On Making Records
What an LP Means to Me
It opens with a piano’s lullaby and a lonesome harmonica pleading out into the night. Long the instrument of cowboys and runaways, as the harp ascends, it’s instantly nostalgic, like someone yearning for something more – lonesome, yes, but hopeful. The piano twinkles something soft underneath. The harmonica falls and rises again as the piano answers. The legato releases. The piano picks up steam. “The screen door slams. Mary’s dress waves.”
It’s the opening of “Thunder Road,” my favorite song, but also the opening of Born To Run, my favorite album. I’d heard it growing up a million times on classic rock radio[1], on that Greatest Hits album in my dad’s car. I thought it was cool, but, you know, it was just another song.
Then I discovered the album, and everything changed.
I grew up in the age of Napster, Limewire, Kazaa, remember those? I burnt mixes on my CD-ROM and refused to buy an iPod for the first four generations, preferring mp3 players that held 20, then 50, then a couple hundred songs. I was one of the first kids to get an FM transmitter, so, when I eventually got that iPod, I could play it in the backseat of anyone’s car, queuing up tunes before that was ever an everyday feature. Pretty much never did I go out to the store to buy an entire record.
I mean, why would I? Any albums I did own, or the ones I “borrowed” from my dad/brother/friends, wound up ripped onto my hard drive, then stripped for the few songs that I already knew. This is still how the vast majority of my generation, and the world, listen to music – albeit now it’s probably an algorithm picking your playlist for you rather than one made in the sidebar of your iTunes library.
But somewhere along the way that changed for me[2]. And it started with “Thunder Road.” Springsteen describes it as “an invitation,” a last-ditch effort to find that bigger thing inside you, an invitation into this world, this feeling, that he’s created. Yes, the song in and of itself is a journey, but it’s also just the opening the salvo. Though the stories change, there’s a continuity to the characters, the voices, and, most importantly, to the sound of it all. By the time the final wailing of “Jungleland” fades into finale, after The Rat’s been gunned down and The Barefoot Girl shuts out the bedroom lights[3], you realize you’ve just listened to an opera, complete with an overture and an intermission as you stood up to flip from Side A to Side B.
That song “Thunder Road” is no longer just another staple of classic rock radio – as a matter of fact, when you hear it on its own, and it doesn’t fade into the horn opening on track 2, it feels like something different, something less recognizable – and you understand that “Thunder Road” was only ever meant to exist as a part of something bigger.
And that’s why, when I set out to record my own music, I was only ever interested in making An Album.
As a matter of fact, that was the north star of this whole process: I wanted to make music for the people who I wouldn’t have to tell to start at Track 1 and play it all the way through[4]. These songs exist as a part of a story – my story – and together they create a feeling. I think that’s all that we’re supposed to do as artists, communicate things that cannot be pointed at but can only be experienced, and so by immersing you in this world, I hope that you can find something in my own story that resonates with you, that feels familiar, that inspires and motivates and makes you know that you are not alone.
I’ve recorded plenty of songs before, but this is my first album. And it comes out on March 26th. If you’re reading this, I’m betting it’s only because you’ve heard a few of these songs already, tried ‘em on, felt something from ‘em. My hope is that on March 26th, when the drums hit on “Do I Seem Okay?” and this world I invented opens up to you, you hear it all in a new way. And while you do that, I’ll be glad to get this first baby of mine out of my damn birth canal, happily at work on LP #2.
[1] Q104.3 for all you New York Tri-State Area folk
[2] I think it was probably when the 64Gb iPod became less than $500, which, looking back on that statement now...lol
[3] Spoiler Alert
[4] I’ll still love you if you play it on shuffle, but you will lose some of my respect. Sorry.