Using a laptop to record some extra elements in various locations has been really fun. Tuesday evening, Greg, Steve, and I decided to give this a shot over at Greg’s place in downtown Holyoke. Greg’s place is great… A nice loft with lovely views of the awesome buildings in Holyoke. I really love my city.

So after some delicious mole, pupusas, and pork burritos at El Guanaco in South Hadley Falls, Steve, Greg, and I headed to Greg’s to put some finishing touches on The Spires. Steve had to download the driver for the Tascam US-144 interface we’re using, but we were up and running in no time.

Down the street at city hall, a chicken ordinance was being debated. There was quite a turnout! Parking on the street was a little busy.

The other thing that was happening was a lively service at the recent storefront church that opened down the street. What was great was that Greg’s amp was picking up some of the signal from it (maybe they had a wireless mic?). The person giving the sermon in Spanish can actually be heard towards the tail end of Greg’s guitar track on The Spires. It’s awesome.

I am getting really excited to start promoting the record, and am pleased to tell you that I’ve decided on a title!

More about that soon.

I recently got together with my bandmate from my Northernly days, Rebekah Dutkiewicz, so she could add some cello parts. The portable laptop rig situation we threw together worked out pretty well.

Rebekah lives in a cool lofty apartment in downtown Easthampton with Jack Brown, rhythm guitar player for the excellent jazz ensemble, Swing Caravan. They have two adorable dogs, Sam the beagle and Pepper the dachshund. They also live nearby Riff’s Joint, which is where Rebekah and I got some delicious burgers for eating.

We setup a borrowed MacBook and a little Tascam interface and Rebekah recorded a bunch of cello parts for Mirror. It is going to sound amazing when it’s mixed all together!

Got together with Greg Saulmon in his swanky downtown Holyoke loft to listen to the record all the way through. Back on Friday, March 12th, my cousin Steve went up to Sackamusic without me to add some acoustic guitar, tambourine, snare drum, and chorusy vocals to The Spires.

Between Greg moving to Holyoke, my grandmother’s death and a wedding to go to, the month slipped by with not much thought given to the album. It was nice to get together with Greg again and take stock of what we had. We shared thoughts about the cohesiveness of the album and schemed up a couple guitar parts to be added. Despite being worried that everything had become so stalled, the record is sounding great as a whole, and I think we got the sequence pretty much nailed down.

The record is likely going to start with Fourth Floor.

Whether you celebrate President’s Day, Presidents’ Day, or President’s Day, for me it was a day off from my day job and an opportunity to head up to Conway to do some more work on my forthcoming record. Dave Chalfant and I worked on adding new elements to a few songs that I recorded as Dining Room Demos, and he added some bass parts to Fourth Floor.

It was fun times.

Fourth Floor is sounding particularly amazing since its been graced with fantastic musicians adding their stamp to it. I mean, just look at this:

Me – Piano and Lead Voice
Aric Bieganek – Drums, Glockenspiel, Background Voice
Rebekah Dutkiewicz – Cello, Background Voice
Matthew Carefully – Banjo, Mandolin, Background Voice
Dave Chalfant – Bass

I’ll be posting a track from my upcoming record sometime soon… maybe this one. Also I may have a name for this thing. More about that later.

This past Friday, my old friend Ethan Tufts was in town. After having some good lunch at Local Burger in Northampton, we headed up to Sackamusic in Conway Rock City. Ethan added some great guitar parts to Fourth Floor and Pulverized.

Me, Ethan, and our friend Bill Belina started our first band back in 1989 when we were in middle school. All we had at the time were two keyboards and drums. I aspired to be the next ‘guy from Tears For Fears’ or maybe Phil Collins with a mullet. We played music in Bill’s dad’s basement, which was lined with polka records and wood paneling. We wrote tons of songs and learned how to be a band. Gradually Bill and Ethan learned other instruments and I learned how to play keys. A couple decades have gone by, and we’ve all played in various bands, grew up, etc.

Now Ethan lives in Los Angeles, has a record label, and makes awesome music asState Shirt. He manages to come home a few times a year to visit with family and friends, and we seem to get together and collaborate on music things all these years later. It’s nice to have him be a part of this record.

Yesterday I drove up to Sackamusic in Conway to spend some time taking some inventory of the songs I’ve recorded so far for the upcoming record. I’m happy to report that things are sounding like they’re really coming together!

I recorded new lead vocal tracks for Mirror and Fourth Floor, and Dave added some bass to Mirror. I tried a vocal track for The Gatekeeper also, but it wasn’t quite what I was hoping for. I’m trying hard to capture the magic of the original live demo I made in my dining room. Maybe I should just use that version on the record. We’ll see.

I didn’t bring a camera with me, but here are some pictures I took with my cell:

Well, I love a rainy night. Especially when there is music-making going on. Last night I picked up Greg Saulmon and Mark Schwaber in Easthampton. After a stop at Local Burger for a quick meal, we headed up to Sackamusic in Conway, MA in order to Schwaberize and Saulmonize two songs, Flowers On The Fire Escape and Fight Or Flight.

I recorded a scratch piano track and some vocals. Then for Flowers On The Fire Escape, Greg added some pretty eerie guitars and Mark added some harmony melody guitar too. For Fight or Flight, they both worked out various guitar parts, culminating with a wall-of-sound noisy guitar finish that blew me away. Greg wound up using a bottle of Arrogant Bastard Ale for part of the scratchy slide guitar stuff. Mark also played bass on both tunes.

I’m taking a little break for the next couple weeks while I celebrate my wedding anniversary, head to Cape Cod for a week’s vacation, and sit with these songs for awhile to come up with vocal arrangements.

The second session with my Northernly bandmates, Rebekah Dutkiewicz and Aric Bieganek, yielded some pretty amazing results. Between Aric’s glockenspiel parts and Rebekah’s multiple layered cello sections, Pulverized and Fourth Floor are sounding downright orchestral. They each even put down some backing vocal tracks, and Aric had some time to do some acoustic guitar things also.

With how grand and crazy the end of Pulverized is sounding, we joked that it was the Layla of the album, but with its darker chord structure, maybe it’s more like the Let It Grow of the album.

Mr. Dave Chalfant is one class act. He packed up his van full of Nields-era recording equipment and hauled it to my house in Holyoke for session #5. Our mission was to lay down some sweet piano tracks using the Marantz piano in my dining room. In recent years, my wife had it moved up here from her hometown of Palmyra, Pennsylvania, as it was her childhood piano. After the tuning efforts of Sean Mallari, Registered Piano Technician, it’s been sounding great ever since.

We recorded over fake scratch piano tracks with real piano tracks on a bunch of songs: Committed To Tape, Mirror, Storm Of The Century, Fourth Floor, and Pulverized. I also recorded a piano track for The Gatekeeper.

Northernly was a band I was very involved in during 2005 and 2006 with Aric Bieganek and Rebekah Dutkiewicz. We played a large number of house concerts and at venues all over the northeast, and a ton of songs came out of that timeframe as well.

We got together for a bite at Local Burger in Northampton, then carpooled it up to Conway Rock City. Rebekah, Aric and I hadn’t played music together in almost a year, but you’d never know it listening to the two songs we worked on: Pulverized and Fourth Floor. Aric tracked drums and glockenspiel and Rebekah did some cello parts that sound fantastic. I’m sure the future Northernly incarnation sessions will yield similiarly great results.

For night number three, Greg and I headed up to Conway Rock City after a brief stop at Bueno Y Sano in Northampton for a quick bite. I recorded some scratch piano and vocals for all three songs we worked on this week: Committed To Tape, Storm Of The Century, and Mirror. Greg added some kick ass guitar parts. That along with Dave and Greg’s bass playing makes the songs sound fantastic.

Actually, none of these songs have any arrangements for acoustic guitars yet, only electric.  The result is a a bigger rock sound than I’ve had on previous recordings, which I’m pretty jazzed about.

It was a beautiful day to head up to Conway Rock City for our second night of recording. Greg, Steve and I recorded some drums for Mirror after a bunch of takes. It’s a waltzy little number that I wrote many years ago. Greg saw Steve and I perform it way back when we were doing Smokejumpers shows, and now he’s playing on it. Fun times. Steve, Greg, and Dave Chalfant worked out some fantastic bass parts for Committed To Tape and Storm Of The Century, I sang a scratch vocal for Committed To Tape, and Greg added some guitar shit too. Oh, and we even had time to rehearse Kindred a bit. All in all it was a really productive evening.

Greg and I took some pictures of the goingson…

Our first night up in Conway Rock City! Myself, Greg Saulmon, and Steve Biegner got a really good start on two songs: Committed To Tape and Storm Of The Century. We head back up to Dave Chalfant’s studio again this evening.

Kristen Beam was nice enough to come up and take some pictures:

photo by Kristen Beam

Tonight I’m heading up to Sackamusic in Conway, MA to start recording with Dave Chalfant. I’m taking Steve Biegner and Greg Saulmon and we’re going to be working on a few songs. It marks the first real (not reel) recording for the forthcoming album.

It somehow seems fitting to be starting this a day after my birthday and opening yet another new chapter in my crazy life. In a phone call yesterday, my dad and I discussed whether or not I thought I was “cured”. I told him I try not to think about it, which is true. Actually, I probably won’t ever be able to answer this question. This fact tends to insert itself into almost every one of my songs in one way or another.

It’s been about 8 or 9 years since I made the last record. I am reminded of how I got to this point, and if I pile up all those circumstances it’s a little overwhelming. But with that, it’s exhilerating too.

I intend to have a lot of fun. To use a Massachusettsism, I’m “wicked excited”.

Last week I had the pleasure of getting together with Mark Schwaber, who looks like he’ll be playing some stuff on some songs (Flowers On The Fire Escape, Fight Or Flight, Other States). He  brought a lot of ideas to the table. It was refreshing to hear these songs in a new light. We’re getting together again this evening, along with Greg Saulmon whose guitar stylings will be surely welcome. Greg has played along with me for my last couple of shows.

It’s been great for me to think about working with a  bunch of different musicians. One of the challenges, however (for them, mostly), is that I don’t really have many demos of most of my songs. So I setup the dining room last night and recorded a couple tunes so I can pass them around and see if anyone wants to play on them. Also it was my first foray into Garageband recording so I wanted to see if I could act like I knew what I was doing. I used some pretty shitty mics and mic stands and the cats were running around, so I did a few takes.

The Gatekeeper is a song I wrote last week. Not sure if it’ll be on the album, but here it is. I recorded this live while singing along to what I was playing.

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Fourth Floor is a Northernly song I’m hoping to convince Aric Bieganek and Rebekah Dutkiewicz to record with me. I recorded the piano track first, then put down the vocal track.

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You can read all about the process of starting the new record here.

I went up to meet with Dave Chalfant to discuss my forthcoming album a few weeks ago. Dave’s studio is in Conway, Massachusetts, on top of a hill, up a bunch of dirt roads and things. It’s in a place where you can see the stars at night.

I thought I’d have time to stop and get my headlight bulb replaced, except I got stuck in some traffic on I-91, so there wasn’t enough time. I wound up driving through the dark, hilly, woods to Conway with one headlight like that Wallflowers song. The snowbanks were so high I felt like my car was on a bobsled track.

I told Dave all my ideas for making a record… what I liked and didn’t like– why I wanted to do this. He calmly nodded and seemed to understand what I was going for. We both were pretty jazzed about the project. I told him about the grant I received from The SAMFund, and how it is somewhat bittersweet, and how I want to to my best to honor it.

The SamFUND is an organization that I learned more about when I played a benefit concert at PACE in Easthampton, Massachusetts. It was in honor of Andrea Coller, a local musician who passed away last April. I performed one of Andrea’s songs, “Call After Midnight”, and one of my own, “Kindred”. In between I talked about my own experience with cancer, and how heartbreaking it was to know that Andrea dealt with a lot of the same things– and worse, before she passed away. Even though we were only casual aquaintances at best, it was just really really difficult to process. But it reminded me how vastly important songwriting and music is– how it contributes to the world and how cathartic it is.

After I performed “Kindred”, I left the stage and pretty much lost it. Sam came backstage, introduced herself, and hugged me. We talked about how much cancer totally sucks. I told her about how much music meant to me, and how over the past number of years, between being sick, trying to restore my normal life again, and land on my feet financially, it wasn’t in the cards for me to make a record. She encouraged me to put a proposal together, write an essay, and apply for a SAMFund grant.

Initially, I felt enormously guilty about it. I kept thinking that there were more deserving people, that I’d be able to make a record one day down the line, I just had to make some sacrifices and save for a number of years first. Besides, I still had some other medical expenses I had to pay off– it was kind of silly to to make a record when I still had debts to pay. But I was encouraged by Sam, my wife Kristen, family and friends. And the more I thought about it, the more I began to see this as a responsibility to myself. I’m truly so tired of putting things off. I had to do that for a good portion of my twenties. Cancer can suck an egg, really. If I didn’t this now, then when?

I submitted a proposal, toiled over and sent in my essay. I wasn’t really confident I would get picked. When I did, I was truly honored. I couldn’t believe it, really. This was really going to happen. I was elated. But I wasn’t prepared for what I would learn next.

From The SAMFund:

In honor of her life, the The SAMFund has established the Andrea Coller Memorial Award, to be given to individuals who share Andrea’s passion and strength of spirit. Andrea’s friends and family will be involved in the selection process.

Sam called me while I was at work to tell me that Andrea’s family and friends selected me to be the first recipient of the Andrea Coller Memorial Award. Even just typing that now, I still can’t quite believe it. When I found out, I was in absolute awe. I somehow had to return to work and finish the work day and process what this all meant.

I won’t ever be able to express my gratitude or how humbling it is to know that Andrea’s family and friends think that I’m deserving of this. All I can do is honor it, and pour my heart and soul into making this record. And everything is starting to come together. I’ve been working with other musicians to work out some arrangements. I’m sending things to Dave Chalfant at Sackamusic. I’m writing and re-writing things. I have all these ideas. And I’m so grateful that I get to do this.

This is all really happening.