Folk-rocky blues, or acoustic pop/rock.

12 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Folk Rock, BLUES: Acoustic Blues



Details:
One Band Man, the long-delayed follow-up to Geoffrey Welchmanâs critically-acclaimed debut album (Comfort Noise), has finally emerged.

âTo quote the Rutles,â Welchman said with a sigh, âthe first album was recorded in twenty minutesâthe second one took even longer.â

The reclusive singer/songwriter, based in Baltimore, recorded his 10-song debut album (âComfort Noiseâ) in a single afternoon session in 2001. One Band Man incorporates guitars, bass, keyboards and drums, as well as stunning multi-track harmonies, all performed by Welchman himself.

The former writer for such magazines as Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, People, and Might had long dreamed of just such an exercise in megalomania. âIâve been playing solo for years now, so I figured the time had come.â

Recording began in February of 2004 at the Chicken Coop Studio in Fulton, Maryland. Returning to the boards was engineer Scotty OâToole, who admits he didnât know what to make of the new material at first.

âHe built the songs from the ground up,â OâToole said, âstarting with drums, then bass, I didnât hear guitar or melodies for three or four sessions. But he always knew where he was.â

The labor-of-love project ran into difficulties half-way through recording, when lack of funds forced a year-long delay. But when work resumed in September of 2005, Welchman said, âI just picked up where I left off.â

âWhat made it worth it,â OâToole stressed, âwas that he had a great bunch of songs.â

One Band Manâs range is startling. Opening with a courtroom confessional (âLife is a trial/and I plead innocenceâ in âThe Trialâ), Welchman weaves in english folk (the celtic-raga outro of âIs It Okay?â), classic 4/4 rock (âWendyâ), backwards-guitar textures in the psychedelic mashup âUnforgiven,â even bottom-heavy funk in âFender Bender.â

âI always loved the variety-show feel of the Beatlesâ albums,â Welchman said. âThey took such care to make each song sound different from the last. Iâd hate to stay in one groove for a whole record.â

His witty lyrics swerve from the Kafkaesque to the light-hearted, sometimes within the same song, such as âCrowd Control,â that opens with the quotable line âWeapons of mass destruction/cheeseburger and fries.â

âI donât set out to be controversial, or topical,â Welchman said, âbecause I donât necessarily plan to write what I write. I just tend to blurt out things that Iâm thinking about. Songs like Crowd Control or Hildegard came very quickly.â

âHildegard,â a surprisingly moving tribute to the 15th century German nun, author, and theologian Hildegard von Bingen, is another example of Welchmanâs penchant for off-beat topics or approaches, such as assembling 21 rhymes for âearâ (âHere My Dearâ). âIt keeps it fun.â

While guitar and bass came naturally to him after years of solo performing and bass-playing with his early 90s band Big Bug, drums were a new challenge. He started playing them in 2002, and as he improved, changed his recording plans from having a session drummer to completing the entire âbandâ himself.

One of the first songs he completed is the albumâs centerpiece, a serio-comic depiction of a nervous breakdown, âOut on the Road.â With a taut beat and a chunky acoustic groove, the song mixed wild west imagery and desperation. âI wrote that out in California, at a really rough time, a night where I tried to get in my car and literally drive out of my life.â

With recording comleted, the album suffered another roadblockâwhich lasted a full yearâbefore the mixing of One Band Man began at Nice Package Studio, in Towson MD. After mastering, it goes back to Nice Package for replication.

And that's that.