I’ll be returning to the WCDB airwaves on the morning of Sunday, May 20. My new timeslot: 10am-noon Sundays! I hope you’ll join me… I love sharing music, even when I didn’t write it.

Still no word on whether the radio station will be open for overnight broadcasting. This is such a cowardly move by the UAlbany administration, and its timing is so suspect… handing down this “punishment” right before summer break is the equivalent of announcing bad news on a Friday. If these “Student Success” clowns think people are just going to forget and get over it, they’re as stupid as they are out of touch.

To their credit, the station staff has kept up the pressure and a ruling is supposedly forthcoming. Let’s watch closely.

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I want to thank the folks who bought Sevendys merch this past week to help with Chuck Rainey’s medical bills – very cool and generous of you guys. I’ve forwarded the proceeds right on to Chuck with my match, and I’ll keep the program going until further notice.

Again, if you would like to donate to Chuck directly, you can do so here.

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My next album is on track for a July release; I hope to make it available on CD and vinyl at that time. It’s twelve songs and seven are mixed. All but one are with the mix engineer, Pete deBoer, and he’s wrapping them up very efficiently.

It’s a weird record. The upbeat songs are very upbeat and the sad songs are very sad. I previewed the rough album for a friend and she cried at the end. Like real tears and everything. I thought it was maybe because she couldn’t stand to listen anymore – which was okay at that point because the record was over – but she said it was because the last two songs were that upsetting.

So I apologize in advance for whatever this album does to you.

Eschatone’s distributor requires a few months to properly set up an album, so while I’ll make it available here in all formats July, I would assume it won’t be in stores (if there still are actual record stores) until the fall. Not that this matters to you since you’ll be getting it the day I put it up on my site, right?

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I got Eschatone Records a PO box in Albany today. We’ll be closing down the New York City address and preparing our next round of releases as a bonafide 518 operation. I’m excited to be back with the company; I withdrew from the partnership in 2009 and returned late last year.

We have a plan and some really crazy stuff lined up to release this fall and winter. We’ll be experimenting with formats. We’ll be working with artists whose music will shock you. And we’ll be working with artists whose names will shock you, because you’ll be like How the fuck did they get that guy?

One genre into which I am excited to expand Eschatone is noise. I’ve been dabbling with Avi in our Space Toilets project… it’s fun and visceral, and the recordings, as abstract as they are, really do manage to say something. I think noise can be the ultimate musical metaphor – all feeling, no context, a direct emotional transmission. We’ll be putting out some stuff from Maryland’s Pregnant Spore; I am always surprised at how listenable his work is, and how much it communicates.

Thus even as Eschatone brings you new folk from Brian Dewan, it shall also put out staticky scrapey instrumental noise.

Come to think of it… there is an artist – a guitarist – whose work has long bridged the gap between the two; we’ve got him also. To be announced.

I had to turn off the FREE on Shoot The Piano Player this morning, and I am having guilt over it. So here’s what I’m gonna do: Every day until August 7 (when my next new single comes out), I will set one random Song Foundry track to free download. You’ll have to hunt them all down, but once you find ‘em they’re yours forever. All I ask is that you tweet or post the song link on your FB wall after you download (and say something nice about it, would ya?).

There are 22 albums in the music section of this site (and some, like my In The Presence Of Presents and Single of the Month comps, are already set to free download). Finding the free tune each day will be a bit of a scavenger hunt. Here’s a tip, though: it’ll be marked in the track listing as “(free)”.

I hope this introduces you to stuff you’ll like. And who knows – perhaps as you search some of the song titles will pique your interest or spark a memory. There are worse things than finding new music to enjoy!

One track is already set up for ya. Why are you still on this page when you could be downloading that shit?

Sorry, no single this month. How about a whole album instead?

Shoot The Piano Player was recorded a couple summers ago in Chicago. LB, Lucy, Joe Abba and I spent a weekend at Electrical Audio with Steve Albini, fluffy coffee and Pip the cat. With Joe on drums, I tracked 13 songs live to tape, vocals and all. There are maybe three overdubs on the whole album – an organ part and a couple of backing vocals. Lucy and LB hung out in the control room, where they got to watch Albini work. That is a true privilege.

For me, making a record with Steve Albini is up there with working with the Ramones. I love that dude as a concept and admire him as a human being. Albini is, in my opinion, the incorruptible avatar of Generation X’s finest values. Most of my contemporaries have sold out but Albini marches on. He’s tireless behind the board and radiates competence in a way that is somehow simultaneously intense and reassuring. At the end of the session, he congratulated me on coming prepared and getting my work done. That’s like Wade Boggs telling you, “nice at-bat.” One of the best moments of my entire life!

The songs on STPP were written over a 15-year period, and they are generally pretty songwritery. Lots of roleplaying here. A few of the narrators are unsavory characters (“You Make Me Feel So Young” in particular… that song is just fuckin gross but I had to record it. I lost multiple girlfriends to nasty old dudes when I was in my early 20s and the lyric was born of my outrage). “I’m On Your Side” was originally part of Rise And Shine – it’s sung from the perspective of a bigoted asshole cop, and my job is to make you like him if not inadvertently agree with him.

I do a bit of side-switching in these songs, too: “Piece Of Crap” (the oldest composition on the record; it’s from 1994) comes alternately from the point-of-view of the cynical, sneering wannabe pop star and the spoiled teens who worship him; “For A Girl In Promotions” starts out like a snipe at the title character but the narrator is revealed to truly care about her and appreciate what she does. I dunno, this is starting to sound a little navel-gazey… so how bout: I’m proud of this record and happy that I can share it with you!

In addition to the digital release (it’s for sale at iTunes, Amazon and all the rest today as well, but why would you buy it out there when you can get it right here?), Shoot The Piano Player is also available on 8-track tape. The 8-track run is limited to an edition of 20 copies, manufactured by a really cool company called The Dead Media out of Ft. Worth, Texas. Interesting fact about 8-track tapes: they play back twice as fast as cassettes and use thicker, higher-quality tape. It can be argued that a well-built 8-track cartridge sounds better, and preserves more of the analog experience, than vinyl. I most likely will release a vinyl pressing of Shoot The Piano Player at some point, but it could be argued that this 8-track tape may provide the ultimate STPP listening experience if you’ve got the means to play it. My 8-track deck broke recently, so I picked up an old 2-XL robot on eBay. His eyes light up in time with the music. It’s awesome.

Here are some photos from the Shoot The Piano Player recording session:

I seem to be at a point in life where all of my public school classmates are getting divorced. There are so many custody battles being documented in real time on my Facebook wall right now… sorry to be a cavalier douche about this, but it’s actually pretty good reading. Definitely more interesting than what was for lunch, or how much Monday sucks.

If Facebook had existed when we were 27, our walls would have been splattered with breakup drama, followed by lots of engagement announcements six months later. It was shit-or-get-off-the-pot time… anyone whose relationship wasn’t the relationship ended it and married the next person he or she saw.

These are the people they’re divorcing now. Here’s a song for both sides.

Wait, what’s a Song Foundry Single Of The Month?

It’s how we’re gonna do things around here for a while. On the 7th of every month, you’re gonna get something new. It might be a Skyscape track, or Hanslick Rebellion, or a JD jam from the vaults that you’ve never heard before. Or, like this month, a brand-new solo studio track (finished yesterday!) with special guests Tony Levin, Anton Fig, Earl Slick, Maryann Fennimore, Mike Keaney and Ralph Carney. Listen, download, and please pass it on – if you like what you hear, share it on Facebook or elsewhere. That’s all I ask.

(Sevendys isn’t part of this. Sevendys is extra; Sevendys cannot be contained!)

It’s the Sevendys model that inspired this change: record, mix, release. Seems simple but it’s not. You have to actually record, mix, and then release. When you’re making full albums, it’s really hard to get to step three because first you have to record everything and then you have to mix everything. Waiting to track one last instrument on one last song? If that takes a year, then your whole album, all that work, sits in limbo for at least a year. Not a particularly efficient way to do things.

I like to work on six or seven albums at a time, slowly bringing them to completion over what could be years. When I feel a song approaching doneness, I focus on that one and knock it out. But then the track just kinda sits there until the rest of the album is done.

With Sevendys, we go into the studio, cut four complete tracks, and simply release them as they’re mixed. For example, “Enjoy It” was mixed the day before it was mastered, and released ten minutes after the master was approved. That’s exhilarating. I’ve got Eric Jarvis, who only started mixing my stuff last year, telling me how great it is to work with somebody who just gets stuff online and out so fast, and I’m cracking up because I really move glacially slowly. But Sevendys has managed to put out something in every month of 2011 so far, and I see no reason why that will stop.

Lots of italics in this post! I am emphasizing all kinds of shit, WHOOOOOOOO!

I’ve decided not to wait around for albums to happen anymore. There are mechanisms for collecting singles into albums and pressing albums into cool physical products, and I’ll still do that stuff, because I love to do it… but I see no reason to hoard tracks for moments so far in the future, they may as well never come. Let’s enjoy “She Loves You (NO NO NO)” today!

Performing “A Place Where No One Goes” live at The Institute in Cornwall, UK, 5-30-08.

That 2008 UK tour with Mike Bassett was so much fun, and we played in such odd places. Like the hidden room in an old Bristol tavern… a 700-year-old pub… a couple of art galleries… and here, an old clock tower by the sea (you can even hear the gulls in this video). Audiences were wonderful, too. I’d love to go back and do that again sometime.

By the way, a Steve Albini-engineered studio version of this song will be coming in the fall on my next full-length release, Shoot The Piano Player. Solo piano, tracked live to tape.

Sevendys LA session video | photos

Slowly decompressing from the LA trip. Jet lag wasn’t really an issue – I never caught up with the time difference because I didn’t really sleep while I was there (then again, I don’t really sleep anywhere). But my visit was packed with all-hours activity and I was pretty weary by the time I got back to NY. I still haven’t actually been home… I’ve spent the entire week in Brooklyn, recuperating at Crazee Joe’s. Looking forward to my Albany return tomorrow.

We got four really excellent-sounding tracks done, all live to tape in the studio. The band was set up Wrecking Crew-style in a rabbit warren of isolation panels; once we got a feel for the space, it became pretty easy to communicate during takes. The room (EastWest’s Studio Three) was small but full of character, and I think it definitely colored the music… everything has this syrupy smoothness to it, including the vocals.

Unlike the first Sevendys session, for which Sheridan and I’d had a week of rehearsal, this time the band came in completely cold. As a result, the live feel coalesced around the most prepared player – Chuck. He created this black hole of groove, just pulling everybody in. It was awesome! Sheridan went all Bernard Purdie on the shit, and Avi’s guitaring got super funky while retaining the jangly sweetness that is so characteristic of his rock playing. Definitely some alchemy going on. Here’s a sample, a video snippet from one take of “Congratulations”:

This batch of tunes was full of starts, stops, dropouts and tempo changes; Jerry played us through those on everything from Taos congas to an entire bag of egg shakers. He also served as a sort of field general, sensing weak points in the performance and pointing them out so we could shore things up. Meanwhile, engineer Ben and assistant Stuart kept things moving in the control room under the watchful eye of The Jarv, who was in turn working under the long-distance Yoda-like guidance of Dave McNair. The Celik brothers took over the control room (the whole facility, really – ask the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who were recording in Studio Two) and sent good vibes through the glass, and David Dillon brought the sax for a song that was called “No, REALLY Listening” when we tracked it but will henceforth be known as “Please Don’t Eat Me, I Love You”. All these cool characters… I’m still trying to figure out what the point was of having me at this session!

On Wednesday night we did a Sevendys gig at local Long Beach haunt DiPiazza’s. Chuck had already flown back, but The Jarv sat in on bass (and even played the same bass Chuck used for the session). I was a nervous wreck – five months of playing on the UAlbany campus will do that to you – but Avi, Sheridan and The Jarv were so good, and the crowd so warm, I ended up with a nice live buzz. We closed with the Celik brothers on stage for this steamrolling cover of George Harrison’s “Wah Wah”:

When we weren’t making music, we Disneyed it up with my gracious hosts, Michael Doret and Laura Smith, and Jerry’s awesome son Diego. Late nights were reserved for burgers and donuts with Jax. Just an incredible trip!

While I get the LA tracks in shape for mixing, I’ve started making plans for the next Sevendys session. That will happen this spring at Dreamland in Woodstock, if Avi and Sheridan’s schedules allow. Chuck and Jerry have become part of the fabric of the band, and I hope they’ll both continue with us – I am hearing insane trap kit/Taos drum Sheridan/Jerry interplay on the next batch of tunes. Maybe the full-on five-piece Sevendys could do a few gigs, too.

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Once I’m back in Albany, at my Pro Tools rig, I’ll prep another batch of Green Plaid Recordings to share. These are just too much fun. I’ll also get back to work with Dom on the new Skyscape record; Jerry has already begun adding drums, and hopefully I can get this stuff done by the end of the year. 2011 is Skyscape’s 20th anniversary, after all.

This Green Plaid shit is awesome fun. I’ve found more than an album’s worth of very decent Skyscape material I didn’t even know existed; a 4-track demo of Physics in its entirety; two Pavlov’s Dogs songs; several live performances multitracked on the Portastudio; all the raw components of Jed Has Too Much Free Time. A lot of it is so poorly performed and recorded as to be unusable, but the ideas are there. Combined with takes from other recorded versions of the songs, original MIDI sequences and brand-new elements, these tracks could be the foundation of something really special.

I’ll be working with Jerry Marotta on adding drums to a few of these songs next week. The basic idea: bring the 4-track Portastudio to a real studio and record the kit to cassette through three good microphones and proper outboard gear. We’ll probably Pro-Tools it simultaneously, but I think the low-tech versions will sound fantastic and more in the spirit.

Songs I’m considering for next week’s session, some by request:
- Skyscape’s “My Family”
- “Deep Deep Down”
- “The Yellow Wallpaper”
- “The Boy Who Tripped On His Mother’s Head”
- Skyscape’s cover of “I’m Too Sexy”
- “Smoke More Crack”
- “Autopsy”

If you were around in my early-90s demo days (or if you were a deep-cut user of the Collider Jukebox) and there’s something from that era you’d like me to revisit, just let me know. You can comment here or reply to the Green Plaid post on the wall of my Facebook music page.

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My friend Joe Aversano e-mailed me this excellent question: How do you know when a mix is done?

First of all, if I’m the one mixing, it’s never done. I’m not a mix engineer. A proper mix involves mathematics I don’t understand, gear I’m not qualified to use, and better hearing than I possess. Proper EQ of each element, balance, and application of effects are the baselines for which I trust an engineer. That said, a lot of it is subjective, and as the project’s, uh, “creative director”, I’m supposed to know what sort of thing I want to end up with.

Part of my job is prepping the track for what I consider to be a proper mix. Eliminating stray noises, making sure all the edits are clean – or at least intentional, maybe indicating where I’d like things panned (though that sort of thing should be flexible). Marking sections if necessary. Making notes. I also include only elements I want in the mix… and I should be confident in making those calls. The arrangement I give to the engineer – what sort of instrumentation and how it’s recorded – will go a long way towards dictating the timbre of the finished track.

Then, when I listen back to a mix in progress, I try to go in with more of an ear for what’s missing than what’s right, and I compile a list of things I still want to hear. Could be anything from “more bass” to “less of the vocal double” to “that one snare hit should have a delay, with an automated EQ sweep on it, that moves from center to right as it decays”. Once everything on my list is checked off, the mix is finished as far as I’m concerned.

At this point, I feel like I should give some well-deserved props to Eric Jarvis, who mixed the Sevendys material. He’s been getting the most out of my tracks for a while now, and when you add the mastering might of Dave McNair (under whom The Jarv once apprenticed), the result is some unstoppable shit!

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With all this Mets-Madoff crap going on, I have a thought I’d like to share regarding New York City sports teams. I don’t expect they should win it all every season, but New York franchises ought to be built and run well enough that year in and year out, the New York team is the team everybody else has to get past if they want to be the champ.

There was a period of time when every sports movie climaxed with the protagonists taking on the Yankees. To get where they wanted to be, they’d have to beat the scary New York team. With the resources available in NYC, I think that’s about right, and anything less should not be acceptable.

Of course, I feel the same way about New York City architecture and infrastructure, but the city is a reactionary disgrace on both counts…

I’ve been sick all week… flu or something. Whenever I lie down, my nose clogs up and I get too uncomfortable to sleep. The lack of rest is making it tough for me to get better. I was using nasal spray earlier in the week, but you can’t use that too many days in a row so I put it aside. Decongestant pills don’t seem to do much of anything. This is a tricky one!

This is the worst I’ve felt since my 2006 pneumonia, which was really bad. If you want to see something rough, search for The Hanslick Rebellion’s Checkerboard Kids performance on YouTube. I was just beginning to recover from pneumonia when we did that gig. I’m wearing like a dozen layers, I couldn’t speak or sing, and half the muscles in my body were pulled from coughing so every movement unleashed bolts of pain. Even after I got over that pneumonia, it was still two years before my immune system worked properly – I was sickly the whole time. I don’t want to get anywhere near that point ever again.

I’ve been trying to relax at home, do a little tidying up. I moved here way back in May but the unpacking part never really ends. I came across this old J-Bird Records box tucked into a milk crate; I assumed it was surplus copies of We’re All Going To Jail! or some shit, but it turned out to be full of 4-track Portastudio cassettes.

I thought I knew where all my old 4-track tapes were… this was a secret stash of about twenty cassettes dating all the way back to 1992. There are Skyscape tunes I had totally forgotten about; collaborations with old friends like Joe Aversano; some of my earliest solo demos; the only existing recording by Pavlov’s Dogs, my freshman-year band with Mike Keaney; even multitrack takes of live gigs where we used my Portastudio as a mixer. I’ve started dumping them into Pro Tools and playing around – the perfect way to pass sick time at home!

I’m no mix engineer, but the raw material is lo-fi enough that even I can’t mess it up. There is a lot of charming stuff here. I’m polishing and putting snippets online as they catch my ear. Here they are, with more to come – a work in progress, 19 years and counting.

I particularly love “Wheelbarrow Rosebud”, the Joe Aversano track. Joe was (and still is) a really unique guitarist, and he writes such pretty stuff. His delivery on this tune is totally 1992, straight out of “Valerie Loves Me”.

Then there’s “Hippies On The Road”, which always started as Skyscape’s cover of “Riders On The Storm” but inevitably morphed into whatever Dom wanted to sing about that day (most often something concerning the Brady Bunch). The drums were recorded mono, so I shoved them into one channel and compressed them until they blew up… then I dropped them out in spots and added some 909 kick and snare. The bass is the keyboard bassline as I originally played it, but dumped into Melodyne, converted to MIDI and now triggering a Fender Rhodes Bass sample. I then EQ’d the bass out of the keyboard track so only the new Rhodes part remained. I guess I could just do clean, faithful mixes of everything, but this isn’t about preserving history – it’s about making cool shit!

Dom and I have been secretly working on a new Skyscape record: Dr. Des Moines. Like Zetacarnosa, it’s a mashup of hi- and lo-fi sounds from the present and the past. I recently unearthed a couple of unfinished tunes from 1992, “Poetry Read-In At Bob’s” and “Motorvate”, with the intention of slipping them in amidst the newly-written material. We’d gotten far enough with them that keyboard sequences exist, but I couldn’t find lyrics anywhere. Turns out there were 4-track demos of both songs that I’d completely forgotten – so not only do we now know the words, but I’ve got classic takes of Dom singing them that I can weave into the 2011 versions. This is awesome.

I lost about half my wardrobe to water damage right before I moved upstate; what remained when I got to Albany included a number of green plaid shirts that I hadn’t worn since college. Some had purple accents so I busted ‘em out and started wearing them to work on Fridays. School spirit thing, purple on Fridays. Anyway, I’ve named the project after these shirts, which, like the 4-track jams, originated in the early ’90s, sat in the dark for almost twenty years, and are now back in action. These are my Green Plaid Recordings.

The Hanslick Rebellion is returning to action, and we hope to have a new EP for you soon. We started writing and rehearsing earlier this year but things sorta ground to a halt. We seem to be back on track now. Richard Lloyd, who had been producing and engineering the new record, is still producing and engineering the new record. He has been very, very patient with us!

I can say with all confidence that the new material sounds nothing like our last release, Let’s Get To The Fucking. Which is not to say LGTTF is anything less than awesome. I reacquainted myself with that EP recently and was stunned by how great it sounds, and how much fun the blend of rock and reggaeton can be:

The new Rebellion material is closer to our live sound, a la the rebellion is here. Richard’s studio is one small room, and we’re just gonna bang this shit out. Richard recorded all of his recent solo work in that space; his amazing The Radiant Monkey feels totally in-the-room-with-the-band, and that’s what we’re hoping for here.

And now, a few quickies.

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I’m really getting into the singles thing – the flexibility of it. As long as I can keep making physical versions to go with digital, I’ll be happy. I’ve got a bunch of new tunes ready to record in easy-to-release pairs; December should be a busy month for that.

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I’ve got a couple of crayon drawings in a Schenectady art show this month. It was a Hallowe’en-themed exhibition, so I used the Eisenstein stills from The Cutting Room Floor as my basis. Here they are… you can see them in person at the Jay Street Gallery (163 Jay Street, Schenectady, NY):

Both were done on large sheets of Bristol board (I forget the exact dimensions) with Crayola crayons. I’m doing the album art for my pal Matt Johnson’s new record the same way, so this was a nice warmup.

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I recently started DJing at WCDB Albany. That’s 90.9 on the FM dial; you can also listen live from anywhere by following this link. My regular time slot is 2pm-4pm on Sunday afternoons, though I’m off this week for Rebellion rehearsal. I’ll remind you again before my next show.

I was a station member in the mid-90’s, when college radio was in its glory. Things are obviously different now, but today’s station members are just as passionate about music as we were back then. Probably moreso… it’s easy to be involved with something when it’s cool. Harder when you have to fight to make it cool. And they do – WCDB is very cool.

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Finally, I’ve been secretly blogging someplace else, fictionally and under an assumed name. Just a heads-up, so you can play detective if ya really want to… you probably won’t find it, but good luck!

As of last week, I have a performance residency on the UAlbany campus; I’ll be playing every Tuesday night for the rest of this semester, and I expect to resume when school starts back up in January. They’re calling me the “Songwriter-in-Residence”, which I think is cute.

The shows are all free and open to the community. I’ll be paired up with another performer every week; we’ll each do a set. As long as it’s possible, I’m gonna try tailoring my presentation to complement the other artist. If the second act is a band, I’ll do a full-band thing. If not, I’ll do solo piano. Other configurations are possible as well – whatever I can make work.

This whole “Fake Coffeehouse” thing is interesting… in the room that was once the UAlbany Rathskeller (it was McDuff’s when I was a student), a stage was installed during a round of renovations – with lighting and everything. The intention was to make the place a coffeehouse, but somehow it ended up being a Wendy’s instead. Tables and chairs were placed on the stage, and everyone forgot it was a stage. Now University Auxiliary Services has turned it back into a coffeehouse. For one night a week, at least. They’re providing free coffee at every show.

I’ve been given the privilege of curating the Fake Coffeehouse series – it’s up to me to book the other performers. I hope to do three things: bring local artists to campus so students can see how much great music is being made in the Capital District; help student musicians find an audience; and bring national touring acts to play in an intimate setting. I want to help cross-pollinate the school and city music communities… I believe that the students are the key to a thriving Albany music scene. So many of them are passionate about music; it’s just a matter of letting those people know there’s stuff right here in town that is worth their time.

The first Fake Coffeehouse show featured a set by the Ramblin Jug Stompers, an awesome Blotto side project. Could not have been a more fitting way to kick off the series. It was wild fun, and a homecoming of sorts for those guys – not only had they played the room in its earliest incarnation, but they met as students on the UAlbany campus 40 years and one month ago!

This Tuesday night, I’ll be paired up with a singer-guitarist named David Schulman. He’s a UAlbany student who does acoustic originals and some loopy electric stuff. Between now and November 30 (when the series closes for the semester with a performance by Brian Dewan!), we’ll have a ton of surprises and great, great music. And coffee.