THREE NEW RECORDS
Friday, September 3rd, 2010
Photo by Michael Benanav
A year and a half ago, following the occasion of celebrating 10 years in the music-making business, I had the opportunity to step back and take stock.
Something of a crisis ensued.
Over those first ten years, I’d been lucky enough to get some truly kind press from some of the best publications, played some of the top rooms, toured extensively, produced 6 CDs.
While not a household name, I felt like I had the respect of my peers and the love of a modest yet devoted following.
And yet…
I was doing all of this without a label, manager, agent or PR firm. Which meant that it was crucial that I spend nearly all of my time engaging in self-promotion, and blessedly little time doing the things I was actually doing the self-promoting for, the things I love — composing, performing, writing, practicing, arranging.
Looking at the big picture, I had to put the amount of time spent on the business side of things at about 90%, and the amount of time spent on making music at about 10%.
Something had to change.
The daily grind of hustling to keep my career afloat was okay, I knew how to do it and you wouldn’t hear me complain, but I was damned if I was going to keep it up for another ten years. The idea seemed completely intolerable to me.
Self-promotion is a profoundly awkward and uncomfortable endeavor. I don’t like it. I do it because it’s a necessary evil, affording me the opportunity to get up and make music in front of people, to connect with them, to engage in and try to help facilitate a meaningful and memorable experience for everyone, but the cost-benefit ratio seemed seriously askew.
Was I trying to force something (a sustainable music career) that wasn’t meant to be?
The time seemed nigh to find out.
In February, 2009, I took a huge leap of faith and decided to see what happened if I essentially quit my day job, and flipped that 90/10 ratio. Clearly, if the universe did not want me to be a musician, I would find that out very quickly.
I dove straight into a creative whirlpool and didn’t come up for air until very recently.
It all began with some brass band recordings in Harlem, a couple of afternoons tracking the beginning of what would become a record called “BETTER GET RIGHT.”
Being back in the recording studio was invigorating. I loved it. I wanted more.
Ensconcing myself in my Brooklyn apartment, and keeping the hustle down to a bare minimum, I began working on arrangements for more new songs and lining up other musicians for more sessions, this time at Hoboken Recorders with engineer extraordinaire Alan Camlet at the helm.
These sessions turned into more sessions, which turned into more sessions, which turned into more sessions.
Which turned into three records.
I threw all caution to the wind and went for it. At the end, I had a trilogy of new recordings, each one a completely different musical statement, yet somehow tied together in a way that made them all of a piece. Not a triple album. A trilogy. Recorded simultaneously, in the same place, with overlapping personnel, each one about a an intense journey of some kind.
BETTER GET RIGHT is about New Orleans, where I got my start, and features my take on two kinds of music that I’ve always loved but (till now) felt exclusionary to me — NOLA brass band music and gospel. Whoever heard of a singing, songwriting acoustic guitar player fronting a New Orleans-style brass band? Whoever heard of a Jewish Yankee playing gospel music? You’re about to. The record is a love letter to my old home, filled with characters and songs from my days living there as a street musician.
This record features some truly amazing playing and singing from trombonists Roland Barber and Andrae Murchison, trumpeter Etienne Charles, sousaphonist Jose Davila and drummer Jordan Perlson.
NO FUTHER INSTRUCTIONS is about a trip I took with my old friend Michael Benanav a few years ago to rural Romania, and the strange and beautiful people, places and things we encountered there. It features a lot of folky orchestral arrangements performed with verve and grace by the great violinists Mazz Swift and Skye Steele, celloist Marika Hughes, accordionists Will Holshouser and Bill Malchow, my longtime pal and bass player from way back Jon Flaugher, Jordan Perlson returning again on drums and percussion, and cameos by the brass band guys as well. (Mazz, Marika and Bill all appear in cameos on BETTER GET RIGHT too…there really is a lot of overlap). The physical CD package for NO FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS also includes a 20 page, full color booklet of Michael’s photos from the trip, many of which you can see here.
THE WORLD WILL BE DIFFERENT is an intensely private album about the disintegration of a love affair, an inward journey so personal that I considered not releasing it at all. It features appearances by everyone on the other two records, but is primarily stripped down to Jon’s bass, Jordan’s drums, and my own voice, guitar and piano.
* * *
At any given point in the making of these records, I was a total basket case, but I never allowed myself to second-guess my gut instinct that my job was to simply show up and to be an artist. That’s it. To see what happens when the first and only concern is music. It was a crazy idea to start with, and it was never not going to seem crazy.
Once it became clear that I was making not one, not two, but three new records, and that I planned to release them all simultaneously, an interesting divide opened up in my conversations with people.
Friends, family, fellow musicians, random people I’ve met along the way, all have had variations on the same reaction: they were intrigued, curious, excited, encouraging.
Music business people — managers, agents, marketing people, et al — thought it was a horrible idea. They thought I shouldn’t do it.
When it came time to begin assembling a promotional team, I didn’t talk to a single marketing/promo person who could get behind the project. They gave me a hundred and one logical, practical, experience-based reasons why I shouldn’t put them all out at once. None of them were excited about doing something different. And none of them, not one, wanted to talk about the music.
So I didn’t hire any of them.
Instead, I’m doing it myself, with a little help from some friends, which in a way makes a lot of sense. The only way I was able to pull off this trick of making all this music in the first place was through the generosity of everyone I worked with along the way, from Alan at the studio to all the incredible musicians who shared their gifts for next to nothing, for the love of the music; to all of the friends and family who have offered their steadfast support, and continue to do so.
The indefatigable Marie Le Claire has documented the entire process, and is in the process of completing a feature-length film about the records and me. She’s just made this short teaser:
* * *
So, now…
Now comes the interesting part.
The records are all being released on OCTOBER 26 (though, through a mixup with iTunes, BETTER GET RIGHT is technically available now). I’m still putting together tour dates, but I know for sure that I’ll be playing each record in its entirety on back to back to back nights at the Abrons Arts Center in NYC on November 4 (BETTER GET RIGHT), 5 (NO FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS) and 6 (THE WORLD WILL BE DIFFERENT).
For the last eighteen months, I’ve kept my head down. I’ve been dreaming. I’ve been writing and producing music exactly the way I’ve wanted, spending money I didn’t have, obsessing about mixes and arrangements and lyrics with little regard for practicality or common sense.
I’ve been giving birth, organically, and it’s been immeasurably joyful, excruciatingly painful, and downright transformative. It may be the most fun I’ve ever had making anything. I can honestly say the results are the most satisfying I’ve ever achieved.
And now it’s time to wake up. Time to stop dreaming.
Now I get to see this music it is going to matter to anyone other than myself and the people I’ve made it with. Now it’s time to haul my wares to the marketplace, to see how the universe responds to my decision to follow my muse, nay-sayers be damned.
What’s gonna happen next? Anything? Something? Nothing?
I’m excited to find out. For now, though, that seems less important than the fact that I finished what I set out to do. Completed my task. Did it. Done. Through.
Three new records, coming this fall.
Bon appetit.
