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.

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.

Along with the piano and voice parts, I recorded some background melodica and some kazoo parts reverb-ified.

Listen to “Happens In Stages”

[See post to listen to audio]

Happens in stages
Dog-eared pages
Two roads at your feet

Heaven and Earth
Or what it’s worth
You could take chances or time

Also recorded on Monday was a song called Little Black Boxes, inspired by The American Widow Project.

I used a carpenter’s hammer against one of the bass strings, then plucked the upper melody with my fingers. The sustain pedal has to be held down, of course. Then I put some water in a wine glass and clanked it with a paint stirrer… and then of course there were tambourines and egg shakers… and then the singing of four part harmonies.

Listen to “Salt”

[See post to listen to audio]

When all the walls that you had built
Could not protect you from the guilt
The secrets hid behind the eyes
Were darker than your safest lies

And when they come, they pull you down
They crush the peace you thought you’d found

But we’re deciding who’s at fault
We stand the breeze and taste the salt
We’re deciding who’s at fault
We stand the breeze and taste the salt

You Were A Cynic (1:56) [See post to listen to audio]

Other States (1:12) with Ethan on melodica [See post to listen to audio]

Fight Or Flight (3:14) [See post to listen to audio]

The new State Shirt cd, This Is Old was released just last month. Ethan has been busy promoting that and also scheming up some shows for himself. He and I are trying to get some sort of Matthew Larsen / State Shirt / ??? tour happening in late Spring…

I never understood why restaurants want to advertise that they’re under new management. Those signs don’t really affect my decision either way. As long as you’re advertising, why not a banner that says “New Menu Items!” or something related to the delicious food that they make?

Anyway, it’s awesome that El Guanaco has been able to thrive despite its somewhat odd location in South Hadley Falls. It goes to show you that people ARE willing to seek you out if the food is good enough. With that in mind, I hope the same success formula rings true for La Casita Azteca in Easthampton, MA.

Mark has been performing with Sara Gomes lately, and from what I hear, it’s nothing short of magic. Sara Gomes is the wife of Tom Gomes, who who used to play drums in a band called Killswitch Engage (and now owns his own drum company). The main guitar dudes in Killswitch are Adam Dutkiewicz and Joel Stroetzel.

Adam and I got together when Killswitch was still in its infancy to record the Smokejumpers album. At the time, I was going through some medical bullshit and Adam would come over with an 8-track ADAT and record in my crappy Easthampton apartment. It’s funny to think that, while Adam was concurrently working hard to develop the metal band that would ultimately launch his successful music career, he was also writing sappy folk songs on acoustic guitar and recording my mellow piano stuff. One song in particular we wound up recording at Zing Studio in Westfield, which is where I met Joel Stroetzel for the first time– he was hanging out with Adam and at Zing a lot.

Fast forward a number of years, and it turns out that Joel played guitar on Mark’s last record, The Killing Card, and the two of them are good friends. Joel and his wife lived in my former apartment in Easthampton after I moved out.

You have to love Western Massachusetts. It’s like we have our own version of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. And, in fact, anyone who has ever played the Iron Horse or knows someone who has is separated only by only a few degrees from Kevin Bacon, since The Bacon Brothers have been booked there on numerous occasions.

Anyway, like Adam D. or Joel or Matt Bachand from Shadows Fall, it’s fitting that Mark Schwaber is one of those people who loves metal but can also tear your heart out with a simple sweet quiet melody. I think it’s this dichotomy that keeps things interesting in Mark’s music, and I am genuinely excited to hear him and Sara together on Friday night at The Black Moon.

Instead I’ll just post about how I’m kind of excited about the whole blog setup. Ever since I started working at MassLive, and since meeting my lovely fiancee Kristen, I’ve been keen to the idea of starting one, but just didn’t have the time to explore it. Finally, I did.

So here we are. As I get into the swing of things, I hope some of these posts aren’t total snoozers.