Hey everybody!

Halo, the EP from my upcoming album is out now on iTunes and my new Bandcamp page! This is the first stage of releasing the full album, Album No. 4: Trying to Put the Things Together that Never Been Together Before, coming in May 2012. 

Help me get the word out! You can post the EP announcement in Facebook, Twitter and other electronic communication by going to the Bandcamp page and choosing "embed/share."  It's super-easy, and is a great way (at $2.98) to get new folks in on the ground floor of this phenomenal skyscraper of an LP you made possible!

And please come to the Halo EP release show this Sunday, January 22nd @ 5:00 p.m. at The Living Room! Special guests and bring the kids! www.leefeldman.com

-Lee

P.S. Any tech problems with your benefits? Haven't gotten benefits? Email ctokar@hotmail.com.

Please watch the video to get a look at the the "making of" process & see when you can expect the final product!

I saw this quote by Theodore Herzl recently and it seems resonant to me:  "Dream and deed are not as different as many think.  All the deeds of men are dreams at first, and become dreams in the end."  It seems relevant somehow to what's going on in the world.  And you can't help but think about these things as you see your kids growing up.  But also, it reflects a feeling that I've had while making this album:  these are dreams that I'm turning into reality.  And that feels kind of crazy.  But when anybody in the studio gets freaked or tense, I say:  "What are you worried about?  Nobody's going to listen to this shit anyway."

Of course I really do hope that people listen to the final result, but as I've learned over the years, you can't (or at least I can't) control that.  I've always felt a bit like a tree falling in the forest.  And "Trees are People Too."  (That's one of the songs on the album.)

But if, as Herzl said, "deeds . . . become dreams in the end" then what is the point of doing things at all?  Woody Allen supplied us with an approach to large questions such as this when he said, "How the hell should I know why there were Nazis?  I don't even know how the can opener works."

This is all to say that making this album has been an incredible experience for me, but it's credible because it's happening.  So many things have been working out right.  Like when Mauro Refosco (David Byrne and Thom Yorke's percussionist), came into the studio.  I had never met Mauro before and in just minutes we (Bill on drums, Byron on bass, me on piano and vocals and Mauro on his assorted pots and pans) had launched into a perfect take of the wacky oratorio "Subtle Flagellating Pulse Baby in a Christian Fabric Memory Dress.

Some things were stressful but worked out well in the end.  Like when, after spending all night and the next morning writing string parts for a quartet comprised of top New York session players, I got into a car service car with only 30 minutes to get to the Magic Shop in SoHo from Williamsburg and the driver convinced me that the Manhattan Bridge was our best bet and then we got stuck in traffic and I was screaming in the back seat.

But the session went beautifully.

So, it's been intense, a lot of work and a lot of fun, and I think and hope that the end result, the recording, will have the vibrancy and texture of dreams.

At the bottom of this entry is a photo of Lee and his brother David circa 1976. 

Two years ago in June, I put together the "Be Lee Festival" at Joe's Pub in Manhattan to celebrate Lee's birthday; 20 artists came out to take the stage 'as' Lee Feldman, singing his songs, telling his "jokes" and in some cases, wearing his crazy cowboy hat.  The idea for the performance came from Lee's idea to license himself.  There's no easy way to explain that - I suggest you read more about that here if you'd like.

The musicians who played that night are an amazing collection of artists; I had seen almost all of them perform their own material at one time or another, and was excited to see and hear what each of them would do. But the biggest surprise was seeing Lee's brother David command the attention of the room with his performance in a quiet, confident and moving way. I had heard David mess around on the guitar over the years, and I knew he could play and sing, but since he is not by profession a performer, I didn’t anticipate how powerfully he could translate his playing to the stage. On a borrowed guitar, David played and sang a couple of songs Lee wrote about their family almost 25 years ago; one of them was "I Remember The Night," about their parent's divorce.

When it came time to do this new album, Lee wanted to record the song - he never has, and he never performs it.  I think it had been renewed for him by David's performance; in fact, we both thought it would be worth it to have David come in and try singing it for the record. So he did, accompanied by Lee on the piano. David nailed it, and apparently, there wasn't a dry eye in the studio (and that’s a tough room!). 

Another surprise the night of the Be Lee Festival was Lee's stepbrother John Malik, who came up from Florida with a cameraman to tape the Be Lee Festival; Ed Haber recorded the sound. To see David’s Be Lee performance of "I Remember the Night" click on this link: http://vimeo.com/5814180.

Thanks, John.  Thanks, Ed.  Thanks, Dave.