The Lenny DiNardo Blog

Hot Stove/Cool Music/Lukewarm Prospects

(Boston DirtDogs photo)

Lenny showed up at the Hot Stove/Cool Music benefit recently and jammed with Theo and Gammons. That's definitely a good sign. In terms of his chances of jumping back into the organization with all the pitching changes this year, I have no clue.  Our pitching is chock-full-of-warm-bodies, so who knows -- especially as Hideki Okajima is an experienced lefty and will definitely make the team, if for no other reason than to be the Nelson to Dice-K's Pedro. 

For now, here are Lenny's winter league final numbers: 1-0, 2.07, 16K, 5BB in 13 innings pitched.

RIP, Nelson.

No Headbanging

Even though Lenny is still rehabbing from his neck injury, he's set to rock out at tonight's Hot Stove/Cool Music show.  The Herald has a good article about his musical tastes...turns out he's not the Arroyo-Lite that folks seem to think...he's more Spoon-lite, perhaps

DiNardo, who’s spent most of this season on the injured list, will be the first to tell you that, musically, he’s no Arroyo.

“I thought Bronson was great,” DiNardo said by phone last week. “He’s really into it. It takes a lot of salt to get up onstage and perform. I wish I had the talent.”
Unlike Arroyo, whose taste seems to have stalled in the grunge era, DiNardo favors less commercial and infinitely more hip worlds of indie and college rock.
“Bronson’s a little more interested in contemporary hard rock,” DiNardo said. “That’s where our tastes diverge. To be completely honest, I don’t listen to the radio. I don’t think there’s anything good there.”

Several years ago (2003), the highlight of my spring was the preseason hot stove/cool music concert, where I inexplicably had a VIP pass...I was rather intoxicated, hanging with Damon, Wake, Theo...and by hanging...I mean making them uncomfortable --

1. Asking Theo where he picked up girls, because "people think I look like you" (he told me he had a girlfriend and didn't get out that often...of course that didn't stop me from asking him several more times);
2. Telling Casey Fossum that he was "DEFINITELY going to be the #5 starter this year" at least six separate times;
3. Welcoming Todd Walker to Boston (he had just been signed) and being unable to help him lose one of the two girls following him around (they wanted NOTHING to do with me, but Walker was a cool guy and tried to keep me in the conversation);
4. High-fiving Gammons (and I think Rich Eisen) as I was leaving the bathroom;
5. Interrupting Theo on the phone (he was negotiating the release of Millar from that japanese contract) to tell him "we [were] all going next door to sing karaoke at T's pub";
6. Oh yeah...actually believing that everyone (wake, fossum, arroyo, gammons) was coming with me to sing karaoke at T's Pub (they said they were coming).

Hot Stove/Cool Music will always bring back fond memories.

(Yo. Click the Beavis & Butthead picture above...)

The Peter Gammons Sessions

Jeff Horrigan is reporting that Peter Gammons has released a new album, named "Never Slow Down, Never Grow Old." And who plays backup? You guessed, DiNardo, Theo, and Arroyo. More impressive perhaps are the other back-up singers -- what a ball club.

The guest musicians include George Thorogood, Juliana Hatfield, Kay Hanley, Paul Barrere (Little Feat), USA Mike Eisenstein, Elan Trotman, Chris Toppin, Theo Epstein, Bronson Arroyo, Lenny Dinardo, Tim Wakefield and Zack Scott, with Kevin Youkilis, Trot Nixon, Gabe Kapler and Don Orsillo joining the backing chorus on “Wake Me, Shake Me.”

Don Orsillo? Really? Wow.

Random Music Interview

Yeah... Red Sox Nation (google cached page) sat down with Lenny last month to discuss his then-upcoming Hot Stove/Cool Music performance.  Among the most awkward questions asked?

How similar are pitching and playing the guitar?

And Lenny was gracious enough to play along:

They're very similar. There are 100 styles of both, and the more unique you are, the better your chances of being successful. It's like a lead guitarist like Joey Santiago of the Pixies. You hear him play, and you know exactly who it is. A lot of other guys are just carbon-copies of someone else. Pitching is the same. A guy like Greg Maddux can throw four different fastballs on the same corner. They'll all move differently, and it's like a work of art how he does it. What he does is a unique, honed craft, just like Santiago.

Furvis riding Lenny's star power

The Herald's Music Section is "buzzing" about local Boston band Furvis, who played with a certain Sox lefty at the Hot Stove/Cool Music concert:

The guys in Furvis don’t play out very much. They’ve yet to go on a proper tour. They’ve only released one recording, a little-publicized EP that saw only 1,200 pressings.

    Yet Furvis just may be the most buzzed-about rock band in Boston.
    How is this possible?
    Don’t ask the band. The Newton-reared foursome, which plays Great Scott tomorrow, is as mystified about its growing buzz as anyone.
    ‘‘To be honest, people say there’s a buzz, but we’re actually kind of nervous about this show,” singer/guitarist Michael Ian said. ‘‘We have no idea how many people we can draw. No gauge on how people perceive us, if we’re cool or lame. It’s totally word-of-mouth, mostly just from the live shows we’ve played in the last four months.”

    One of those shows included rocking out with Sox pitcher Lenny DiNardo at the last star-studded Hot Stove, Cool Music benefit. Bolstering their next-big-thing status was getting a song added to the playlist of one of the most influential college radio stations in the country, Seattle’s KEXP-FM (104.1). Not bad for a band that, placing third in theWBCN-FM (104.1) Rumble aside, hasn’t really done anything yet.