AV ProductionWorld
Sustainable Business Tactics for Artists and Producers
November 2007
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Yo, I’m Peck the Town Crier, also known as Chris Peck. My music is made of story raps and live band arrangements. The songs pull from all kinds of American music: boogie woogie, marching band drumming, party funk, raucous guitar and organ-fueled rock music, among other things. For the past year or so, I’ve been performing a collection of songs that would find it’s way onto my new album, “Groundhog’s Day”, which I’m self-releasing on Tuesday, December 11th. Until very recently, I was doing only solo performances, seeking to tile together a complete experience of each song with a looping pedal, guitar, drum machine, mini sampler, pan flutes and other small instruments, and a mic for my beat boxing, rhythmic breathing, and rhymes. Usually these semi-live renderings would fill up the first half of my 30 minute set, and I’d usually close it out with my “karaoke set”. That’s where I’d just turn on a discman and rap over instrumental versions of stuff that was in progress for the album. I love doing that part of the set, ‘cause it frees me up to be a little more of a performer. I like to change costumes on stage, and act like I know how to do modern dance. (Not in a mocking way, of course, I really do want to begin a more serious study of dance and choreography.) But a new phase has recently begun, with the birth of my 7 piece live unit, “Peck the Town Crier & The Crymuscles”. (Kind of a mouthful, right?) This band is made up of players who appeared a lot on the record, and now that “Groundhog’s Day” is so close to hitting the streets, I want to represent it as truly and thrillingly as possible. It’s a rarity these days to make an album that depends heavily on great playing, full of style and character. I want folks to come to the shows and see musicians playing with their hands what you hear on the album. Ten out of the eleven tunes are centered around a story rap, that follows more of a songwriter form than a rap form. All those tunes started with the lyrics, on pen and paper, and as the verses take shape, I’m always writing arrangement notes with little arrows and circles into the lyrics. The paper is usually a bloody mess before I have a first draft of the tune. The next incarnation starts to outline my musical ideas on Roland vs-880 digital multitrack recorder. These are always really skeletal versions. Sometimes I’ll make the drum beat with mouth sounds, or a drum machine, and overdub just enough guitar, autoharp, or some other harmonic instrument to get the song across. Sometimes I’ll even say some vibe directions over the top of the song. Then, my favorite part of the process is calling the players who I think would be the perfect, most killin-est communicator of the songs’ mood. I’m lucky to come from a jazz background and to know a whole lot of interesting players, young and old. So as I’m writing a song, certain players’ musical personalities will come to mind, and I’ll start to write to their strengths. Similarly, I’ll start imagining a certain studio that I think will suit the tune. I’m really old school in that I don’t try to be my own recording engineer. Everybody likes to keep certain priorities, and to make sure certain luxuries stay around in their lives. One of my dearest luxuries is working in a great studio with a great engineer. Most of “Groundhog’s Day” was recorded by Scott McDowell at Hyde St. Studio C, in San Francisco. Scott’s my age, 27, and is a hardworking, super-focused cat. He takes the musical environment and overall experience very seriously in the studio. So, to work with such a skilled guy, who’s so committed to making the music “sound like a record”, (as he likes to say), it was a real privilege and a luxury. It just gave me the cradle I needed to focus on the players, and the arrangement, and on any musical ideas that might spontaneously appear at the studio. I’m a big believer in the old model of specialization in music. Y’know like: Michael Jackson brings the heat with his voice and charisma, while Quincy Jones writes great arrangements, and Louis Johnson and Ndugu Chancelor lay down a super solid foundation, and Rodney Templeton writes an enduring song. (Those are all cats who were involved in Thriller.) Nowadays, not just in the arts, but in all spheres of American life, people are asked to be competent at so many things. Your mind is expected to be very nimble, jumping between different skill sets all day. I like to talk about “r.e.m. mind modes”, where you are allowed to sink deeply into one type of thinking for an extended amount of time. If you’re asleep, you need a few hours to get into the deep, quality level of sleep. I think the same thing applies to really vibing out musically. When I write music, I turn off my phone. I plan to have no other prescient issues going on. I hide out and try and click into “r.e.m. music mode”. Really original, vibed-out music is like a rare breed of orchid. It only grows in just the right conditions. Sometimes, not always, this mind mode can work in opposition to the recipe for success in 2007. I don’t think of financial success and musical vision as being musically exclusive in the present day, but I will say that many of the musicians that excite me the most happen to be very obscure. This could be a taste issue. But I’ve decided that when these two kinds of success DO seem to work against each other, that I’ll always choose musical vision over an opportunity to put myself in a position where I might get bigger. That being said, I’m excited to reach as many people as I can with my new album, and work off the strength of the most accessible songs on the record, using them as a Trojan Horse to sneak in the more ambitious songs on the record. |
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Thanks a lot, AV ProductionWorld, for giving me a forum to talk about my process. If anybody wants to rap more about music and life, or wants to check out some of my music, drop me a line:
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