John DeNicola

Don’t Wait

Third album from Academy Award/Golden Globe winning songwriter. Nine songs inspired by his first professional band “Sweetback” that he played with when he was 19 years old. With some of the players from the band playing on the tracks. Old Style Tip On Jacket CD’s and Lp’s available with amazing artwork by Jenna Shot. Both CD and LP have inserts with lyrics and more artwork.

Two little words. Incalculable impact. Don’t Wait is not just the title of John DeNicola’s new album; it’s an exhortation—and he means it. “Get busy!” the celebrated singer/songwriter/producer urges. “Your family, your friends, your passions—whatever you’ve been wanting to say or do—the time is now.”

Though a sad event was the catalyst for this collection, the results are truly uplifting. Last year marked the sudden passing of Tim Lawless, a uniquely talented vocalist that DeNicola had been making music with since they were Long Island teenagers. The loss led DeNicola to compose “King of His Own World” as a tribute to Lawless. And, after pouring his heart out, alone at the piano, DeNicola went further, assembling former bandmates from back in the day to play on it.

Local favorites Sweetback were excited and confident when a major label came sniffing around in the early Eighties—but their dream deal never materialized. So while the fellas stayed friends, they went separate ways musically. “Some of us wanted to make money as a cover band, and some of us wanted to pursue our own music,” DeNicola says of the breakup. 

DeNicola, of course, leaned toward original stuff—and made quite a go of it. First, as the Academy Award-winning, Grammy-nominated co-writer of “(I Had) The Time of My Life” and “Hungry Eyes,” both mega-hits from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. Next, he went on to pen tunes for the likes of John Waite, discover up-and-comers (such as Kara’s Flowers, better known now as Maroon 5) and launch iconic indie label Omad. Then, beginning with 2019’s The Why Because, DeNicola began releasing his own records as a showcase for his incredibly catchy songs, gently beseeching voice and prowess on too many instruments to mention here.

All these years later, DeNicola had the ways, the means, and the still-strong musical relationships to put a do-over on the past. “After Tim died, I got the idea to follow through with that record Sweetback didn’t get to make,” he says. “It seemed like a noble task.” 

Have a listen and revel in what noble sounds like. Several songs, including “King of His Own World” and “Amen and Hallelujah,” harken back to the jazzy R&B that was Sweetback’s specialty—all bouncy horns and funky Fender Rhodes. No surprise there, since the tracks boast long-ago bandmates Greg Schliech on keys, Jeff Lange on sax, Ken Favre on guitar and Bob Myers on drums. 

Yet other songs feel worlds away from that party vibe. “Flotsam and Jetsam” is a wave-swept plea with yearning vocals over grungy guitar and brooding brass. Sixties-tinged “A Room Full of You,” with its sitar and tambura, has a swaying lilt that belies its love-from-afar loneliness. 

Much of the album’s theme arose organically, without discussion or plan, from a creative mind-meld between DeNicola and Jason Stutts (the Omad artist Rust Dust), who wrote the words for four of the LP’s nine songs. “Usually, when I collaborate with any lyricist, I send a musical piece with random syllables sung as a scratch melody,” DeNicola explains. “Jason’s genius is in the way he weaves a story out of my random ’oohs’ and ‘las.’” 

Take, for example, “A dirty penny stuck on a lonely avenue/She scraped him up and showed him what good love can do,” from the jaunty “Saint Samantha’s Singing Penny.” Or this imploring line from the piano-nuanced title track: “Never let today be a treasure that we throw away.”

The connective tissue to the songs on Don’t Wait is that very message. Even the cool cover of “Apocalypse,” by Moby Grape legend Peter Lewis, fits right in. “I’d always thought this song was a Seventies forewarning about the state of the earth’s ecology,” DeNicola says. “I later learned from Peter that it’s about an incident in the desert when he accidentally shot himself with his own gun.” A friend tied a tourniquet around Lewis’s leg and roared off on his motorcycle to get help, leaving the musician to painfully contemplate his life—and its looming end. 

DeNicola, who calls death “nature’s number one flaw,” nonetheless reveals, “It’s always a surprise to me when anyone dies. Losing Tim was, and just recently another songwriter friend passed away within two weeks of a diagnosis. So tell your partner, your children, your friends how much you care, and do those things you want to do but haven’t found time for yet.” 

It’s more than a beautiful record, it’s an imperative: Don’t Wait!