Now 39 years after first interviewing John Palumbo of Crack The Sky as an 18-year old music critic at The Evening Sun, Nestor finally gets to ask the singer and songwriter to reflect on the band’s unique blend of rock, progressive elements, and complex songwriting, which often tackled themes of race, culture, and politics. Palumbo shares the origins of songs like “Nuclear Apathy” and “Songs of Soviet Sons,” and discusses the band’s resilience and the joy the music bring to fans in Baltimore.
Nestor Aparicio interviews John Palumbo of Crack the Sky, discussing the band’s 50-year history and their recent performance at the Fallston Barrel House. John reflects on the band’s unique blend of rock, progressive elements, and complex songwriting, which often tackled themes of race, culture, and politics. He shares the origins of songs like “Nuclear Apathy” and “Songs of Soviet Sons,” and discusses the band’s resilience and the joy they bring to their fans. John also touches on his writing process and the band’s current activities, including upcoming shows at the Collective Encore in Columbia.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Crack the Sky, John Palumbo, songwriting, rock music, Baltimore, Maryland lottery, Heritage fair, nuclear apathy, Soviet sons, white music, progressive rock, record labels, live performances, fan engagement, musical legacy.
SPEAKERS
John Palumbo, Nestor Aparicio
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T am 1570 tasks of Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive. And I tell you what it’s my positive mindset that’s made this particular piece. App. We’re gonna be out doing a Maryland crab cake tour. All are brought to you by our friends at the Maryland lottery the magic eight ball. You know, I wrote the magic eight ball here, and it said, Will John Palumbo wind up on your podcast here before the year is over? And you know, I’ve been catching up with a whole lot of old rock stars. I’m chasing people down Rick Emmett doing a show this week, and I’m trying to chase down Getty Lee and a whole bunch of people with the Orioles. And I got an invite about a month ago to go see crack the sky play up at the fallston barrel house, which back in the day, I have interviewed art Donovan in that room. I’ve talked to I did Raven stuff in that room with Bryant McKinney in the Super Bowl era, and I hadn’t been in it since it’s been reconfigured. The place was mobbed. I love crack the sky. I interviewed them back in 1986 when I was a 17 year old music critic at the Baltimore news American and then the evening sun and I saw them at painters mill in the round. One of two shows I ever saw in the round there, actually reviewed a show that they played at Timonium at the fairgrounds in like 1988 with Don Wayner and upfront promotions. But I hadn’t seen crack in a while, and I must say this as I bring John in. Here they were the the band, the wedding band for my son, unwittingly, my son was married on the rooftop. On this side, my son was married on the top of the rusty scupper and crack the sky was playing a benefit concert appear six on a summer night, and all I could hear was ice, and she’s a dancer, and just all the good stuff over the Inner Harbor. John Palumbo, you brought the band back to life 50 years. Ain’t no way you’ve had this band 50 years at a weird in West Virginia and the Baltimore Beatles, but I am honored to have you on I was honored to be treated so kindly by everyone in your crew. Just nice, nice people. They gave me seats up in front. I was so close. It’s almost like the zoom on top of you and you guys were just great. So, I mean, keep doing this, man. You know,
John Palumbo 02:15
thank you. Thank you so much. It was a great day. I’m glad you enjoyed the show, and it was great. It’s great being here finally and get these computers working. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 02:24
I mean, I tell you what, we’ve had about three or four tries to do this, and because you’re old, and technically, you’re the tech degeneration, we figure that out, right, right, right. I’m old, that’s true, and we finally get this together. But since, like, it’s taken a week to organize this, I’ve been doing more reading and more listening and more thinking and watching more, you know, Putin and Trump and thinking songs of Soviet sons and thinking about nuclear apathy and your your writing in that era. And I just, I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know a ton about your band, other than I love your band and I listen to your music, not bullshitting like i Listen, I I listen to your music a lot, and you guys played at Heritage fair a few times, and I’ve seen you and whatnot. And I don’t geek. I took a selfie with wickowski at Heritage fair because it’s my homeland from Dundalk about five years ago. But, like, I haven’t bothered you guys in 40 years. And I honestly, after watching a zeppelin documentary twice with my buddy Johnny Allen, I don’t know your story well enough, and I literally, because your Wi Fi has been screwed up, and you’re I discovered you have a book like I can learn everything I ever want to learn about you that you have really during this period of time, not just playing great shows, like you’re doing down at the Encore and the collective you like you’ve told your story. So I felt like I was going to get your story out of you, but I’m only going to get the little snippet, because you can just sell some stuff, right? Yeah,
John Palumbo 03:46
yeah. We have that book. You mentioned a book. Yeah, I have another book, but you’re talking about that the correct sky book.
Nestor Aparicio 03:52
Sure. I want to learn about your band, because I I really love your music, man. Okay,
John Palumbo 03:59
what do you need to know? What do you need? Nestor? Well, give you anything you need to know, song
Nestor Aparicio 04:04
writing and things like nuclear apathy and white music and songs of Soviet sun, just there were things about race and culture and international and politics and all of that that’s baked into your music that’s so sort of Pink Floyd, but not Uh huh. I
John Palumbo 04:22
hear you well. Nuclear apathy started out as I was going to do a book, the philosophy of nuclear apathy is how it started. And I was on a plane coming in, coming back from somewhere to New York, and I started to look over my notes for the so called book, and I said, this would be better as a song. So I wrote, wrote it as a song. Songs of Soviet sons is a different animal. That’s like, that’s like, you know, the people misunders. People here misunderstanding what, what the people there are going through in Russia. I mean, then Soviet Union, um, and white music is just a fun song. I mean, it’s just a great white man’s, uh, kind of a snide, you know, smack to the white man who has no rhythm,
Nestor Aparicio 05:23
myself included, or an All American boy in your case. But for you, in writing these songs and singing these songs, performing all these years, the thing that was lost on me in listening to your music, just you know, in the privacy my home and only experience it, I’ve probably seen you guys a dozen times over the years, right? And it hasn’t been up front close watching you play, just sort of like singing along, and I like your songs and whatnot, but, like, I haven’t been up close. And I was up close thanks to your band at fallston a couple weeks ago. And I just the musicianship and the, I mean, you just have these signature changes and just complex music that you wrote back in the day. And I, and I and to some degree, you bring so much joy to people. And I’ll just say that my wife is not familiar with you, other than um, than hot razors, right and right. So she, she’s from New Hampshire. She didn’t experience you. She’s 52 years old. You know, knows of you through me. We’ve been married 22 years. She knows the song since I play them, right? But she doesn’t know that. Like 98 rock, 1979 Holly bird Middle School, somebody comes in with white music or, you know, and the songs are on the radio, and you were a part of the culture here, right in Baltimore, for, for anyone who’s from Baltimore, they know that, but they you know your story. And for my wife to walk into this room full of crack cultists, crack heads and everybody knows every word, and she was so titillated by how much fun everyone else was having with it, she felt a little left out to some degree, but, but to her, Your music is new, right? But more than that, like this Pink Floyd Poppy, like, I don’t even know where to put you or what rack to put you in all these years later, but it’s still, I would say, timeless, ageless, because it’s classic rock in the most classic way.
John Palumbo 07:24
I appreciate it. I really do appreciate it. Thank you. Part of the problem with us, like not really breaking through, was no one knew where to put us. No one really could tag us thinking, I mean, they tagged us as Prague, and we weren’t really pure frog. We’re not really a frog band. We do some progressive changes, but I wouldn’t call some band when you when you hear like Spock’s beer and bands like that, that’s pure Prague. We’re a rock and roll band. Some of the bins when we visited record store, they had us in jazz. So, yeah, no one knew what to do with us. Was part of the problem. The other part of the problem was a record label and and they’re stumbling around not really knowing what to do, period. Yeah, that was,
Nestor Aparicio 08:17
you know, that was an obvious thing, and I think that’s been a story well told for many, many years in life, song and all of that. But for your resiliency, for the resiliency of what you’ve done through all these years, even me writing, I found that that piece I wrote about you in 1986 crack is back. You were the cover of the weekend thing. I think you were playing painters mill or something at the time, sort of blowing up Detroit, maybe a little before greenhouse in that era, and there’s been a lot of lives for your band. But I think the thing for me is being exited from it as just the guy loves your music and hasn’t come out to a show or felt you’ve been places I’ve been. I mean, just like the heritage fair made it easier for me to check in with you every couple years in a place that wasn’t like a bar or a big theater, and then I got this invite, and I checked back in, and I’m just, you know, it brings me back, not just to my youth, but also my to my wife. She’s like, I this is a good band. I like this band. And I’m like, Yeah, I like it too, but you’re still making music, right? So, I mean, I got handed CDs and all this stuff. Tell me about making music in the modern era for you, because I would think, unlike in the day where you’re kind of making it for radio, making it for this or that, probably a little liberating for you at this point to be making music, right,
John Palumbo 09:38
right? Yeah. We make it for ourselves. Of course, radio is pretty much dead. Record companies are pretty much dead, except I think universal is the only one that’s left, and this followed up everybody else. I might be wrong about that, but I’m pretty sure universal is the one that’s left. And, you know, we, we, it’s such a good band. Really, you know, the players that we have are just so good, and I don’t feel, you know, weird about saying that, because I consider myself more the writer than than even a performer. For sure, somebody called me a what’s I just went blank, conductor. Anyway,
Nestor Aparicio 10:22
the conductor,
John Palumbo 10:23
yeah, no, no, no, I’ll think of it. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 10:27
you shouldn’t tell the story of the band, you know what? I mean, even it sounds like she’s a dancer, where, like, it’s a spoken word, you’re sort of an orator. And then there’s the part where, like, the crowd sings choruses with you, you know, yeah, it’s
John Palumbo 10:42
really neat when I do that. I yeah, I like writing. That’s, that’s my favorite thing to do, is to write. And, you know, everybody has a studio now in their house, and so that that’s pretty much, you know, helped us a lot. I’ll record. I’ll write something recorded here and then send it to Rick, who’s got a studio in West Virginia, and he will then invite Joe Macri and Bobby heard and Joey dmico, and they will cut live what I have sent them. So sometimes my nothing but my voice will appear on on a track, which is fine with me, you know, because there’s certainly better guitar players than I am and and that’s kind of how it goes. And now we have Bill hubar, a new member of the band, and he’s just putting some sparkle to it, you know. So, like I said, we do it because we love to do it. We do get to play other, you know, other areas besides Baltimore, but it’s spotty and certainly not as insane as Baltimore. Baltimore has been so good to us. It’s a It’s just we were going out, I guess, in fallston, and I was waiting in the wings, and I was talking to Rick, and I just shook my head, and I said, What’s why is this, you know, the Baltimore thing? Because we were listening to the fans out there waiting, and some of them were singing our songs. And I just turned to Rick and I said, this is so bizarre. You know that here in Baltimore, it’s just like, it’s wonderful. And
Nestor Aparicio 12:33
you’re in Jersey these days, right? You’re, I mean, dude, whatever that hazing thing, we’re in the Eagles gear. They almost do that. What you doing? Man, I have
John Palumbo 12:42
Eagles fried. That’s what I’ve been living here forever. We’re just, we’re just a little bit east of Philly. So that’s,
Nestor Aparicio 12:52
by the way, I found this thing here. I want to share this with you. If you look, you’ll really see my face. But this, really, this is the story I wrote about you guys. And it’s dated December 26 1986 so it was hammer jacks. You guys were doing hammer jacks, hammer jacks, Inner Harbor concert hall. I want to say that the way bud Becker did hammer jacks, Inner Harbor concert hall rack, the sky rack is back,
John Palumbo 13:19
sounds like bud, that’s great. That’s, you know, bud,
Nestor Aparicio 13:22
let me dude, I true story. I’ll pull that back up. December 26 1986 I was 18 years old. I was born october 14. So I was in those clubs writing about you guys. I was a kid in overwhelmed by all of it. And, you know, you talk about the studio thing, like the Bernie uh top and Elton John, two different rooms thing was such a historic, you know, rock and roll thing that everyone knows about. And I, you know, the more I look at, I went to the zeppelin documentary. I’m become more of a rock historian. And even back in his 60s, when all the songwriters, the Barry manilows, would get together, write jingles and in rooms together in New York, and when the industry began just having great writers, and, you know, just being someone that says, I’m a writer, I like to write. It’s what I like to do, right? That’s makes you unique, right? I mean, and,
John Palumbo 14:19
yeah, I think so. I think that the most important thing certainly are the songs. Without that, there’s nothing. There is no band. And so I’m really proud of my contribution to that. Like I said, I love writing and and the band is very keen on on having, you know, good songs and ones that that I don’t throw away, you know, I consider Okay, they’re good and, and so they do their best to really make those songs shine. Reluctant front man. That was what someone called me. I’m a reluctant front man, which is perfect.
Nestor Aparicio 15:02
It. I saw you sitting a few out. And I’ve been to shows for all these years, like I sang in a band for a while, just standing for three hours. I radio, I stand, I sit, I stand like and I don’t think anything about it, but I thought, you know, I mean advanced jam and take a seat for a minute. I, you know, I see all sorts of performers. I don’t think that’s on rock star at this point. I thought it’s like, it makes you, you, it’s part of your gig at this point, you know, yeah, another
John Palumbo 15:29
couple months or so, and I’ll be sending the whole
Nestor Aparicio 15:34
How you feeling? You doing? Okay?
John Palumbo 15:35
Really, good. Yeah, I’m feeling great. Thank you. How are you? I’m excellent.
Nestor Aparicio 15:40
You know, I mean, you know, I would say this, you guys, this is how old I am. You guys in the band gave me a seat, and I had to sit down. I have been standing in the back, you know, Surf City, and, right? You know what? I mean, hold on at the beginning, and I’m staying. It’s a rock show to me, so it’s a standing thing. But then I looked around and John, I don’t want to date myself, but I’m 56 now, and I was one of the younger folks. You know? I mean, your crowd tends to be and the crowd’s all sitting down, so they’re not going to hold it against you. Yeah, I mean,
John Palumbo 16:10
at all. We’re seeing a real cross section of age in the crowd. It’s, it’s really incredible. We see some people our age, we see their kids, and in some cases, we see their grandchildren. You know, we’re when we do meet and greet, we’ll have people coming up to us and say, you know, this is my grandfather. Told me that you guys are a good man. I never saw you before, so we get that a lot.
Nestor Aparicio 16:36
Well, you’re still out touching people. You’re great musicians. You have great songs, and a mom and dad know a couple of them and that, you know, it’s the right atmosphere for listening to we all have to have first exposure to music, right? Like, what was your first exposure to music? I mean, Johnny Allen, I were out having a boozing it up after the zeppelin thing the other day, and he was telling me his stories of the early 70s and the first things he heard and Beatles records and stuff. You’re a little older than me. Where did you grow up? And where was that record store, or that place you first heard music?
John Palumbo 17:10
The record store was my mom, and she bought me the Meet the Beatles. That was the first actual, the first record music that I ever heard. So it was done in my bedroom when I listened to meet the Beatles. And was, like most people, I was just knocked out, you know. And, and the more I listened, the more I kept saying to myself, this might be what I want to do, you know, this is a if you can do this for a living, it would be really a fun thing to do. And, yeah, so mom was the one that turned me on to that.
Nestor Aparicio 17:44
To mom, pardon me, if Mom must have been supportive of your music effort. She brings the beat her kid wants to be a musician. Perfect, right? Yeah,
John Palumbo 17:54
she was. She was very supportive, as was my father, until I announced to them that Ricky and I were going to go to New York and and that they were a little stymied by that. That was, uh, that was something that they weren’t too keen on. Where did you grow up? What was your hometown? And same as Rick weird in West Virginia. Weird, yeah, I mean, weird is a weird
Nestor Aparicio 18:16
place. It’s a little strip between, like, Pennsylvania and Ohio. I looked it up. It looks like it would be like, sort of a beautiful, sort of, you know, rivery way, like, area, right? No,
John Palumbo 18:28
some a lot of West Virginia is, this was a steel town before they closed the mills up. This was just a steel town. And you had, we were talking about this the other day. You had my wife and I were talking, you had two options. If you were a man and growing up there, you could go to West Liberty, State Teachers, college and become a teacher, or you could go to the mill. That was it. We had no idea that you can make money off of like playing tennis. You know, we had no idea that was a career, and certainly other things. And so, yeah, it’s, it was really hardcore steel town. Yeah, John
Nestor Aparicio 19:12
plumbo is our guest, crack the sky. And my crazy thing, crack is back now, 39 years old, but they are back, and they’re they’ve never really left, and they’re playing, they’re more shows if, if my introduction to say, if you haven’t seen them in a while, go see them down at the collective encore in Columbia. It’s a great place as well. I do want to give a shout out to my buddy Gus colarus and Axios wines. We lost Joey Mullen from bad faith. I saw bad finger play. The only time I’ve been to the collective encore was about a year and a half. Two years ago, a friend of mine had a birthday party Gus and he hired the band and brought them in and the band and I got to see bad finger play really recently, it was beautiful, but it was at the place. You were playing, which is a neat little spot. It’s right off the lake down in Columbia by the mall. The collective encore. If you don’t know about it, check it out. March, 28 March, 29 March, 30. Sunday matinee for those of you can’t stay up late like me up in fallston, boozing it up, because that was the hardest part of seeing you in fallston is like, what time I go on, what’s up? Wait, what time, like, what time? How far is the show from? Al, I feel like I’m just, you know, old, right? We’re all getting older. So tell me about the new music a little bit and and your writing and your style. And, you know, I’m a writer. When I die my tombstone will, I mean, I was a writer when I was 18 years old, writing about your band, right? I but in the modern era, writing about football, baseball, sports, politics, life, my life, you know, things like that. It is what it soothes me. It, it. It counsels me. It guides me. It it helps me in every facet of being able to get an email out to you to have you on the show writing so important, you know, you grew up in, you know, I google weird because I had always knew you were Pittsburgh band from West Virginia, sort of weirdly transplanted through Baltimore. But like when I think about your background there, and how you got from there to here, and the writing part of your education, and being able to string songs together and string words together and write things like nuclear apathy and sing songs of Soviet suns in the 70s and 80s, I would just say for your writing and for what your background in writing and your education has to be instrumental that it served you for a lifetime of being a writer. Yeah,
John Palumbo 21:39
yeah, that’s what I do. I mean, that’s my job and and I do it every day. I try to write something every day. That doesn’t mean I come up with good stuff every day, you know, I throw a lot of stuff away, but then, you know, it’s a great feeling when something sticks, you know, and I’ll know right away. I’ll try and convince myself that something’s good when it’s trash, and I’ll just do not throw it away, but the good songs, the good songs, stick. And so that’s that’s my job.
Nestor Aparicio 22:15
So I’m at your show, and they gave me these great seats and whisked me up there about eight songs in, I was checking out your merch, and I had to pee because I’m 56 and I’m at the show, right? And I got up to pee, and I’m in the bathroom, and you start to tell this story, and you start to play like this most familiar song, and it’s the other song my wife knew, because it was just such a gigantic hit with kicks even up in New Hampshire. Don’t close your eyes. I Right. I’d sort of forgotten that you were on it. I remember seeing your name on the liner, so I knew you wrote it. I don’t think about it much. I had Steve on the show when he retired, and had that big, beautiful night that everybody was a part of down at Merriweather and you. But writing that song, I don’t know the story of that. Tell me that, oh,
John Palumbo 23:00
I didn’t write it myself. It’s co written by Donnie vernel and myself. We co wrote it. And the deal was we were, they were at my house, or Donnie was at my house, and we were writing, you know, just writing songs. But Bud Prager was their manager, the Big Shot manager, and he called me and said, I’d like you to write songs with kicks. And I kind of laughed. I said, because that’s you want to talk about two ends of the spectrum, you know? He said, No, I think it’ll work. And
Nestor Aparicio 23:36
did he say, Don’t tell me. No, tell me, yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s my kicks. Comment. Sorry,
John Palumbo 23:41
sorry, Nestor, it was probably a good one. Anyway, we started to write, and then I hooked up with the rest of the band, and I was supposed to produce it, and yeah, and we were working on it when we got a call, or I got a call from Eddie Kramer, who said, you know, he’s, he’s getting ready to come in and produce the kicks record. And I said, Oh, really? I said, because that’s what I’m doing, you know? And you said, well, we’ll have to find out, you know? I mean, he was very nice about it. There were no, you know, wasn’t weird. And they obviously went with Eddie Kramer. If he did, I’m not sure if he ended up producing that record or not. Do you know
Nestor Aparicio 24:24
I don’t off the top of my head at all? I mean, it’s been, it’s been a 40 minute, 40 years a minute. But you know, when I heard the song, and it’s familiar to my wife, and what do you think about that song? Made it a hit and made it ageless and timeless, that it even transcends, that you sing it, and it’s a part of what you do, and everybody loves it so much.
John Palumbo 24:48
Well, I think what made it a hint was at the time, that was, you know, hard rock ballads were heavy rock ballads were like everybody. Doing it, and it’s, it’s the story. I don’t know if you know they were playing live, and they, they did, not even they did that song, kind of like, almost together to set, and someone in the record business world was there and said, Why? Why is that song not being cut as a single? And this person had bud pragers here, and had whoever the head of Atlantic was, who was that I forgot, and they ended up putting it as a single, and it went, but it was a year or so before they even picked that out of the catalog and went with that. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 25:38
that was such a great time for MTV and for music and all that stuff. I missed the 70s and 80s. And every time you guys play, I can go back and experience a little bit of my heart and soul. And my wife got a kick out of how much I like your music, too. So I was very amusing to her to see me have so much fun So, and I’m slightly even thinking about it. So there isn’t that what it’s supposed to do, like, really supposed to
John Palumbo 26:03
be fun. That’s say, every time we go out and something weird happens or something difficult happens, you know, we it’s supposed to be fun.
Nestor Aparicio 26:12
Well, as long as I have a classroom nearby and I can stand and sit, you know, and you get it over with by 11 o’clock, because kids gotta go to bed, you know, go to the matinee on Sunday, John, I appreciate all that you went through to make this happen, and I’ve appreciated all these years. I haven’t spoken in 39 years, but I want you to know that it hasn’t been 39 years since I’ve listened to music, and I still enjoy it and appreciate your contributions. And I always try to say to musicians like you, no matter how big a shot you are or whatever, I would just say, you know, there have been so many moments where your music comes into life. And I’ve spent a life in sports with the ravens and Orioles and all this stuff. Anybody, anybody that knows me would tell you, music is the thing that that sort of fills me in a way, and so you provide that. And I appreciate that, man.
John Palumbo 27:02
Thank you. Thank you so much. That’s that makes me feel good. That’s great. Go
Nestor Aparicio 27:06
buy the book. Go see the band. Go buy the CDs, go hit the merch stand. Tip The waiters. Go see them down there at the collective encore in Columbia. And you can find all the stuff to do out at crack the sky com. And if you’ve never also you’re missing out.
John Palumbo 27:24
If you come to the show, you can pick up the book there.
Nestor Aparicio 27:28
Okay, well, and I honestly, man, we got a bad Wi Fi connection. I don’t need to wear your ass out after you wrote a book and all that, if I love the music and all but for you to say to me at the beginning of the interview, what do you want to know? I’ll tell you anything you want to know. And there’s actually a book where I can read anything I want to know. I don’t want to be the guy that doesn’t read a book. So just so you know, I’m gonna I write books, guy that still reads books, so I’m fine with pimping your book. John Palumbo, crack this guy, go check them out. They’re as relevant as ever. The music’s as great as ever. And let John sit down every other song and you use the restroom and have a good time and go see him three times down there. I’m back for more. I’m Nestor. We are W, N, S, D. Am 1570 it’s house in Baltimore, getting into the Rock and Roll with crack the sky on Baltimore positive you.
