Odd West

program notes

I began writing these songs to have something to perform for my family, in 2017. I continued writing into 2018, a year of big changes. In January I married my wife in New York, and over the course of the year we would travel to three other weddings together. I was asked to write and perform music for these three wedding ceremonies of my closest friends and family - and this is what led to Odd West's development as a collection of songs.

This year of peaceful ceremonies was also shared with death; four of my friends died over the course of the year. A former bandleader, Janka Nabay, died suddenly and unexpectedly in his home country of Sierra Leone. Another three friends, all from my hometown of Denver, committed suicide in unrelated events. At least two of these suicides were related to long-term substance abuse, something that resonates with me as I have dealt with and quit drinking over the last two years. This is another essential factor in the creation of this music; this album would not be possible had I not quit drinking. These songs were born out of an environment of opposites and extremes, change and opportunity. Families coming together for different reasons. Different paths to peace. 

The entire album was written in a unique alternate tuning I developed myself. The purpose here was to eliminate all prior associations between sounds and shapes on the guitar. Thus, when I first began writing these songs, I had no idea how to play anything. It felt like I was writing music and learning the guitar completely from scratch, especially since I was also developing fingerpicking technique for the first time, and all the songs on Odd West are finger picked.

I didn’t initially intend for these songs to have any words. I wanted the emotional impact of the music to be uncolored by the emotional content of words. The affect I was trying to approximate with these songs was that of a half-remembered lyric, a song from a dream. I included some real English words among a kind of fake language and in a few occasions even the names of various family members to add to the effect of almost-understanding. Track 11, “Oh, Moon!”, is the only exception, with words written in Arabic by the singer, my friend and former bandmate, Boshra Al Saadi.

The album was recorded in eight days by the brilliant Daniel Schlett at Strange Weather in Brooklyn. I have known Daniel for years; he was the engineer for the two Janka Nabay and The Bubu Gang albums. Singing with me is Boshra Al Saadi (Teen, Al Saadi, Bubu Gang), who I mentioned earlier. Playing drums is my good friend and classmate from Oberlin Jon Leland (Amen Dunes, Sun Araw), who I played with not only in the Bubu Gang, but also Skeletons and Glasser. Moppa Elliot (MOPDTK) plays upright bass, and Sam Sowyrda (Dan Deacon, Cloud Becomes Your Hand) plays percussion. Additional mixing help was provided by longtime collaborator and friend Matt Mehlan (Skeletons, Uumans, Shinkoyo Records).

This is the story of Odd West. Songs for my families. Songs of change and control. The title, Odd West, does not refer to a place. It is actually a reference to the way the streets run in Manhattan: Even East, Odd West. For a few years I was obsessed with unsanctioned street bike races. I had to memorize all the streets in Manhattan and this little mnemonic device was a starting point. This album is my first and only collection of original songs, and as such is many years in the making; the culmination of years of practice.