Now that was fun

We had our first rehearsal last night as a ‘band’. It was a pretty special experience. In the world of New York singer/songwriters, the concept of a band is a malleable thing. Everyone at rehearsal last night had other projects and other gigs that were ongoing. Pete’s main project just got signed to Verve.

So when you have a bunch of people in a room that have other interests and other projects you never know how it’s going to turn out. On the one hand, everything can feel mechanical, impersonal, rote, leaden. People going through the motions, wishing they were someplace else. But on this specific hand something different happened. Everything just clicked.

This is the same group of people that were all in the studio together back in March. We’ve played together before. And the New York music world is surprisingly small so the other guys play together fairly regulalry. Rob and Matt just did a session for another songwriter that Paul is currently producing. Rob and Pete play together live in the Catapult. Etc. I suppose you could expect that same level of chemistry and camraderie would exist based on those shared experiences. But I really don’t think you could expect an authentic and distinctive sound to emerge from this group of people. It felt like something coherent and unique to me. An actual way that we, as a band, sounded.

I have used the word ‘landscape pop’ to describe what I thought the record sounded like and that has turned out to be a well-suited descriptor. Also maybe ‘desert pop’. Lots of open spaces. Minimalism. Strong but subtle tension. Lots of beauty. Some sadness.

It starts with Bill Dobrow on drums. He’s played with a many famous and noted individuals and his talent is obvious. An ability to conjure atmosphere and use dynamics to create momentum. Rob Jost (bass) and Bill play really well together and Robby is always working across the fret board to create low-end motion. During the show he’ll also have an upright bass which he’ll bow on occasion. Plus he plays the ukulele. Plus he plays the french horn. Plus he’s just a nice guy.

Pete and Matt drive a lot of the desert melody. I didn’t play much guitar last night and really only picked it up to help work through the right changes on a specific tune. So Pete and Matt create the surface music and the absence of another guitar player allows for the development of (sometimes vast) open spaces in the music that manifests itself in this gorgeous landscape quality. The stars on a cold night, mountains slunk low against the penumbra. Maybe it sounds a little like Low. Or The National? I don’t know. It just sounds really really good. When we’re sitting there together and I can focus on singing and and have this music underneath that is authentic and textured and haunting.

The highlight of the night (for me) was our rendition of ‘All my friends’. I wrote about the fact that we were going to cover it but last night was the first time we actually did cover it. It’s a simple song without a traditional verse chorus structure. Just goes from A to D as long as you want it to. We interpreted. Changed it into a rolling minimalist thing and just built up over the course of the song with Pete and Matt using lots of delay to create texture and bubbles and stronger punctuation when necessary. When you’re in that spot, when you’re participating in creating that kind of thing, that’s what it means to be alive. Like being in love. Rubbing your hands against your wife’s skin. Alive. Really good.

We play live at Rockwood Music Hall on Monday, September 1st. Come check it out. It’s gonna be a thing. A good thing.

Tags: cover songs, playing live, songwriting

Now that was fun

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