REVIEW: Toad the Wet Sprocket at Webster Hall 2/26/09

Last night I saw Toad the Wet Sprocket at Webster Hall in Manhattan. I've seen Toad once before, also in Manhattan, and this was by far the best show out of the two, and probably the best show I've ever seen, and I've been to 42 concerts in my young life. They opened with "P.S." a great song from their early days which was re-recorded for their retrospective CD back in 2000. The set continued with fan favorites and hits. They sounded the tightest I've heard them. Their touring steel guitar/mandolin player Johnny Hawthorn is a great addition to their live sound and really adds a lot. The vocals were great and everyone was really awesome. Hopefully they come back soon.

I love Toad.

AFT gets around tonight and tomorrow

My band, A Fragile Tomorrow, will be playing tonight at the Harp & Whistle in Newburgh, NY at 8:30pm. Come on out if you're in the area for some good times. It's free!

Tomorrow night we'll be joining our friends Rawson at The Delancey in NYC! I'm not sure of the price of that but you can check our website for all the info.

Writing for the next AFT album is coming to a close faster than I expected. A late night acoustic jam session in my room with Brendan and Shaun got me to start writing this nice song that Dominic will provide vocals for it, and just about 15 minutes ago I finished a song that started when I was walking around wanting to write a fast, hard, punk-ish song. And I'm pretty sure that's what I got. Stay tuned...

IN MY OPINION: 15 Most Influential Songwriters

Here's a list of the 10 most influential songwriters on me and my music. This is mostly coming out of boredom, but I'm also doing this to share with some people who may not be as well educated on these great songwriters and great musicians.

15. Amy Ray [Indigo Girls, solo]: Amy Ray has been half of the Indigo Girls for a long time, yet I feel that most of her IG songs go unnoticed by the general public, of course excluding big IG fans like myself. Her three solo records include some of the best rock songs ever, with a hint of punk. Aggressive and catchy are the best words to describe.
KEY TRACK: "Put it Out for Good" (a perfect example of the punk/pop punk element to her solo work. This song is really upbeat and the guitars sound excellent. I've seen her live show and it almost seems like an anthem for Amy Ray fans. Everyone in the audience knew the chorus)

14. Seth Lakeman [Equation, solo]: Seth Lakeman is known in the UK now as a rising solo artist, but his work with Equation is some of my favorite. I never knew he was such a talented songwriter until I heard his latest solo album Poor Man's Heaven.
KEY TRACK: "Crimson Dawn" (this song is from his latest. The arrangement is great and the tone of the song is very somber. Background vocals by Equation singer Kathryn Roberts are the icing on the cake for me)

13. Bruce Springsteen: "The Boss" is an understatement. So many great songs and so many great albums here. It seems like he never runs out of steam. The key track for this one is one that's from his latest release because I feel like more people should appreciate this one.
KEY TRACK: "Queen of the Supermarket" (a wonderfully clever song from the Working on a Dream record. The fact that he went into a supermarket and created an entire story out of one grocery trip amazes me. The melody is great and the the way the vocals express the lyrics are heartbreaking. Beautiful song)

12. John Lennon: Don't be mad because I put Lennon as #12. To me he's in a completely different league than most of my favorite writers. I bet his songs influenced most of the artists on this list.
KEY TRACK: "Happiness is a Warm Gun" (I can't get over how brilliant this song is. The melody, the tempo changes, the guitars, harmonies. It's everything you expect and more in a Beatles tune)

11. Neil Finn [Crowded House]: The first time I heard Crowded House I was blown away. Neil Finn has remained one of my favorite songwriters for a long time because of the structure of his songs and the melodies he creates. A true genius in a brilliant band.
KEY TRACK: "Even a Child" (my favorite from their wonderful comback album Time on Earth. The lyrics stand out to me, as well as the production and instrumentation. One line that really grabs me is "Dream of a holy state in a nightmare time". It's all there)

10. Dave Pirner [Soul Asylum]: Dave Pirner is definitely one of the best songwriters to come out of the 80's. His band Soul Asylum has been a major influence on me from the start.
KEY SONG: "Somebody to Shove" (aggressive and loud with big guitars and one of my favorite opening guitar licks ever)

9. Justin Currie [Del Amitri]: Great Scottish pop-rock from the 90's. Many people don't go past their hit "Roll to Me", but there's much more there. Don't get me wrong..."Roll to Me" is a great song, but there's an entire catalog of brilliant songs from Justin and the Dels that are worth checking out
KEY SONG: "Always the Last to Know" (upbeat with a great melody yet the lyrics are filled with a bit of anger and sadness)

8. Brian Wilson [The Beach Boys]: Brian Wilson writes the best pop songs ever. He's the kind of songwriter I strive to be like. He knows his hooks, he knows his melodies, and he knows how to keep everything original. He's a true legend
KEY TRACK: "God Only Knows" (this song blew me away the first time I heard it. It's really like nothing that came before it, and definitely not like anything that came after it. A standout in popular music)

7. Willie Nile: My dad introduced me to Willie Nile's music a long time ago, and I was hooked ever since. Great rock songs with a hint of folk and sometimes a little twang.
KEY TRACK: "Asking Annie Out" (a wonderful pop song with a great melody. The fiddle and mandolin are great additions to the recording)

6. Danielle Howle: Danielle is a friend of mine from South Carolina who's been doing her thing since the late 80's. She writes everything from pop to rock to punk to country and everything in between. She may not know it but her music has influenced me greatly for a long time.
KEY TRACK: "Could Be Here" (great tune from her 2002 album Skorborealis. The vocals are spot on and the gutiars are beautiful. My favorite DH song ever)

5. Bob Dylan: Where to begin? He's one of a kind. The Highway 61 Revisited album has been one of my favorite albums for a long time.
KEY TRACK: "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" (my favorite song from Highway 61. It's rootsy, it's folksy, and overall it's a great song)

4. Peter Holsapple [The dB's/Continental Drifters]: I first heard the Continental Drifters about 7 years ago. Soon after I discovered the dB's and I was hooked. I've known Peter for 4 or so years, and I don't think I've ever told him what his songs have done for me. He's another writer that seems like he can write just about anything
KEY TRACK: "Black and White" (a dB's song from their debut album Stands for Decibels. This is the first song from The dB's I heard, and it may very well be my favorite)

3. Glen Phillips [Toad the Wet Sprocket]: Glen Phillips can write a pop song. Yes he can. BUT, they're so much deeper than that. I've heard Toad the Wet Sprocket categorized as "Thinking Man's music" and you really won't know why until you hear them.
KEY TRACK: "Amnesia" (this song is off their great album Coil, and it's my favorite from that besides the great song "Crazy Life". "Amnesia" is so different than a lot of their stuff...it's really dark and big

2. Hootie and the Blowfish: Why, you ask, would I put a band as a whole as my favorite songwriter? This is because I couldn't possibly pick one member. Hootie will not only hold a place in my heart as 1. My favorite band and biggest influence altogether and 2. The most underrated band in America, but they hold a place because they write some of the best songs ever. People who haven't heard much past the huge smash Cracked Rear View need to listen to the Fairweather Johnson album in it's entirety. It's rootsy and it's what made me want to be a songwriter.
KEY TRACK: "She Crawls Away" (written by Darius, if I'm not mistaken. This is such a great pop song and it'll be stuck in your head for days. Enough said!)

1. Gene Clark [The Byrds, solo]: Gene Clark is by far the best songwriter who walked the earth. Perfectly crafted pop songs that unfortunately went mostly unnoticed by the general public throughout his great career. His work with The Byrds is great, and his solo work is even better.
KEY TRACK: "Polly" (beautifully written and wonderfully performed. This is one of the best examples of his great talent and legendary legacy. Robert Plant & Alison Krauss do a haunting version on their brilliant album Raising Sand. God bless Gene Clark)

Well, I hope you've enjoyed my list and I hope you'll check out all of these great writers.

Till next time.

So close.....so close....

As I sit here in our computer room. I'm juggling two different tasks. One is finishing the writing for the new AFT record. I'm so close!! Doing this "Storytellers" show in March has given me a deadline, and that's something I've never had before when it comes to getting an album together. I like it though. It forces me to not procrastinate as I've been known to do in the past when it comes to songwriting. A lot of the time I'll start a song and then I won't finish it for a few days...I can't do it this time. I have almost a month to get a few more songs done. I'm doing really well actually, so we'll see where it gets me by the time of March 29th. By early April we'll have some sort of idea of what the next step is.

The other task I've taken on has come out of one of my new songs, called "Hey Mother". There's a story behind that one that I started thinking about recently. I sort of took a few lines from that song and wrote a plot for a novel out of it. This morning I decided I'd write a novel. Yep. The ideas are really coming together and it's gonna be really cool, I think. I'm developing the characters carefully and slowly so I can really dig into who I want these people to be. I don't read a lot of books these days (but I'm really into A Million Little Pieces by James Frey) but what I like about novels is that not only does the author have complete control over one character's life, the reader also interprets the characters and their traits in their own way, which is a lot like songwriting. I think I'll have a fairly easy time with this....I hope. I'll keep y'all updated on it for sure. I'm not positive on what I'm going to do with it yet. I'll probably save up and print/publish it myself, sell it at shows and such. Who knows. I'm just in the idea stages but I'm excited about it

Stay here for updates on the AFT record and my yet-to-be-officially-started novel.

Folk Rock: The Way I See It

"Folk rock is a musical genre, combining elements of folk music and rock music." -Wikipedia


Yea, I guess that's what it is in it's simplest terms....but I dunno. I see it as something bigger than that, something more complex and hard to categorize.

I've come across people who are confused about how one categorizes themself as folk rock. Well, here's how I see it.

When people ask me what genre my band is, I often say folk rock. Maybe it's just because of my undeniable affection for a genre that is, in my mind, perfect in every way. Folk rock takes elements not just from folk and rock, but from country, celtic, and pop. I'm not saying that it takes elements from country and bluegrass, celtic, and pop in the sense that the songs sound like country songs or pop songs. What I'm saying is when someone is seen as writing folk rock songs or playing folk rock music, they're taking the Americana elements of folk music, whether it be in the lyrics or the music, adding a rock backbeat, and most of the time exploring different instrumentation. You'll hear many folk rock songs that include instruments like mandolin, pedal steel, harmonica, banjo, accordion, and so on. Take, for example, Shawn Colvin's hit song "Sunny Came Home". That song, as well as many of Shawn's brilliant songs, is a great example of a folk rock song. It's definitely got pop elements, being so catchy and having a great hook. But if you listen to the music more attentivley, as I often do, you'll hear 12 string guitar (a huge part in folk rock, especially early folk rock, thanks to The Byrds), piano, steel guitar, mandolin, and obviously acoustic guitar. I always love a rock song with mandolin because it adds such a brightness and a bit of a punch to the song. I'm a sucker for the mandolin, folks.

I recently purchased a great box set titled "4 Decades of Folk Rock", or as I call it "4 Decades of Songs I Wish I'd Written". This covers the genre in, obviously, 4 different decades (60's, 70's, 80's, and 90's & Beyond) and it presents some of the best songs and the best representations of what folk rock is. It begins with "Like a Rolling Stone" by the great Bob Dylan. It could be said that this song started the folk rock movement. There's the legendary story of the 1965 Newport Folk Festival when Dylan brought members of Paul Butterfield's band to back him up. He played lots of his songs, but for the first time he played them in sort of a rock and roll fashion, with the guitars amp'd up and the drums pounding. I can imagine why people wouldn't know what to think. Newport seems like it's always been such a low key event. You have a few mics for guitars and vocals, maybe some percussion or something but that's about it. Suddenly this great folk singer brings in a band and people go crazy. For me, when I think about it, this was a blessing. Even though I obviosuly wasn't there, I think that this really paved the way for folk rock to become what it is.

Soon you had The Byrds covering Dylan songs and adding one distinct sound to them that really gave folk rock it's own identity. The 12 string guitar. Roger McGuinn really brought that sound to the mainstream. The jangely, bright, smooth tone coming from his Rickenbacker really amazed me the first time I heard it. The Byrds did quite a few Dylan songs, though if you haven't heard much from them you should check out their original material. especially ones written by Gene Clark, the main songwriter for the band.

I'll try not to go into any more detail on folk rock music. I just felt like sharing my point of view on the genre. I have no problem classifying my band as folk rock, even though most of the time, especially in our live show, we tend to be a little harder in terms of style. In the studio we use mandolin, accordion, electric piano, 12 string guitar, steel guitar, slide guitar, and other instruments that, to me, play a big part in folk rock music.

My Ears Wrote a Song Last Night

Last night I did a bit of songwriting. Interesting, huh? I know. Nothing new whatsoever. I go into my room and come out some time later with a song, or parts of a song, or a poor excuse for a song. Last night began as no different, at least until I started thinking about where I wanted this song to go. It all began with a teency melody in my head.

I sang with melody over and over, and finally decided that the best course of action was to imitate this melody on an acoustic guitar, and build from there. I picked up my trusty acoustic, found the key, and then realized that if started in a D minor I could play exactly what I was singing with a pull off on the high E string, the two notes in a D minor on the B and G strings, and then notes in C and G chords. That's never happened to me before, where it was such a simple task to recreate this short melody, so I had to stop and collect myself before I continued. I took a breath, and continued.

Because I liked this part so much, I told myself to focus on the bit I just wrote and just keep building it. Before I continue, I need to fast forward a little bit. After the song was all done, I played it for Shaun Rhoades, the bass playing little man who lives in our basement, and he said something I was hoping he would. "Ya know how sometimes you hear a song and you sort of know where it's gonna go next, like what chord it's gonna go to? That's what this song is. It goes exactly where your ears want it to go".

Thank. God.

"That's just what I was going for, actually" I said in response.

Back to the writing session. So I focused on building the part because I loved it so much, blah blah blah. I decided that melody and the chords that went with it would be the intro and verse. Then I had a nice idea. I'd take that same melody, drop one (or maybe it was two) notes, and change the key from a D minor to an A minor. I did that, added a little ending to it, and called it the solo, or instrumental break, as I got so used to calling it when we recorded our last album with Malcolm Burn.

There ya go. Two parts in the can. Now came the chorus. I usually have no problem writing choruses. Actually, many of my songs started out as a chorus and quickly built themselves up from there. I decided I'd make the chorus very melodic, and keep it in all major chords. F-G/F-G-C. Fine, right? Not fine enough for me. I started thinking "How can I make this song good for the ears?" I guess what I meant by that is exactly what Shaun said. I'll add some nice chords to make it go exactly where one wants it to go. So that's what I did. It started with a D major, then back to an F. The I added an E major and mimicked a few notes I was singing in the E chord. Then back to F, then the kicker, and F minor for good measure. There. I had a pop chorus. I knew from the beginning that this song was going to be all about the chord progression and the melody, and I think I'm actually really happy with how it came out. The lyrics came pretty quickly. After throwing around a few ideas I decided I'd do what I do a lot. I'd write down a bunch of words in a certain part of the song that sounded good, and I'd pick a few that went together and kick the rest out. I took those two or three words, "put them back in my head", you might say, came up with a little summary of the song, and just started writing. I didn't stop writing words down, no matter if I hated them or not. Most of the time it takes the deleting of a few lines to get something I actually like. Once I had the lyrics and phrasing down, I felt pretty confident that I had a song. I played it a few times to myself and tried to think if there was anything else it needed. I came up with a nice little outro that combined parts of the intro/verse chords and the chorus. Ta-da! There's my song.

I won't go into detail about what this song is about. You'll have to come see my band at Bodles Opera House in Chester, NY on March 29th. We're doing a cool show where we're playing all the new songs together in one night. We're making sort of like an intimate storytellers evening, but still full band. You'll get to hear about all the new songs, including this one, which has already been brought to the band.

That's all for now. I hope you enjoyed this trip inside my brain, inside my bedroom, and inside my song.

Dream Guitar of the Week: Harmony Stratotone H44

Ooooooooh. This fine piece of ass is a Harmony Stratotone H44. Small bodied, copper colored, and bluesy sounding. Harmony recently started reissuing these beauties. Richie Valens played one, but I fell in love with it after seeing Tom Waits play one. I imagine myself with one of these, a bottleneck slide, and a Fender Blues Deluxe. When I first saw it, the body freaked me out, but I soon got used to it's unique shape and overall great construction. Arguably, It's the epitome of a classic blues guitar. At least for me. Great players like Valens, Waits, and Marc Ribot, use this guitar. No wonder Marc Ribot has the best tone. He plays vintage guitars, mostly Harmony's.

You'll be seeing a lot of Harmony axes on my dream guitar list, up there with some Gretschs, Fenders, Danelectros, Guilds, and Rickenbackers.

Wow, I have my own blog now. Cool.

For a long time I've been blogging from my band's website and myspace. I've always wanted my own blog for non band related things, so I finally forced myself to make one. Here I am.

Knowing myself, you'll probably hear from me a lot at first and then I'll kind of fade away in the blog world. I'll try my best to keep this updated and current.

I have a band. We like to call ourselves A Fragile Tomorrow. I sing and attempt to play guitar, and various other instruments. We get around, so check out our site for shows and such. afragiletomorrow.com

I have a general love and obsession for music so that's probably what you'll be reading about here for the most part. To be honest I don't really do anything else. I'm homeschooled...but you don't want to hear about that, do you?

I go to a lot of concerts, so I'll post pictures and reviews here. I'm pretty excited to see Toad the Wet Sprocket in NYC next week so I'll definitely try to post a nice little review here. I love Toad so it'll be all good things, I'm sure. I'm also going to this cool REM tribute show at Carnegie Hall next month. Lots of great artists are playing, including my friend Peter's band The dB's. Check them out, and check out his site peterholsapple.com.

I'll also post from the road and probably let you in on some of the albums I'm currently digging. Right now I'm pretty obsessed with Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. I bought it when it first came out and loved it, but ever since it won all those shiny awards, I can't put it down.

That's all, folks.