Broken Harbors

In 2001, about when I stopped drinking, I decided to take a crack at writing song lyrics -- a reasonably natural extension of my long-standing efforts to write poetry.  After a time, I began to try and put these lyrics to music, and a bit later, a few of my friends and I began to assemble in our basements to hammer out these songs with a band. One thing led to another, and before long, we had a band that was known only to ourselves, practicing with reasonable regularity.  On drums, my friend Jon Blum, who beat a hasty departure from Chicago under questionable circumstances, kept the rockin' beat.  On lead guitar and gruff vocals, my friend Mark Miller, a habitue of certain disreputable Northern Virginian neighborhoods, kept us barely awake with his desert-dry humor.  My friend Dan Nathan, really the only bona fide musician of the group (having a jazz combo on the side that plays at spicy restaurants in the area) kept us honest with a borrowed bass, and kept us in tune and on time with his wry asides about the value of playing in sync with one another.  Mark suggested the band name we adopted:  Broken Harbors -- from the Neil Young song, Tell Me Why.  It seems especially appropriate to me now, sitting in the wreck-strewn harbor of Nuku-alofa, Tonga.

After a time, Mark and I made some appearances at Open Mikes, and our little ensemble played a mix of his and my songs.  Before leaving on our circumnavigation, we agreed to try and memorialize some of our songs in a studio; before we could make the big leap, Jon Blum took a job that demanded all of his non-family time, so we entered the studio as a threesome, and picked up few studio musicians: one for our beloved departed drummer, as well as a keyboardist.  Marco Delmar, of Recording Arts, undertook the not-inconsiderable task of trying to record and mix our decidedly-ragged sound.  We chose four of my songs, and an equal number of Mark's -- mine were chosen to reflect a sampling of the over 75 songs I've written, and of the 20 or so we played regularly as a band.  They favor the "band" sound, and when I return, I plan to record a number of the more acoustic songs I've written.

The end result of our efforts -- as far as the songs I wrote -- are available here, on a MySpace page.  Mark's songs are still in the process of recording and mixing, and we hope to have those up before long.  Give it a listen; I'd love your feedback -- we had a lot of fun playing and recording these songs, and I'm really looking forward to returning to the risers and recording studios when we return from our trip in a few years.  I've also added the link to the left-hand side of the home page of this blog, for future reference.  Feel free to share with friends and foes alike -- the more the merrier.  I'll never quit my proverbial day job (I'm currently unemployed!), but music will always play an important part in my life.

I want to extend my deepest thanks to Mark, Dan, and Jon for their friendship and their major contributions to the songs and to my musical growth, and to Marco for his patience and guidance and expertise -- we had a lot of fun, and I feel uncommonly lucky to count each of them as a friend.