First, I hope you’ve had a great summer. It’s been a while since I’ve opened up the ol’ newsletter program, but with our new little guy walking around the house and already starting to learn to play piano, things have been busy, as you might imagine!
Nevertheless, I am extremely thrilled to announce that this summer in between raising a baby, working full time, helping my lovely lady out with her dance studio, riding 163 miles in a 2-day bike ride where we raised $30,000 for Dana Farber Cancer Institute (and catching up on the last season of Stranger Things), I did manage to complete my brand new record with the help of my good friend, Mr. Scott Barkan.
Oh, and I managed to get back to my monthly residency, and wrangled the band back together for a very special Bay Area show, details below!
What? I thought you were only writing books these days?
Yup, that's what I thought too, but turns out there was a lot of music left to record...
~
Back to Barkan
When I started this writing project two years ago, I approached my old friend Scott Barkan, our guitarist extraordinaire who cowrote No More Rainbows when were still playing as Even Elroy. I brought Scott a collection of songs--many of which I felt were still too raw to share, but when he got excited about a song called Good Enough (Never Gonna Be an Astronaut), the lights faded and the sound came up and the world fell back into place.
Thus began a process of delving into a new album, which, meant weekend bursts on Amtrak trips to Scott's home studio in Philadelphia, and back to San Francisco for some piano tracking with our friend Adam Rossi.
Working with Scott was as if no time had passed. We'd done a few shows together the last couple of years, and discovered we had left some ideas out in the ether since our last official album back in 2008. The choice to work on these particular tunes together was a no-brainer, and resulted my new record, BETTER WHEN I'M OLDER, which I'm thrilled to say will be released in October.
If you are in the Bay Area, I'm equally thrilled to announce my West Coast album release show, where we will be returning to our local favorite, the Hotel Utah, with my Boston buddy Ben Reynolds on bass, and our old friend Ryan Machamer on drums... and maybe a few other surprise guests!
If you're within a 200-mile radius, we hope to see you there!
Hotel Utah San Francisco Saturday, October 19th 8pm
with the Soulbillies, and Caroline Rose
Tickets are available here. (It's a small place and does tend to sell out, so you might want to grab them now!) IN OTHER NEWS: A Summer of Matt's
This summer was also a great summer for wineries and friends name Matt. I was fortunate to catch our SF buddy Matt Langlois and his trio at the Truro Winery on Cape Cod, and another member of our musical family, my good friend Matt Ward--our original drummer in Even Elroy at a winery in Seattle. I dare say, keeping with the name of our first Even Elroy record Nothing's Really Changed, we don't seem to have aged (or matured) much in ten years. We both got giddy when we heard the band at the local winery playing one of our old covers, Stuck in the Middle, and both secretly would've jumped up and played a set if the kids didn't have to go to bed.
I feel I've been truly blessed with the amazing friends and musicians I've met through my music career, and while I've stopped performing full-time, I do feel there is much left to be done and can't wait to make some new friends and memories.
Stay tuned for more to come in a couple weeks--and let me know if you can make it to the Hotel Utah on the 19th!
Cheers!
Jeff & friends