May Newsletter

Happy Friday, happy May, and happy Scholars release day! Our album is out at last, and I’m so grateful for all the positive words we’ve received on it so far.

I think if there was one primary theme in the building of this album, it was trusting in the music. As I got excited about various concepts for the story, I filled up many pages of notes; in hindsight, that all seems like idle daydreaming in comparison with the work of getting together with the band and hammering various musical pieces into shape. Once those pieces were in shape, 90% of the conceptual writing went out the window, as I focused on trying to get lyrics that suited the music appropriately. I don’t think that the concept work was all a waste of time, as thinking about the setting at length allowed it a richer presence on the album as a backdrop; but I probably did spend more time than necessary on that side of things.

Trusting in the music doesn’t necessarily mean you sit back and let everything cruise; it’s more about setting aside those larger concepts and ambitions, and ego as well, and looking at the song at hand, or the verse at hand, or the reverb patch at hand, asking “does it work? Is something else going to work better?” Almost every time I go through the process of making a song, I think about watching the Beatles do it in the “Get Back” documentary. Even though there’s a fair amount of dysfunction in the group, it’s a real thrill to watch them create - not because they do it in a flashy way, but because they go about it so plainly, with a humble focus on the craft. When Paul is writing “Get Back”, he’s not thinking about how many records it’s going to sell; he’s asking John, “what’s a good last name for Jojo? It’s got to have that sound - that ‘meeeahh’ sound.”  You watch him spit out different names, searching for the right combination of vowel and consonant. This is how great work is created: not by worrying about greatness, but about sitting down with each piece of it, and trying one thing after another until you find something that grooves. (In Jojo’s case, they gave up on the last name, and filled out the line with “Tucson” instead.)

So we did that as much as we could with this album, trusting when it wasn’t right that there would be an option that made it right. “CCF” sat through a year’s worth of discarded verses, one of which became the basis of “Devereaux”. “Devereaux” got rewritten with a new structure after we’d already tracked it once. A verse of a song that didn’t make the cut got acousti-fied and became “Lady Gay Approximately”. And so on. Our earlier albums were always marked by worry for me - worrying whether it would come out right, whether it would fit my ambitious designs, whether it would get us to the next level, etc. This time, my work was in setting aside those thoughts as they came, and settling back down to the task at hand. As a result, I had a much better time working on this record than any previous one I’ve been involved with. I love the music that’s on it, and more than that, I love where we got to as a band working on it. We had the pleasure of coming to know and trust one another more, and I hope that pleasure is reflected on the album.

Thanks for the love, and enjoy. America, we'll see you soon!