Press release -
MR. AIRPLANE MAN: Boston Punk-Blues Duo Return to The Dirty Water Club
For over 20 years Mr. Airplane Man, have been creating stomping, hard-driving original songs that combine elements of blues, punk, garage rock and psychedelic pop into an unusually compelling and distinctively haunting mixture.
In the late 1990s, Mr. Airplane Man were based in Boston and went on tour and worked with their mentors, Morphine, and played on bills with The White Stripes, The Blues Explosion, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Reigning Sound. Because of their stripped-down guitar-and-drums instrumentation, they often were compared to The White Stripes, but Mr. Airplane Man crafted a stubbornly non-retro, distinctly feminine version of the blues that felt more deeply personal and soulfully entrancing than the more mannered and self-conscious blues affectations of Jack White.
The duo were fairly popular on the East Coast and in Europe, and released a series of prized recordings on Sympathy for the Record Industry and other underground labels in the early 2000s before Mr. Airplane Man mysteriously disappeared for the better part of a decade. Tara McManus and Margaret Garrett moved away from each other and began raising their kids, and the group was seemingly forgotten until December 2014, when The Lost Tapes, a collection of unreleased 1999 recordings, was released out of the blue.
“We’re both single moms. We had a lot to juggle,” Garrett says in an interview at a picnic table on a sunny, breezy day in the park at the south end of the reservoir. “We had different bands, but we both missed playing together. We re-met in Boston and played a couple shows, and it felt amazing.”
Newly reinvigorated, Garrett and McManus flew to Europe and began recording the songs that would end up being released in 2016 as Geneva Session by Swiss tastemaker Robin Girod. Mr. Airplane Man also started working again with a former producer, Reigning Sound/Oblivians mastermind Greg Cartwright. McManus and Garrett rerecorded a few songs from the previous sessions, but they were so inspired by their surroundings that they wrote several new tunes that ended up on Jacaranda Blue, Mr. Airplane Man’s ninth album, which was released in March 2018 by Sympathy for the Record Industry, a seemingly dormant label whose recent revival echoes Mr. Airplane Man’s return.
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The Dirty Water Club started in October 1996 in the Tufnell Park neighbourhood of north London, at a venue called The Boston. The club's name is derived from The Standells' 1966 hit 'Dirty Water' which glorifies the US city of Boston, Massachusetts.
Past performers have included The White Stripes (voted by Q Magazine as one of the top 10 gigs of all time, Mojo one of the top 30 and Kerrang one of the top 100!), The Gories, Country Teasers, Black Lips, NOBUNNY, Kid Congo Powers, The Fleshtones, Billy Childish, Radio Birdman, The Dirtbombs, Thee Michelle Gun Elephant, The 5.6.7.8's, The Horrors and The Brian Jonestown Massacre to name just a few. The club has also seen some original '60s performers, such as The Monks, ? and the Mysterians, Kim Fowley, Sky Saxon, GONN, Michael Davis of the MC5 and more grace its stage.
Their in-house record label, Dirty Water Records, is one of the leading garage/beat/(real) R&B labels in the world.
