"Brothers & Sisters"

Things are really coming along with the new album, which has a working title of "All It Takes Is One." (To clarify, I'm using the word "album" to describe a full-length or "long-playing (LP)" release. However, like our  four-song "extended play (EP)" in 2010 and the single we issued in December, our new collection will be released primarily as a digital download on Amazon, iTunes, etc.)

I know that downloads of single tracks are the norm these days, and some people consider albums to be obsolete. But if you're a member of my generation, and the few preceding and following it, you likely still embrace the "LP" as a valid art form ... and if you do, you might want to buy this one. At least I hope so.

Some of my earliest memories are of being glued to the jukebox at the restaurants where my mother worked. There's anecdotal evidence that I learned to read by matching up the song titles and artist names on the tags associated with the music that was playing. It was all about singles then, and it was a great era for diversity and song craft in pop music. The jukebox vendor would come in roughly once a week and replace older records with new ones, and he'd give the discards to me! I once had a very large treasure trove of used records, mostly without sleeves, to go along with the newer ones I'd buy at Woolworth's from time to time. Sadly, they're all long gone. One day, I'd like to own an old analog jukebox stocked with old 45s. But I digress.

At some point, my brother Chuck, who is four years older than I, impressed upon me that singles were "out" and albums were "in." In fact, I had two other older siblings who collected all the big LPs of the day. My sister Eileen had the Beatles and then Donovan, Dylan, Baez, Havens, Collins and Mitchell. My brother Tom leaned towards the Beach Boys and Four Seasons and later Hendrix and the Chambers Brothers. Chuck was in early on Bowie and Lou Reed and Mott The Hoople and then early punk rock. I loved most all of what my siblings had and would sneak those records onto the stereo when they were out of the house, but the first album I remember owning outright was "Innervisions" by Stevie Wonder. 

This was all back in the days when the radio airwaves were ruled by 77 WABC, which largely ignored the narrow categories by which popular music was (and is) defined and simply turned us on to anything that was good. Meanwhile, FM radio was relatively new at the time, and it was there that we heard deep cuts from albums and artists old and new. The point is, you could find the entire range of what was being played in our house on the radio, and much, much more.

And the albums themselves -- at least the best of them -- varied in tempo, volume, style and  subject matter. To me, in retrospect, it all started with "Beatles For Sale" and evolved through "Rubber Soul," "Revolver" (my favorite), "Sgt. Pepper," all the way through to "Abbey Road." You had acoustic- and electric-based pop/riock, infused with elements of R&B, country, classical and even Indian music. The "two guitars, bass and drums" foundation was supplemented by piano, organ and early forms of the synthesizer, strings, brass, woodwinds, odd percussion instruments -- pretty much an "anything goes" attitude that made each song unique and the entire collection a work of art, at least when it all came together well. You had the Beach Boys and the Stones and other contemporaries of the Fab Four following suit, creating a competitive environment from which everyone grew and thrived.

When we were in our teens, my friends and I were so in love with the album as an art form and music in general that we'd walk from our houses in Prospect Park, NJ to a bus stop on Haledon Avenue in Paterson, travel several miles out of our way to Paterson's City Hall and transfer to the bus that took us to the Willowbrook and West Belt malls in Wayne -- all to take advantage of the sales at Sam Goody, Korvettes, Harmony Hut and Disc-O-Mat. Upon returning home, we'd have informal listening parties where we'd play our new "gets" from beginning to end, giving them all the focus and attention to detail that we'd afford a movie at the cinema. And we pored over each album cover for photos, lyrics, musician info and other trivia (yet another lesson learned from being Beatles fans, especially during the "Paul is dead" era). 

So you can see how and why the long-player format has become so ingrained for so many of us who came of age in its heyday. 

Nowadays, music is becoming more and more like fast food -- although perhaps I'm being too kind, because at least a Big Mac is a tangible item and there's a relationship that lasts from the point of purchasing it to the point of expelling it. Meanwhile, songs and albums have gone from being physical products to nebulous entities, existing almost in theory, which explains why so many people would rather copy and/or steal them than purchase them. 

And yet my friends and I are making an album anyway, because I still believe there are people out there who embrace and honor music and the LP as they always have. And the album we're making owes a lot to our favorites from years gone by. So far, we've got rock and pop with tinges of blues, folk, country and New Wave; acoustic and electric guitars and bass; blues harp and straight harmonica; keyboards and real, honest-to-goodness strings. Besides the "core four" of Jimmy, Smitty, Timmy and me, we've had five "guests" lend their talents to the project so far. We've just about finished recording six or seven tracks for what will be a 10-12 song collection.  

In short, those who've been following my musical activities since Every Damn Day (or even earlier) are likely to be very surprised by the new record. I hope "All It Takes Is One" will live up to, if not exceed, your expectations.

Many, many more details to come...

"Kill A Clown (No, Not Really)"

What began as a silly joke set to music inspired our most recent release as a single.

After the release of our 2010 debut EP, "The Cosmic Adventures of ManBoy," we began work on a full-length LP the following year, but it's been slow to materialize due to day jobs and other real-world concerns.

Among the first songs to be recorded for the LP, due to its simple blues structure, was "Kill A Clown."

I'd written the lyrics solely to amuse my friends. I have no real strong feelings about clowns, pro or con; I was just having fun with the notion that there are people who have an intense dislike and even fear of them. When I shared the lyrics with people, they tended to laugh, and then ask, "What's the music like?" So I threw together this basic arrangement, and then it kind of took on a life of its own.

Because I was self-conscious that the song might be misinterpreted, I added the "No, not really" backing vocals to the arrangement (as well as the song's official title) before testing the song out on live audiences. In my mind, it's cartoon violence. But I feared that someone whose mind is inclined toward actual violence might take it the wrong way, and I'd become a poster boy for the "evils" of rock music. I wanted to make it clear that it's a joke, though I acknowledge that it's not everyone's kind of humor.

While work on our album continued at a snail's pace, we played a few live shows, and the audience response to "Kill A Clown" caught me a bit off guard. After our set, I'd offer our EP up for sale, and people would actually be disappointed, to the point of not buying it, because "the clown song" wasn't on it.

I got sort of the same reaction from Rich Russo, host of the freeform radio show "Anything Anything," when I gave him a copy of "The Cosmic Adventures of ManBoy" after our show last month at Maxwell's in Hoboken. He subsequently sent me an email saying he liked a couple of the songs on the EP, but he wanted to know where "the clown song" was -- whether that was on another release. (We had closed our set at Maxwell's with that song.)

At that point we decided to put out "Kill A Clown" as a single independent of the upcoming LP. Russo responded a few days later by playing the song on two separate installments of "Anything Anything" on 107.1 The Peak (serving New York's Westchester and Rockland counties and Upper New Jersey) and 105.5 WDHA-FM (serving northern, central and western New Jersey). It's also been getting regular airplay on The Penguin, an Internet radio station based in Belmar, NJ.

On Dec. 7, veteran rock critic Mike Greenblatt, who praised "ManBoy" as "Disc of The Week" in  The Aquarian in January, reviewed "Kill A Clown" for the online music magazine, Atlas Jams: "...A delicious slice of power pop ... with chunky guitars and perfecto vocals. ... Complete with kazoo break and gunshot, it’s a visceral blast of goodtimey violence."

The single is available at Amazon MP3, iTunes, CD Baby and a few other online stores. Buy it, okay? :)

Alabama Getaway

Just a few days until we hit the road for our whirlwind weekend tour of lower Alabama. A couple of quick notes on that:

1. The headliner for our 7/30/11 show at Soul Kitchen has changed. We will now be opening for Johnny No, the band that was runner-up in the 2011 Nappie Awards for best band in Mobile. We're psyched to be playing with them.

2. We will be the subject of an article in the 7/27 edition of Lagniappe, Mobile's top alternative weekly newspaper. (For the "classic" version of the paper's website, click here.)

3. We'll also be written up in the region's big daily newspaper, The Press-Register, on Thursday, 7/28.

4. On Friday, 7/29, we'll be doing a warmup gig at the West End Tiki Bar in nearby Dauphin Island, a beach resort town. The show will run from 6-10 p.m. and will include a set of originals as well as covers. If you can't come to the Soul Kitchen show, here's an alternative; if you'd like to to attend both, we'd be externally grateful. ;)

More updates to come. Undoubtedly.

Alabama

Okay, so it's been three months since I blogged. I've meant to; after all, since I last posted here, we made our live debut at Pat DiNizio's 5th Annual Memorial Day BBQ. My talented brother Chuck served as our lead guitarist, and it was an honor to open for the Smithereens. You can check out video footage of our performance on the Pop Goes The World channel on YouTube.

As I wrote earlier, the gig we landed at Pat's BBQ fell in the category of "It never hurts to ask." Pat added me as one of his Facebook friends earlier this year and when he posted something about the plans for the BBQ, I emailed him (twice) and asked if we could play at the event. Eventually he responded and said "yes." (We can't thank him enough for the opportunity.)

Our upcoming gig at Soul Kitchen in Mobile, AL falls under the same category. A musician friend of ours, Bobby Butchka, moved from Jersey to the Mobile area several years ago. During a stop in our area last fall, Bobby recorded some lead guitar tracks on "Hero's Trial," a song from our upcoming album. At the time I floated the idea of lining up a gig for us in Mobile, with him as our lead guitarist. He said he was all for it.

Fast-forward to May of this year. I was planning a July trip to visit family in Mobile. Why not try to set up a gig for while I'm down there? I researched the local music scene and sent our CD to three clubs ... none of which was Soul Kitchen. After all, I'd visited their web site and saw that they had national acts on their bill; it seemed to me that it was the Mobile equivalent of Maxwell's in Hoboken, NJ (Bobby later confirmed this for me).

Ironically, the one club promoter that responded to our mailing said we weren't a good fit for his venue, but suggested we get in touch with Brad, the booking manager for Soul Kitchen. When we emailed Brad, he got back to us right away. He wrote that he had heard of Bobby but he wanted to get some sense of how we would draw at his club. We told him it was hard to predict, but we would try our best to promote the show through Facebook, the local press and radio. The discussion seemed to end there.

Then I saw on the Soul Kitchen web calendar that a band had been booked there for Saturday, July 30, the date we were looking for. I was immediately discouraged, and called Bobby to tell him so. But when I mentioned that the band booked for that night was The Ugli Stick, Bobby said: "I know those guys!"

I called Brad and asked if we could open for the Ugli Stick; he said that if it was all right with them, it was all right with him. Bobby then called the band's frontman, Eric, who gave us the thumbs-up, and with a return call to Brad, we were good to go at Soul Kitchen. Crazy how these things happen ...

P.S. Earlier this week, Lagniappe, the local alternative magazine in Mobile, gave out its annual Nappie Awards, in which readers weigh in on the best and worst of the city. Soul Kitchen was picked as the best place to see live music; Bobby Butchka was named best solo performer; and the Ugli Stick were chosen as best band. So it would seem that the planets truly are aligning for this show!

What's Going On?

I started this blog after reading a Facebook post by CD Baby. It suggested that it only takes 15 minutes a week to maintain a blog that will keep your fans posted and interested in you. As you can see, I've fallen far short of that. My excuse is that real life intrudes, and in recent weeks there just hasn't been anything exciting to blog about.

On the bright side, I'm blogging tonight, so that means enough things are happening to make it worthwhile.

1. Recording of the new album is coming along nicely. We've made great progress on around a half-dozen tracks. It's sounding good!

2. While adding acoustic guitar tracks on a couple of songs for the album, I took advantage of the opportunity to demo one of the songs I wrote recently. It's called "Salvation," and I characterize it as a "love/protest song." The lyrics reflect my general sense of concern and frustration with the world, juxtaposed against my gratitude for having found the love of my life.

Coincidentally, actor/director Ed Burns posted on Facebook that he's seeking song submissions for his independent film, "Newlyweds." He gave no specific direction or context for the kind of song he's looking for, but I submitted "Salvation" anyway. At the very least it's getting exposure on the SoundCloud group Burns created for song submissions. He's supposed to pick the winning song by Easter weekend.

3. In the "it never hurts to ask" department, Mike Daly & The Planets will make their live debut at Pat DiNizio's 5th Annual Memorial Day Picnic/Fan Jam and Concert, which will be held in Pat's back yard in Scotch Plains, NJ on Sunday, May 29. Yes, we'll be opening for the Smithereens, whose new album, "2011," is getting great reviews, so we're psyched. Pat's Beatles cover band, the Scotch Plainsmen, will also be playing, and he'll be doing a solo acoustic set as well. We're psyched! For ticket and other info about the event, visit PatDiNizio.com. If you're going, please send a note along with your check indicating that you were refferred by me.

4. We've got a lot of fans in Sweden. Our songs have been streamed more than 1,300 times on a website called Spotify. Also, the vast majority of our listeners on Last.fm are from Sweden. Not exactly sure why, but if someone out there can shed some light on it, we'd love to know. Send me a note at mike@mikedaly.com

5. Hey, you know, we've had a four-song EP out for several months now. Or maybe you didn't. In either case, it's selling at various online digital music sites for around 4 bucks, while the CD version is available for as little as $7.50.  If haven't already, all the info you'll ever need to obtain it is available on the righthand column of this page or at MikeDaly.com

Songs In The Key Of Life

For the past few weeks, I've been in the midst of rehearsals for the upcoming Every Damn Day 20th Anniversary Reunion Show. In between, I've been working with the Planets on recordings for a new album. As I mentioned earlier, my friend Jim "Higgs" Higgins (Whatnots, Skanatra), has added guitar parts to a song called "Shot of Confidence." Tonight after rehearsal, Jim Van Sickle and I  played the most recent mix of that song for John and Richie of EDD. Its lyrics express a fair amount of self-doubt and self-loathing, which led John to voice concern. I responded that the song was written 5 years ago.

There are a few EDD songs that have the same mood or express similar sentiments; "Sudden Spark" is one that immediately leaps to mind. When Higgs first heard "Shot of Confidence," he remarked that it sounded a lot like Pat DiNizio of the Smithereens, a band that influenced some of EDD's earliest work.

Indeed, many of the songs that will be featured on the next Mike Daly & The Planets album are in fact several years old. To my ears, and those of the people I've shared the demos with, they've held up over time. The great thing is that while most of these songs, like most of those recorded by EDD, were inspired by negative life experiences, they no longer inspire unpleasant feelings for me; rather, they're simply songs that I take pride in having written. That's the up side of using songwriting (or any kind of creative outlet) as therapy: Once you're able to get past the pain of the bad experience, you're left with an entirely separate entity that will hopefully strike a chord with an audience.

In the coming weeks and months, we also plan to record material  I've written much more recently, including some that is currently only in the idea stage. These songs will be more reflective of my life now: much more confident, positive and hopeful.

And so, just as my newest recordings will feature a rotating cast of musicians to produce a variety of sounds and styles, so will they vary in mood, encompassing what has been a long period of transition in my life. I hope to record and perform the kind of music that spoke to me as I was growing up, and compelled me to create my own.

I'll be offering sneak previews of our latest stuff as this project progresses. In the meantime, I hope to see many of you at the EDD show on 2/26!

Family Affair

One of the things I most looked forward to when recording my "solo" material was the chance to work with a variety of musicians whose talents I respect and admire. Among those are members of my immediate and extended family.

So far, my brother, Chuck, has played lead guitar on "No Simple Task," and my sister's husband, Charlie Moller, has played piano on "Mikey's Lament." Both were rightly singled out in Mike Greenblatt's gratifying review of "The Cosmic Adventures of ManBoy" in The Aquarian Weekly on Jan. 12, 2011. And both of those tracks have now been played on the Plástico Elástico radio show in Madrid, Spain.

In addition, the regular members of my live band (Tim Gillespie, Jim Van Sickle and Jim "Smitty" Smith) are my "brothers from other mothers." So far, Tim has played lead guitar on the studio version of "Mikey's Lament." And, in keeping with the "family" trend, Smitty's daughter, Amy, played acoustic guitar on "No Simple Task" and violin on "Follow You."

I plan to include other family members on the material we're recording now. I have string parts in mind for my nephew, Emmet, and my niece, Kelsey. And Chuck and Charlie will hopefully lend their talents to one or more of the newer songs.

Meanwhile, a couple of good friends have recorded with us over the past couple of months. Jim Higgins (Whatnots, Skanatra) has provided lead guitar on "Shot of Confidence" and a harmonica solo on "Star". while Bobby Butchka (Whatnots, Fear of Falling) added a guitar solo to "Hero's Trial".

For the most part, I've asked each of the "guest" musicians to play a part I've heard in my head since I wrote the song in question, and then offered a spot where each can do his or her own thing. I find that where I might have had a preconceived notion of what those improvised parts would sound like, all of the players have exceeded my expectations with what they've contributed to these recordings.

I like the diversity of sounds and styles that my latest recordings have produced. I feel very fortunate to have such a large group of talented family members and friends, and I'm happy to be able to involve them in my recent projects. It's really been a lot of fun so far.