Then as it was
Then again it will be…

I met him twenty years ago. I spent a decade getting to know him, musically and personally. Ten years ago today, those of us who loved him were forced to say goodbye. Jesus, I can’t even believe it…he’s been gone for as long as I knew him.

I’ve spent the last decade missing him, and not a single day has passed that I haven’t thought of him, or felt his influence. He’s there, in the music I listen to, in the music I write and record, in the choices I make onstage, he’s always hovering. “What would Carter do?” That’s a thing. I actually ask myself that…a lot. I just wish I listened to that voice more often. I feel like, most times, he’d shake his head and say, “Why the hell did you play it like that?”

Changes fill my time
Baby that’s alright with me
In the midst I think of you
And how it used to be

I remember the last time I saw him. We were recording (what, unbeknownst to us, was) the final Sorta album at Tomcast. We sat on the couches between takes, chatting and playing guitars. He showed me the unusual open tuning for his song “Country Living”, which he had just recorded for his upcoming album. I was completely obsessed with the song. He showed me the tuning and the chords, and how to do the voicings just right. (It later dawned on me that I was the only person who ever had that lucky privilege - to learn it the right way, from the man himself.) We ate ice cream sundaes and wrapped the session. We said goodnight and I said I’d catch up with everyone the next week, after I got back from my beach vacation. Little did I know that was the last time I’d see him. Three days later he was gone.

I wrote this song, “Always In Awe”, the day he died. It’s in the same tuning as “Country Living”, the chords and melody are directly inspired by it…it’s a tribute to him, but also a musical homage. I love all the little Sorta references that made their way into the recording (that came out a couple years later)…I’d forgotten about all of that. The song is about heartbreak and loss, but the recording adds another layer - it becomes a sweet love letter to the little band we shared together, for a short time. And it’s completely honest. I was truly in awe of him, really from the day we met. He was my musical hero, I looked up to him, in every way, even when we shared the same stages together. Even when he would defer to me, and humbly say that I was better than him. Oh, whatever…I never believed him for a second…I mean, I think he meant what he said, always…but I just knew in my heart that whatever raw talent I might have had, it could never touch what he had - which was true musical genius. And on top of that, he was just so fucking cool. He was one of a kind. He should have been world famous.

Ten years gone, holdin’ on.

And I’m still missing you, Carter Albrecht.

Always.

CH 9-3-17

Around this time every year, I remember that I have a Christmas song. Oh yeah, that song I did back in 2008, or so. It still exists.

I wrote a cute little Christmas song and recorded it with some friends, and I put it out as a single. And then nothing happened. Par for the course with my music, but why not cram it down your throats one more time. Maybe someday it’ll grow into a Christmas classic. Or not.

Many thanks to those who helped me record it: Paul Williams, Marc Solomon, Amy Curnow, Wade Cofer, Mary Armstrong, and Steve Luthye.

Happy holidays…hope you like it!

CH  12/24/16

Song…Of…The…Week: “The Home In The Sky”

Awwww…I like this one. It’s about my old dog that’s no longer with us…sweet Jake. When you write songs, sometimes it’s nice to leave an air of mystery about them and let people come up with their own interpretations. But then, there are some tunes that are just clear as day…this is one of those…it’s about a fucking dog! Surely, people can relate to that, yes?

I wrote it a few months before he died, actually…it was when I could see the inevitable writing on the wall, as it were, even though he wasn’t visibly sick at the time. It’s a tricky thing, trying to write a song like that without it being sappy and stupid. But I felt pretty good about this one.

Musically, I really like what’s happening on it. I think I’d been listening to a lot of M. Ward at the time. The production on it is fairly sparse…well, sparse by my standards. I’m sure it could be easily pointed out that there are pianos and baritone guitars and acoustics and dobro and handclaps and, ok I get it. But hey, at least there aren’t multiple stacks of mellotrons and Brian Wilson-wannabe backing vocals. So there.

I recorded it with my buddy Paul Williams at the helm. Paul is so great to work with…he’s super laid back. Always friendly and encouraging. He’s got great ears and instinctively knows what a song needs. And perhaps most impressively, what it doesn’t need…in other words, he knows how to keep me from going overboard. All the different things we put on the song - from the call-and-response dobro and baritone to the plunky piano bits - actually made sense…it never felt too indulgent. And I love the groove…it’s got this easygoing 70’s shuffle thing happening. Pretty sure I copped the bass line from some old song, but I’m not sure what it was…it wasn’t intentional, it just seemed very natural, and familiar.

This is kind of like a flip-side companion piece to “Madelyn”…whereas that track is the furiously frantic industrial playground psych-stomp, “The Home In The Sky” just coasts along gently. They shuffle similarly, albeit in different parallel universes. I had to make sure they weren’t back to back on the record. That would be a little too much shuffle.

Funny fact: Tom walked in one day while we were mixing this tune, probably a year or so after we’d recorded the basic track. After a minute, he turned to me and said, “Sounds good, but it’d be better if you let a real drummer play on it,” displaying his usual snarky attitude whenever I’m the drummer on a song. But without missing a beat, Paul and I both turned to him and said, “That’s YOU, asshole.”  

Enjoy.

CH
April 8, 2016

What better choice for the Song Of The Week on April Fools’ Day than…“A Dirty Trick”? Well, I dunno. Maybe a million other songs. But we’ll go with this one for now.

This is what I like to call the sore thumb on Stargazer. It sticks out. Nothing else really sounds like it on the record. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

It’s a bit of a throwback to the days of my youth. Particularly the sound of Olospo. Olospo was my band back in the early-to-mid 2000’s. In those days, I had a tendency to write songs that were a bit more (perhaps unnecessarily) complex. They were, as always, rooted in the pop music and melody that I grew up loving, but I found great happiness (and perhaps some humor) in the inclusion of “math problems” within simple pop structures. We enjoyed weird time signatures, unusually complex riffs, layered songs-within-songs, etc. We were young and dumb, and our shows were (literally) epic. Those were some truly fun times…and some of the best memories I’ll ever have of playing live.

Anyway…I wrote “A Dirty Trick” many years later, after the demise of the Spo, in December 2009, while I was in a hotel room in Galveston. Quite a few Stargazer songs were born in that same room, while I was enjoying a two-week stay for a gig I was doing at the time. “ADT” just fell out one morning when I was playing around with the guitar. It started with that odd, stuttering riff in 7. I liked the idea of having a herky-jerky drum intro, and then settling into a more natural groove. The entire song came very quickly, and within an hour or so, the entire thing was done. I made a demo and then moved on.

I didn’t really think the song would go anywhere anytime soon, after writing it. I was busy preparing for the release of The Slack’s final album, and in the midst of recording A Cosmic Joke. My mind was pretty far from the funky stylings of Olospo…and I immediately recognized that the song was a throwback to that sound. I liked it, but I wasn’t in the headspace to do anything with it. I knew what it sounded like and recognized its potential to be a sore thumb. When I played it for my Slack bandmate Eric Neal, the first thing he said was, “Your Spo is showing.” Touché.

So the song sat around for awhile, but when Olospo got back together for a one-off Halloween show in 2012, we decided to work up some new material. I offered up “ADT” as a new song for the band, and we worked it up. Everybody liked it. We played it at the show and it went well. Inevitably, there was talk of a new album, and everyone got excited. But as is often the case with aging musicians, life got in the way and we were unable to follow up on the promise and potential of making another record together. But…we did manage to get together and sort out “A Dirty Trick” in the studio. Nick, Tom, Britt and I got together at Tomcast and recorded the basic track in December 2012. And then, again, it sat around for awhile! Life got in the way and everybody moved on.

A couple years later, when Stargazer’s recording momentum really amped up, I found myself coming back to it. I really liked the track, and I wanted to include it on the record, knowing full well that Olospo wouldn’t make another studio album…not any time soon, at least. Why let the song go to waste? I loved the idea of including a new song that was a throwback to the sound and influences of my younger years…I’d done it before…hell, there were other songs on Stargazer that were throwbacks - songs that sounded like The Slack, or even like Sorta. They were like little love letters to the past…memories of the people and places that had paved the way. And “A Dirty Trick” was no different - it was like a love letter to The Spo!  So what better way to pay tribute than to actually have them playing on the song. I wrote a song that sounds like my old band, and the band actually makes a cameo. It all made perfect sense in the end. So Tom and I got back together and put the finishing touches on it for the album. I added my layers of ping-ponging Jimmy Page guitar harmony, we dirtied up the lead vocal, added some fun percussive elements, and then it was done.

The track is an effing blast, I think. Tom and Nick are so locked into the pocket…Nick’s bass playing has always been stellar, and he really shines. Tom’s fills are weird and unique…totally idiosyncratic drumming that only he can do. Britt’s funky keyboard accents fill all the right holes. And then there’s me going over the top with the guitars. Just like the good ol’ Spo that I remember. And love. I still love the Spo. Kinda hard not to.

And there you have it. No fooling.

CH
April 1, 2016

Dear Diary,

So we spent the past couple days shooting a video for “Madelyn (Don’t Cry)”…that was a pretty wild experience.

Highlights…hmmm…well, there was me playing guitar in the woods, electricity be damned! There was me being reunited with my long lost Zounds Sounds buddy - the Wurlitzer/Musitronic student piano, courtesy of my old friend Marc Solomon. There were former students working on the crew…that was fantastic. There was me battling my allergies in the trees. There was me trying to play drums to a completely inaudible playback, and hoping blindly that I was keeping decent time. Ah, the good stuff. At least it was a lovely day. Well, the first day was. The second day, we just shot in a studio with a green screen.

The real star of the video, though, is an eight-year-old girl named Savannah, who was delightful. Her job was basically to run, run, and then run some more…through the woods, down the street, around the corner, etc. It was my idea originally to have the video be some sort of “chase scene.” In my head, I just had my daughter Maddy running and me chasing her with a wobbly camera, all in good fun.

But in the hands of our extremely talented director, Mitch McLeod, it’s surely to be taken to a much higher artistic level. We got Savannah on board because we knew that a) it would be a pain to get Maddy out of school for a couple days, and b) it would be a pain to get Maddy to cooperate and follow directions and be on set running for hours on end, two days in a row. So we went the professional actress route.

For me, it’s just awkward being on camera…no matter how many times you do it, when it’s your own video, and your own song, and you’re mimicking something, it’s just…weird. It didn’t really help that it’s been so long since we made the recording, and I could hardly remember what the piano parts and guitar solo were doing. The guitar solo’s already backwards on the record…how do you mimic playing that shit??

But it was a pretty painless experience. Everyone got along, the weather cooperated. Nobody got into screaming fights. Trey provided donuts and sandwiches and coffee.

I can’t wait to see the final cut…high hopes here. Other than what my original concept was for the video was (the running and chasing part), I have no idea where it’s all gonna go.

When are we shooting the next one, guys?

CH
March 30, 2016

This week’s SOTW is short and sweet. “Sweet Pea Pie”, to be exact.

There’s not a whole helluva lot to say about this little ditty, except it makes me smile and giggle. It’s not exactly rocket science.

I wrote it as a piano exercise some nine years ago or so. In the last few weeks of his life, my friend and bandmate Carter Albrecht had given me some good-natured guff about my piano technique…which is fairly unorthodox, to put it nicely. So as a knee-jerk reaction, I started practicing a lot more, and trying to come up with some tricky exercises that would increase my speed and dexterity on the keys. I have no formal training whatsoever there, so it’s always been trial and error, at best.

“Sweet Pea Pie” came around sometime in late 2007, after Carter passed away. But the determination was still there on my end. I’m not sure I ever set out for it to be a song that would be included on an album. It was just something I had laying around for awhile. I made a demo and moved on.

But as luck would have it, Tom and I came back to it many years later, and decided to make something of it. I had a pretty hard time getting it right…my timing was shoddy and I could barely remember how to play the damn thing. But Tom had a great idea…he suggested we slow it down to half speed for the actual recording, then speed it back up and see what it sounds like. So we did exactly that, and when we sped it back up, it gave it that off-kilter, old-timey sound that we’d been looking for all along. A happy accident, if you will!

I think it was Tom’s idea to flesh out the instrumentation in the second half. I added a hopping gypsy guitar track with his pseudo-dobro at the studio, complete with the chromatic harmony run at the end, and he added some light drums. But the real gold came from the guest spots: my friend and former student Max Gerl - a brilliant jazz bassist and Berklee student, who wasn’t even 20 years old when he came in to cut the track - laid down some upright bass, in a single take, if I recall correctly. And then the supremely gifted Reggie Rueffer came in, composing and performing the fiddle arrangement in about an hour’s time. Quite a sweet slice of pie, indeed.

I swear I can play this live on the piano. But I need to practice it for a day or two before I do. So if you want to hear me play it, please give me advance notice. Otherwise it’ll be a big steaming mess.

Thank you for listening.

CH
March 24, 2016

Hey, it’s the Song Of The Week! Oh, and the site looks a little different. That was really nothing more than me taking two minutes and saying to myself, “This looks boring and shitty. There’s gotta be a way to make it look slightly less so…” And voila!

This week’s SOTW is called “Our Situation.” I enjoy this one, kinda. It’s always nice to have an upbeat song somewhere in there. It makes me think, “Hey we can do this one onstage!” That is, if we have four keyboard players, or just one who really knows how to split sounds and multi-task.

I’ve had this song lying around for awhile. I earmarked it in my mind to be a part of a “dance album” project. I got it into my head that I would make a record entirely based around drum grooves, and do something with a very minimalist, dry sound. Talking Heads, Spoon, old 70’s records…that kinda stuff…groove oriented and interesting rhythmic textures, without too much fuss. I never got around to making that record, naturally. But maybe I will someday.

“Our Situation” didn’t wait around long enough to be a part of that future endeavor. When I showed up to Junius one night in the spring of 2014, Lindsay and I found ourselves on the same page immediately about cutting the track right then and there. And we did. I can’t really recall if we did the entire track in a single night, but we sure as hell did most of it, very quickly.

Because I’d composed the drum part in my head from the get-go when writing the tune, I played the drums myself. In fact, I played and sang every single note on the song - from the walking bass to the multiple guitars to the crazy keys and the stacked harmonies. I played the bass part with a pick (I usually play with my fingers), in order to get a particularly percussive sound. In fact, I think I played bass with a pick on almost all of the Junius tracks…it became our go-to sound on those bassline-driven productions. Plucky.

My favorite part of the recording process, though, was the double-tracked harmony synthesizer solo…it took a few failed attempts to get it just right, but Lindsay and I were giddy with delight when we heard the finished take. That thing sounds ridiculously spectacular. It’s a pretty groovy bit.

The only thing that sucks is the last line of the song. We did it several ways. The first way was this annoyingly abrasive bark. Then I decided that was no good, so we tried it a couple other ways. Finally we settled on a very drawn out, whispery kinda thing. I was ok with it at the time, but later I was like, “I should’ve sung that part better.” Maybe I should’ve gone back to the bark. But whatever…it was done. I wasn’t gonna go back and mess with it anymore. When you’re making a double album, there’s only so many times you can nitpick something before your mind becomes numb to it and you never want to hear it again.

I’m hoping you will listen many times before you get to that point.

Thank you.

CH
March 18, 2016

Here’s a link to the recent interview I did with the always-friendly and supportive Matt Meinke over at Notably Texan.  Enjoy!

CH

March 15, 2016

Oh yeah, the “Song Of The Week” thing. One week in and I almost forgot about it. I need a manager.

What better time than to introduce you to my favorite song on STARGAZER. It’s called “Like A Child”. (There was a longer title at one point, that referenced a funny scene in a funny movie, but I digress.)

I’m a total sucker for ethereal, dreamy music. It feels like I’ve been trying to do it for years and years. Like I’m always on the hunt for the perfect simulation of “A Pillow Of Winds.” That kind of sound just puts my mind at ease, and is such a pleasing musical aesthetic. Honestly, if I could pick one type of music that always gets me, it’s that sound. Floating, chiming, textured melody and harmony…when done right, it’s pure bliss. You ever hear that song by Calhoun called “I’ll Go Anywhere But Home?” That is absolute perfection. I want everything I ever do to sound like that. But alas, I’ll never get there. “Like A Child” was yet another attempt (in a long line of them) to achieve that sonic goal, namely the early, pre-Dark Side Pink Floyd sound, as well as some more contemporary stuff, like XO/Figure 8-era Elliott Smith…the Calhoun song…etc etc.

The song itself had been lying around for a while, since the Cosmic Joke days. Not sure why it didn’t make it on to that album…probably because I already had a song or two on that record that fit that particular sound. But I knew from the minute I wrote it that it was going to become something special in the studio. It was born in a hotel room in Galveston in December 2009…I remember it tumbling out of nowhere, in its entirety, in just a few minutes. Those are the best ones…one minute you’ve got nothing…next minute, you’ve got an entire song that wasn’t there before, and you’re just like, “Oh, hey!” I really like the chord movement…it starts with the (obvious) major-seventh thing that I’ve been doing constantly since the Slack days (because it’s so pretty!), but then it throws a couple curve balls in there that make the melody a lot more interesting. It’s dark and weird and tense, then it releases nicely. I rarely feel like I accomplish that in my own music, but this one sounds like a success, to my ears.

I worked with both Tom and Paul on recording it for STARGAZER. Tom and I started it back in 2012, with just a simple track, incorporating nylon string guitar and my lead vocal. We used Tom’s old classical guitar, that belonged to his mom before she died many years ago, to track the basic fingerpicking. I thought that was a really cool thing to do - it’s the only time we’ve ever used it on a recording. For some reason, it just felt right that day. It was tricky to keep it in tune, but once we got going, it held up well. After adding the upright piano solo, we let it rest, for a long time. A year or so later, Paul and I got together and started adding more layers to it, as was my wont. We tracked the various chiming electric guitars, as well as some subtle keyboard textures, to supplement the acoustic piano.

I should’ve probably been happy with it at that point, but for some reason, I came back a few months later, and decided I wanted to add just a little bit more. I felt like the song ended too quickly, so I convinced Tom that we should keep going at the end, and create a Floydian soundscape…to let the song drift off a little further into dreamland. We added bass, percussion, more keyboards, and some noisy, echoing slide guitar, for maximum Gilmour effect. My friend Daniel asked “What the hell is that, a chainsaw?”  Yes!  Well, no. But I’m glad that it has that vibe.

It drove me crazy for a little while that you could hear so many (unwanted) noises on the track…the nylon guitar was played rather quietly, but the mics were so hot…you can hear my feet moving and my fingers squeaking up and down the neck…you can actually hear me breathing while I play. But after nitpicking that for awhile, and then stepping back, I decided it was cool to leave it in. Sometimes you just gotta let it happen the way it happens.

Hope you enjoy “Like A Child.” It’s (probably) my favorite from this collection.

CH
Mar 11, 2016

Here’s a rant that’s not about politics. Yay.

Trying to be an “artist” is a slippery slope. Just calling one’s self that reeks of pretension and self-importance. And when you recognize that, it’s easy to want to tap the brakes.

For me, there’s the obvious desire for people to hear the music I’ve made. Because I really love music itself, and when you really love music and care about it, then you would at least hope that the same passion you have for the music you love translates into the music you create. But, I’m old and cynical and weary about waving my arms and jumping around, screaming “look at me, look at me!” It bugs the crap out of me when people do that. So I guess I don’t do a lot of self-publicity. It makes me feel icky. Thus I’m a terrible salesman.

I’ve always had this weird attitude about it, thinking that if your music is good enough, people will somehow find it. And if your music isn’t good enough, they won’t. Maybe that’s a bad attitude in this day and age…but it’s still how I feel. I don’t think that by constantly promoting myself, it’s going to make my music any better or more appealing. It just makes me more annoying.

That being said, I’ve worked hard on all my records, especially this most recent one, and I hope you’ll listen. I’m really happy (and relieved) that STARGAZER is finally out there. Thank you to everyone who helped me get it done, and thank you to everyone who’s listened. I’ll continue to go against my own nature and ask you to listen. Please listen. And write reviews of it, good or bad. Tell people about it, if you like it. And I will continue to thank you.

Because I don’t really know what else to do between now and the time that we start doing full band shows to promote the album, I’m just gonna start doing a “song of the week” post on my blog site…something just to keep me actively acknowledging it. I’ve stayed quiet for so long, it seems like it’s something worth doing, for now.

So…check it out below. Seriously, right below…keep reading…scroll down!

Hello, hello. Thank you so much to everyone for their kind words about STARGAZER. It’s safe to say, I’m very relieved that it’s finally out there. The vinyl is currently in production, and as soon as we have it (ballpark: May/June), we’ll start doing some full band shows…I can’t wait to get out there and play this stuff live for you. In the meantime, keep an eye open for any solo acoustic shows I might be playing.

Starting today, I’m doing a “song of the week” blog post, just to keep stuff actively updated on the site. I’ll probably go through all of the STARGAZER material that I haven’t talked about yet, and then at some point, I may even go backward through the catalog and revisit some long-forgotten tracks from yesteryear.

This week’s song is called “The Quest To Break Free.” This was the fourth song I recorded at Junius, with Lindsay Graham at the helm, in the fall of 2013. It started out softly, as a folky, foot-tapping thing…a rather sparse and simple song. I didn’t think it would even get recorded for the album, because it was just another demo in an overstuffed closet full of them. But when I showed up at Junius one night, Lindsay pulled up the demo and said he really liked it. I’d been hoping to record a song called “Rollerskate” that night. But when Lindsay heard “Rollerskate”, he said he’d rather try something else at that moment. There was something in the vibe of that song that wasn’t matching his mood. That was the cool thing about how the Junius sessions worked…there was a great deal of spontaneity in what we did. I’d give Lindsay a ton of demos, and then we’d tackle something depending on our respective moods. I wanted to do “Rollerskate”, but I was feeling pretty open-minded. He was really curious about this acoustic demo he’d been listening to. When he pulled up “Break Free”, I said “oh yeah, I like that one…just a simple little folk song.” And he said, “Yeah…but…what if we really amplified it?”

Hmmm…sounded familiar. This was not the first time we’d turned a song on its head. Knowing “Madelyn” had received the same treatment just a few weeks earlier, I smiled and said “Ah, yes…here it comes. What are you hearing?” And he said “Oh, I don’t know, something with a really thumping bass line.” And so we set off on a quest (pun intended) to spice up this simple ditty. The immediate results were really exciting. We started with a baritone guitar, fingerpicking the part just like it was on the original demo…then we knocked the entire track out in a single night, in just a matter of a few hours.

We didn’t change anything about the actual song, we just found a fresh way to interpret it, with a pulsating, driving beat and a plucky bass line. The only real remnant of the original demo (other than the lead vocal, which was virtually the same) was the fingerpicked baritone, which only popped up here and there, most notably in the intro. Everything else - from the syncopated bass to the punchy Wurlitzer to the chiming Nashville guitar - was laid down one right after the other, in quick, spontaneous succession. We made a drum loop from something Lindsay dug up on his computer, and even though it was originally intended as just a placeholder, we liked it so much that we agreed to keep it. We edited it meticulously and tweaked it to our liking, and then it was done. I stacked a ton of vocal harmonies and we called it a day.

The whole song in a single session. If only it could always be that easy. When I left the studio that night, I was like, “Wow, four hours ago, I would have never dreamed that I’d be walking away with this song, finished, and ready to go on the album.”  I will always remember that night fondly. Hope you enjoy hearing it as much I enjoyed making it.

My son really loves this song, but he prefers the early rough mix of it, where I jammed for a couple minutes during the outro. Lots of mindless noodling on guitars, keys, and bass. I guess a few remnants of that made it into the final remix, which was done many months later. Maybe I’ll post that early version someday. For now, I’m happy with the short and sweet ending.

CH
March 1, 2016