Armed with vocal takes from my Vermont sojourns, plus a host of guitar tracks from a blitzkrieg guitar-tracking-only weekend, it was time to flesh out the vast gaps in the record and turn it into the piece I was dreaming of. So I threw my laptop into the car, and made the trek to the antithetical nexus of rural Vermont: Brooklyn.

Brooklyn is many things, including home to one of my best and most talented friends in the world: audio composer Josh Cipolla. I met Josh on literally my first day at Skidmore College in 2006, and we’ve been music buddies in one capacity or another ever since - from informal jam buddies to 90s cover bandmates to pit band pals.

For two  non-stop weekends, we sunk dozens upon dozens of hours into mixing and production: adding drums, piano, keyboard, even a raging “guitar solo” performed on a Casio keyboard. These sessions were exhausting, painstaking, and absolutely necessary. Were it not for Josh’s seemingly inexhaustible patience, this record would never have been completed with even a fraction of the polish that we ultimately achieved.

In terms of production, the inspiration for “Go On, Rewind” came from Nick Drake’s “Time Has Told Me” and Ed Sheeran’s “The A-Team”, with a touch of explosive guitar. This was the first song we dug into and the one which Josh and I  had the clearest and most aligned vision. From a production standpoint, it was also the easiest to make, and the most fun. The drums were straightforward. Subtle percussion on the second verse was recorded later using brushes on a djembe.

“Consequences” took hours of drum programming - perfecting fills, wrangling around my imperfect guitar performances, and creating a crescendo swell at the end of the record. In fact it’s a safe bet to say that getting the drums right on this song was the single greatest timesuck of the recording process. That said, I am as happy with the results as I think one can hope to be with a song with a retrofitted drum track. Never again will I track guitar first and apply drums, like a band-aid, later. Rookie mistake; lesson learned.

Then there was “Meadow Girl”. Of the tunes that I knew would appear on the EP, this was the one I felt the greatest license to sonically expand. But it wasn’t until I heard “Fifteen” by Goldroom that I knew  what kind of production I wanted. I shared it with Parker, and this was the result. Strings entered the mix later, and we eventually opted to use them sparsely during the swell of the second verse. “Meadow Girl” has consistently received the most praise, comments and attention of the bunch - no doubt in due to the spectacular production value that Parker created and  Josh completed. We had a lot of fun creating the “chill” vocal vibe. All in all, it’s the song I’m happiest with from the record. Parker and I started making electronic music together in the winter of 2010, and in character and delivery, this song really fits with that collection of (still unreleased) songs. Look for a full record of folk-turned-synth-pop music from Parker and I later this year.

“Hold the Knife” went through several iterations - including a back-and-forth panning version (ultimately panned in another way) - before we settled on the  straight-ahead version that made the record. A bit disjointed in retrospect, various components were handled by myself, Parker, and Josh, and then made to exist collectively. Love it, hate it - at under 2 minutes, you won’t have to tolerate it for long either way. At least it’s a bit of whimsical fun on the way out.

By the time all of this work was done, we were well into December, just weeks away from the target release of New Years Eve. I found myself frantically juggling communications with a CD pressing company, final mixing and mastering, the usual family obligations that coincide with the biggest holidays of the year, and party preparations for a barnstormer record release. Through some miracle - largely derived from the sympathy of family, the flexibility of the press company, and assistance from a huge laundry list of friends handling everything from hosting, to live sound engineering - we pulled it all off in style.

Thanks to everyone who made this record possible. 

• Parker and Josh for endless patience and invaluable help in production, mixing, and mastering. Without you, no EP.
• Aaron Moberger for being the Dr. Gonzo to my Raul Duke, and not only pushing me to release the EP in an epic New Years Eve blowout, but providing lead guitar on the recording and performance. 
• My dad Steve, for the support and incredible photography that formed the basis of the EP promotional materials. 
• Jack Macejko of Blue Recipe Radio for being the most incredible sound guy and performance capture artist I could ever ask for. 
• Steven Desrosiers for the generous use of PA equipment, and his lovely wife Sarah, my favorite fan and best source for great new music.
• Adam Stoler for always phenomenal advice, percussion playing, and keyboard talents. My mental clone, only smarter and wiser.
• Brian Cook and Jon Guy, for holding down a killer rhythm section at the New Years Eve show.
• Glynis, for the initial photo concept and accountability. 
• Dave, George, Chris, Sophia, and everyone else who not only made the CD release party work, but made it awesome.

There’s no doubt I’ve forgotten even more incredible people who played a part in the record’s creation and execution (I won’t even try to capture the folks who contributed to its inspiration). Thank you for inspiring me to live the dream.

I leave you with the 4 lessons I learned chasing a dream and making this record:

1. Don’t wait two years to begin recording your music.
2. Track drums first. 
3. However long you think it takes to finish a record, quadruple it. 
4. Don’t wait another day to begin chasing your dreams.

Emphasis on #4. Thanks for reading.

By the summer of 2013, I had achieved the biggest of my non-music goals: I’d netted my dream job with a marketing agency, competed in two powerlifting competitions in the past year and a half, and had generally run out of excuses separating me from EP completion. So I saddled up one summer Friday into my Honda CR-V and headed for the old family cottage in Vermont in a town so small that the road is named after my paternal grandmother’s family. 

A familiar scene in the summer of 2013: Netbook, Yeti microphone, Akai Pro MPK Mini Keyboard, inspirational reading, capo, a spot of ale.

Fueled by coffee - and I am not a coffee drinker - I embarked on an all-night recording session that yielded the first passable, digestible, and shareable demos of my songs. Finally, two years after getting started, I had struck on a formula and conducive environment for creating a record. Eight hours later,  I emerged from the cabin and struck off on a run through the back roads of Vermont, tears streaming down my face from both the beauty of my rustic environment and the realization that - for the first time ever- I could see the pathway to my dream. It could really happen. I could do it.

Taken on a sunrise run after staying awake all night recording. Probably crying when I took this. Life is beautiful; Vermont especially so.

The property in front of the cottage. Taken later in the fall.

The sunset of my late-September visit. Fall was weeks ahead of where it was in Rhode Island.

The cottage from my great uncle’s porch. 

Nearly all of the vocals you hear on the EP were recorded in that cottage in isolation, my own personal Bon Iver experience in the tradition of For Emma, Forever Ago. I am infinitely grateful for that cottage, for that getaway, and for my great uncle Ronald across the road who was my only social contact in that tiny Vermont town. Without it, there would never have been a record.

Two Inches of Ash is a short, imperfect EP that took over 100 hours to record, produce, and release. For every minute of music you hear - and there are only twelve - there were about ten hours of work put into it.

I started writing Two Inches of Ash in May 2011. I’d moved to Providence just four months before with my good friend/roommate/writing partner Parker Tichko  but a dream job offer in Las Vegas meant that come spring, it was time to pack up and go (don’t worry, kids, Parker returns later in our story). So I found myself quite alone in this sprawling two-bedroom apartment on Providence’s East Side as spring turned to summer, in a city that was still alien and new. 

It would end up being the introspective experience I needed to finally spur my inner creator to write a record.  

One quiet night in May - I have forgotten the specifics now, other than the late hour, the throbbing emotion, and the complete lack of chemical substance - I picked up the guitar and started to play and sing. I was playing and singing out of the hope and possibility that lay ahead of me. I was playing and singing for the new people I had connected with who seemed poised to change my life. And I was playing and singing for the two-year relationship - the first girl I ever really loved - that had crumbled that winter.

“Go On, Rewind” was the result. It was a creative joyride through my subconscious, more metaphor than message, with lyrics crystallizing in my mind literally as I sang them. I had written dozens of songs before , but none of them like that. I would sing, then feverishly write, and sing again. If the words didn’t feel right coming out of my mouth, I scrapped them, knowing that I had mucked up the purer message that my subconscious was attempting to convey. 

95% of the song was written this way within a 2 hour span of time, with clean-up and tweaking performed in the weeks after. I considered it then - and consider it now - to be the strongest song I’ve written. It was certainly the deepest and rawest emotions I had been able to excavate and unearth in song. But it wasn’t painful to write - in fact, to say that I wrote it at all implies a deliberateness that simply wasn’t there. It would be more accurate to say that it “happened” to me. It has since made me wonder, does the conception of great art require suffering at all, or just intimate inner listening? Is it supposed to be as easy as “Go On, Rewind”? My guess is that great art can be both the easiest thing and most challenging thing in the world.

“Consequences” came next, perhaps a month after “Go On, Rewind” was written, under identical circumstances - late at night, stream-of-consciousness, chemical-free. It was a play off the chords to one of my favorite songs of all time, “Give Me Love” by George Harrison, with an extra 7 chord and a bit of alt-rock attitude thrown in. I loved the words to this song as soon as they found their way out, and today it is still my second favorite song I’ve written. Like “Go On, Rewind”, stream-of-consciousness “listening” gave birth to the lion’s share, with minor massaging and embellishment applied in the weeks following. I can still remember the exact moment that the chorus - the absurdly simple “I don’t know, do you?” - fell out of my head, perhaps equally in response to the story being told and my literal cluelessness as to how to treat that section of the song. “I don’t know” is easily the number one phrase I fall upon when writing stream-of-consciousness style, and it’s not hard to see why.

I wrote “Hold the Knife” third, after a long night out with an out-of-town friend, and had written and demoed it all within 90 minutes. It was a passable, low-key demo that was my only recording of the song for years - more mellow and campfire-ready, in retrospect closer to the spirit of the “Go On, Rewind” and “Consequences”. The words felt stupid at the time, even as I was writing it, but I wanted to convey something more whimsical and ambling after the more heartbreaking ventures of the prior tunes. If I had to take a stab at what it meant, I’d say that “holding the knife” is about trusting yourself and your ability to take control and wield forces that are potentially dangerous. 

Well after the spring and summer creative spell of these songs, I settled in to write again in March 2012 in a very different headspace. “Meadow Girl” was what came out - loosely inspired by a certain someone, but more of a feeling I aspired to achieve than one I had felt lately. To the discerning listener, the Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris” influence will be obvious in the chorus. Beyond that it was really just an inspired, poetic riff over my usual suspects, G and D chords.

March 2012 - nearly two years prior to this writing - was the conclusion of that songwriting season, and the beginning of more or less a creative drought while I got wholly distracted by a communications career, powerlifting, new friends and lovers, and relocation across town. I completely intended to release the EP within the year of 2012 - that did not come even close to happening. While the aforementioned factors were very real barriers and distractions, I was also simply not content  to step into a studio and lay down tracks with voice and acoustic guitar. I had bigger dreams for these songs. I heard lush production. Thundering rhythms. Soaring electric guitar. It was going to take a lot more than just me and mine to make that happen, if it would ever happen at all.

Surely the only musician in history to use the pursuit of a killer deadlift as a distraction from recording.

The entire process ground to a halt here, not to be picked up again until the summer of 2013.