BIOGRAPHY
It’s 2022 and Richard X. Heyman is releasing 67,000 Miles An Album. The disc is a collection of brand-new songs mixed with some from a few years back. The earlier compositions were written for The Doughboys, in which RXH played the drums and sang. He thought he’d try his own versions of these garage-rock-ish stompers, and he certainly puts his unique stamp on them. Then there are two songs that date back to the beginning of his songwriting – Plans and You Can Tell Me were written when RXH was a wee lad of seventeen! All in all, it all adds up to an adventurous time traveling trip through the pop landscape.
Speaking of landscapes, Heyman hails from Plainfield, New Jersey, a town which also gave us such luminaries as George Clinton & The Parliaments, jazz great Bill Evans and 60’s top-40 pop group The Critters. It was there that RXH helped form The Doughboys, who released a couple of singles on Bell Records. Subsequently, Heyman landed a record deal with Cypress/A&M and then Sire/Warner Brothers, who released his first two albums, Living Room!! and Hey Man! respectively. Along with his wife, Nancy, RXH has recorded an impressive dozen albums on his own label, Turn-Up Records. With this new CD (his fifteenth!), Heyman once again has written, produced and performed an exuberant display of melody and lyrics that will surely please the most discerning ears.
For those of you unfamiliar with RXH's music, it might help to list his influences: one can hear traces of early rock'n'roll, 60's British Invasion groups, American folk rock, Motown; even some Broadway and classical baroque find their way into the mix, but it all ends up bearing his singular sound. Besides drumming with The Doughboys, he also lent his chops to Link Wray, Mark Lindsay, Brian Wilson, The Left Banke's Michael Brown and Steve Martin Caro, and Jonathan Richman, among others. As a guitarist, he performed with Mary Weiss of the Shangri-Las, and played keyboards with Ben E. King.
