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| Sadly, guitarist Scott Kempner – of The Dictators, Del-Lords, Tenement Angels – has passed away. He'll be greatly missed. |
Remembering Scott Kempner aka "Top Ten"
Eric Ambel of The Del-Lords: Scott Kempner’s love of rock and roll really came from his heart.
He wasn’t studious about it. It was a feel thing. His taste was all over the place but it was all real. He stayed way more up on the new stuff than I could. When Scott, Frank, Manny and I first started The Del-Lords he made really amazing mix tapes. I still have them. Stuff like “Elvis - Sun vs RCA”. Our two guitar thing worked right off the bat. His version of rock and roll guitar was more ’60’s/surf’ where my rock and roll was leaning on ‘blues and country’. We were doing the weave before we knew what it was.
Scott had really learned what it meant to be in a band, a real band, from his time in The Dictators where he functioned as “the heart”. He was funny. He’d been in professional bands his whole life but he could barely turn his own rig on but that was ok because he came with songs. Great songs that he wrote for our band. Songs that were informed by our lives together.
We stayed in touch after the Del-Lords, both doing our own things. When a Spanish promoter made us an “offer we couldn’t refuse” over 20 years after our first run had ended it really turned into a gift to ‘get the band back together’. We all enjoyed it and I got to use what I had learned as a producer to make the Del-Lords record that delivered on the sound that I had in my head for the band. We had a great time working on Elvis Club at my studio and that included a lot of lunches and dinners. After the record came out and we went to play the gigs with Mike DuClos and then Steve Almaas on bass. Scott and I were not the ‘saving my per diem types’ and we’d often enjoy fall back dinners like spaghetti bolognese with a bottle of red wine after a “don’t call it a day off travel day”.
Scott loved his friends, and he had a lot of them. He loved animals always. Cats and dogs! When he reunited with Sharon it was the coolest thing I’d ever heard of. Scott was lucky to have such a wonderful sister in Robin. As I knew from experience with my mother’s Alzheimer’s-Dementia his family would have tough times ahead but they never, ever failed to do the very best for him negotiating this horrible disease. Scott called me his “Guitar Brother” and brothers we were.
Thank you all for your messages. I know that all of Scott’s family, friends, bandmates and collaborators appreciate them greatly.
I’m missing my guitar brother now. I have a lot of stuff I’d like to tell him about, like hanging out with Bernie Williams from his beloved Yankees at the Bohemian Grove talking about guitars, but for now I’d just say I miss you Top Ten.
Elliott Lefko, concert promoter: In the mid 80s one of the owners of The Bamboo club in Toronto asked me to program a week of Country music. The real country as in Patsy Cline or Hank Williams. I headed down to NYC where I had heard there was a roots scene and met Jeremy Tepper who had an excellent band The World Famous Blue Jays and also edited a trade magazine about jukeboxes and put out compilations of trucker music. He knew all the good bands. So I quickly signed up hot acts like Last Round Up and The Del Lords. I also got early gigs from Blue Rodeo and Handsome Ned and even Kinky Friedman and The Texas Jewboys (although it was a Toronto version led by the late great guitarist Seb Agnello).
The week was incredible and on Saturday, the Del Lords took the stage. They were tough and serious with amazing songs and glorious harmonies. The band were dressed in dark jackets except for the singer Scott Kempner in white with a sleeveless t shirt. This was The Clash by way of Nashville and Lou Reed’s New York. The stage presence was pouring out of them. And Scott outspringsteened Springsteen. In his slicked back hair and bandana around his neck and his boot, he was that urban gipsy on a hydrant-drenched summer night.
After the gig the band wanted to party and Scott and Eric “Roscoe” Ambel stayed up all night, high on a crazy sold out gig on their first Toronto show. Years later I saw Scott when he worked at Amoeba Records in LA. He could not have been nicer. Scott died this week. The tributes from people like Dion and Adny “Dictators” Shernoff were so beautiful. If there ever was a real hall of fame, like on the wall of one of Eric Ambel’s dive bars, then Scott would be up there with the best of them.
Miriam Linna, Norton Records: 16 FOREVER Scott Kempner was always "Top Ten" to me. His absence due to illness has left a giant hole, and now his passing is such an enormous loss to his friends, fans and family. He truly was, and anyone will attest to this, a real rock n' roll heart, and one of the kindest of those hearts that I have ever known.
He was, to me, first and foremost, a Dictator and secondlly, a fellow Flamin Groovies fanatic. Before Billy and I had the enormous privilege of issuing several lost Dictators tracks on 5,7, and 12 inch formats, I made him the Fan Of The Month in the third issue of the Flamin Groovies Monthly (October 1977). All layouts went underwater in hurricane Sandy and all I have left are these moldy pages. If someone has the color cover of Scott, please send it along. He was a force of nature, and I know he is getting his well earned props in the music papers today.
Friends will remember Scott for his massive presence in the Dictators, the Del-Lords, with Dion, and his solo work- his guitar playing, songwriting, and most of all, his rock n roll heart. I'm showing these fan pages from the Groovies Monthly, but I need to add that he was absolutely instrumental iin getting the lost Dion Kickin Child album out on Norton, and his liner notes show him as a thoughtful, thorough, astonishing writer and historian as well. There is much to say, and many images and tons of music to memorialize and celebrate our memories of Scott Kempner. I'll also always remember the pride and beauty of Scott taking center stage to sing Tallahassee Lassie - not so much for Freddy Cannon as for the Groovies blistering version. And the Dictators would deliver it with Scott , right into the center of our hungry little souls. Heartfelt sympathies to sister Robin, Andy Shernoff, Ross the Boss, Handsome Dick Manitoba, Eric Ambel, Ritchie and everybody else.
Cary Baker, publicist: I can’t pretend we were lifelong friends. When Bronx-weaned Scott Kempner, then known as Top Ten, was recording and touring with New York's Dictators, I was in college in Illinois – albeit listening to the Dictators' debut album and reading about them at every turn in Creem, Rock Scene and other 'zines du jour.
It really wasn't until I had my indie publicity company, Conqueroo, that Scott was brought to me as a possible artist for representation by a gent named Abe Bradshaw who had a label called 00:02:59 (the label's name alluding to the perfect length of a pop song per The Clash). The project was Scott's 2008 solo album 'Saving Grace.' Naturally, I accepted the project with alacrity. And with Scott by then West Coast-based, I got together with him a few times and attended his local shows.
I recall one day, Sharon (i.e., MY wife Sharon – his wife was named Sharon also) and I had driven the length of Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) from Santa Monica to...Oxnard, Calif. PCH goes from being one of America's most picturesque stretches of highway to an abrupt end at the foot of a military base in Oxnard. Anyway, there we were in Oxnard. "What can we do here?" I wondered out loud. "Hey, wait, Scott Kempner lives here!" (Yes, an unexpected location for a Dictator or Del-Lord.) It was around noon and I called him to see if he had lunch plans. He was available and willing indeed. So we swung by his and Sharon's condo (Sharon was working that day) where we received quite a greeting not only from Scott but from his beloved dog Sally. And off to lunch we went – somewhere in a strip mall, but it was about the company, not the haute cuisine. Life stories were told, and laughs were had.
I was then called upon to work the Del-Lords' 2013 reunion album 'Elvis Club,' which (if I'm not mistaken) brought them to SXSW and one of the Guitartown/Conqueroo day parties I long promulgated with partner Li'l Deb Williams. More laughs and adventures ensued, and I became friends with the band's other frontman, the great Eric Ambel (like myself a Chicago area native). Eric and I later worked together on Sarah Borges' projects.
The final time I saw Scott was at one of reissue innovator, philanthropist and all-around mensch Gary Stewart's legendary Christmas night parties in Santa Monica. As the hour grew late, Scott and his Sharon and me and my Sharon were walking to our cars at the same time – both parked near McCabe's Guitar Shop, which was nearby to Gary's abode. We avowed to get together soon, but alas, as happens, we never did.
Then came news – along with an edict to keep it under my hat – that Scott was suffering early onset dementia and had moved back east, where his sister could look after him. Say what??? This was heartbreaking news – Scott was so talented, witty and vibrant. The silver lining was that, at least for a while, he could still play the guitar.
This week's news of his mortality was heart-rending if not entirely unexpected. I'll always remember Scott as one of the coolest cats I encountered in my music biz career, and in my life.
I like to think of him reunited with Gary Stewart among other departed pals, carrying on a spirited conversation about music, laughing at the limitations of terrestrial life. And while I'm in no hurry to arrive at that party, I look forward to joining in that conversation when the time comes.
Rock on, Top Ten!
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