It's been 10 years since we didn't release the first Roland High Life album →

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Now that the Roland High Life is a real band again, we decided to re-master and release our debut EP, “If You Really Want To Hear About…”

You’ll notice that, while I said re-mastered, I didn’t say re-released. Because we, uhhh, neglected to ever actually release this album, just like we kind of neglected the band for a decade for no good reason; we just kinda got busy, even though we were all still friends, and let it all languish.

But now, it’s finally out there for the world to see. Even though I wrote these songs in college — at the very start of my ADHD treatment, and dealing with all kinds of new sensations — I still think they hold up pretty well. We also had the privilege of recording it all at WERS studios at Emerson College, which meant access to lots of high-end equipment and unlimited time after hours in which to work. (The downside, however, is that we lost the master multitracks, and had to work from the rough mixes we put together. But still.)

I’m not gonna do the same song-by-song breakdown on here; I could, but it feels moot, seeing as I wrote all these songs on the cusp of 21 or so. I’ll save the Behind-the-Music shpiel for our next album.

But I will share this newly-recorded acoustic version of “Squatter Song” that I did over the summer. That’s a song that I originally wrote upon first moving to Boston, freshly diagnosed with ADHD and feeling very depressed and overwhelmed with the state of being a mental ill grownup and having my own apartment. Thus, it felt oddly fitting to play the song again on the eve of Boston’s famous Allston Christmas, as I sat in the empty Boston apartment that I now own as I move back into it as a somewhat-functional adult.

The new Roland High Life album is out today! →

Well folks, it’s been about a decade since we last released or performed any music … but the new 5-song EP from my indie rock band the Roland High Life is now available on Spotify, iTunes/Apple Music, BandCamp, and everywhere else you might want to find your tunes!

We arranged and recorded all of these songs over a single weekend at a house in Vermont. They weren’t fully written that weekend — me and Walker, my co-front-man for the band, had been working on songs intermittently that we’d share with each other. But we put them all together, arranged them, and recorded the tracks pretty quickly on our own. For a self-produced work in a basement in Vermont, I’m pretty god damn proud of the work that we pulled off, and I’m very much looking forward to what’s next for the band.

I wrote this song about a few people I know in real life who have succumbed to the crippling addiction of fucked up Trumpian conspiracy theories. I think the Americana-blues-punk vibe we landed with here really encapsulates our vision for the future of the band. The song also explicitly references David Graeber’s economic theory on Bullshit Jobs, which I think everyone should read.

This is a Walker jam (aka my best friend, and the other lead singer in the band). He had sent me an acoustic demo of this a few years back, and I think we landed in a pretty rad Jimmy Eat World-esque area in this. It’s a banger for sure, helped along by Chris the Drummer laying down a sick bass line.

I had originally imagined this as more of an AJJ-esque folk punk song; you can find my solo version of it on Spotify as well. It’s a lot more politically direct than our other Roland High Life thus far (even when we have gotten political), but I think we hit on something good here. Walker convinced me to play it like a Springsteen song that my audience already knew, and that’s exactly how we recorded it. I also threw down some mandolin and lap steel guitar on this track, to really mix it up.

This is actually an older Roland High Life song that we never quite recorded right. I’m not sure if this one is perfect, either — maybe a little too slow — but it’s still the best we have so far. It’s a love song to my cherry red Gibson Les Paul Junior, and I definitely accomplished what I set out to do (i.e., writing a song about loving music that’s also overly sexualized in a weird way). I originally wrote this at a time in my life when I was prone to over-complicating songs, but I do think that the look-at-me-i’m-so-clever music theory games that go on in here are still pretty cool.

Another Walker jam, this one started off as more of a Billy Joel knockoff, and Walker wasn’t sure if it would fit with our rock vibe. But Chris, our drummer, said that he’d been listening to lots of Teenage Fan Club lately, and as soon as he said that, I was hit with a Teenage Fan Club-style version of the song in my head. Or at least, that’s what we were going for; the final product is a little more ambient power-pop, and very much us, which makes it even better.

Plus that snare drop right before the second verse is sick.

Premiering a few new Roland High Life songs at Frank Turner's Lost Evenings!

Back in October, my old band the Roland High Life and I reconvened at a house in the woods of Vermont to write and record our first album in 10 years. So far, it sounds pretty great, and I even premiered a few of the new songs at Frank Turner’s Lost Evenings festival in Boston, at the Open Mic event hosted by Derek of the Homeless Gospel Choir. The response from the crowd was fantastic, and I’m looking forward to getting these songs out into the world!

"GIMME INDIE ROCK!": The Simple Comforts of A Future Perfect

A Future Perfect is a brand new play by Ken Urban about indie rockers in their 30s dealing with marriage, careers, babies, and of course, rock and roll. The show is currently receiving its world premiere in Boston with SpeakEasy Stage Company, and if you're anything like me — that is, the creative indie rock type somewhere between the age of 24 and 45 trying to find a balance between still doing what you love and living some semblance of an "adult" life without explicitly selling out and/or turning boring — there's a good chance that this show might hit that sweet spot for you. It has all the charm and humor of a great indie movie (like The Happy Sad, also by Ken Urban and currently available on Netflix), along with a fantastic soundtrack featuring the likes of Pavement, Modest Mouse, Neutral Milk Hotel, the Smiths, Dinosaur Jr., etc. etc.

In short, it's pretty fantastic. 

Then again, I might be biased. After all, the show is directed by my partner, M. Bevin O'Gara, and I also did some music and video projection work for the show myself (in addition to the sound design by Nathan Leigh). So I mean — sure, if you want to put it that way, I guess I would be biased. But it's also an incredibly touching story about friendship, adulthood, and not losing sight of the things that you believe in. Even without the personal connections, that still hits pretty close to home for me.

A Future Perfect runs tonight through February 7 at the Calderwood Pavilion in the South End (there's also a Pay-What-You-Can performance this coming Sunday, Jan. 11). If you're reading this, you'll like it. Trust me.

Also there's puppets.