February 10, 2024
Last Thursday, I performed with Scarlett Taylor at Pianos, and every time I write that, I want to call it “Piano’s.” The venue does not a belong to a piano. It is simply more than one piano. Neither makes sense, but this messes with my head for some reason. The MTA app said I would be 10 minutes late to the 5:00 load-in, but as my friend Nicole told me, I am min-maxing the MTA, and I arrived at 4:55, before anyone else. This is traditional and authentic Ehrenworth behavior. I don’t believe Pianos has a piano. There was no piano in anyone’s Pianos set, although the other bands had pedal steel. The bill curation with Scarlett’s family was fun, although we were the only rock band, right in the middle of the line-up. The other bands drove-in from out of state, meaning they came in cars and brought amps and multiple guitars per person. Alien behavior to an MTA min-maxer like myself, but the lead guitar player graciously let me borrow his Mesa Boogie to keep changeovers and set-up clean and quick, and I appreciated that. I love to play Boogies!
Scarlett just put out her album Hallows, and I’m going to talk about it. Partially because it’s a great record and she’s my friend, and partially because I played on nearly every song and this is a *business minded* self-promotion newsletter. I am but a filthy capitalist. These songs are so fun to play live, and I think we mostly captured that on the recording. The instrumentals were done live together in the studio with Chris, Maggie, Erwin, and I, and the record really jams. I had to close my computer and stare out the window of this LIRR train when “Machine” came on just to jam to it. I can’t write through that. Listen to Maggie’s hi-hat in the second verse it goes crazy! In part, it's because we’d been playing shows together and getting a feel for these songs, but that’s barely true. I think every time I performed with Scarlett leading up to this had a different line-up, and some of the songs were new. I hope this isn’t classified information, but I taught the whole band “Lucky Me I Talk to Angels” day of in the studio, as I had played it recently at an acoustic show. And they all killed it. They ate! I love how exuberant everyone sounds on that tune.
And on top of the live recording we did, there’s lots of great new touches. The piano on “Veil” (now “Perfect Timing” but in the band we always still call it “Veil”) was a super cool surprise for me when Scarlett first sent us the masters. The hoards of hootin’ and hollerin’ dudes help “Machine” and “New Moon” pop off at the end. My guitar on “Shadow Talking” was replaced completed with piano (and it was the only song not performed at Pianos- I’m not dropping this stupid Pianos bit), and I like the reharmonization sometimes. I sometimes feel like I can do everything better than everyone, but I should concede it’s quite nice. My guitar remains intact on the other quiet song, closer “Where the Shadows Play,” which I played more aggressively than I remembered, but it’s got great dynamics to it.
I like the sound of my guitar on the album, although I do wish it stood out from Chris’ playing a bit more in the mix, since he has a lot of great parts as well. I wanna call it “skronky” or one of those fake guitar player words. I can hear myself in my playing, which is cool. Almost every song was originally an electronic piece that Scarlett wrote which inspired me to approach the guitar in a lot of weird ways. On “Deja Vu,” I tap out this alarm note and pull it off for upstroke chords in the last chorus. I brought out a slide for “Machine,” which has made me realize that slide is really fun and I need to play it more. Everyone at the shows would tell me they loved the slide and it made me briefly think I was good at slide before I tried to play slide on anything else and realized I need to practice. Really, the main thing I like about the slide is how much noise I can make with it.
Go stream Scarlett’s new album, and come see us at a house show in Brooklyn next Saturday 02/17. And there will be plenty other opportunities for you to see us being announced soon if you can’t make that one. I also wrote a piece on Beat by King Crimson for Spectrum Culture. It’s one of my favorites from King Crimson, and a super overlooked record!
Thanks for reading!!