When you grow up where I did in Upstate New York, most bands and artists generally don’t become significantly famous or notable very often. Ithaca has had the X Ambassadors, Buffalo gave rise to the Goo Goo Dolls (along with Ani DiFranco), signature Foreigner frontman Lou Gramm was born in Rochester, and musician Post Malone hails from Syracuse. The most notable creator who briefly cut his teeth closest to my hometown was (as far as I know) the late great, hit-making guitarist Duane Eddy, who came up in Corning until moving away with his parents to Arizona at age 12.
There are probably a few others I’m neglecting to mention (you can let me know in the comments). Point being, this is an example of the sort of spark that isn’t a frequent occurrence when it comes to this area.
Thankfully, today’s local and area indie music scene still sprouts names you need to hear (like Rochester’s Roses & Revolutions). Or the Syracuse-based, multi-genre duo Gavin and Bob (AKA: Dram Fools). Dram Fools formed in 2019 and feature a defining approach of jazz, R&B, American songbook, and Celtic flavors that’s “vocal-led with frequent trading of lines and harmonization.” Each brings jack-of-all-trades skills to building songs, which led to the recording of their first studio album, Whisky River, in 2025.
Given Whisky River was a project years in the making, it comes as no surprise the LP has a length of 17 tracks. The journey jumps forward without ever sagging, though, beginning with opening song “Maybe in Time.” Highlighted by Gavin’s piano-playing flourishes and warm saxophone sections, the vocal exchange between the pair has a sweetly classical, loving float of lyrical devotion that brings to mind yacht rock or the soft sway of a band like Bread. Vintage nostalgia in the best possible sense of the words.
The title track takes a downshift into slinkier means, keeping the saxophone’s presence while adding in jazzy keys, upright bass, sliding fiddle, and a sly, alcohol-saturated sense of humor setting the scenery. The result is a cocktail of beatnik swing and Americana fever dream, with the Fools’ narrator happily swimming (or drowning?) in a bottle of something fiery sweet. Like Bruce Springsteen’s Seeger Sessions ingesting a shotglass of bad decisions, devilishly winking as the final curtain swallows down upon unknown ends.
Whisky River is eloquently elegant at changing shape from song to song, and does so once again as a flute and Gavin’s piano style create a lushly arranged rise reminiscent of an Elton John-styled ballad with plenty of sentimental Brit-pop shine on “Halfway Home.” Jazz noir returns with fedora on and percussive trenchcoat trailing behind as “Love Found Me” hits center stage. Romantic feelings are still in the air here, but it’s unknown if they’re reciprocated as a backdrop of brass tilts us further down into a black-and-white film scene. The earnest harmonies/cross-vocals between Bob and Gavin create hope for an optimistic outcome over anything ominous, though.
Gavin’s knack as the piano-framed balladeer comes to the forefront once again on “Darkness into Light,” which is reminiscent of classic pop in the mold of America or Seals and Crofts. So many of Dram Fools’ songs on Whisky River center directly around the human heart, but they do so with such genuine sentimentality that you never grow weary of connecting to the feeling. Mike Manley’s bluesy guitarwork lends mystery to “Writhe and Moan,” which takes human connection to a primal level. Instead of what occurs in the light, this track is built around what goes on in the darker, dimming corners, emphasized by sensuous saxophone work.
“A Perfect Time to Cry” throws Gavin’s vocals into a Robin Gibb in the Bee Gees type of role, which takes the uplift of an affectionately personal connection and turns it into the hangover of when it all goes wrong. Gavin echoes Gibb’s ability to not only illustrate a lyrical story, but make the emotional scorn feel deeply painful and heartachingly real. The way he holds each crescendo of final notes on the track can make you feel like there’s a pin dropping in the room. It gets you to sit up in your seat.
Before Whisky River can get too tearfully morose, though, Bob soars in with the openly chuckling, tongue-in-cheek romantic frustration around “I’m so Mad.” The LP often feels like Broadway scenery, flipping the deep-hole vulnerability of “A Perfect Time to Cry” into a jazz-dance bounce that may have the narrator going “I’m so Mad,” but has the listener only being able to grin. Each vignette continues with the lightly sweet pleading of “Wait for the Sun (with more MVP-level saxophone fills), a kindness in “Lead with Your Heart” (with Drew Serafini’s guitar glances creating a bouncy soft rock level of ease), as well as the haunting Celtic ghost story dirge of “All We’ll Never Know.”
One of the things I dig most about Dram Fools is how they can keep throwing twists at you across these 17 songs. Just when you think you’re sensing a consistent pattern of upright optimism or painstaking woundedness, along comes the humor of tracks like “I’m so Mad,” the title song, and the swing number “Little Did I Know.” Frank Sinatra would have appreciated the finger-snapping, big-band feeling of the midtempo, swaggering adoration found inside “Morning, Noon, And Night,” while “November Song” feels as coldly lost as the ice at the bottom of the narrator’s glass who’s been out too long at the jazz club. Or does it? Arrangement tempos quickly shift again with a clarinet and brass that wind up warming your bones instead as the final notes roll like movie credits.
Whisky River reaches the end of this water’s road with “Not Our Time,” “Hold On,” and “The Legend of Dram Fools.” “Not Our Time” bids a meditative, bittersweet farewell to accepting a coupling that simply isn’t meant to be, but that it’s okay in the end. “Hold On” is back with more finger-snapping soft rock and tight harmonizing, preaching how to keep your head up even when the odds in life seem stacked against you. And what would an album of such defining, signature sense of character be without closing out on a left-field curveball like “The Legend of Dram Fools,” returning to whiskey once again with bagpipes and psaltery set in a perfect brogue of Celtic tone.
For two musicians of such different backgrounds (Bob from Buffalo, NY and Gavin raised in the UK), “The Legend of Dram Fools” seems perfect to end this record somewhere between these spots on the map. Down deep somewhere behind the veil of a teeth-gnashing folk tale of mysterious means. If anything, this song is not only the perfectly accurate mission statement to describe Whisky River, but to discuss this band based out of Syracuse as a whole. And you only need to do it with five words that flow straight off the tongue as well as any stiff drink could hope to manage.
“Don’t ever underestimate Dram Fools.” That’s not only refreshing, but (like Gavin and Bob) is a motto that’s straight, no chaser.
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