The Hanslick Rebellion played a gig on March 2 – our first in four years. It was awesome (for us, anyway). We agreed to keep things going in spite of the band members’ various familial commitments and the physical distance between us. Playing shows together is difficult, but recording is always possible, and since the Rebellion always goes big we decided to tackle the most daunting monster project in my catalog: the unfinishable Rise And Shine.

We’re talking 40 songs in almost as many genres. 15 singers. Two-and-a-half hours of music. My last attempt to record this thing put me off music for over a year.

Rise And Shine is a musical stage play I’ve been working on since 2000, when Arturo Vega informed me that he’d strung together 20 or so of my already-released tracks to tell a story and had already begun writing the script. We brainstormed a complete three-act arc and I began writing new songs to fill in the gaps – 20 additional pieces of music in all. By 2005 I was well into a fully-cast demo of the thing with an incredible and diverse group of singers that included Dicky Barrett, Brian Dewan, Jessy Moss, Matthew Bair, CJ Ramone, Maryann Fennimore, Bryan Thomas and Kitty Kowalski. But we couldn’t stop tweaking, and what was, in retrospect, the perfect version of the play got mauled to death by revision after revision. I gave up on the demo in 2006 because I just couldn’t keep up with all the changes. By the time we took our last meeting, in 2010, we couldn’t even explain to an interested investor what Rise And Shine was supposed to be about. That’s when I packed it in.

The storyline, as plotted in 2000 and held consistent until 2005, is fairly simple – two college friends reunite at a New York City nightclub five years after graduation. One night, a girl from their past appears at the club and fucks all their shit up. That’s basically it. You’ve got a cast of colorful supporting characters representing various denizens of early-aughts New York nightlife, each with a mini-drama woven around the main thread, but it really is straightforward, linear and fun.

Hanslick Rebellion is the no-brainer choice for a Rise And Shine recording. A number of the songs Arturo wrote his script around, including “We Wait And We Wait”, “Leave Your Boyfriend”, “Starlet” and “Grub”, are Rebellion tunes. Better yet, because the Rebellion only recorded live, there were never studio versions of these, so it’s not like we’re being redundant. Plus Mike and I sang the two male leads on the original Rise And Shine demo, with some surprising lead vocal reversals that add a twist for longtime Rebellion fans (for example, Mike sings “Grub” in the play). It’s just right.

My first move in reopening the Rise And Shine case was to sift through the aborted demo recordings and see what might be salvageable. Sadly, not much. For all the vocal talent we had lined up, most of the tracks are unusable. We had such limited time with many of the singers that in some cases we were racing through 20-30 songs in a day. You obviously can’t get good takes that way. Then there’s the file management and handling of those vocal tracks – many were hastily and poorly auto-tuned by the engineer and then the original tracks were discarded! Unbelievable now, but at the time there were no best practices for Pro Tools workflow. The only singers whose work I can confidently keep are Maryann Fennimore, Brian Dewan and Jessy Moss, and those only because their vocals were cut so late in the process that the project stalled before the engineer could mutilate them. Everybody else has to be rerecorded (which is impossible in several cases) or replaced.

On the other hand, all 40 songs are written and arranged right down to the vocal harmonies. It’s all laid out… everything just needs to be properly performed. The undertaking is massive – recording it is only the beginning. Mixing and mastering 40 songs will cost a fortune. I get queasy just thinking about it. Unfortunately, the folks who were willing to invest in Rise And Shine the stage play are probably out on Rise And Shine the album. I understand; there’s a lot more potential ROI in the former.

In order to make this happen as quickly as possible (ha ha) I’m throttling back on my other projects for a while. That means April’s Single of the Month will be the last. My next solo album is just about done, so I do plan on putting it out later this year. But other than that I’ll be in Rise And Shine land for the forseeable future.

As we power through this thing, we’ll do our best to document the process with a series of video clips. Here’s the first one. This is actually an excerpt from a short film made by Emily Sheskin and Serena Kuo in 2004? 2005? I forget exactly. But it features Arturo and me talking about the musical and how we came to be writing partners:

This photo was taken on May 16, 2000, at Joey Ramone’s last birthday party. At least, the last one he attended in the flesh. Joey’s birthday is May 19. That party was a couple days early; this post is a couple days late. It’s all right.

Joey’s been gone ten years. Everything about the world is different from the way it was on May 16, 2000, the night Arturo threw down a stack of photos on his living room worktable – the very table the Ramones had leaned on to sign their first record deal – and instructed Joey to autograph and me to flip and stack while he snapped this picture.

I just read something about the plane that emergency-landed in the Hudson a couple years ago. One of the passengers referred to the water landing as a “miracle”. It wasn’t a fucking miracle. It was the work of an excellent, experienced and competent pilot doing his job in an exemplary way. Those lives were not saved by an imaginary god, but by a real human being.

Why is there no longer any appreciation of excellence in our culture, in our society? We don’t strive for it… we don’t even seem to understand it anymore when we see it. What entertains Americans in 2011? Shit we can poke fun at, ridicule. Things that make us feel superior. The “Friday” video, the rapture fail. Our spirits are broken. This is all we have left. We justify the time we waste picking over garbage by invoking “irony”… but there’s no irony here. Slapstick isn’t ironic. Ineptitude isn’t ironic. Self-flagellation isn’t ironic.

The Ramones made music that was simple. Simple can be a cop out; it’s easy to be simple and shitty, or simple and stupid. But Ramones music isn’t shitty or stupid, and it’s very, very difficult to play well. The generation that beatified the Ramones was X – my generation. Not coincidentally, we also wielded irony – real irony – as a weapon. We bludgeoned bullshit to death with it. Like the Ramones, though, Gen X is history.

I want to share a video with you. I found this earlier tonight on some old mini DV tapes and edited a couple of camera angles together. This is from October 8, 2004 – the Ramones “Beat on Cancer” event in New York City. Joey, Dee Dee and Johnny were all gone by then. CJ Ramone, Daniel Rey and the Descendents’ Bill Stevenson performed with rotating singers, including Suicide’s great Alan Vega.

This performance is funny, yeah; it’s a mess. But it’s touching, and it’s right. I offer this without a trace of irony… here is a true artist with giant fuckin balls doing what he does, doing whatever the hell he wants. Being excellent over excellent music. Happy birthday, Joey.

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.

Sevendys’ next session: Presidents’ Day weekend in sunny LA. Chuck Rainey will be joining us once again, along with a few other surprise guests. The venue: EastWest Studio Three, where The Mamas & The Papas used to record… and the Beach Boys created Pet Sounds. We’re pretty psyched!

Here’s Collider performing “California Sun” live at CBGB, December 17, 1999, at an event called the Ramones Cyberpunk Blitz. [The Blitz was technically the launch party for Arturo Vega's officialramones.com, which was and will always be the only website endorsed by all of the Ramones while they were alive - both ramones.com and the late band members' individual sites were developed posthumously by their families, who then strongarmed Arty into giving up the officialramones domain and changing his site's name to RamonesWorld.]

The Cyberpunk Blitz featured 10 bands doing Ramones covers and a performance by Joey. All of the participants were asked to play under a Ramones-themed pseudonym; we changed our name to Crummy Crummy Crummy Crummy Crummy Crummy Crummy Crummy Crummy Crummy Crummy Crummy Crummy Stuff for the occasion. Because we were the only band with a keyboard player, we got to do some of the more esoteric tunes – “Howling At The Moon”, “We Want The Airwaves”, “All’s Quiet On The Eastern Front”, and this one.

That’s Chris De Rosa on drums, Bonnie Bowers on bass, Sean Gould on guitar, and yours truly. Video courtesy of Chris De Rosa.

I’ve been thinking about the term “Americana” as it relates to music. Technically, it refers to “roots music” like R&B and various folk and country styles. The contemporary distillation is “alt-country”. All that is what it is… those are culturally agreed-upon definitions and I’m not going to dispute them. But when I think of the word etymologically, as music that is American, it seems to me that we could expand the definition if we wanted to. Everything from jangly San Francisco pop to the Wall of Sound to bubblegum to Broadway to rap to jazz to the arena rock power ballad could be Americana.

Music was our culture’s most robust art form for almost half of the 20th Century. It was a vital driving force, the way the novel had been before it, and visual art before that, and poetry before that. But I think those days are finally over; music is now what all of those other things have been for most of my life: ephemeral entertainment. Music reacts to cultural change, and no longer directs it. Audiences are too fragmented for any one piece of music to have the impact of a “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, or an Appetite for Destruction, or any Beatles record.

You could argue that the chef or the comedian is the new rock star, but I think the art form that has replaced music is stupidity. It’s the only thing for which you can bank on every American tuning in. We love to gawk at other people’s moronic behavior in any medium. Stupidity inspires us to create and collaborate, and most importantly, to share… in YouTube form, stupidity brings us all together around the Facebook Wall the way a hit single once brought us together around a turntable or car stereo.

Anyway, if music is no longer America’s cultural lifeblood – and sure, you can argue that it still is, though I wouldn’t – then it should be safe to look back on its reign from here, just after the end, as something that can be considered in its entirety. What was American music?

I have my opinions, honed by years of friendly (and sometimes not-so-friendly) debate with Mike Keaney and the Hanslick Rebellion gang; informed by countless priceless firsthand conversations with New York punk rockers and San Franciscan concert poster artists; colored by my experiences in the music business of the 1990s and early 2000s, and by my status as a white male, a citizen of the East Coast, and a member of Generation X. My perspective may be useful, but it’s probably also sort of Cubist.

Say what you want about the “attention span issues” of Millennials, but the fact is that when they choose to engage with a subject, they go deep. They’ll use the Internet to its fullest potential, tracking down and consuming every morsel of information. I learned this when hanging with the Avi Buffalo crew, who pissed all over that stereotype about the intellectual indolence of Gen Y. Those guys are passionate about music and so they want to hear it all – every note ever recorded. And they want to know everything about how it was made. Avi and Sheridan are on the obsessive, beautiful quest of the true scholar, and they see music history in a context that’s as different from mine as mine is from that of someone who attended the first Television gig at CBGB.

Avi, Sheridan and I had been talking about doing some recording together… making it an adventure, trying out some of America’s legendary studios like Muscle Shoals, EastWest or Ardent. Studio recording is arguably a dying art, and in the past decade classic studios have been disappearing faster and faster. As we brainstormed potential destinations, I thought about how each studio represented a time, a region, and a sound. I began to categorize newly-written songs by appropriateness for a particular studio. A tune that might lend itself to lush sonic experimentation would get earmarked for Dreamland. Something basic, grooving and soulful, for Muscle Shoals.

We settled on SugarHill in Houston, Texas for our first recording safari. Originally known as Gold Star, it’s the oldest continually-operating studio in the United States. The air in that room has gotten shook up by all manner of hillbillies and bluesmen, by the Big Bopper and the 13th Floor Elevators. SugarHill isn’t synonymous with a sound, but the studio’s output represents a spectrum of styles that are all genuinely American.

All across the country, musicians of generations past – the very players who helped to develop their region’s signature sound – are still kicking around and quite vital. As a guitar/keyboard/drums trio, we lack a bassist, so that’s great for us… a local bass player can be our wild card, anchoring two Californians and a New Yorker to whatever city, style and era we happen to visit. As regards such, our trip to SugarHill went better than we could have imagined: the Texas bassist we drafted into Sevendys was Chuck Rainey.

We recorded basic tracks live in the studio, all in one room, instruments bleeding together. The sound was incredible. And here’s what it looked like:

The result: four songs, two of which are now available for listening and downloading. The other two are being pressed to 7″ vinyl, and we’re currently planning our next session. Working with Sheridan and Avi has me feeling so musically rejuvenated and excited… this is the most fun I’ve had playing in years! And there’s so much to consider, and to learn, about the history and fabric of American music as we embark upon this adventure. I almost feel like I’m getting to experience everything from multiple angles – through my own eyes and ears and simultaneously through the perspective of my other-generational partners. This is the first rung of a whole new ladder.

The first video from The Cutting Room Floor, directed by the awesome Ryan Mechan. Blink and you’ll miss my cameo!

My old friend Kole Hansen is somewhere in the air above… I dunno, probably New Jersey, as I type this. She’s flying across the country to inaugurate my home studio with a dozen of her finest tunes.

I met Kole at some shitty gig in Washington, DC about eight years ago. I was playing with the rapidly-disintegrating Collider; she was doing a solo acoustic thing. Why we were on the same bill is a mystery only my old manager can explain (and we’d probably come away confused even then). But Kole and I hit it off and agreed to work together sometime in the future. It’s sometime in the future, right?

We’ve got two weeks to record, so let’s see how far we get. It looks like Kole is gonna keep some kind of video diary; I’ll embed it here with some notes of my own. Installment one:

Last summer, two magazines I was designing folded simultaneously and I found myself with some extra time on my hands. I took the opportunity to hit the road with three of my favorite musicians: Reeves Gabrels, Mike Keaney and Matt Johnson. We drove west to St. Paul, south to Lenexa, Kansas, and then back home, stopping along the way at anyplace that would have us. And we hit as many Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives locations as we could find on the route.

It was a blast, and every show was captured on my trusty digital stereo recorder. A couple were even multitracked by the venue. When we got home, I collated representative tunes from each show into an audio souvenir of the tour. Dave McNair did a stunning job massaging takes from different rooms and sound systems into one smooth set, and the result is CELEBRATION PARTY!, which came out today at iTunes, Amazon, and every other such digital retailer.

You can listen to the album in its entirety right here at the Song Foundry, of course – and also purchase the download in a package with one of the silkscreened posters from the tour if you like. Reeves and I signed and numbered 50 of the posters, which I gotta say look awesome. I drew the poster in crayon (after the work of Kazunari Hattori), and then the great Kayrock of Brooklyn printed up a sweet batch.

Here’s video of “We Wait And We Wait” from the tour’s first stop, in Pittsburgh, PA.