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Legal Tender’s Eric Davenport finds spiritual kinship with St. John and Sir Paul
May 16, 2008 by kyrbyraine



Let’s get it out of the way: Eric Davenport is not, and has never been, one of the Beatles. But sometimes you have to wonder if one of John Lennon’s groupies had, you know, oblivious to him dropped an egg somewhere and out hatched this glammy rocker based in Southern California. Davenport is Legal Tender, and the album Carbon McCartney is retro rock at its purest. Davenport explains it all except his possible bloodline.

Kit Burns: Your album is called Carbon McCartney, obviously a tongue-in-cheek reference to your easily detected Beatles influence. Were you conscious of your similarity to the Beatles or did you name the record that because people brought it to your attention?

Eric Davenport: Well, people have always said to me, “Ya know, you sound a lot like the Beatles/Paul McCartney,” but I think my own original style shines through. People have always compared my music to the Beatles, jokingly calling it the “Rolling Beatle Monkees Sound.” The fact, it was my young twenty/thirtysomething mates who started calling me Carbon McCartney. Ergo, the title of the CD. But please don’t get me wrong. I am in no way comparing myself to the Great Ones, but if people want to make a comparison, I can’t think of better musicians to be compared too. I won’t deny the influence is there and sometimes people hear the influence even when I don’t. I may remind people of the Beatles (or Paul), but I
don’t think I sound exactly like them. But there will never be another Mozart, Elvis, or Beatles.

Burns: Legal Tender is just basically you, correct? Or is it a full band?

Davenport: Well, on the Carbon McCartney CD it is mostly me, but Tony Hart the drummer for the old band played on three of the songs. But the new band members are about to be announced in the next few weeks.

Burns: When did you get your start in rock & roll? Did you always have this glam meets British Invasion sound?

Davenport: Well, Elvis Presley probably started it off. I saw an Elvis movie; I do believe the first one I saw was King Creole. I liked that, that got me started wanting to play the guitar. I wanted to play guitar for a while. The next big thing came when I was in grade school, I was probably in the fourth or fifth grade, and Trudy Bennett lived across the street. She came running over one day, and I can still remember we were by the flagpole at Crestmore School, and every time I see that flagpole, it reminds me. She comes
running over and says, “You’ve gotta listen to this.” She had a transistor radio, and lo and behold, if it wasn’t “She Loves You” playing by the Beatles. Then from it, that’s what I want to do! As far as the glam meets British Invasion, I really do not know how to answer that, except to say I have always played what feels good to me. I have a vary rich back ground of influences: rock, blues, Jazz, country,
Gospel, classical, big band, heavy metal (like Ozzy Osbourne and Dio), pop, and yes, glam Like Davie Bowie and the like.

Burns: Listening to Carbon McCartney is a lot of fun. Do you feel that there’s not enough fun in rock & roll these days?

Davenport: The fun days of rock & roll seem to have gone for the most part. I always tell the young guys rock is a whole lot different to day than back in the ’50s and ’60s. The guys that owned record company actually liked, played, and collected records; now companies are middle management training grounds. It’s no longer the rock & roll business, but the business of rock & roll. It’s like everything else only to make big big money. No one’s happy to just have a recording that sells and makes you some good money. I think the worst thing is most artist are try to hard to project “that rock & roll image,” and it’s like play acting; they seem afraid to be themselves and hope people will like what they see. Most people find a formula that sells, and that’s where they stay, afraid to do anything else.

Burns: Time for the most difficult choice in your life: Paul or John? Which one and why?

Davenport: That is like asking what do you like better a good meal or good sex; they’re both good in different ways. For me (the Paul part of me) Paul and I are alike in many ways. His first instrument was a trumpet, we both did the Boy Scouts, and he is down-to-Earth and sometimes a little corny. I like the
fact that he never tries to be something, he is who he is, and he is cool. You never hear him out in public cursing trying to be hip and making a jackass out of himself; he has class and he is a honorable man and someone who likes people and his fans. The John part of me is attracted to his humor and his intelligence and like Paul, he can pen a great song, genius that he be. Half-John, half-Paul makes a whole. And they were just cool. The difference between hip and cool, hip is when everybody is doing it, cool is when you’re the only one or the first one doing it.

The best cutting-edge sounds from around the globe
Legal Tender has uncanny likeness to the Beatles
10 03 2008
Artist Name: Legal Tender
Album Title: Carbon McCartney
Country: United States
Whether or not Legal Tender acquired their name from the classic B-52’s song is something I have no answer for, but I can safely assume that Carbon McCartney is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the band’s uncanny likeness to the vintage Beatles sound. And, no, don’t even bring up Oasis, who actually knocked off the Rolling Stones’ swagger as much as they did the Beatles’ boyish harmonies. On “Hey Little Girl” and “Tears Away,” vocalist Eric Ross Davenport manages to echo the flawless McCartney/Lennon style without looking like a, ahem, carbon copy. I don’t think this is much a ’60s retread as it is a statement against how dull and pointlessly angry rock & roll has become since that golden age.
Davenport is obviously having a ball here, and it translates to the listener. We pick up on his happiness and enthusiasm, his love for British Invasion pop, glam rock, psychedelia, and even ’70s heavy metal. Notice how cranked up the guitars are on “Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah” but remains absolutely melodic. That’s how the English used to play them, kids; dig up your papa’s Mott the Hoople and Sweet records and you’ll see what world (obviously, Ziggy Stardust’s homeland) where Davenport is coming from. Engaging, life-affirming, exhilarating, fun, uplifting: If we can carbon copy more McCartneys like Legal Tender, it’d be a better world.
Tags : British Invasion, Glam Rock, Mott the Hoople, psychedelia, Sweet, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Ziggy Stardust
Categories : Classic Rock, Glam Rock

Dabelly.com
Local Lint featuring
Eric Davenport

Eric Davenport rocks it his way


"It's kind of the Rolling Beatle Monkees. My style, and people seem to hear that, and my influences are Paul McCartney and the Beatles. You can really hear it, yet you can hear me too, which is really important because I don't want to sound exactly like him, that's already been done. But if I have to sound like somebody, I guess that would be the best way to go," begins Eric Davenport.

The local musician works under his band-to-be's name, Legal Tender, and has self-released "Carbon McCartney" (MCM Entertainment/Merit Records). He has a pleasant laugh and easygoing manner and is eager to share his thoughts on music and his secret writing.

"It's always kind of a mystical, magical thing." Davenport explains, "You never really know where these things come from. Sometimes it's just bam, over before it starts and you wonder what happened there and other times, it's more perspiration than inspiration. What I've started doing is to give myself a challenge-- I'm going to write a song while I'm waiting for the cookies baking in the oven.

"About 90 percent of the time I fool around with the guitar, keyboard or piano and the music will come," Davenport continues. "Sometimes you only get so far and you have to put it away for a day, a few days, a couple of years.Then you're writing something and you go aha! I remember when I wrote such-and-such and you pull it out and it works."

As always, I like to know where an artist's path began.

"Elvis probably started it off. I saw an Elvis movie, I do believe the first one I saw was, 'King Creole,' I liked that, but nothing
really happened," Davenport tells me. "I wanted to play guitar for a while. The next big thing came when I was in grade school, I was probably in the fourth or fifth grade and Trudy Bennett lived across the street. She came running over one day and I can still remember we were by the flagpole at Cressmore (in the Inland Empire area of Southern California) and every time I see that flagpole it reminds me. She comes running over and says, 'You've gotta listen to this.' She had a transistor radio and lo and behold if it wasn't 'She Loves You' playing by the Beatles. Then from there it was how do I do this?"

Davenport asked his parents for a guitar, but following his uncle's advice to find out if their son was really into music, they got him a trumpet, which he played through high school. He finally got a guitar in seventh grade.

"I was playing trumpet and guitar and it was a good thing too because trumpet helped me with my arranging," Davenport says.

He also sang and was in bands from when he got his guitar.

Davenport majored in music in college. He currently owns a software company with several programs available, including
"Jim Cannon Magic," an equestrian program, as well as "Movie Voodoo," an animated film program. He also does editing for film. But the passion next to music for Davenport is his horses. He has always had them since a child and has two Arabs, Shur (su-har) and Rene.

"I enjoy the outdoors. I do a lot of hiking and camping, backpacking, generally being outdoors doing things," Davenport states.

In whatever time he has left over, Davenport is working on getting funding for the film, "Too Many Secrets." It's about a female writer who escapes her problems with a stay in the mountains. She puts the people she meets in the book she's writing and becomes entangled in investigating a murder.

We discuss today's music scene from Davenport's perspective.

"I've noticed that more and more young people are discovering music like the Beatles and they're liking it," Davenport says. "Because it's so pure and so real, it's not encumbered by today's image-making process and dollar-generating monkey-grinding machine that you can see the personality of the music.

"I'm surprised at the amount of young people, I have kids that are eight, nine, 10 years old that like it and I have adults that like
it, it's running the gamut. That's good for me," Davenport adds about his own music.

I ask him to tell me about "Carbon McCartney."

"It's the CD that almost didn't happen," Davenport responds with a chuckle. "Originally it took me about six months to record off and on. I like to record very quick if I possibly can. In this case, I'm doing all the instruments myself, so it takes a little longer and fitting it into everyday life. After it was recorded, one evening I decided that tomorrow I'm going to make the master copy and I'm going to back it up. The next morning I woke up and my hard drive was dead, so I had no music

"I took it to a place and they tried to retrieve information off my hard drive," Davenport goes on, "they got some, some worked, but most of it was corrupt. I did have a backup disc, but it does not insure you that it will actually play and it came out corrupt too. I had to start over from scratch and it took me four-five months to get it finished off. You can't always recreate exactly what you did before."

Davenport adds that his work was affected by memory, microphone placement, weather and a range of other factors. Still the effort was finally successfully finished and released August 2007. It's been doing well too, especially in Oregon and Australia.

"It's starting to catch on," Davenport says. "I figured it would take six to eight months to get any notice considering that I am an unknown artist, but things seem to be moving a little faster than I planned."

His future is promising with Las Vegas hotels showing interest in booking him and licensing and release of his music in England pending. In the meantime, Davenport has been playing solo and is gathering musicians for his band.

Davenport is also giving back an opportunity to people who purchase his CD. If they can solve the clues in the booklet which comes with it, they can win an iPhone. The contest is continuing through May.

"I hope people give the music a listen," Davenport ends.

Legal Tender/Carbon McCartney
You have to love a group that not only acknowledges their obvious affection for the Beatles but actually named their album Carbon McCartney. Such humilty and tongue-in-cheek humor can endear a new fan to an unknown act instantly although Legal Tender are appealing enough with their songs. And what tunes are these: finger-snapping, toe-tapping pop cuts that are fueled by the buoyant spirit of the ’60s British Invasion and the beefy, speaker-filling riffs of ’70s AOR. “Hey Little Girl” explodes with flamboyant, glammy guitars and, yes, Beatlesesque harmonies. However, like the other retro tracks on the CD, this is no pale imitation; it really does sound like this record had originally come out during the era of its inspirations.
Oddly enough, for an LP named after Paul McCartney, Davenport actually recalls John Lennon even more. (Perhaps Carbon Lennon wasn’t catchy enough.) “The More Things Change” and “Victimless Crime” offer slices of tasty psychedelia without the corniness that sometimes seeps into the genre. Those who fondly recall the Beatles’ jangling, ringing riffs will be hooked on “Tears Away” and “Missing You.”
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Legal Tender/Carbon McCartney
If Legal Tender were actually a band, they’d probably find no place here as much as I adore Carbon McCartney. However, Legal Tender is simply the name of the project from singer/songwriter Eric Davenport. Although he does employ extra musicians such as drummer Tony Hart and back-up vocalist Jennifer Keenan, this is Davenport’s baby, his labor of love. Davenport nearly does everything here, and shockingly it sounds like a band effort, a tight, hook-laden power-pop record that looks to the late ’60s and early ’70s for a creative charge.
Davenport mines a handful of nearly extinct genres here from Beatles-styled guitar rock to glam to psychedelia to AM radio pop. The production frees itself from the artificial slickness and audio distortion of today’s recordings for a much clearer and classic-sounding mix. You can actually hear each instrument separately; they don’t blur together in the songs, lost in a maze of white noise. The tunes rent shelf space in your head for weeks; that’s how memorable they are, especially “Hey Little Girl” and “Windy.”

Yeah E Yeah E Yeah Yeah

The Bluesy mood of the music helps to enhance the message of the lyric here.
Nice work writing about an emotion to which almost anyone can relate
The song might have been more memorable with a chorus that has a repeating lyric-
Just a thought!
The liner notes say you were going for a lose stonsey feel, but to my ears the various elements could have be locked together a bit more tightly- the underlaying bass drum pattern feels just slightly lopsided to my ears which is part of the issue.

Your guitar solo is expressive and soulful- a potent element!
Cool gritty guitar tone, nice bass playing too.

Melody: Good music in verses, : Good music in choruses, Memorable hook
Melodies have a nice catchy and singable flow.

Structure: Well- written structure.
Good balance between repetition and variation

Lyric: Cohesive, Good use of imagery, rhymes well, Communicates emotion to listener.
The words express a universal theme and you did a good job keeping them straightforward and cohesive.
Title: Title ok, though could potentially be more memorable.

#103



Well as you, all know my CD Carbon McCartney has been released Finally!!



The CD has been doing well and getting good reviews from all of you.

Thank You.

CDBaby sold out the first week it was put up, that was a great feeling.

I have had lots of interest from as far away as the great down under, Australia.

This is a good thing.

I well have at lest two interviews in news papers in the coming weeks, so I will give you a heads up when they come out, as well as post them, and include them in the news letter.



Also, keep your fingers crossed I maybe getting some air play both here in sunny SO. Cal, but also in New York. So I will give you the heads up on that when I know.



Finally, all your words of encouragement have meant soooooooooo much to me, Thank you

And to those of you that have bought the Carbon McCartney CD, a vary special THANK YOU.



Oh, and lets not for get the contest for the iPhones.



The first and only bonus winner Joseph Luna visited Fiesta Village Family Fun Park in Colton CA, today, so look for photos on the Legal Tender Web Site at: mcmlegaltender.com. coming this week







Eric Davenport

Legal Tender




Eric R. Davenport
Merit Records