Making Music Human

Sometime in mid-2005, shortly after the release of The Recovery, I recall saying something to my wife that compared being a singer-songwriter in the suburbs to some sort of sadomasochistic extreme-sport wilderness survival challenge.  The kind where someone abandons you in near-arctic Northern Canada with nothing but a pair of galoshes and a carving knife.   After a few weeks of solitude you start to forget what it’s like to speak out loud, and after a season or two, you realize you’ve completely forgotten what its like to have a conversation with another human.

One of the most hopeful and beautiful shifts that has happened to me as an artist, began just months later when I met Benjie Hughes.

Benjie is the owner and founder of Backthird Audio, a studio in Aurora, but more importantly he’s a music lover who lives by his studio’s motto… that “music is people”.  He has invested deeply into the arts culture of Aurora and, slowly but steadily, has been connecting artists with each other, one at a time.   The result, for moderatly-introverted songsmiths like myself, has been a gradual widening of a local network, and a kickstarted heartbeat (avoid thinking about these guys) to a local music scene.

There is something distinctly more human and alive about the music scene in Aurora today.  Its not Chicago, or even a mini-Chicago and I’m actually glad about that.  Its a bit unpredictable and even awkward at times, almost like your goofy 13-year old nephew, but it is growing and it is human.  For me, the past few years have been filed with small joys like Tiny Candle shows, City of Lights records, friends playing at each others gigs, on each others records and supporting each other’s projects.

This Fall, Made in Aurora Vol. 2 was recorded at Backthird, released, and is now for sale (Its a Christmas record, so buy it now before January blows in and makes it passé).  I had the privilege of playing a small part in it, and the 30+ names that grace the bottom of the album cover are the lifeblood of this heartbeat I’m describing.

Six years after that previously mentioned conversation with my wife, I can honestly say I don’t have that “sucking air from a vacuum cleaner hose” feeling about being a music creative in this area anymore, mostly due to Benjie and those 30+ names.