September 16-22, 2004

list cap

Robert Hazard

by Nicole Pensiero

When he was a teenager, Robert Hazard flipped burgers at the Philadelphia Folk Festival. This year, he performed there. And in between? Well, in between Hazard — the son of a local opera singer — spent some time as Philadelphia's own new-wave hero, a vision in black leather, singing about the "Escalator of Life" in a robotic manner that was part Bowie, part Gary Numan.

"The deal then was to be sparse and economical with your words, and numb in your attitude," the 55-year-old singer-songwriter recalls. "It's kind of ironic — the songs I'm doing now came about because I got into poetry and wrote endless lyrics, which I started putting to music. It's poetry-driven music."

Poetry-driven music … from Robert Hazard? Yepper, and it's darn good too, in a Mellancampish kind of way, not to mention liberating for the former rocker-turned-folksy-storyteller. Hazard's self-produced album, the haunting The Seventh Lake (which is currently being shopped around for a distribution deal), is a roots-laden story-song collection of heartache and loss set to the sounds of mandolin, harmonica and accordion — and not a single steely synthesizer.

Hazard says it's a long way from "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," the song he wrote that Cyndi Lauper took to the top of the charts 20 years ago. "This was done on a shoestring budget, with no real expectations," Hazard said. "But it was truly the record I wanted to make. And the goal now is to just gather a group of people that like what I do so I can continue to make music."

Fri., Sept. 17, 8 p.m., $19.50-$22, with the Brindley Brothers, The Point, 880 W. Lancaster Ave., Bryn Mawr, 866-468-7619.