Saturday September 17th, 2011

by Scott Wink of CharlestonFoodBloggers.com

Mount Pleasant, SC -  The last time Jeremy Current was in town I had the opportunity to have dinner at Long Point Grill in Mount Pleasant with him and a friend of mine, Claire Long.  Jeremy is headed back to Charleston this week at the end of a week long tour across North and South Carolina.  Below is a schedule of those concerts followed by some exerpts from our dinner where we discuss food and some background on his music.

Jeremy Current with Luz:

Tuesday Sept 20th @ The Berkeley Cafe Raleigh, North Carolina

Wednesday Sept 21st @ The White Mule  Columbia, South Carolina

Thursday Sept 22nd @ Evening Muse Charlotte, NC

Friday Sept 23rd @ Midnight Rooster Hartsville, SC

Saturday Sept 24th @ The Village Tavern Mount Pleasant, SC (Charleston)

Jeremy Current:  The first song on my album “Dark Land of the Sun” is FYEO which stands for “For your eyes only”.  I was in a play my freshman year in college. It was called Urinetown: The Musical.  It was on Broadway about 10 years ago and won a few Tony Awards. It is a hilarious musical about a town who has to pay to pee because there is not enough good water anymore due to a long drought.  I was in this play as Mr McQueen who was the second hand man to the guy in town calling the shots, Mr Caldwell.  When I was in this production I had a crush on this girl who had the lead role. One day she went back to her car during rehearsal and there was a note on her car that said FYEO on the outside of it.  On the inside it said something like I have feelings for you and I just can’t tell you who I am right now.  This note ends up coming back to me because a few people tell her I have this crush on her.  I just couldn’t say anything about it because I didn’t write it but the fact that she thought I wrote it was enough for her to be interested.  

Charleston Food Bloggers:  Did you find out who really wrote it?

Jeremy:  I know now, yeah.

CFB: Do most of your lyrics relate to personal experiences or do you try to channel other people’s emotions too?

Jeremy: So far they are all mine. I have written a few songs recently based on some dreams I have had so they were not real life experiences but they were still coming from me.  I know a lot of people write out of fantasy. I have a friend who loves the idea of southern living back in the 50’s when things were a little different than they are now. Things were less commercial.  It is tough because there are people who do it well and it feels real but there are also people who you hear singing something and you want to immediately discredit their songs because they seem not genuine.  I never want to come across as someone who was just spouting off about stories. To me it is more about what life is about and connecting with people. Speaking genuinely and telling your story is what people will relate to.

A lot of people want to pronounce FYEO as a word instead of initials.  It is on iTunes and they had this auto correction. If you make all the letters capital they immediately leave the first letter capital and the other letters lowercase so it does look like a word not an acronym.

CFB: The fifth song on the album is Mile Long Driveway.  It has so much in it. It feels like an album’s worth of emotion. “Reaching out with broken hands and feel there is no hands reaching back at you”…amazing.

Jeremy:  I wrote that song at a really depressing part of my life.  There are not many songs that I can play and every single time feel something.  A lot of time I can get excited because a performance is going great or the reception is great but this song I don’t need anything to happen but to sing the words in front of people and it means a whole lot to me.  I had something that I had to share...something that usually people don’t talk about and it lets people connect.

Dinner:

After a brief and informative conversation with our server Jeremy decides on a glass of Angeline Pinot Noir.    Deciding on dinner was a little more difficult. He was torn because he said everything sounded amazing.  Eventually after several stops by our server we decided on dinner.  Our table ordered:

-Braised short ribs served with boursin-whipped Yukon gold potatoes, seared asparagus, and port wine jus

-Sweet tea cured pork chop served with herb potato cake, braised red cabbage, and apple cider brandy sauce

-Grilled butcher’s steak, truffled frittes, and green peppercorn demi-glace

Jeremy had the steak. If you are curious he ordered it rare.

The pork chop