The new album, I’m From Here, is complete, and will be released to folk radio stations and all streaming and download services on March 1st.
I’m From Here album notes
Despite the title and the isinglass like cover photo of my parents, this isn’t a conceptual album about my keeping my memories of my childhood in Long Island at a distance and the forever unfinished business of the effect that my father passing away when I was ten had on my family. The album has twangy songs, topical songs, funny songs, and a song about cars that combines my two main passions (I’m an automotive writer). But the four songs on the album that tie back to my family and those early years are precious to me. The whole point of “I’m From Here” is that “here” isn’t a physical place. It’s the root of who you are whatever that is, however it was created, and however you arrived there.
Recording notes
The album was mostly recorded, layered, and mixed by Doug Kwartler at Hollow Body Studios who recorded and produced my friend Erin Ash Sullivan’s recent Signposts and Marks as well as my last album, and was co produced by me and Doug Kwartler. Four songs that didn’t require Doug’s layering were recorded and mixed by Steve Friedman at Melville Park Studio and were produced by me.
Song notes
I dreamed I Said to Sisyphus
Facebook is very good at serving up old posts of what happened X number of years ago. One morning it cheerfully notified me that a decade ago, when I was facing layoff, I posted “I dreamed I said to Sisyphus “at least you’ve got a job.” ” As someone always looking for grist for the songwriting mill, I looked at the memory and thought “Write a song where I say outrageous things to mythological, historical, and contemporary figures? Challenge accepted!” And no, I don’t think Woody Guthrie is overrated; it was just the most outrageous thing I could think of saying in a folk music context. And yes, you can interpret “Morrissey” as folksinger Bill Morrissey, but I meant it as Morrissey the insufferable former member of The Smiths who appears to be incapable of writing a melody that’s not 1 3 5 3 1. Dark and twangy with topical references.
I’m From Here
Singer songwriter 101 is “write a song about where you’re from.” I’ve long semi joked that singer songwriters are supposed to have an Americana twang in their voice and sing about their hardscrabble beginnings. I, unfortunately, am a nice Jewish boy from Old Bethpage Long Island, the more bucolic version of Levittown. What the hell am I supposed to do with that? When we moved to Amherst in 1969, I put the Long Island years in the rear view mirror. Of course, now that I’ve lived in Newton since 1992 and Maire Anne and I raised three kids here, there’s zero doubt that they’re “from here,” and if they want to reject that like I did with Long Island, that’s up to them. But the idea that where you’re born, where you’re from, and where you call home aren’t the same thing took hold. Poignant and layered.
Damaged Goods
If you know me, you know that I really am attracted to cars and guitars with patina, really do have a 1975 BMW 2002 whose paint looks like sidewalk, and really do own a Guild D55 sunburst whose tail was caved in when it fell off a postal truck during shipping. As I say, we are all damaged goods. Wear your scars proudly. Bright and twangy.
Onward Through the Fog (America is Bleeding)
When the 2016 election happened, I felt like I’d been hit in the head with a bat. That feeling of trauma persisted for years. All I could say was “I don’t know how it happened… it still does not compute.” It finally came out as this song, which was released on the July 2022 Hudson Harding Folk Now compilation with the title “America is Bleeding.” I hoped that the song would no longer be relevant. Sadly, I was wrong. Dark and mournful with beautiful cello accompaniment.
The Duck Pond
The first song written and recorded for the album. The story behind it (a ten-years-later meeting with a college girlfriend) is absolutely true. I had the song on my to-do list for decades, but writing it meant confronting a question whose answer I didn’t want to know. A poignant story with a layered recording. You can find a beautiful hand-painted lyric video of the song that Lisa Bastoni did at https://youtu.be/MM3L8–1XolI.
High and Lonesome Tonight
I don’t usually write novelty songs whose title telegraphs the joke, and this one, centered around bluegrass’ “high and lonesome” sound, seemed so obvious that I couldn’t believe someone hadn’t already written it. I backed off adding a drum track, as in spite of the near-novelty title, I wanted it to sound like an authentically twangy bluegrass song chock-full of respectful references, not a parody of a bluegrass song.
The Telescope
The deeply resonant story of the 70-year journey of my father’s telescope from Brooklyn to my house in Newton, and the second of the four songs in the I’m From Here arc. I’ll freely admit that it was hugely influenced by Guy Clark’s remarkable song “The Randall Knife.” One of my favorite albums is Joni Mitchell’s travel-conscious Hejira, on which I love the way Jaco Pastorius’ bass conveys a sense of being unmoored and rootless. I had the idea of incorporating a bass part with that kind of sound to connote the lack of focus of the disassembled telescope, and having the music come into focus when the scope was repaired. Huge thanks to pro Jesse Williams for making it happen.
I Can’t Wait ‘Til He’s Gone
This was written as a “prompt song” for an in-the-round song circle, where the prompt was “after the rain.” I spelled it “reign” (“after the reign of hate and terror”) and wrote an anti-you-know-who song reminiscent of “I can’t wait to be king” from The Lion King, except the repeated line is “I can’t wait ’till he’s gone,” where the meaning of “gone” is not only out of the public eye but, well, gone. Short and twangy. Like “Onward Through the Fog,” more than anything, I wanted the song to be obsolete. When the election went the way it did, I thought about pulling it from the album. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the sentiment is even more true than it was before: I REALLY can’t wait ’til he’s gone.
‘Til I Blow Away
The third song in the I’m From Here arc. Anyone who has had an elderly parent or loved one pass away has seen them literally shrivel up and die. I went through this with my mother in mid-2019. While processing her death, I had the idea of writing a song about the stages of life from the standpoint of moisture. After all, we’re literally conceived and born in moisture, adolescence is all about wonderful glorious moisture, and life is a life-long process of drying up and blowing away. There are a few problems with this. First, it’s frankly a weird concept to hang a song on. Second, Kansas wrote “Dust in the Wind” nearly 50 years ago. So the Grand Moisture Concept was abandoned, and what remains is the opening line (“It starts wet and screaming / it ends dry and dreaming”), and the title, which is the last line of the refrain. And the song naturally swerved in a different direction anyway; it became my processing the fact that when my mother passed, the last bulwark of my immortality was gone, and I felt like I was on the conveyor belt with nothing between me and the grave. Mournful with a beautiful fiddle track.
We’d Talk About Cars
The true story about a friendship with fellow musician and car guy Rob Ayres. We really would meet at open mics, him driving there in his Porsche Boxster, me in whatever vintage BMW I was driving, and sneak out between songs and talk about cars, and I really did get my Lotus running the day he passed away. Sometimes, when I’m driving a cool car, I have this epiphany that, if I looked to my right and saw him in the passenger seat, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit. Twangy and funny with a spoken bridge. You can find a fun video of the song at https://youtu.be/ExyjlvB1wQI.
Let It Fail
My dark rejoinder to Dr. Seuss‟ Oh The Places You’ll Go. I went to the New England Regional Folk Alliance (NERFA) conference in Asbury Park in 2022, and after I played a showcase and felt like Zoidberg doing his mating display on his home planet, a fellow asked me if I wanted to shoot a video in his hotel room. “As long as it’s not a porno,” I asked. He turned out to be JB Nuttle of One World Video who has a history of tapping people he likes. It was characteristically nihilistic and self–indulgent of me to choose this song as the one to play and video, but that’s where my head was at. The album recording used the guitar and vocal tracks that JB recorded in the hotel room, and augmented them in a way that was reminiscent of the dark synth tones and dirty slide guitar of Springsteen’s “Tunnel of Love” album (Nebraska gets all the ink, but Tunnel of Love is REALLY Springsteen’s singer–songwriter album, and I’ll fight anyone who disagrees, even Warren Zanes).
The Aftermath
I wrote this just before the 2016 election, during which I went through a career change and when Hillary Clinton was heavily favored to win but Felon47 was clearly stirring up something deep and ugly in this country. And once again, here we are. I really don’t mean to sound jocular when I say “The wreckage now resembles / a thing that I might use” at the end. I was talking about my own wreckage, not the country’s. I put the song on the album because it contains the line “America, get over yourself.” Hey, someone’s got to say it. Twangy and bright.
Daddy
The final song in the arc. I’ve addressed my father’s passing in several other songs, but I’d never written one about how he died (childhood Tuberculosis treated with radiation), nor sang a song specifically to him. The song was triggered by my sending an email to my sister on our father’s birthday that said “Happy birthday to our father, who we still call daddy.” Her seven–word reply made me drop my jaw, and is the end lyric of the song. Beautiful and mournful, with the pathos of the lyrics set against a concertina-accompanied waltz.
Live Bonus Track: I Made My Peace With Christmas
As I say in the song’s intro, I’d written multiple songs about religion, but I’d never written one specifically about Christmas from the standpoint of not only a Jew, but a non–observant lapsed Jew. It has a lot of resonance with folks like me who believe that they’re not making “war on Christmas” by not actively celebrating it.