The road to The Humming Field. My musical history.

Recollections that are as accurate as I can remember. I doubt they’re spot on.

It began early. Piano lessons as a kid. My siblings records (especially my brother Brian’s), the Sullivan show on Sundays, falling asleep to my radio every night. I played a mean tennis racket while singing into an old golf club, positioned just so. I guess I got the bug when I was really young. Got my first real six string (can I say that?) at twelve years old. Took it everywhere despite the fact that I could barely play it. Learned mostly from friends at school and Beatle books. Grabbing the back seat on the school bus with my friend Dan to share what we were learning. It’s not easy playing on a bus that’s bouncing around the hills of western Massachusetts.

I started out as a roadie for FAT as an 18 year old in the summer of 1977 and did it for roughly two years. Fat was a great five piece rock/blues rock band from western Massachusetts. I handled the stage set up and acted as guitar tech. They were a huge draw and I was part of a full time, three man road crew. I was surrounded by really fine musicians and was able to join the band in recording projects at Criteria Studios in Miami and Atlantic Studios in New York, working with engineers like Steve Klien (Nugent) and Gene Paul (Les’ son, and yes,we got to meet dad). The producer in both Miami and New York was Felix Pappalardi who was the bass player in Mountain and whose production credits included The Youngbloods(Jesse Colin Young’s band) and Cream. Heard great stories of Jimi Hendrix coming to a Cream session to give Eric Clapton a quick tutorial on the wah-wah pedal, and of working with Leslie West. In Miami, The Allman Brothers were recording their record, Enlightened Rogues with Tom Dowd producing, across the hall and I was invited in by Dickie Betts to watch him overdub some solos. I thought I’d sit in the back of the control room but he brought me out to the live room, gave me a chair, gave me a set of headphones, and started to go while standing no more than five feet away. Just the two of us in the live room. Unreal, I was a kid. Ahmet Ertegun arrived to check out the proceedings. Holy moly.

The band had a home studio in Ashfield, Ma. where they demo-ed lots of songs and brought in Mick Ronson to work with them. I knew of Mick from my infatuation with David Bowie and the records Mick was involved with in particular. He was the right hand man on The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, in my personal top ten of all time. I was awestruck. I moved to the couch and he took my room for a couple of weeks. He taught me the piano intro to Lady Stardust and asked me to share a mic for my first ever vocal tracks, doing some backing vocals. I was absolutely thrilled. The band got a kick out of it and busted my chops for weeks. It was awesome. He sat in on a few gigs with the band and just had a thing.

Working with the band was an amazing experience and I learned a lot. My introduction to the world of clubs, studios, late nights, managers, label people, money men, etc. I had wanted to play since I saw The Beatles, Stones, Kinks, et al on the aforementioned Ed Sullivan show. Being in it firsthand only made me want to do it more. I left my gig with Fat with the intention of playing right away. About a year later I met Fritz Erickson while hanging out at Greenfield(Ma.) Community College. He was trying to put a band together. I told him I was much better than I actually was. It worked. He asked me to play that day so I drove 45 minutes each way to get my gear. Freddie and the Victors was born. Fritz wrote almost everything we played. Great power pop. Fritz did his best to turn me into a real guitar player to mixed results. Vic Comoli, our bassist, said he heard alot of snap, crackle, and pop onstage. I don’t think it was meant as a compliment. Our drummer Brian Belmonte would have been the perfect frontman, if his air guitar was any indication. We had a short run but got to open for one of Boston’s best bands, The Neighborhoods, quite a few times. They were electric. David Minehan, at 18 years old, rocked like very few I’ve ever seen. Tried to steal a few moves with little success. The Victors disbanded, Fritz moved to Boston and eventually played some shows with The Hoods, as they were known, before playing with The Future Dads and then (I think, though this sequence may be all wrong) Gang Green. Fritz is a great player and friend. He got me into my next band The Vejetables.

I moved from the happy valley, as the Northampton area is known, to Westboro, a town near Worcester (nuff said) to join them. Talk about a short run, it lasted only a few months. The band consisted of Pete Beats on drums, Russel Sprouts on bass, Bobby Beans on guitar, and I was Al Phalfa on, get this, lead guitar! There was a keyboard player who lasted so long, (not) that I don’t remember his name. We had a parody song to the tune of Wild Thing called Ed King, the then governor of Mass. They had recorded it before I joined the band. David Small played a nasty solo that Bobby played live. It was a hugely requested song on WBCN, at that time THE station in Boston. The band also recorded a song, Go French, that I took with me to at least three other bands. Great guitar solo by Fritz Erickson (Newman!) who had played with all those guys before I knew them. There seemed to be a little momentum building but after Pete Beats and I took a horrendous beating from the Westboro,Ma. police I got the hell out of there and returned to Northampton..

There I got involved in my next band called Pryvate Tunings, often referred to as “always tuning”. We were a bizarre combination of styles. I was into my Bowie look. The other guitarist was Paul Rocha, my best friend to this day and one of the most musically gifted people I’ve ever known. He was sporting the Duane Allman muttonchops. His brother Tony played some guitar but mainly sang. He was built like a fullback and was dashingly handsome with his stash and sportscoat. Bassist Rich Cahillane, who I’m also still close with, was right out of a Grateful Dead show. Trippy to say the least. Bob Grant was our drummer. Had a look somewhere between Loverboy and Tiger Beat. Chicks dug him. Our music was as scattered as our look. We all wrote and wrote quite differently. The covers ran the gamut, from XTC to The Guess Who. Somehow, we still had a following, mainly the girls from Smith College. Could be worse. We lasted about 15 months, a long time for me in those days. While in the band I started demoing some songs of my own at Multi-Trax, a studio in Northampton. The engineer was Peter Keppler who I later lived with, toured with, a did a lot of other stuff with. He’s gone on to do sound for tons of people including, Bowie, Nine Inch Nails, Steve Earle, David Byrne, and on and on. Somewhere in the course of this period I started hanging out with Aurin Schackman and Jimmy Weeks. Jimmy worked at the local music store and also at Multi Trax. I think I met both Aurin and Jimmy through Paul Rocha and we really hit it off. The three of us liked to hang together and started messing around musically. That turned into Square One. It also led to the end of Pryvate Tunings and Jimmy’s band, R-Complex, one of my favorite bands in the valley, ever.

Square One was the first time I was in an all original band where I was doing alot of writing. While we started off as a three piece with one set’s worth of songs we would become a four piece band with three sets worth of songs with plenty to spare. We all wrote, together and individually. It was the most creative time in my life to that point and the two years were really exciting and fulfilling. That first relationship kind of thing.

Aurin had the voice and played bass. Jimmy was/is an amazing all around musician/engineer/producer and what was remarkable is he was, I think, 19 at the time,as was Aurin. Jimmy played better bass than Aurin, better guitar than I, and was equally good on drums,and keyboards. He certainly helped both of us get better and also saw something in the chemistry between us. We all did. He could have played everything in the studio, as he did on his own stuff, but we were very much a band. And we were definitely a band of the ‘80’s. Lots of hair, make-up, synths, and a fasion sense that makes you cringe a little looking back. A little pop-y, a little new wave-y, you get the jist. But, hey, it’s been said that you don’t have to apologize for the ‘80’s.They happened , that’s all. This would be the first time in my journey to get directly involved with the stuff I’d seen firsthand working with Fat. There would be contracts, getting out of (paying our way out of) contracts, showcases for labels, many trips to New York for full blown 24 track recording on someone else’s nickel, managers, popularity, jealousy, another manager, great gigs, terrible gigs, brotherhood, in-fighting, too much self medication, girlfriend problems, more managers etc. Aurin’s father, Al Shackman, was a guitarist/musical director who had worked with Nina Simone, Harry Belafonte and many others. He helped us get in the door of our first manager who shall not be named because, well, he just should not be named. It started off great. He booked us time in CounterPoint Studios, in New York, and hooked us up with our first outside producer, John Doelp. John was a great guy, and I thought he was a really cool producer. He had worked with some moderately successful bands of the day like Rubber Rodeo and Human Sexual Response. The resulting tracks led to our expanding of the band. While Jimmy could play drums and keyboards in the studio, he couldn’t do that live. We courted and eventually convinced Keith Levreault to join the band. Keith was playing with Ray Mason ( remember that name) at the time in a band called The Chills. He was definitely the right guy. Great drummer, fun to be with, it was just right. The demos also led to our first interest from record labels. We rehearsed like crazy. We got really tight. Peter Keppler was our soundman and was like a fifth member. He knew exactly what we were trying to do and helped us immensely from behind the board. RCA and Capitol records both sent A&R guys to see us play in Northampton. That didn’t happen too much back then. You usually had to go to them. I’d never been so nervous as before that first showcase for Capitol @ Sheehan’s Cafe. While there was interest there was no offer. Things went south with the shant be named manager. Our first lesson in the world of corporate music came when we had to buy ourselves out of the remaining time of our contract. Ouch. We immediately hooked up with Doug Breitbart, a young, energetic guy who worked in the office of the shant be named. He totally believed in the band. He had a small studio at his father’s place in Wilton,CT. We recorded lots of stuff there, working with John Doelp as producer and Peter Keppler as engineer. We won a regional Battle of the Bands and our prize was to have a video shot. This is probably ‘83 or 4, so the video thing seemed huge. It was filmed at John M. Greene Hall @ Smith College. The wacky director, whose name I can’t remember, somehow made a sparse crowd look like a pretty decent house. It felt like a lot of things were heading in the right direction but in hindsight I think Aurin and I got lazy and too into the big fish, small pond syndrome and things unravelled quickly. Our last gig was a really sad thing. Got really drunk and fell asleep at an after-party to celebrate our good run.

I took some time off, moved back to mom’s house in the country, got an eight track and recorded my first home recordings. It was wierd not gigging and after a short respite I got together with Paul Rocha and Aurin to do a cover band, make some cash (?) and enjoy the hang. We called ourselves The Cat’s Pajamas, and for some unknown reason, people really liked us. We played to a cassette of drum tracks we put together on a LinnDrum. That didn’t satisfy for long so we hooked up with Tommy Borawski, a drummer from Northampton. It was a good, not serious time. While we were going along, my friend Bobby LaRoche talked to me about his need for a drummer for his band The Sighs. I suggested Tommy B. Bobby worried about what that would do to the Pajamas. I told him not to worry, it wasn’t anything serious. So Tommy B. joined The Sighs and the Pajamas were put to bed. This led to another break during which I listened to a lot of Ray Mason’s casette albums. I told my then girlfriend how much I liked his stuff and she said I should ask him about playing together. I did and Ray welcomed me aboard.

Playing with Ray was probably the most challenging and rewarding thing I’ve ever done. His songs ran a broad musical spectrum and forced you to play in different styles. The line-up changed a few times, Chet Pasek on drums to start. He was sooo good. Jimmy Weeks played bass on some gigs, drums on others but the main group during my time with Ray was with Jerry Ellis on bass (he of The Elevators fame) and old friend Keith Levreault on drums. We made a cool record called Between Blue and OK that was released a couple of years later. I learned so much from Ray. We were really,really good.

During that same period The Sighs had a buzz going and were showcasing in New York.They were playing power pop in the great tradition of bands like The Raspberries and Cheap Trick. Tommy B. had settled in nicely on the kit but they were having lead guitar problems. Bobby LaRoche asked if I would do a showcase for a management team with them, just to help out. I agreed and learned a set as fast as I could. That gig went really well but created a quandry at the same time. The managers, John De Nicola and Tommy Allen ,collectively Omad Productions, liked the band as they saw it, meaning if I was in we were all in. That left me to choose, something I didn’t want to do. I loved playing with Ray and all I was learning from that. At the same time, the opportunity to try and land a record deal through Omad was a rare chance I felt I had to take. So I did, though with some definite regrets about leaving Ray’s band, which is still rocking to this day!!

Things happened really fast with The Sighs. We were showcasing for major labels, and getting interest, almost immediately. We were courted by a few of the big boys but ultimately decided to take an offer from Charisma Records. They were small in terms of roster but had the backing to do big things. Another plus was that the president of the label, Phil Quarterarro, was our biggest fan. We signed in June of 1991 and were told to keep writing, giggng and basically moving forward as we weren’t expected to record our album for at least six months. That changed quickly as well. We were suddenly planning to go to L.A. for three months, in late August to record our record with Ed Stasium( Smithereens, Ramones, Jeff Healy, among many others) producing.

L.A. was a trip. None of us had been there, nor had we ever experienced the benefits that come with having a real record deal. We were given an apartment in the valley, wined and dined, and recorded at A&M Studios in the A room. That’s the “We Are The World” room. Tommy Pluta, our bassist, met The Edge and Bono in the mastering suite. I hung out in the Fish Lounge with a sweet, pretty, unknown named Sheryl Crow one afternoon. Hugh Pagham was there. He produced two of my favorite bands, The Police and XTC. It was wild. And that was just for basic tracks. We did the rest of the record at Rumbo Recorders in Canoga Park, in the valley. It was owned by The Captain and Tennile and was where another one of my faves, Tom Petty, recorded Full Moon Fever. Working with Ed Stasium was a real learning experience. He was a taskmaster, but what I learned then really helped me in future recording sessions. We went back to A&M to mix. When I left on the last day I was there I looked around and tried to take it all in, really appreciate it. I thought that I may never experience this again. What foresight!!

Apparently, the whole time we were recording, there was stuff going on at Charisma. We heard little asides but were having too much fun to really pay attention. Besides, that why you have a manager. The label was going to change distibution companies and maybe become part of Virgin Records. Phil Q was to become head of Virgin. Our record “What Goes On” was released in June of ‘92 and we started touring right away on the east coast. We were getting some good airplay for the first single, Think About Soul, but at all the gigs people would tell us that they couldn’t find the record anywhere. And when your label gets you a review in Billboard with the album title wrong, flares should be lighting the sky. It was reveiwed as “What Goes One”, a catchy little phrase we still greet each other with. “Hey man, what goes one?” Charisma did change distribution companies, Phil Q. did become head of Virgin, which looked good on the surface but in reality we’d lost our biggest fan to the daily chores of handling Janet Jackson, The Stones, Lenny Kravitz,etc. and our record was basically lost. We stayed on the road anyway. We toured the west coast with dada, a great band that had alot of airplay with “I’m going to Dizz Knee Land”, the first single from the album Puzzle which we played non-stop on the rest of our tour. We came home in September and lost all communication with the label for a few months. Dark times indeed. We finally met with the label and we discussed rereleasing the record with some original tracks and some new ones. We would be one of a very select few to leave the dying Charisma label to become part of Virgin proper. A cornerstone of the future. Hah!! We wanted to do a new record, feeling the first disc was its own thang, so we recorded lots of songs to be heard by our new A&R guy, another person who shant be named, who hated us from the beginning. He had ideas like, “Sing more like Dave Pirner from Soul Asylum “. What? At any rate, after rejecting about twenty songs we realized things were really bad. We parted ways in the spring and a whirlwind, head-spinning experience was over. The record was barely nine months old. Not an unheard of story in the world of corporate music, but a stinging one when its your story. None the less, I wouldn’t trade that time, living a dream, albeit a short one,with your mates. The stories still flow whenever we get together to screw each other over playing poker.

We hung in there, looking for a new record deal. Some major labels had been in the running until the eleventh hour before we signed with Charisma so we thought getting a new deal wouldn’t be that hard. We were wrong. After a while it became apparent that a Charisma-like deal wasn’t going to happen. We took a deal from a small label called Big Deal (not) records. They released our second record “Different” in late ‘93, maybe ‘94. (Again, I must admit that these recollections and dates are cloudy at best). Much different this time around. As opposed to three months in L.A. for the first record, we did this one in two days at the Hit Factory in NYC. That record only got airplay locally. Bobby moved to NYC and started playing with a band called Cardinal Woolsey, while still doing gigs with the band. We did a few dates with Gin Blossoms. They were climbing. We were nose-diving. A short period of blah ensued. We played our last gig without knowing it. We sort of dissolved.

During that same period I spent some of my down time working on a record by Andrew Jones and SpiritHouse. My friend (and Humming Field co-producer and engineer on the Different record) Danny Bernini was working with Andrew at Long View Farm studios, a beautiful studio that I’ve had the pleasure to work in on and off for twenty five years. They were working on a track that required a fingerpicked acoustic track that was painful to play. Danny said to Andrew,” I know a guy for this part”. I’ve been doing SpiritHouse to this day. Three records later (plus a compilation) we’re talking about the fourth. Andrew is Bahamian and we get to play his home turf yearly. That’s always a great time. We have a hectic schedule of three or four gigs a year and that works for all of us. All of us is a big number. We’ve totalled twelve onstage for our last few gigs. This project has woven itself in and out of the last fifteens years of other musical pursuits and is a safe haven for everyone involved. It was never a full time thing so I had to seek that out elsewhere. Not knowing where I wanted to be band wise led me into the play for hire thing for the first time.

Keith Levreault who I had played with in both Square One and The Ray Mason Band had moved to NYC. There he hooked up with Kevin Salem. They were touring with Wilco in ‘95 when the second guitarist bailed. Keith recommended me to Kevin and I joined the tour just after the Wilco shows finished. Damn! But I was a paid musician. ( I figure I’ve spent almost ten % of my career as a paid musician. Good numbers,eh?) We did the states, went to London for a gig and a VH-1 London live show that Kevin and I did as a duo. Bassist Scott Yoder and I tore up London in a huge way that I can barely recall. Kevin was supporting his record Soma City. The critics loved it. The label had no clue how to sell it. Kevin was the first non hardcore artist for Roadrunner Records and they just didn’t know the ins and outs of a non hardcore artist. Again, not a new story but one you don’t want to call your own. Kevin asked me to do a few guitar and vocal tracks for his second record ”Glimmer”. Niko Bolas (Neil Young) who had produced Kevin’s first record was producing this one as well so I got a chance to work with him. That was cool. I played with Kevin in his touring band for two years. We had Will Rigby ( the db’s) on drums for one leg when Keith couldn’t be there. Playing with/for Kevin was cool. He’s an awesome guitarist and writer and we got to hook up for a great impromptu gig at South by Southwest(SXSW) in Austin, Tx. years later with Wilco’s former drummer Ken Coomer on the kit. Good stuff.

Back home in Northampton, I got asked to help out on some demos for a guy named Matt Hebert. He had asked Ray Mason and Keith Levreault, back from NYC, to help him flesh out some songs. He asked me because he loved Kevin Salem’s Soma City record and knew I had toured with him. I didn’t really know Matt, though I’d bought my beloved SG from him five years earlier. Still, I was eager to work with Ray and Keith again. This spawned Ware River Club, a band I loved and would be a part of for the next eight years. I think this was ‘97. Matt’s original idea was to track some songs. The band thing didn’t come up in early conversations, though once we got a handful of songs together, playing shows was the obvious way to go. We recorded our first record, The Bad Side of Otis Ave., in the summer of ‘98 and released it that fall. While we had been a four piece live we grew into a five piece while making the record. Bob Hennessy played guitar, mandolin and banjo on the record and stayed with the band from that point on. I think we’d all been influenced by the alt-country thing that was going on with bands like Wilco and Son Volt. I hadn’t played with that flavor much at all before and I found it to be really satisfying. Matt wrote the majority of WRC’s material and I wrote as well. We thought we’d be road warriors and scared Ray and Keith away, as they were both involved with other bands and couldn’t commit to touring. It turned out to be a while before we really got that thing going. In the process we auditioned some drummers and bassists, some working better than others. Our friend Cheri Knight recommended Doni McAulay, a drummer she had worked with who was living in Vermont. He came down to play and it was obvious right away that he was the guy. He in turn helped us find our bass player, Duke Johnson, another Vermonter. While we had to adjust to living on the very bizarre V.S.T.(Vermont Standard Time) these were definitely the guys for WRC. We did some forays into the Carolinas and eventually to Austin for SXSW. We traveled really well together. You have no idea how important that is until you’ve traveled in a tense van. Yikes. We did a camping tour which beat the hell out of the hotel thing. Set up a base camp for the next five shows and shoot out to the surrounding gigs. We laughed alot. Seeing someone trying to blow up an air mattress by mouth, while really drunk, well you don’t get that just anywhere.

When at home, I was doing various projects with Danny Bernini, co-producing demos for metal bands, singer-songwriters, whomever. We worked mainly at Long View Farm. Danny also had a studio at his home near Long View. The Bad Side record was recorded between those two places. We also did a second record with Andrew Jones and SpiritHouse during this time. We recorded the bulk of the record at Danny’s house over a weekend full of booze and spontaneity. Andrew had another batch of great songs and some of the crazy outtakes were especially fun.

One of the people Danny and I worked with was Spookie Daly, his band to become Spookie Daly Pride. It was totally different from stuff I’d done and was lots of fun initially. Danny and I co-produced and got involved in the writing as well. Labels really responded when we shopped the demos, but as often happens, that’s when some shit starts stirring as well. I was asked to commit full time. I did. That lasted about two weeks because I realized I really wanted to do WRC and those guys never tried to force my hand. We could all do as many or few things as we wanted. I withdrew my commitment and things got weird. Falling outs all over the place. It just wasn’t healthy. I left, or was I asked to leave, as the record was starting to be made. I was asked back later to play and co-produce. I did. That doesn’t make much sense, I know, but when you love to make music logic doesn’t get in the way too often. I think we made a really cool record. Kinda wacky. We would attempt to capture another record a few years later but it just didn’t happen.

This was a pretty busy time as I was also auditioning for a gig with a Canadian woman named Lynne Kellman who went by the moniker, Another Girl, a little slap at the industry and their cutting and pasting of one chick rocker after another. Lynne was really talented. Excellent guitarist and violinist. She played almost all the tracks on her record, engineered and produced it as well. She was signed to R.C.A. and they were holding auditions for the touring band to support her record, In The Galaxy. I couldn’t figure out exactly what she was playing on her record so I wrote alot of my own parts. When I played them at the audition I think she was taken aback a little at first. When I explained why I had to write my own parts she seemed to understand and even like that approach. She called a couple of days later to offer me the gig. I was a hired gun again. Totally cool getting R.C.A to support you while doing music all the time. WRC, working with Spookie and with Lynne totally filled my plate. The gig with Lynne unfortunately didn’t last long. The world of music as business disillusioned her, I think. I got the gig in August, we rehearsed for a couple of months, played very few shows, and then it was over by the new year. It was idyllic for a short time. The label set her up in a house in Newport R.I., as she was from Vancouver, and we all stayed there. Waking up for a day of cooking, making music, and taking walks on the cliffs. It was pretty cool. I lost touch with her and I wonder where she is now. Is she making music? She was so talented.

The following spring I did what would be my last gig for hire thing, playing guitar for an artist named Settie. She released a record on Iguana, a small label out of NYC. She worked with songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Brian Fellows. I knew Brian from his days in a band called In The Flesh. They had a development deal with, I think, Columbia. He played with Keith Levreault and also Paul McNamara, who would wind up playing in SpiritHouse and owning the studio where I recorded much of The Humming Field record. Brian could really write a pop song and Settie could really sing them. It was also a short lived thing but we had a really great time. Sadly, Brian died of cancer in June, 2003. He was a really talented guy, played alot of instruments, an amazing bass player, and we really enjoyed working together. I still see Settie from time to time and I hope to get her to sing on some of my future recordings.

By now there was just WRC going on and that was fine. We’d recorded our second record “Don’t Take It Easy” in 2000 and it felt like we really jelled and became a really good live band after that. Our vocals got better, we listened to each other more, we just matured.We toured more often. Our trips to SXSW were always a gas. Meeting other bands that you’d been listening to on the drive down. Lots of consumption. A weeklong party with great music everywhere. We became really tight with a couple of bands, namely The Silos and Gingersol, and wound up doing quite a few gigs together. That led to a period of really good shows, more road trips, and pretty nice press. We also had our share of crappy gigs. The ski area gigs stand out in the crappy department. Playing next to a huge tv that was far more intriguing to the patrons than we were. Hearing a roar from the crowd only to realize some guy on the tube just hit a three-pointer. It was at one of these gigs that Duke told us he was leaving the band. Very sad. We probably would have taken it worse except for the fact that he was leaving to become a father. There’s not alot of argument there. I’ve always felt that things were never really the same after Duke left. He was replaced by a great guy named Scott Helland who really played the stuff well. He lived a few hours away in New York state and it was just different. It’s no slam to Scott, as I really loved playing with him. It’s also no slam to Keith and Ray to say that the line-up with Duke and Doni just felt like the quintessential band. We did most of our best work, most of our work period, with that group of guys and we really had that brother thing going on. It’s hard to put into words. At any rate, we marched on.

It had been about four years since the last record with Andrew so it was time. To thank the band for whatever it is we brought to the table, Andrew flew us all to Cat Island in the Bahamas. We stayed at a place called Hawk’s Nest and turned a small house on the water’s edge into a studio. We flew a bunch of gear down and stayed for almost two weeks. The record, The Cat Island Sessions, was such a treat to make. Andrew had another batch of great songs and arrangements were worked out on the deck, or on the beach, with acoustic guitars in hand. Working late, sleeping late, getting up to go snorkling, swimming, whatever. Playing to the sunset. Then back to recording after dinner. I think you can totally hear the enviroment in the record. It was so peaceful and relaxing . We play yearly in Nassua and Andrew has made quite a name for himself there.

I did another short stint playing with Amy Fairchild in and around Boston. I’d played on her first record and even did a few gigs with her in the early ‘90s when she was in Northampton and we were a couple. She did a record produced by Adam Steinberg who I played with in Spookie Daly Pride and still play with in SpiritHouse. Jeff St. Pierre played bass and Dave Mattacks played drums. Dave’s resume is ridiculous, including Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, and George Harrison. Wow. Amy won some national songwriting awards and got some great reviews. A song was placed in the tv show Dawson’s Creek and other things were rolling as well. I’m don’t remember why I stopped that gig. If she slowed down or if I felt overextended but that stopped somehow. I think she still does some gigs in Boston. She’s a talented woman.

The third WRC record was tracked over a long period of time between the end of the Don’t Take It Easy record and the following three years. ( I must reiterate that my time lines may be screwy). WRC joined Andrew and the band for a cd release gig in the Bahamas. Andrew was supporting his fourth record, a compilation, and WRC was supporting Cathedral, which would be our last record. We worked really hard on Cathedral. It was the most studio record we’d done. In some ways I really like that, in some ways not as much. I can’t point fingers. Danny and I produced all three WRC records so get out the mirror. We signed a deal for Cathedral with a small label. We released it in ‘04. We all had alot of hope and good vibes going in but things just didn’t work out. The expectations were probably unreasonable to begin with. We also didn’t tour as much do to the fact that we’d lose so much money on tour and we were already way in the hole.I think we all had different ideas about direction, both musically and business-wise. When things slowed at a rapid rate we lost alot of steam and enthusiasm. And quickly. I think Matt felt confined by the band. I wasn’t able to get songs in anymore. The energy waned. We played our last gig in November of ‘05. It was a great turnout and a really fun show. Ray, Duke, Scott and Mark Schwaber who filled in on bass for a very short time, all played. Keith was the only one-time band member who couldn’t make the show. He had a gig, of course. We played all three records in chronilogical order. We turned away a hundred people. It was a great way to go out.

I spent some time feeling sorry for myself since I wasn’t playing anymore. At the same time I did nothing to make myself available. I turned down a couple of things and began life as a barfly. Not that I hadn’t been a barfly before but now it was a full time gig. I slowly started to write again. Andrew Jones loaned me his computer and I now had Pro-Tools. I set up a space and started tracking new songs and songs that never found their way into WRC and some songs that had been collecting dust for quite a while. I wrote a song of longing about a girl I longed after. Clever. I wanted to do a proper recording of it and I went to Danny to see if he would track it for me. He agreed. I asked Doni to play the kit. He agreed. It went so fast that we completed a second song on that eight hour session, which is fast if your not a true band. That led to The Humming Field record. I figured with this working arrangement, as long as I prepared it would go fast enough to be do-able. I had songs to choose from, a great drummer in Doni, and in Danny, a guy that I’d done so many projects with that communication was more about levels of excitement than words. If the hair on your arm stands up, you’ve probably got the track. We were able to keep some of the tracks I’d done at my place. On others I’d hurried to the point of not tuning. That makes overdubbing really hard so we started over on some songs. It didn’t take that long. The days were just spread out over a long period. We tracked fifteen songs in about ten days. I was playing everything but the drums and doing all the vocals so that’s a little time consuming. It feels really good to have gone through this process. It was cool to play bass and keyboards. They are not my normal thing and the exploration of less familiar instruments was really gratifying. Doni played awesome stuff and Danny did his usual stellar job. The end result being this record that I’ve threatened to do for years now. Some really good friends helped me afford doing it. There are songs to still be written, half finished tracks that need attention and that will hopefully lead to another record soon. For now I hope that listening to it is half as fun as making it was. I feel really lucky to have played with so many talented people over the years and I think you can hear their different influences on this record. I expect their corrections, as well as those from old friends, but for now, that is the bumpy and hopefully accurate road to The Humming Field.

Thanks for taking the time,
Matt Cullen

P.S. I know I’ve left out some people, some bands, some records I’ve worked on, but that’s not meant as any slight. It’s just an indication of some pieces missing in my puzzle. Cheers...

Partial Discography

With Ware River Club

The Bad Side of Otis Ave. co-produced
Don’t Take It Easy co-produced
Cathedral co-produced
Luxury Liner Glitterhouse (Germany) Compilation

With Andrew Jones and SpiritHouse

Andrew Jones and SpiritHouse
Caddilac Heaven
The Cat Island Sessions
Plenty, Plenty Love (Compilation)

With The Sighs

What Goes On
Different
The Imperative Collection (Compilation)
Yellow Pills (Compilation)

With Spookie Daly Pride
Marshmallow Pie co-produced

With Ray Mason Band
Between Blue and OK

Also appeared on

Kevin Salem
Glimmer

Amy Fairchild
She's Not Herself
Amy Fairchild Live