"Sunday"

My debut album “Sunday” is out now

Well folks, today is the day. Listen to my debut album Sunday here.

As you’re listening, follow along with the story of each of its eight songs: 

Small Business

This song opens with a meditation exercise I do on the guitar: Droning on the low E string with my thumb and looking for musical ideas with my other fingers on the higher strings. It’s a way for me to let go of incumbent thoughts when they feel oppressive. Getting lost in this exploration helped me escape my grief. By allowing my mind to be idle, I could let go and start to accept the hard feelings of loss I was in. I had been doing this for months when one day, after a bad day at my old job, the exercise became a whole song that tumbled out at once, more or less fully-formed.

The lyrics are about reckoning with concessions we make in life – the amount of good you do or things you learn, the closeness and openness you let yourself have with the people you love, the opportunities you let yourself seize or deny – in light of how little time you have. It voices my sadness and frustration at how easy it could be to never tell the people who matter most to me that I really love them, or to hear that from them myself, now that I know how bitter it is to never be able to say it to someone’s face again.

The cast of players on this song is amazing: In addition to Andrew Daly Frank and Ben Wagner, it has members of Office Culture (Winston Cook-Wilson and Ian Wayne), Caitlin Pasko, and members of Cuddle Magic (Alec Spiegelman and Cole Kamen-Green). Winston plays a piano part on this that is so beautiful that I almost couldn’t bear to listen to it while he was tracking. Jack McNutt, one of our old Office Culture bandmates, once suggested we name that band “business”, and that came back to me when I was naming this song. I thought of the idea of the business we do in life ultimately being very small in the scheme of things, but how cherished the work you do here is. It seemed like a beloved little shop, your life’s work. I wanted to turn my feelings of loss and regret inside out, into encouragement and advice. The final refrain, “Everything that you can do / take your time, it’s only you” is a twisty way of saying seize this moment, because it’s all you have.

California Days

I wrote all the songs on Sunday in order to counteract the darkness I felt in bereavement after I lost my father. I relied so much on my partner Emma and my family at this time, but everywhere I looked I saw a reflection of death. I needed to make my own tools to find the light, lightness, warmth, and ease absent from my life. I found an escape to a fantasy world in sound, and became attracted to music that had a radiance I wanted to be cast on me: early 70s Bob Dylan, All Things Must Pass George Harrison, Kacey Musgraves, The Grateful Dead, Talk Talk. I would lie in bed and, to try to balance myself out, look for sounds from the guitar that helped me feel like I had sunlight on me. It didn’t always work, but once in a while I would find something that gave me solace. That’s where I found this song.

As I played the chords for the first time, I thought of a trip I took to LA in 2016 for a friend’s wedding. This song became a symbol for the light I wanted to shed in my own life. Its predecessor, “Small Business”, is based on the droning E string, and this song is similarly built on a chord progression that constantly lets the low and high E strings ring; the continuity of these two songs means a lot to me symbolically. Those drones on the root note took on a centering idea in my work, like the concept of “om”. When I felt unmoored or unstable, being able to return to their centering “one” was a way of regaining my balance. I owe a lot of the beauty of these recordings – and especially this one – to my friend, producer, and guitarist Andrew Daly Frank, who plays the opening chords, the beautiful / weird MIDI tuba parts that swell through the end of the song, and who had the idea to do the false ending. This song has many metaphors for our collaboration - his voice harmonizes with mine on the second verse, and my guitar harmonizes over his in the outro.

In California

This is a brochure from the tourism bureau of fake California. If any of these places are real, I wouldn’t know, because I thought of all the names sitting on my couch in New York. I hope when people listen to it, it exudes positive energy and appears to cohere, but when they focus in, it suddenly makes no sense whatsoever and turns into a goofy, uncanny fantasyland. Some of the locations are strange or grotesque (“New Enola Gay” “El Placebo”), some are absurd parodies of how California place names sound (“La Belle Montagne”, “Los Berlin”), some sound more like places in Pennsylvania or Vermont than in California (“Old South Stonewall” “Friedrichsburg”), some aren’t even plausible as place names (“Glycerin”, “Keratin”). Some are just winks to people I know or things I like: My brother’s childhood stuffed animal was named Elwood; the engineer on my favorite album’s surname is Elevado; Kevin Seraphin played in the NBA. It makes no sense but I like the sound of the names so it feels like a love letter to my usefully-fictionalized analogue of a real place I barely know.

The Light of the Day

I was surprised when I thought up the bouncy riff for this song. It seemed too classic for me personally to pull off, like it was handing me a pair of Mick Jagger’s pants to try on: they’re right for this, but am I right for them? I was in a dark period, but I had this riff that reminded me of songs that describe an easy, fun life - “The Boys Are Back In Town”, “Takin’ Care of Business”, “Lookin’ Out My Back Door”, etc. That turned into an interesting feeling to play with. As the lyrics came together, they described how false life can feel when you’re grieving, how you go through the motions and try to act normal as things are breaking inside you, and that makes normal things seem meaningless and absurd.

The first verse presents mundanities that, when set against this instrumentation, seem like they’re being celebrated. Some of them are so dumb that you wouldn’t believe a narrator could extol them, like watching the time pass, collecting paychecks, or paying taxes: takin’ care of business! How can you write a song about the ease of life when everything feels so hard? Listening to the first chorus in that context, you might wonder, “does this idiot think spending his life like this is ‘Living in the light of the day’?” The duality turned into an interesting way to make the lyrical choices. I’ve always thought that “taking it” is a funny term to use, because it can mean “going with the flow” or “enduring a hardship” or both at the same time, which is why I use it here and in a similar way on “California Days”.

Because the song leans into its own dissonance, I felt comfortable letting loose and having my band do lots of things I’d imagine we’d otherwise be uncomfortable with: Andrew cooks up big classic rock riffs, my drummer Ben Wagner did a whole take of cowbell we didn’t use, Ian, Andrew, and Caitlin sang the corny-but-true refrain “You know you gotta promise me you’ll be free”. The very Bobby Keys closing saxophone solo was played by Alec Spiegelman in one take and blew my wig clean off. But I also attempt to resolve the theme the same way I do elsewhere on the album, by turning the pain and confusion into what is hopefully some guidance and reassurance. The second verse reveals more doubt and uncertainty, which hopefully makes the closing chorus feel less parodically self-satisfied and more like advice or encouragement.

Snow Walk

My dad was never disabused of wonder; he found something like a full moon or a walk in the snow awe-inspiring. One day, a few years after he died, I got out of the subway near my apartment and noticed it had started to flurry. It was after work and I was tired. On the sidewalk ahead of me were two people walking arm-in-arm, making it difficult to pass; to do so, I would’ve had to step into the street, which was slick from the snow. I started to steam and, when I ran out of patience, slipped by them. Rushing by, I felt angry and frustrated by their selfishness to put everyone around them in that position. And then I started to think about it – two people happily savoring a walk in the snow had made me think about death, feel flummoxed and mad. I could have reveled in the beauty of the moment, but instead I became scared and resentful. It was the opposite of what I loved and learned from my dad. I turned on a side street and started humming a melody with lyrics to calm down and articulate some of my fears; not just about the moment, but about the bruise it revealed on my heart.

It was just a few months after David Bowie died. Bowie meant a lot to me when my dad was sick; I used to listen to Ziggy Stardust on the M68 bus on the way to visit him in the hospital, and the apocalyptic imminence of “Five Years” became an important soundtrack for me. I was thinking of Britt Daniel’s beautiful acoustic cover of “Never Let Me Down”. I used that chord progression with the melody I had written on the way home and finished the song with second verse lyrics that try to calm the first one. This song was originally just three minutes, but once in a rehearsal I had the idea for the band to continue jamming on the riff that originally ended it, which turned it into the odyssey it became. Andrew starts the solo out, and then I join him on lead a few minutes in. I love the way our playing weaves together, until it finally mushes into the secret language of drones that closes the song. This jam, like the intro on “Small Business” and “California Days”, is a therapeutic – hopefully great space-out music for anyone who wants to turn their brain off and just feel sunny vibes for a while.

Evening Out

In my mind, Sunday is like a full day, with the intro on “Small Business” the glowing pre-dawn, the long jam on “Snow Walk” a beautiful waning sunset, and this song, “Evening Out”, a fading twilight.

This was the first song I started for this album and the last one I finished. Its first demo is from two and a half months after my dad died, in mid-February 2014; I completed writing it in 2018. The title plays with a double entendré of “if all evens out in the end” and the evening, the end of a day. In both cases, it’s about feeling the curtain come down. At the start of writing, the very idea that my dad’s end had come was too painful to reckon with in reality, so I used this song to create a twilight man, someone who is both there and gone at the same time – “He’s a wanted man, gone but always inside you.” The imagery throughout is partly what I imagined his youth to be, and partly my own memories of visiting his childhood home and driving back late at night on the highway, a beginning and an end. I allowed this mix of memory and imagining to become, as the verses progress, warped by his death like a picture left out in the sun.

In the original iPhone demo, I hummed a solo that sounded uncannily like a trumpet, and I feel that Cole Kamen-Green’s layered performance here fully realizes all the magic I wanted this song to produce.

Pete Williams

I was in my childhood bedroom when the house was empty an afternoon a year and a half after my dad died and I found my high school transcript. I thought about all the drama and shame I felt as a teenager, trying to make myself into a person I wanted to be, and to live up to the standards I set for myself. That world and its concerns seemed so far away, like a hometown I could never return to. I saw the name of my guidance counselor, Pete Williams, at the top. He was a wonderful guide to me; calming, kind, strong. He couldn’t help me love myself in that moment, but he didn’t join me in my impossible expectations or self-criticisms. He just lent me belief and a vision of a brighter future. I needed that kind of centeredness and direction from someone, anyone, after I lost my dad, but I couldn’t find it at that moment in the world.

The verses of “Pete Williams” describe how broken my life felt after I lost my dad; how much pressure I felt and put on myself to be a rock for my shattered family and having no idea how to do it; how much I wished I had someone who could point me in the right direction when I didn’t know where to turn; how disfigured my world seemed now that I was an adult.

I wrote the chorus first. I was on vacation with my stepmom Lisa and my two brothers Davey and Peter Walker, trying to figure out what our new lives were going to be like. It pleads for guidance and reassurance, and I think is the counter to other parts of the album (“Small Business” for example), which are focused on whether life is about seizing the moment or learning to be present and enjoy what you have. It doesn’t try to say everything is going to be okay one day, it commiserates how broken things felt in that moment. The verse came later and fit perfectly. I used to play this song with my old band, which was a trio toward the end, and because we didn’t have a lead instrument I would scat the written saxophone solo. Suffice it to say Alec did a much better job with it on his baritone saxophone.

Hey Young Man

This is the only song among these I don’t remember writing. I don’t even know where the original demo is, all I know is it was finally finished in 2015. Like a lot on this album, it’s a double-image; I’m both talking to myself and talking to someone – maybe the younger me in “Pete Williams”? – with more of their life ahead. Some days it’s hard to know which one I am. The first verse is my feelings of insecurity, and the second is about finding beauty and little signs of life among that uncertainty and chaos. As the second verse approaches, Andrew sails in over my piano with a whalesong of feedback guitar, I add mellotron, and Alec and Cole grow a lush meadow of wild horns.

Death makes you an adult. I don’t have the support and guidance anymore I yearned for in the depth of my loss. I used to want someone to tell me it was going to be alright, until I realized time was my only healer. I’ve seen enough now to urge and encourage people to love their time and possibilities while they have them. I want to give the feeling I longed to get, that things are hard, you’ll get through this, things will be better if you stick this through, and perhaps that summarizes the purpose of the album overall.

I wouldn’t be here without the following people I need to thank:

Andrew Daly Frank If it weren’t for Andrew, I may not have recorded a note. He gave me the push I needed to think about these songs as an album. He put me up in his old place in Greenfield, Massachusetts and we crammed recording sessions into three-day weekends. I’ve texted him more days than I haven’t over the last three years. He made me feel like I was not just good, but good enough. He spent hours playing, editing, and discussing these songs with me, pushed me to his standard, and forced me to find the finish line. Sunday would have been worth it if I got nothing more than a deepened friendship with him.

Ben Wagner Before Andrew and I even recorded a note, Ben and I holed up at our old recording space and played these songs over and over to find their form. He did drum take after drum take in my family’s garage and didn’t run out of juice. He’s lighthearted and down for pretty much anything, which I needed when my mood turned dark or my confidence wavered. He’s as tasteful and restrained a drummer as you could want and a wonderful friend. I don’t think other qualities matter more than those.

Caitlin Pasko Despite having never heard me perform, Caitlin agreed to sing on my album. And after only hearing a few songs, she offered to help me promote it in her capacity at Clandestine. She fielded my unsure questions and cheered along with me when we broke through. She’s a believer and a day-one and I do not take her for granted.

Winston Cook-Wilson Winston stood calmly by me as I fretted and worried about the prospect of putting myself out there, and at every step lent me the confidence to do things the right way. He led with his music and then brought me through the door after him. He even wrote the album bio we sent out to let people know this album was coming. He helped me feel controlled and the infusion of beauty he lent this album with his piano playing changed its countenance.

Ian Wayne I’ve had the privilege of watching Ian mold, year after year, music that shows his innate talent and vision. I’m lucky to be an admirer and a friend. He’s humble even as his work swells up beneath him. He agreed to sing harmonies for a much worse lead singer on this album and gave the performances muscle and melody they certainly wouldn’t have mustered on their own.

Sophie Racine Ingenious Sophie found a preternatural ability for visuals and animation amid a patient, careful facility with an iPad and stylus. She sat for hours turning the psychedelic turbulence of these songs into beautiful, bright, explosive images and asked for nothing in return at the end. She is a gift in my life.

Lisa Chase Lisa housed us, fed us chili, and put up with having a trio whacking away behind her house the weekends we were up with her. But more importantly, she rebuilt the little town where everything was breaking down after she lost her husband, I lost my dad. She’s the load-bearing wall of that home.

Audrey Walker My mom is a blessing in my life and I can’t put my gratitude and love for her in words. On top of that, she provided the metaphorical record crate this album draws from. If my preferences lean toward the Allman Brothers or Bob Dylan, then she can rightfully claim curatorship. Above all, she believed in me and encouraged me to do things I loved for that reason only, which is an ethic I gratefully carry into all endeavors in my life.

Davey Kaplan I thought of Davey constantly when we lost our dad. I couldn’t prevent what befell us and I couldn’t protect him from its effects. But now he’s well on his way to becoming an adult, a man who his father would admire and relish being with. He is a hero and an inspiration.

Peter Walker Kaplan My confidante and supporter, who I go to for musical sensibility and intuitions about structure and vibe. Peter Walker sees into my music and finds me in it as much as anyone in my life. He feels its spirit because he knows the me deep in it. There’s no one who I want to play these songs for more than him.

Caroline Kaplan My creative paragon and shining light. She is more committed to her art than anyone I know, and as such is my example. She has signed her life to it and braved its challenges, hewing herself into a pure artist driven by her love of her craft. She listened to this music like only someone who has fought for their work can and I am so thankful for her.

Emma Racine I played these songs for Emma before I played them for anyone else. Just she and me and my guitar. She heard my pride, passion, and aspiration. She joined me in them, supported me, told me they were real and good. She was my rock at my depths and lifted me when it was time to rise. I can’t imagine how I would have survived this season of my life without her.

Peter Kaplan The size of loss I felt after my dad died is a smaller reflection of the magnitude of my love for him. And the warmth and wonder I tried to pull from these songs is a yet smaller reflection of blackness of that loss. Ultimately, this music is a distant echo of the man he was, the closeness of our relationship, the father I had. He’ll be gone seven years on November 29th. Seven years gone like seven days of a week that begins on Sunday and ends with just a son.