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.

Last night I went back to see the current revival of Thornton Wilder’s OUR TOWN at the Barrow Street Theater in NYC. I wanted a chance to see it again before it closes in a couple of weeks, especially since David Cromer would be returning to reprise his role as the Stage Manager (last night was his first night back — I missed him entirely the first time around).

This is as close to a perfect production of this play that any of us will ever see. I want everyone I know, and everyone I don’t, to go and see it. I wish I had millions of dollars so I could bankroll and extend the run indefinitely and buy every ticket to every performance and hand them out to random people on the street.

This revival of this play should be subsidized by our government, and every high school kid in this city (and every other) should be able to go see it. If we had a national theater, in which great productions of great plays were kept in repertory for years, this OUR TOWN would have to be the first entry. It gives backbone to the endangered conviction that live theater, done well, not only still matters, but is crucial, vital, important, and necessary.

If you can, and even if you think you can’t, go and see this while you still have the chance. Bring a friend. Bring three friends. It is one of those experiences in the theater you will never forget. Especially for those people who hate theater, or don’t get it, or have stopped going because it’s always so bad; or for those people who feel disconnected, cut-off, anxious, overworked, unmoored, hopeless — this play is for you.

Okay, now that I’ve shaken the tress, some particular thoughts I had while watching this OUR TOWN:

First, I am reminded that OUR TOWN is The Great American Play. In my experience, ever since I first became aware of this play as a teenager, OUR TOWN has always been synonymous with cloying sentimentality, with white-bread, ’safe’ entertainment, with being that play that every high school puts up a production of, because it’s so cute, easy, and will offend no one. Look up “bourgeois” in the dictionary and you’re be sure to find a mention of OUR TOWN, that simple, boring play.

I have news for you: OUR TOWN is shocking. It’s dark, full of despair and longing and deep, deep pathos.

The list of virtues that make OUR TOWN so great is long, and includes the fine balance achieved of bottomless darkness and real humor and light; flawless construction; wonderful, simple, unpretentious language. But most of all what makes this play monumental, in its quiet, unassuming way, is the fact that what happens in it doesn’t happen to the people on stage, per se…it happens to us. Watching the play performed, especially in this production, one is aware that what is happening onstage is a mirror. We see ourselves, we see our family, our friends, our enemies, our city, our country, our town.

The first time I saw this production, a year or so ago, it had been some time since I’d read or seen OUR TOWN, and the first two acts made me shrug. What’s the big deal?, I thought. Why is everyone talking about this production? It wasn’t until the device used in Act Three (I won’t give it away, but it’s a brilliant stroke) that the play hit me, hard. I couldn’t get up out of my seat afterward, and I saw others across from me in the 3/4 round setting that seemed to feel the same.

This time around, I found myself plunged into that well of emotion almost from the very beginning. Maybe it was Cromer’s performance, which I’ll get to in a minute. Maybe it was that I knew what was coming.

If you don’t know the play, stop reading here.

What gripped me this time and kept me in a state of heightened emotional awareness throughout the first two acts was the sensation of watching the proceedings and experiencing everything on an entirely different level: this time, instead of watching exposition or character development, or the unfolding of a ‘plot,’ I was immediately and keenly aware of Wilder’s thesis, that who we are, what we do, and feel, and think, how we communicate with one another — the very world we live in — is both intensely beautiful and utterly meaningless. Gone in the blink of an eye. Beyond our comprehension. Watching the small talk between family members and neighbors, seeing the evidence that Wilder so expertly lays before us was, this time, a profound experience for me. Because within the writing, there’s no judgment. Somehow, Wilder achieves the trick of standing outside of humanity and rendering us back to ourselves without comment (until the end, that is, and even then judgment is debatable). And isn’t that what love is…unconditional acceptance? The knowledge that to judge, criticize or try to change someone else is none of our business? So what he does is that he shows us how much he loves humanity (us), foibles and eccentricities and even ignorance and all, and he lets us love ourselves. And then, in Act Three, he pulls the rug out from under us. It’s almost a dirty trick, except that it’s done so well, with such tenderness, that rather than feeling duped, we’re in on it, we get it. The whole thing makes inevitable, terrible sense.

Cromer’s direction is pitch perfect. He’s found the exact right pace for the play. It flows effortlessly, evenly-calibrated throughout, with long, effective pauses at times, and overlapping choppy, hurried moments at others. He achieves balance. The performances he gets from the cast are uniformly right; no one stands out, no one steals the show, for the most part, it doesn’t even seem like anyone is even acting (not in a stylized, Richard Maxwell kind of way, just totally devoid of ego), which is just as it should be. Only in two brief instances of real onstage emotion (a scream from Emily, and a moment from Cromer, which I’ll get to in a moment) do we get jarring reminders that just beneath the surface of these pleasant, almost wry, proceedings, there is a current of raging darkness just barely being controlled. The choice to leave the house lights on throughout is another subtle, bold move that makes total sense. We all become part of the play. It feels great and also, at times, greatly uncomfortable.

As for Cromer’s performance as The Stage Manager, what makes his much-ballyhooed nonchalantness so effective is not that he is devoid of emotion. He’s not, and he only needs one moment of stark feeling in a two hour-plus performance to show us that’s not the case, when he slams a pair of boots down on a table to drive home a point. Cromer’s putting on a master class in control. He has a serious job to do and he takes it seriously. Cromer’s Stage Manager is like the kind doctor who matter-of-factly tells you that the condition you have is terminal. It’s not that he doesn’t care — he does, greatly. But he needs to protect himself and us as well. We need his professional calm to anchor us, and he needs to stay detached to keep his sanity. If he got emotional about every patient (audience, us) he’d lose his marbles, because the reality is just too overwhelming.

I’ve spent some time putting these thoughts together because I feel it is my civic duty to urge you to go and see this play. Consider it an investment in your future. Go see it. Tonight. As the play itself seems to say: before it’s too late.

Tour dates are shaping up for the fall. Stay tuned!

Well, I dropped off the first one at the plant today — 13 new masters and artwork for my next CD, entitled “BETTER GET RIGHT.” It’s a recording inspired by and, in some way, set in New Orleans and features the Biting Fish Brass Band.

There are more CDs to come. Two more are in their final stages of mixing — the first, “NO FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS” is my “Romania” song cycle. After that is “THE WORLD WILL BE DIFFERENT,” a collection featuring primarily guitar, bass and drums on a batch of new songs, many of which I’ve never played out.

I’m pretty excited about this stuff and I can’t wait for you to hear it. Thanks to all who have been so supportive and encouraging during this fevered year of recording activity. I think you’re gonna like the results…

Here’s a clip of Nellie singing my song “When It Rains” — enjoy!

Here’s a clip of Nellie and me singing together at Joe’s Pub last year on the Hoagy Carmichael standard “Two Sleepy People”…enjoy!

Here is a list of confirmed guests, and the songs they are scheduled to perform. In addition to these folks, there may yet be some unannounced surprises coming to sit in with the band. Hope to see you there!

“YOUR VOICE: THE SONGS OF HOWARD FISHMAN”
Wednesday, July 22 @7pm sharp.
JOE’S PUB @ The Public Theater in New York City.
Tickets and info here

Marika Hughes “Someday”
(from “LOOK AT ALL THIS!”)
Susan Oetgen “Anywhere at All”
(from “we are destroyed”)
Sasha Dobson “It Won’t Be Long II”
(from upcoming new release)
Roland Barber “Want you to Be Mine”
(from “DO WHAT I WANT”)
Bill Malchow “Katie La La”
(from “LOOK AT ALL THIS!”)
Skye Steele “In Another Life”
(from “DO WHAT I WANT”)
Sheriff Uncle Bob - “Luck”
(unreleased outtake from “LOOK AT ALL THIS!”)
Richard Julian “Dreams of You”
(from “I LIKE YOU A LOT)
Ian Riggs “Pictures”
(from “LOOK AT ALL THIS!”)
Mazz Swift “Good Times”
(from “THE HOWARD FISHMAN QUARTET)

Hope to see you there!

Anyone who’s ever gotten on a stage knows what it’s like to have a bad night…to not be connected to the music, or the audience, or oneself. It happens, and it doesn’t feel good. But witnessing Jonathan Richman’s palpable sense of confusion and unrest for not (in his mind) delivering the goods, to see him offer himself up like that in front of a packed house, was really something. One fan suggested he solve the problem by singing his song “Springtime in New York,” and yes, he said, that might very well be just the thing. He called Tommy back to the stage, unpacked his guitar, and performed the song with tenderness and real love for the audience and for the city, and all was well once again in the world.

This guy is amazing. I’ve had the pleasure to see him four times in the last three years, and each time have been completely floored by the intimacy he creates with the audience, by the spontaneity of his performance (the guitar flights of fancy, the lyric ad libs, the off-mic bits, the dancing!..he’s out of his mind, and G-d bless him for it), by his total engagement in offering service to the crowd in the form of light, humor, warmth, gentleness and wisdom.

Sure, I could tell he was a little off his game last night. He started strong, but seemed to become preoccupied with his decision to instruct the venue to keep the A/C off. As it got warmer in the room, he began to worry about the audience’s comfort, asking us if we were too warm, even as one of his songs railed against things like A/C and new housing developments and things that keep us from “the real” of life. He seemed to get confused, torn between following the dictates of his conscience and his concern for the audience, and the show took a noticeable energy dive from there on in. Or maybe it was the decidedly un-Jonathan Richman-like song he sang about being a victim to other people’s unkindness and cruelty (I don’t the name of it, but I’d put money on it being a cover of a Vic Chestnutt song, who opened the show).

Whatever the reason, JR lost his groove about halfway through, and struggled mightily to regain his balance. Seeing this guy, in his late 50’s, veteran of thousands of concerts, care so deeply about trying to find his way back into the moment, was a real gift. Hearing his conviction that he’d rather fail in his dedication to the moment than be another nail in the coffin of true, live performance and risk and humanity, confirms for me — once again — that Jonathan Richman is a modern-day hero.

Go see him if, and as often as, you can.

Tour dates are here.