No Frills — STORYTOWN

A couple of years ago, a friend and very good musician remarked that my recordings are “pretty produced’, meaning they have a lot going on – keyboards, horns, harmony vocals, etc. I don’t think he meant it as a criticism, but I did wonder if they are maybe overproduced. When I’m arranging and recording my songs I HAVE lots of ideas, and I love the process of “decorating” the songs with textures and countermelodies and harmonies and so on. I really enjoy this part of making music, so I guess I just can’t help myself. I do sometimes worry that it’s too much, that the arrangement and production get in the way of the song. It can be hard (for me) to recognize when “less is more”; you can kill the essence or impact of the song by adding too much stuff in a misguided attempt at making it “bigger”.

I did share with my friend that I have a personal rule that I won’t start arranging or recording a song until I have finished the melody, chords, and lyrics, and where I think the song, in its unadorned state, is “worthy”. Of course I’m not so rigid that I’m not allowed to tweak the lyrics or structure once I’ve started to create the recording, but you get the idea.

Overproduced or not, I love the full-blown Storytown band, its big sound, with three-part harmonies, the horns’ textures and stabbing attacks, the grooves. In my ideal world we’d play once a week (at least), get a more cohesive live sound, loosen up, play around with things. And I could work on my singing and live persona; I generally feel that I’m the weakest part of the band. But it’s taking me an overly long time to realize that this ideal of playing out regularly is not an option in NYC, not with such a big band and with our failure to amass much of any fan base beyond some loyal (and much appreciated) friends. Absent any dramatic change in the status quo, I think we may be able to pull off one or maybe two shows a year, primarily gated by our audience draw. (I am hoping to schedule a very excellent Stories from Storytown event in the fall, with some exciting guests. Watch this space for more on that.)

If you’ve been reading these posts for a while, you may remember my very clever and hilarious post, The 10,000 Hours in Hamburg Tour, in which the band proposes to achieve Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 hour rule” via a tour that visits all 22 towns in the US that are called “Hamburg”. Well, we never did that, and so here we are.

For quite a while I attributed our inability to guarantee to a venue big audiences to our not being especially good – the songs and overall sound and myself – not the musicians, who are all stellar. I now believe that we aren’t that bad (although we could obviously be more better with 10,000 hours under our belt). I instead believe that our potential audience in the tristate area isn’t much into going to rock clubs to hear original music. I don’t deny that we could be more exciting or in some way generate a buzz that would change things, but right now I’ve got no ideas for how to do that. (Maybe something very theatrical and surprising, like face paint, or live animals on stage, or …) Another factor, sad to say, may be our relative agedness compared with other up-and-coming bands. I do hate to think that my time has come and went.

I’ve got some folks exploring possible opportunities at festivals and maybe small, customized regional tours, positioning us as “new Americana”, whatever that is – and I’m the one who coined the phrase – but I’m not optimistic any of this will come to fruition. Maybe I should be content to be a “legend in my living room”.

So, while I contemplate these and other matters, and while I wait for the demand to build up for going out to a club to hear Storytown, I’m going to try playing a few (or maybe just one) solo gigs – just me and an acoustic guitar. My goal is to shed as much of the production hassle (scheduling, equipment, etc.) and the pressure to bring in a bunch of people, and instead to focus on the songs and my singing. I want to be a better singer overall as well as a better interpreter of my songs; I fear that sometimes I fall back on the full band sound to mask my own shortcomings. Finally, I want to test whether the “no frills”, undecorated versions of the songs stand on their own.

So my first foray into solo performance is at a tiny dive bar in the East Village, Lucky, on Easter Sunday evening April 5. And although I’m trying to resist the pressure to fill the venue, I would like to have some people there so I’m not singing to an empty room (awkward); also the bar would very much appreciate it and might actually ask me to come back. So, once you’ve found all the Easter eggs and had your fill of chocolate bunnies, please consider coming out and giving me some honest feedback. I play a set at 7pm, followed by a set at 8pm by the duo Tide Pool. Here’s the promo that Lucky has created for the gig (click to watch):

Thanks for being you.