Still Life turns 10 years old
+ All Of My Life from my kitchen
Still Life turned ten years old yesterday. Sorta the ugly duckling of my catalog but I love her all the same. I don’t relate to or remember most of these songs nor did any of them, besides Parade (and All Of My Life, sorta) have any real life span in my live show. It’s also the only one where I’m not on the cover. We did a few photo shoots but nothing was really sticking and so we ended up using a picture I took with my first iPhone of the wonderful Maynard Monrow piece lying on the floor of my house. Ive always sorta seen this record as the lost Babies album. A lot of these songs I had meant to be Babies songs and we even recorded it in the same studio we did Our House On The Hill.
A trivia fact of this album is that I had a pretty gnarly vocal node while making it. I got surgery to remove it not long after the recording and had to go on vocal rest for a month as well as other rehab. So, this is (hopefully) the only record where you can hear the node in full force - my vocals are pretty gritty. If you compare my vox on this compared to Singing Saw, it’s pretty noticeable.
When Harlem River came out everyone figured it was a side project for me, a one off. But releasing Still Life less than a year after Harlem River seemed to solidify me as solo artist in people’s minds and sorta got the ball rolling for my solo career. It was also on tour in support of Still Life that I met a lifelong collaborator Meg Duffy while playing a show in upstate New York. Meg, Justin Sullivan (who also played drums in the Babies and on Harlem River) and I then went onto play these songs across America and Europe as one of my favorite moments of my live band: a power trio.
I’m thankful this album exists and for the good memories and people that surround it. Below is an alternative cover that we didn’t end up using as well as me playing All Of My Life in my kitchen this morning into my phone, probably the first time i’ve played this song in 7 or so years, below the pay wall.
