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Here’s
the “Dirt” on Alice in Chains Fan Heath Ransonnet
He begins a Thursday night appearance at Destin’s Cava Blue Bar with a song I don’t know by a band I don’t know—Dishwalla’s Angels and Devils. But the lack of familiarity is not a tuneout, not with Ransonnet’s excellent “high part” singing. He makes the vocal pyrotechnics sound effortless, never strained. After a song about his son, One and Only One—“Strangest thing, it took me exactly nine months to write that song,” Ransonnet tells me later—it’s on to some more familiar tunes. A few bars of Green Day’s American Idiot, prompted by a patron’s request, followed by Elton John’s Daniel and John Mellencamp’s Pink Houses in their entirety. The energetic singer describes his guitar playing as limited, but he’s got enough instinct to impart each song with just the right amount of accompaniment. Never too little, and certainly never too much. Later, Cava Blue’s head bartender Scott Sudakis stops by to sit in on bongos, shakers, and other percussion instruments. I’ve heard quite a few performers take on George Michael’s Faith, but none of them start out with the lyrics to Def Leppard’s Pour Some Sugar on Me. I wish Ransonnet would do the whole song that way. He says he needs to learn the words. After an original Ransonnet describes as “about a girl who keeps slippin’ away, doing bad, naughty things, and she’s gonna go to jail”—the deeply felt Crumblin’ Away—he does a little bit of Tom Petty’s Mary Jane song. Again, he apologizes for not knowing the words. Later, Ransonnet’s longtime girlfriend Roxanne tells me she knows all kinds of song lyrics. “I wish I could sing,” she adds. Ransonnet spent the last decade-plus singing in a number of rock bands, notably Spank the Monkey. The amusingly named outfit played many a gig at the Swamp before Ransonnet moved here permanently a couple years ago. The still-young talent had had enough of the rock and roll lifestyle. “I got burned,” he says. “I quit playing.” In July, he picked up his guitar for the first time in 16 months and began playing solo at the Cava Blue Bar. “I never played by myself. My girlfriend and I started spending a lot of time here, talking about music with Jack (Shoop, owner and chef).” Shoop’s gamble has paid off handsomely. Nobody would expect Radiohead or Radiohead-influenced tunes to work, but somehow they do. Alice in Chains, too. “I love that song,” a woman cries out from the bar after Ransonnet’s anything-but-bleak take on it. Ransonnet describes his own material as “Matchbox-20-ish, some kinda Radiohead-ish.” The songwriter’s common themes include “being on the road, alone, doing things you shouldn’t do and you end up feeling bad about. Some stuff, I don’t even know what I’m writing about. This one song I wrote about four years ago, I thought it was about someone else, but it turns out it’s about me!” He says his favorite album of all time is Radiohead’s The Bends, and his preferred band of the moment is the Ours. “They’re twisted, out there, mind-boggling,” Ransonnet gushes. He is a longtime admirer of the late Alice in Chains front man Layne Staley and—surprisingly—on-again/off-again Van Halen screamer Sammy Hagar. “A lot of people give me crap about that because they like David Lee Roth, but he’s my kind of guy—great singer, cool positive vibe!” One of Ransonnet’s career high points was the opportunity to record with former Ozzy Osbourne-Alice in Chains bassist Mike Inez (currently touring with Heart). He was introduced to Inez through a close friend who worked as a monitor engineer for a number of top bands. That same pal was also responsible for introducing Ransonnet to his all-time favorite performer, Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver. “It sounds cheesy, but you really can go out and get anything you want,” Ransonnet says when I ask him what important lessons he’s learned over the years. “I’ve met and hung out with superstars, and they’re normal people. Being in a band is hard. It’s a tough business and a lot of luck. I’m doing it just for the music, because I’m over trying to be a rock star. I like not worrying about it, just being able to play.” He says he will continue to perform and write, with more than 100 or so completed songs and “tons of fragments” under his belt. Ransonnet’s short-term goal is “to get a few more people in here. I just want to be happy, that’s the God’s honest truth. As long as I can play music, it’s all good.” We sit outside the Bianco restaurant for a while. Ransonnet tells me he’s going to see Velvet Revolver in Jacksonville before Roxanne comes out to inform him that it’s time to start the next set. Scott is anxious to beat on the bongos some more and take a stab at singing Pearl Jam’s classic Better Man. “I feel like crap,” Ransonnet tells me. “But when I’m up there, I feel good even if it’s only five people. I’m getting happy.” SIDEBAR: WHO? Heath
Ransonnet-guitar/vocals. He also brings a set of bongos to the
gigs “in case anyone wants to bang around.” |
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What
separates Heath Ransonnet from the rest of the acoustic guitar
guys popping up in every bar and coffee house from here to Katmandu?
It might be his exceptional voice, his raw emotion, or his intriguing
songbook—lots of original stuff, the occasional crowd pleasers,
and stuff by his favorite performers that shouldn’t go over
but somehow do.Copyright © The Beachcomber, Inc. 2003 - 2008. All rights reserved.