What Happened to Echolyn?

 

The album is taking time because we are different people now. I know
i am. Teaching has fallen in my lap and is calling me. I tend to go
where the energy takes me.  As i've said before i feel like i'm in a
river and just going with the current to where it takes me. Sometimes
its a beautiful calm ride and other times i feel like i'm drowning
but i know from both experiences i'm learning and change WILL occur
to take me elsewhere.
Right now the river is saying to pursue college level teaching, go
back to school for a degree, make a new echolyn record, record
strings tonight with an artist i'm producing, play in a punk rock
band with my soul mate and wife, and listen to the new Crowded House
album. When the river changes course so will i.

In my twenties i constantly felt like i was forcing, conquering and
sometimes failing my own reality. Because of this nothing ever felt
"right". Of course i wouldn't trade those times for the world because
i wouldn't be who i am today without those experiences. In my
thirties i was frustrated because i wasn't who i thought i should be.
I had spent my late teens and twenties thinking i was this and that
without really knowing WHO i was. In my thirties i spent a decade
shaking that preconception. I think we all do that to different
extents, culminating in a realization/ crises somewhere between 35
and 45. Midlife if you will. Its a passage we step though and as a
friend of mine says its a time when your Greek Chorus leaves you and
you're standing ALONE on the stage of life. That CHORUS is the one
that in our youth shouts "I'm a musician!" or "I'm a professional
athlete!" or "I'm a parent with a beautiful family!" or "I'm a
teacher!!". But who are we really when those ideals go away and we
are left to just speak without them??

Our album has taken a while because i (we) are not the same people we
were when we made "the end is beautiful". I was in the passage when i
wrote those tunes.
The end of my old life didn't seem beautiful at the time (you can see
it in my words) but deep down i knew it truly was. I knew change,
though frightening, CHARGES our lives with a newness and energy.
The new album has taken a while because when we get together i don't
want to sound like i was then...it doesn't feel immediate, real or
me.  I can't speak for my mates but i know i can't release music that
just goes through the motions. We've written a ton of music over the
past 5 years but i am smart enough to know what feels right and vital
and what feels like a a ghost of who we really are. We trust each
others instincts to perceive those things.

For the past 2 or 3 months we've been in the moment so to speak and
all on the same page enough to actually make something new that
represents who we are now. On the 21st-22nd we are cutting the basic
tracks to 3-5 new ideas. We are all excited!

I still spend a ton of time writing songs for me, the band, other
people, etc. I know ray is the same. As we get better at that craft
we know what things can be. When they don't get to that "truth" we
have to figure out how to fix it. Sometimes that takes a while. Its
certainly not for lack of trying. My solo album "Last Of The Curlews"
was the first thing i wrote on the "other side" of my life. It is a
look back, a goodbye, and a realization of the NOW. It is a
"welcoming" of change and its infinite possibilities. It is me
stepping off the river's edge and into the water.
The new echolyn album has to be that and more... more because it has
to be real and vital for ray, chris, tom and paul... not just for me.
We'll know when that happens. We know it now i think. That's why we
are actually moving ahead with this new project.

What would Yoda say??  "Weeds there are.... but use them to become
the river you always were"  ;-)

b

Also, search on YouTube for some live in studio recordings of two album tracks the band made.