About this project

We say we "make music", and when you're performing, it's easy enough to understand.  Making music is a physical activity; you hit the drums, strum the strings, feel the vibrations in your throat when you sing.  In the moment, it's a tangible thing.  When it's recorded, though, it loses some of that physicality (unless you turn the speakers up really loud).  While the internet provides amazing opportunities for indie folks (e.g., crowdsourcing your record on Kickstarter), you still want to be able to hold something in your hand and say "I made this".  Music should have some weight to it, after all.

I'm very close to finishing my new record, "Sweetheart of the Music Hall".  The recording is done, but there are still costs for mastering, production, and duplication.

You may wonder why anyone in the digital age would bother making a CD at all.  The usual responses for independent musicians like myself are valid: you need to have something to sell at shows, something to give away immediately in the chance a random opportunity comes along ("hey, is that Clive Davis getting coffee?"), something you can get independent record stores to support, etc.  But what these all come down to is the same basic reason: we want to MAKE something.

This is kind of an old fashioned attitude, which is why I have an old fashioned package in mind.  The title track was inspired by weekly late night hangs at Rockwood Music Hall, one of my favorite places on earth.  Somewhere in those brick walls and wood floors I got the idea to do a cover in the style of the old pulp detective novels.  

The lovely and talented Emily Raw shot a cover at Rockwood itself with Ann Courtney, frontwoman of the amazing Mother Feather and longtime bartender at Rockwood, who I think you'll agree makes a dazzling femme fatale.  We've lined up a professional artist who does that style for a living (see the Hard Case crime novels) to turn the photo to an actual illustration.  One of my favorite songwriters who also happens to be a genius at design, Richard McGraw, is lending his talents to the project.  And that's before we even mention the music itself.  The record is produced by Chris Cubeta (of local rock heroes Chris Cubeta and the Liars Club), who is rapidly becoming one of the most sought after producers in NYC, with production credits for Wakey!Wakey!, Harper Blynn,  and Casey Shea, among others.  I can't even begin to list the number of musicians involved at this point.  It's not a stretch to say we've put everything but the kitchen sink on the record (and we've talked about using the sink for percussion overdubs). 

In short, every dollar contributed this project will go to creating an object that lives up to the level of talent already invested in the recording, something we can all be proud to hold in our hands and say "I made this".