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Nov 06, 2015 Web Exclusive By Frank Valish

To tell her story, Freda Love Smith (Blake Babies, Antenna, The Mysteries of Life) chooses an entirely original conceit, setting her personal narrative in the context of food, cooking, and the connection they have to family, music, and life. Smith frames her story around the yearlong cooking sessions she has with her oldest son Jonah, as he spends his last year of high school at home before going off to college. Teaching Jonah (and later her youngest son, Henry) to cook allows Smith to bond with her sons, and she weaves her own personal history in and out of the stories she tells about them. Or is it vice versa? It’s hard to tell. “A Rock Memoir, with Recipes.” Or a food and family memoir, sprinkled with rock and roll. Either way, Smith covers all the relevant ground.

Written in a conversational tone, Red Velvet Underground finds Smith discussing her musical history, from picking up the drums to moving from Indiana to Massachusetts and starting Blake Babies, from the dissolution of that band to her time with Antenna and eventually The Mysteries of Life with her husband Jake. She discusses her quasi-nomadic lifestyle, making ends meet as a musician working a varying multitude of different jobs. She shares anecdotes about Juliana Hatfield, Evan Dando, and, perhaps surprisingly, even Henry Rollins. All these stories are told intermingled with her tales about cooking and food. Relevant recipes end each chapter. Chapters are usually brief, and Red Velvet Underground is a relatively quick read.

At first, it seems odd to couch a book subtitled “A Rock Memoir” so heavily within a context of cooking. But as one makes his or her way through the book, it becomes clear that, in comingling the two, Smith is offering up a rounded version of herself, evenly balancing her loves of music, food, and family. For Smith, they intertwine. And in presenting them together, Smith shares her own story with honesty and integrity. Red Velvet Underground is Freda Love Smith. And we thank her for sharing.

(http://lovesmiths.blogspot.com) (www.agatepublishing.com)

Author rating: 7/10