I Am Making A New Record In Front Of A Live Audience
Late this Fall, I'll be joining forces with the mighty Wild Honey Collective to record a full album of songs in front of a live audience at the beautiful Robin Theatre in my hometown of Lansing, MI.
I am recording a live album with The Wild Honey Collective on December 3 at The Robin Theatre. The show will highlight a spate of new tunes that we’ll be premiering at the show. It’s also an opportunity to pay tribute to a very special album on its 20th anniversary as well as affording me a new opportunity to showcase my catalog of songs. There is a lot riding on this one set of music. Let’s take a close look at how we got here.
Back in the spring of 2022, I was in a bad way. My father had unexpectedly died just eighteen months prior. I owned a failing business. I was hopeless, and lacking any real purpose in my day to day life. Making music with my closest friends in The Stick Arounds was one of the few bright spots in an otherwise dimly lit outlook on life. Now that band too was buckling as it struggled to navigate the dwindling spaces for original rock bands to ply their trade in a post-Covid landscape. Simply put, I was deeply depressed and mired in stasis.
My friend Tommy McCord of the recently formed Wild Honey Collective messaged me about an idea for a brief tour to the Northeast and back. We found time to chat and Tommy laid out his plans for Wild Honey to tour out to Maine and back during a run of shows that lasted roughly eight days. He wondered if I might be interested in coming along for the run. I could open each of the shows with a set of my own songs, and then I would sit in with Wild Honey during their set, even taking lead vocals on a song or two during the show. I was all for it. We set to making concrete plans.
We hit the road during the final week of July, 2022. Tommy played the role of road manager; handling booking, promotion, communication with venues, finances, and everything else to do with the tour. I’d only ever been out on tour for more than a few days on one other occasion, a one week Midwest run with my old outfit, The Pantones. And that had been more than fifteen years earlier.
For eight days, The Wild Honey Collective and I bounded up to eastern Maine and back to the Mitten. The shows ran from quiet nights to joyously raucous affairs. My mental health on the trip waxed and waned as I pondered the dwindling future of my business and there state of my general malaise. Still, I managed to enjoy the shows and the companionship of touring with a new band. If anything, that journey taught me how to find my resilience on the road; a skill that would come in mighty handy in the years to come.
Since that 2022 tour, I have gone out on three separate solo runs varying in length from a pair of weeks to a whopping month and a half on the road all by myself. If not for that initial week with Wild Honey I might never have found the courage to tour so fervently on my own. I look back on that run and realize it was the moment at which I first began to find my feet in pursuing a life as an independent creative. In short, without that tour, I might not have quit my job, or started WAIM, or ever headed out on a solo tour. My heart is filled with love and gratitude for these folks.
While Wild Honey and I have not toured together in the three years since, we have performed a handful of times together here in Lansing as a part of one of my shows or theirs. They are collaborators, label-mates, cheerleaders, and dear friends. I knew that I wanted to find a way to work with them again as I began to formulate my projects over the next year or so. The question was the best way to do it.
As I began to think about the things that I wanted to accomplish, creatively speaking, I found myself torn between a variety of musical pursuits. First, I had a batch of songs that I had been working on for a while. They were not songs that would work in the world of The Stick Arounds, even if that band itself were not on something of an extended hiatus. My other musical avatar, Harborcoat had begun as a recording project with me and co-producer Isaac Sander Schuur. The “band” that came to play under the Harborcoat moniker had largely been formed in the process of making the Joy Is Elusive album and subsequent touring. It was never designed to be a permanent live outfit.
In addition to recording these new tunes, I needed to release something in my own name and not under a band name. As a solo touring artist, I have consistently found it challenging to bill myself as Matthew Carlson, when I have just one album under that name as a solo artist, and that release was from 25 years ago.
In the intervening years, I have released my music under a variety of band names including Matthew Carlson & The Pantones, The Pantones, The Stick Arounds, and Harborcoat. For a casual fan or a booking agent with no knowledge of my work, this can be confusing and even frustrating. It can also prevent me from getting more gigs. If only for practicality’s sake, I need to get some stuff out under my own name.
This December will also be the 20th anniversary of The Pantones album, Sleepless Nights, Silent Mornings. The making of that record forged The Pantones into a true band. That album marks the moment at which my bandmates ceased just playing along to my songs, and began helping me arrange and shape them into something greater than I could craft on my own. The album also comes with an incredible backstory that I hoped to find a way to better highlight. In essence, I wanted to find a way to pay tribute to that record, those songs, and that band on the album’s twentieth anniversary.
Before I could assemble a set of players, I needed to figure out how in the Hell I was going to serve all of these disparate purposes that I had circling in my mind. First, I needed to assemble a plan for recording some songs to be released under my own name. Next, I needed to find a way to revisit old material and present it for release. Lastly, I hoped to pay tribute to a few of the songs from the record that helped to solidify my path as a singer and songwriter.
Without a band to fall back upon, I started to think of musicians in the area that might be a good fit for this set of songs. Almost immediately, my mind settled on the gang in The Wild Honey Collective. As I mulled over the new tunes and the musical directions that I hoped to take them, I gravitated to a sound like what rock writer Greil Marcus once called, “The old, weird America.”
I envisioned a Bob Dylan and the Band approach to making an album. The songs should be performed with ease, comfort, and style. At first, I considered a trip back to the family cabin where I have previously arranged and recorded albums by The Pantones and Harborcoat. It was easy for me to imagine us ensconced at the cabin by the lake for a week recording reams of songs for later use. But as we looked at the calendar, a week near the water seemed like a tough feat to maneuver with everyone’s busy schedules. A cabin recording would also do nothing for shining a light on the old Pantones material, either.
My grand plan for the Sleepless Nights twentieth anniversary had been to assemble the original members of The Pantones, including bassist Jake McCarthy who now lives in Maine for a short tour in Michigan. Sadly, my plans were again thwarted by the harsh realities of adult obligations, parenthood, and geographic chasms.
As I looked at all of these moving parts, I began to wonder if I could achieve each of these objectives with a recorded live event. We could prep the new tunes for the show and commit them to tape. Additionally, a live show could also give us the opportunity to reimagine a series of tunes from throughout my career, including songs from the Sleepless Nights, Silent Mornings album. I reached out to Tommy and asked if the band would be game. Indeed they were.
The Collective
Joel “Kernel” Kuiper has played drums in every project I have been a part of for more than twenty years. In the years since the Sticks have slowed down, I have picked up my solo touring and Joel has been as busy as he has ever been, playing almost constantly in Wild Honey. As a result of these circumstances, I get to play with my dear friend less often than I would like. Kernel was a no-brainer for the kit on this project, no matter who his main outfit might be. Kernel is my drummer.
Adam Aymor is a singular talent who rips it up on pedal steel every night for Wild Honey. He is a devilishly great six string player as well. Having him in the band is like adding a Nashville studio level cat to the proceedings. And Adam is not the only player in the band of that quality.
Tommy will handle mandolin, acoustic guitar, and perhaps some banjo duties in the band as well as offering some vocal harmonies. It’ll be fascinating to see how Tommy’s role as a multi-instrumentalist in this project evolves. He and Adam should give the band a lost, lonesome sound to the proceedings. Dr. Dan O’Brien, a ridiculously talented dude on a variety of stringed instruments, will handle bass duties and backing vocals for the show. We’re also working to get some contributions from Danielle Gyger and Timmy Rodriguez, the other “official” members of the Wild Honey Collective.
Former Pantone and Harborcoater, David Baldwin - one of my closest friends and a longtime musical collaborator - will be the final piece to our musical puzzle. David is a musical wunderkind who never ceases to amaze me with his ridiculous musicality even after twenty five years of continual collaboration. He plays guitar, piano, trumpet, and melodica with remarkable acumen. David also possesses an angelic voice that he’ll lend to the evening’s proceedings.
If I am honest with you dear reader, this collection of players is an embarrassment of riches. And we’re assembling all of this talent for just one night.
With a Cracker Jack band in place, and a date solidified at The Robin Theatre, we now have to get to the work of prepping the actual material for the show. I am excited about the process of unpacking the new songs and revisiting the old ones. In addition to a few songs from the Sleepless Nights album, we’ll be featuring material from my time in The Stick Arounds and Harborcoat, as well as performing some other Pantones songs.
This very special show is ONE NIGHT ONLY and will be happening at The Robin Theatre in Lansing, MI on Dec. 3.
Tickets are on sale now at The Robin Theatre.
Grab your tickets right away, seating is limited for this event.
Cheers,
Matty C
If you have a song from my career that you would love to hear at the show, please tell us all about it in the comments below. I’d love to have your input.
Be sure to stay tuned for regular updates as we manage all of the logistics for the show. It’s going to be quite the journey.
