area and beyond, including venues in Red Bank, Belmar, Bradley Beach, Manasquan, Sea Bright, Atlantic Highlands, Freehold, Princeton and New York. On Feb. 22, he will be featured on Café Improv, a cable show produced by the Princeton Arts Council.

Just as he favors a simple approach on stage, he prefers to record in a way that he feels best captures the music he delivers.

"The CDs were recorded live in the studio with no overdub. What you hear on my recording is what you hear live when I’m performing in a coffee house, no studio tricks involved," he said. "It’s more of a challenge because I’m not editing anything, I’m not mixing. The songs have to stand on their own. It’s a truer experience."

Padovano acts as his own business manager and does his own marketing and distribution, dealing directly with radio stations and distributors. He’s had air play on many radio stations, including stations across Europe, Canada and Australia, and his CD is available at Jack’s Music Shoppe in Red Bank.

"I consider I’m in a group of independent musicians, and there’s a lot of that over the last 10 to 15 years," he explained. "People release and promote their own recordings.

"The advantage is that I have creative control over what I do.

"I love music, and I decided many years ago that a record company wasn’t going to determine whether or not I was going to create music," he continued. "Once I put that in my mind, there was nothing stopping me from having the nerve to go out there on my own and to become a solo performer and solo recording artist."

He has self-produced all seven collections of songs, the last three on CD. "With this new CD I fully explore the idea of the character of a musician who performs at small shows and works side jobs," he said.

Padovano has structured Return of the Rainy Day Hobo like an opera in three acts.

In Act One, Padovano’s original songs tell the story of a performer setting out from his hometown to begin a "back roads tour." "The second track, ‘Back Roads Show,’ " he said, "pretty much explains what I do — playing at out-of-the-way places, places people don’t even know about."

The title character has no name, but he resonates with the life of a musician on the Jersey Coast, according to Padovano.

"People call him ‘rainy day hobo’ because the outdoor jobs and back road performances end whenever the rain comes, and he moves on to another town. That’s kind of like the Jersey Shore music scene," he observed. "When the weather changes, you have to move on, the work stops.

"In the second act, the character is trying to find his way, and he gets more involved with his music and work," Padovano explained. He boards a train to return home but decides not to get off; instead he just passes through.

In Act Three, years have gone by, and the wanderer has aged. He returns home and realizes everything’s changed — much like the way change has come to his local area.

In "Where Are the Old Timers?" Padovano paints a picture of a place his character no longer feels connected to, and he decides to move on.

"The old men he used to talk to, who used to help him, are all gone, and everything’s changed," he said. "At the end he decides he has to leave again.

"It’s a bittersweet story," he noted. "This is my story."