Heart-Shaped Rock

After 17 personnel changes in four years, Goodmorning Valentine guitarist Joey Beltram hopes his latest band will stick around a while. The new lineup makes its area debut at the Akron Art Museum’s weekly Downtown at Dusk summer musical series, which wraps its season tonight. “It’s just how the Akron scene is -- a lot of people play in other people’s bands, so there’s a lot of comings and goings,” shrugs the 28-year-old Beltram. “There’s no ill will. It’s just one of those things. This time around, it seems pretty permanent.”

The new quartet’s set list includes lots of tracks found on the band’s last two albums, 2003’s Easter Park and 2005’s Steady Your Hands. Some fans call the tunes “hybrid folk” and “alt-pop,” but Beltram groans at the labels. “I’m not obsessed with paying a lot of attention to genres,” he says. “We take a basic song structure and see what we can do with it.” Beltram says his mom’s collection of Elvis Costello and Tom Waits records from the ’70s helped shape his songwriting. His own Wilco and Belle and Sebastian CDs also figure into the mix. “It’s not this verse-chord-verse-chord-verse-chord kinda thing,” he says. “That’s what I get a kick out of.”
Thu., Sept. 27, 6:30 p.m., 2007