The Next Right Thing

Watching an artist’s trajectory can be thrilling. While with some artists, the question is how will their talent develop, with others the question is what will they do with all that freaking talent.

Seth Glier has innate songwriting instincts that put some experienced songwriters to shame. He understands structure and how to develop ideas from component to component. He has an agility, and facilty, with rhyme, and doesn’t overuse it; knowing when to surprise the ear with internal rhymes, and knowing when to smooth the edges with near rhymes. He finds and weaves images that catch the ear and engage the inner eye.

Besides the writing ability, he is an accomplished composer and pianist, and has a gorgeous tenor voice complete with a daring falsetto. See him in performance sometime. He is the real deal, the complete package, the cat’s meow *and* pajamas.

So after traveling the country back and forth, doing his early experimentation on self-produced CDs, developing a fan base and settling into a performance style, finally getting a real label-produced CD out into the world......what does he do next?

He does The Next Right Thing.

There is a lot of say about Seth’s second MPress-produced album and not all of it can fit in this blog post. You hear him reaching for new points of view, yearning for the life experience to give him more to write about; trying different metaphorical languages, willing to let himself fail, and far more often succeeding.

The first striking thing about the CD is how stylistically different the opening title track is from the rest of the album. ‘The Next Right Thing” (which often opens his show) is a high vocal over a Native American drumbeat, an a capella two-verse rumination on religion. The first verse describes a huge multi-cultural religious gathering, lamenting and praying and condemning; the second verse describes a woman dying on her bed, praying for a favorable judgement. With the chorus “People need a miracle/To do the Next Right Thing.”

The rest of the album has ballads of all sorts (even uptempo ones like “Lauralee”) and after the first track you think you may have wandered into the wrong playlist; but listening, and sinking deeper into each song, you begin to realize Seth has written an album about faith. And hope. And wondering what, if anything, to believe in.

Not only in explicitly religious songs like “Down With The Ship” with the iconography and discussion of belief systems, or “I Don’t Need You” in which the singer needs hope and faith and something to believe. But in “Book of Matches” where a family’s house burns down and the singer (and the family) think more of the love and future they still have. And in “What The Others Have Done,” in which a woman considers the latest in a string of men, hoping this one will finally be the one. Or in the two back-to-back songs about driving long distances to see a girl (“Walk Katy Home” and “Lauralee”), in which a journey is taken with the hope of love and redemption at the end. Belief and faith and hope come up again and again in these songs.

What’s most exciting is to hear Seth deliberating changing the narrative voice. It’s very easy to fall into writing “I/You” songs -- where the singer “I” is discussing his relationship with the girl (“You”), and certainly those songs are in here -- good ones, too. But there are songs about other characters (“Down With The Ship, “What The Others Have Done”, “Book of Matches”), even female characters, as well as a straight narration song like “The Next Right Thing.” Even “I Don’t Need You,” though it clearly is an “I/You” song, is more about what the singer *does* need, other than someone to love.

This is a lovely album and worth several, or numerous, or myriad listens. And as always, Seth’d beautiful voice, piano and writing, and supported and shaped by Ryan Hommel’s (producer/sideman/BFF) guitar and production.

Creative Juices

If I knew where they came from I’d be able to find them more often. I wrote a lyric a couple of years ago that included the line “The river isn’t always gonna flow.” Because it isn’t. You’re lucky to find it in full roar, and you have to wander great distances sometimes between one roaring stream and another.

I quick glance at the last year of my blog shows….well……a lot of wandering between bodies of water. Longeurs. Gaps. Lacunae. Sporadic posting with a lot of hemming and embarrassed hawing.

Some disappointments and a lot of re-evaluation. That sums up 2010, I think.

What’s interesting is that, before I did a lot of lyricwriting, I got my creative juices flowing in the theatre, onstage and off. And I gave that up for a few years so I could concentrate on the writing more. So when my well seemed to be running dry, I shuffled back, and for the last few months I’ve been back to stage work, getting back in front of an audience.

It’s therapeutic, in many ways, and it’s definitely a confidence builder. Haven’t been able to write a lick, as my headspace has been filled up with line-learing and character-creating, but it’s all part of life’s rich pageant, as the lady said.

So, 2011, what’s in store? I’ve begun some collaboration experiments with jazz/rock/folk cellist Michael G. Ronstadt, I have irons in the fire with my friends The Lyra Project, and I will have a song cut on Jen Foster’s upcoming 2011 CD (date TBA).

Not a bad start to the year. I’m off now to get on a stage under the bright lights, and in a couple weeks will go back to dark corners with my notepad and journal.

I’ll keep you posted.

In Country

I'm in Nashville, landed at BNA around 2:00 local time. Got myself situated and went out for a drive and food.

Going out later to hear some music at some writers' locations -- not the downtown strip. I'm a little hampered by not having had any coffee today, but I can't just sit here and stare at the walls, that would be counterproductive.

Nothing on the schedule tomorrow, so I will force myself to write something. In the evening I'll be seeing Coles Whalen at The Listening Room.

More as it occurs.....

I Try To Keep Control

Who knows why I haven't posted since June? OK, I probably know, but it's not terribly interesting, when you come right down to it. Music has taken a vacation this summer, along with me. Here we are at Fall, and me about to go to my high school reunion. I could tell you which reunion it was, but as Number Two said so often, "that would be telling."

Here's a song I wrote with two (2) composers, Josh Dodes and Adam Blau. Josh is an NYC denizen, had a band, did all the Lower East Side venues, and now does more straight composition. Adam is LA-based, and does film work. I've met Josh, and when I called him to work on a song to pitch, he brought in Adam. The song is "Constant" and it's a swell song -- the guys did a kick-ass job on the music and the recording.

I went up to NYC to see Rachael Sage perform, and she was sharing the bill with her friend and partner Seth Glier, whom I met that night. Seth and I struck up a conversation, as we all wandered the Lower East Side, and several of Rachael's friends went to get crepes.

The creperie across the street from The Living Room is tiny, and is staffed by a couple of women in very tight t-shirts. The air in the creperie was heady with all sorts of desire. Hell, it was a Saturday night, and the whole neighborhood was alive with young people, wearing little clothing, exuding hormones. Electric.

Seth was writing a note to someone, I assumed a girlfriend, but I couldn't be sure, and he wanted a metaphor for being constant. He was musing, looking for input...."...constant as......constant as....." I didn't have an answer right there but I kept thinking about it.

The crepe girl. The lust-filled Lower East Side populace. The girl at a distance that one needed to be constant for.

That's the background to the song. Hope you like it.

Not Autobiographical. Really

Here's another of the new songs that were written for a pitch. It's an energetic defense of laziness. An ambitious ode to lack of ambition. It's called "I'd Rather Sleep."

I've had this lyric kicking around for a while. I forget why I wrote it in the first place, but I had fun with it. Early in my collaboration career, one of my other (now) regular collaborators tried it and we didn't see eye to eye. Finally, he confessed that he thought the guy singing the song was sort of a jerk. Which I can't disagree with.

Jordan, who wrote a couple other songs with me that I just love hearing over and over, has a great pop voice and sound, and he came up with a really fun setting to the song.

I had a crisis of confidence about this song, when I revisited it being set to music. I rhymed Mona Lisa with Tower of Pisa. All very well and good, but it hit me that Cole Porter had done the same in "You're The Top."

I thought about changing it, or taking out those lines. But then I thought, hey, is he the only guy who's allowed to rhyme those two things if they work? And Cole Porter wrote that song in the 1930s. Seventy-Five years later, I think I may get a pass on using them again.

I hope.

Another Fish Story

A year and a half ago, I had the opportunity to pitch some work at a high level -- at the highest level. I had some lyrics, matched with some music, that cleared early hurdles to be considered for a big project. But, as happens too often, the project changed, the players changed, and the work never got to the artist in question.

Recently I had a similar chance to pitch to a debut CD for a well-known performer. I gathered a few of my favorite partners who I thought could hit the mark, and we came up with several songs. Unfortunately, this time the work just wasn't what they were looking for. I thought I had read the pitch correctly, but I think there was a difference between what they said they wanted, and what it turned out they actually did want.

Anyway, I've got five new songs to post and here is the first of them. "Jessica Nye" is a jazzy and jaunty pop ode to a woman (fictional) who has decided to stop living the life she was living, and is breathing in a brand new day. It has strains of "Georgy Girl" and the "Mary Tyler More Theme" in it.

Music by Carlo Pocklington.

It's all good, Jessica Nye.

Spring Awakening

Hey, where have I been? Nowhere, mon frere. Just hibernating, trying to get the juices flowing.

Well, Spring is here and there are green shoots. Songs to pitch and collaborators to pitch them with.

For now, a very busy week here in Philadelphia, with four out-of-town friends descending to perform.

On Sunday, April 18, Jen Foster is back at the Tin Angel at 8pm.

(In the afternoon, you could catch Manchester (UK) folk singer Zoe Mulford at the Swarthmore Fun Fare in Swarthmore, PA, at 3:40pm.)

On Wednesday April 21, you could see Seth Glier perform with Maia Sharp at 8:30pm. That is, is you weren't over at World Cafe Live seeing ambeR Rubarth open for Jason Reeves. I have no idea what I'm doing that night.

On Saturday, April 24, you could head up to Phoenixville to see Zoe Mulford at Steel City Coffeehouse.

Plenty going on in Philly......see you there?