LIFE HAPPENS ANYWAYS
hello there!
here’s the short version:
—my new record, ‘Life Happens Anyways’ is out on bandcamp on friday, july 15, 2021!
—you can preorder it from https://colinwoodford.bandcamp.com today, as well as wherever else you listen to music on August 6th 2021. but you do download it, right?
—you can buy the sheet music here! on this very website!
here’s the slightly more involved version:
in 2018 and part of 2019 i had a morning ritual of writing music longhand for at least one hour or one page, without the aid of an instrument. it was an opportunity to try and translate thoughts, feelings, sights, and sounds non-judgmentally. there are tiny, terrible pieces you’ll never hear, there are large-scale keyboard and string pieces i hope you someday hear (incidentally if you’re a performer or fundraiser for that kind of thing, do get in touch), and there were a handful of pieces from around the same time that felt somehow connected. they had a song-like and band-like sensibility, but didn’t fit into any current project.
luckily, i love bands. there’s something magical that happens when a stable group of people play a cohesive catalog of music, unique from what’s possible with individual creators—cool though those projects are. so i assembled a band to play this music, and the personnel gracing the record are, in score order: Andrew Conrad on tenor saxophone and bass clarinet, Gregory Uhlmann on electric and baritone electric guitars, Evan Montgomery on electric and 12-string electric guitars, and Brandon Schmidt on the Fender bass.
sometime in 2020, perhaps 5 or 6 months into our new-but-the-same-in-all-the-worst-ways lives, and like many artists having lost an awful lot of work awfully quickly, i had a strong urge to document this project before i lost either the chance or the care. i found a studio with appropriate covid protocols and a working tape machine to record to! so, on a cool October morning we trundled in to memorialize these songs, those moments, not having played music with other people in ages. shout out to 64-sound and Tyler Karmen for their facilities and expertise, and to long-time collaborator Daniel Eaton for another beautiful mastering job.
i prototyped the album art and and, on admitting that i really wanted a proper print, took it to Krause Intaglio in maywood, ca, where Ludwig Mohr cast, typeset, and foil-stamped a design improved and modified for ease of use on the beautiful old machinery. i love being around machines like that in part because my dad and grandad both had mountains of tools large and small, and in part because, like tape, their use is highly specialized, highly involved, and highly sensual i.e. that the tools have sights, sounds, substance, and in the case of tape machines and typesetting, smells. humans were there; clever enough to make, refine, and use these tools to beautiful effect.
the title, ‘Life Happens Anyways,’ is a gentle reminder that the planet keeps on spinning. our joys and sadnesses are predicated upon and will predicate future joys and sadnesses. it is an inducement to compassion.
let’s do a brief track by track:
-eii 17: the opener and earliest composition on the record. i had a saxophone in mind for the opening statement and melody, especially because even though quick, repeated notes are verboten on sax, they sound fantastic. Andrew proves the point beautifully. it’s bright and energetic, with musicological debts to brazil and senegal as much as american jazz and soul.
-Life Happens Anyways (eii 19): the title track was one of those rare songs that just exited my body fully formed, and even more rarely i knew it was going to sound good. i don’t know why those happen, but like Billy Connolly talking about comedy, 'I’m just glad to be here when they turn up.’ the title itself was only made clear to me in 2021, more than two years later, but it hit me like a mac truck so here we are.
-eii 24: to me this one is kind of like a slowed-down field recording of birds, but a worn-out motown cassette is playing somewhere in the distance. it really struts, but it also limps.
-eii 21: part of what i like in this one is that, despite having a singable melody, there’s some fun timbral interplay—the sax and guitar play a motor function, the other guitar and bass play a melody function, but both guitars have a similar enough sound that the separation can be pleasingly hazy.
-eii 20: we meditate on the octave, then pivot to a good-thumping quarter-note rocker. letting such talented improvisers flex these muscles is always fun and interesting.
-the worn down metal on subway stairs: not written in the eii series, but as a reflection on the title, which was written before the rest of the song. it’s melancholy if somewhat turbulent.
-weights and measures: a different strut, a different limp. the seemingly asynchronous (a word i use with apologies to those teaching in public schools in 2020) bass line ostinato and almost romantic melody somehow work together. there is a beautiful guitar solo followed by a reprise of a quiet and harmonics-based section, before a final stomp of the whole ensemble playing the main bass riff.
thank you for coming and reading this far down. please check out the record, purchase it if you’re into it, scores are for sale here, and definitely share it with someone you think would dig it!