In the laundry room

The laundry room is an important part our lives. At first, and still, it might be communal. Shared with strangers, united in our goals. You can’t stand when people move your clothes out of a washer or dryer, and you can’t stand when people aren’t prompt in removing their clothes from a washer or dryer. At some point you might have a laundry room of your own.

A laundry room can take on many roles. First and foremost, of course, it has the plumbing and ducts needed to handle said activity. But I’m almost positive that if you have your own laundry room, you also use it for storage. Maybe with a custom shelving unit, and plastic containers of various sizes. A broom—more than one. If you have side loaders, the tops might become shelves themselves. If you have top loaders, you have to move everything off of the lid to get your clothes in. During the pandemic, you might have found yourself working from the laundry room. For the separation, the quiet, or the fact that both of you have meetings and someone gets the prime real estate. You might alternate, you might not. Several years before the pandemic, I found a new use for my laundry room. I had tasked myself with recording an album. A folk album. Just me and a guitar. And a feeding-back microphone. Let me explain.

I have broad taste in music. I really don’t like classifying music. Music is music. But yes, there were styles of music that I didn’t like, and I avoided at all costs. That has since changed over time. It all started with seeing The Five Pennies, and Louis Armstrong and Danny Kaye’s performance of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” I don’t think I sat for the whole movie, it was on network television anyway, loaded with commercials, but that song, the spirit, moved me at a critical moment. In a few months, I would have the opportunity to chose whether I wanted to sing in the school choir, or begin to learn an instrument and play in the band. There was no question, I had to start learning how to play the trumpet. I wanted to be able to move people in the same way that Louis Armstrong had moved me. To create music that makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck. Interestingly, not all people feel music in this way, but I did. And so began my musical journey with Mr. Salzburg at my elementary school.

I would stay with the trumpet through high school. It’s a difficult instrument to master, and I don’t think I ever mastered it. But it was helpful. The discipline of practice and lessons, the exposure to new music, the care and maintenance of my instrument. But Nirvana would have a stronger pull. A new force in the universe, creating a phenomenon all their own. I knew I had to learn how to do that next. And so I began to teach myself how to play the guitar. And then Bob Dylan. And then experimental music.

I became interested in experimental music and improvisation within that context. Creating something from nothing. Something cohesive, with a group of individuals all focused on the same goal, to create new music. At that point, the choices are truly infinite. You have to start somewhere, and then you have to take that starting point and develop it. I quickly learned that the performances I liked best were those where the performers seemed to play off of each other. I realized that in order to do this, you have to both play and listen at the same time. And if you could increase the speed that you translated what you just heard into what you are playing, this creates a feedback loop that gets amplified by the number of performers in the group. The effect on the listener can be staggering.

I entered a period of study with one of the great composers at my university, Stephen Syverud. In our classes together, we dissected compositions, I learned a new vocabulary to discuss avant-garde works, and I developed my skills using the tools of the trade: reel-to-reel tape machines, modular synthesizers, and digital tools as well, including recording and composition software. We would go on to form a group ourselves. Along with several graduate students, we performed improvised, experimental music at universities across the United States. The experience was invaluable.

And so I found myself sitting in my apartment, ready to start working on my folk album. From scratch. But not really. For this record, it had to start with the poetry, the lyrics. And so I pulled up my latest journal, sat down with my guitar, and started reading passages and playing the guitar—playing and listening at the same time—to hear if anything struck me. And it did. Twenty-two times over the course of two weeks. But first, I needed a place to record these potential songs. Looking back, I probably could have booked a studio, but I was unknown—and I still am. I didn’t know how long this would take, so I didn’t have a budget in mind. And the idea of folk music, to me, felt like the antithesis of going into a professional studio. It should be recorded in the space where it was written. Still, I didn’t think my loft apartment would be good for acoustics. And to be honest, I didn’t want to cause problems with my neighbors. I was planning on incorporating microphonic feedback into my performances.

With Dylan, in the early days, he had these amazing harmonica breaks. I could ride for a mile on those harmonica lines and never get bored. I tried using the harmonica in my music, and it felt good, but I didn’t want to copy someone else’s idea. I had to push it forward, in my own way. I thought back to my days performing in the experimental group with my professor, and I realized the performances that I did on microphone could be easily incorporated into folk music. A second microphone, used for feedback, could essentially replace the harmonica parts that I so loved from my favorite Dylan tunes. Hands free.

Once I had the concept ready in my mind, I knew I would need a small, enclosed space in order to dampen the noise from the feedback. There was only one place in my apartment that I could think of… you guessed it.

Recording went fairly quickly. First takes to hear the blend of poetry, guitar, and noise. Settle on a tempo. Adjust lyrics. Then go for it. All in the same take, like they used to do. Add a few ad lib pieces to get a flow going and see where the rap takes me. And that was it. Tracking wrapped in two weeks. Mixing would take slightly longer. I now know that you can get really side-tracked with mixing. It’s a unique and different skill to recording and performing, and to add to the complexity, there’s no right answer. There are definitely bad mixes, but there are just as many good mixes. I would spend countless hours, printing countless revisions of a mix, until I finally settled on what I thought was good. Then I went back and remixed everything to that standard. Once I had a cohesive sound, I set the track sequence, looked for an appropriate image for the album art, and submitted my work for distribution. I’d learn a few years later that I should have copyrighted my material before doing this, but I still applied for copyright after the fact.

So what’s my point? Yes, laundry rooms can be multi-purpose. And we all have winding roads that led us to the place we are today, musically or otherwise. But the real reason I needed to tell you this story is because I want to hear what you come up with in your laundry room.