Creative Writing: The Cobra Club
I had the opportunity to use a fancy studio in the Lower East Side gratis recently. It happened to occur in a time when I needed to make music more than at pretty much any other point in my life. I am truly blessed with some excellent friends. It was a harrowing time. It is without question the most emotionally honest thing I have ever been involved in making. Here's the first single.
Feel free to listen to the whole EP, a link is attached. I hope you enjoy the single and all the songs. If you or anyone you know happens to be in NYC on May 25, I'm playing one of my fave spots in the nabe, The Cobra Club to celebrate its release. With plenty more coming up. Let me know if I can come to your city.
Jason
Soundcloud:
https://soundcloud.com/icantwaitforsummer/jason-s-matuskiewicz-with-my-friends …show more content…
EP: https://soundcloud.com/icantwaitforsummer/sets/jason-s-matuskiewicz-ep-1/s-gKXMR Musings in re: "With My Friends"
"With My Friends" is the slice of the anthemic slice of singer-songwriter alt rock.
It does not have a narrative or a straight forward statement. It is an expression of a feeling of ennui and company that helps to mitigate it, even if not with the ideal methods. This, and the other songs on the E.P. were all written while my girlfriend was undergoing intense chemotherapy. This was dark time and methods were bound to be less than ideal. We coped. We survived.
Autobiography:
Shortly before I met her, my girlfriend was diagnosed with stage four cancer. She survived and we met and it was wonderful. So far, I have only met the love of my life once and it was a metaphysical thunderclap in my soul. She gets me like no one else. It is a relationship sustained by friendship and deep mutual respect and admiration.
When her cancer came back, I was with her in her hospital room every moment I could be, for three weeks, and then three more weeks when she had to go back just about immediately after that. But she is not easily bested. She beat cancer again. And it appeared to have been
eradicated.
That is until this summer when it returned. While she underwent chemotherapy, my band, Shapes on Tape, was a bit of a hiatus. Songwriting is how I cope with the world--celebrating and lamenting the world that we have made for ourselves and the world that has made us. Though I tried to put a different face on it, my grief was bottomless. That is where these songs come from.
I was fortunate enough to have the use of Loho Studio in the Lower East Side and to have my very good friend and Grammy nominated producer, Justin Craig, and the ever excellent engineer, Andrew Gerhan, available the same weekend. So we laid down the drum tracks and then finished the rest at Justin's Foxhole Studio.
There’s a lot of the things I love in this music. There’s clearly a little Neutral Milk Hotel, some acoustic Beck influences, a smidge of Bright Eyes, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Arcade Fire, and The Beatles. It probably exists somewhere between “London Calling” and “Damn the Torpedoes.” More than that, though, I hope it expresses how I feel.
Feel free to listen to the whole EP, a link is attached. I hope you enjoy the single and all the songs. If you or anyone you know happens to be in NYC on May 25, I'm playing one of my fave spots in the nabe, The Cobra Club to celebrate its release. With plenty more coming up. Let me know if I can come to your city.
Jason
Soundcloud:
https://soundcloud.com/icantwaitforsummer/jason-s-matuskiewicz-with-my-friends …show more content…
EP: https://soundcloud.com/icantwaitforsummer/sets/jason-s-matuskiewicz-ep-1/s-gKXMR Musings in re: "With My Friends"
"With My Friends" is the slice of the anthemic slice of singer-songwriter alt rock.
It does not have a narrative or a straight forward statement. It is an expression of a feeling of ennui and company that helps to mitigate it, even if not with the ideal methods. This, and the other songs on the E.P. were all written while my girlfriend was undergoing intense chemotherapy. This was dark time and methods were bound to be less than ideal. We coped. We survived.
Autobiography:
Shortly before I met her, my girlfriend was diagnosed with stage four cancer. She survived and we met and it was wonderful. So far, I have only met the love of my life once and it was a metaphysical thunderclap in my soul. She gets me like no one else. It is a relationship sustained by friendship and deep mutual respect and admiration.
When her cancer came back, I was with her in her hospital room every moment I could be, for three weeks, and then three more weeks when she had to go back just about immediately after that. But she is not easily bested. She beat cancer again. And it appeared to have been
eradicated.
That is until this summer when it returned. While she underwent chemotherapy, my band, Shapes on Tape, was a bit of a hiatus. Songwriting is how I cope with the world--celebrating and lamenting the world that we have made for ourselves and the world that has made us. Though I tried to put a different face on it, my grief was bottomless. That is where these songs come from.
I was fortunate enough to have the use of Loho Studio in the Lower East Side and to have my very good friend and Grammy nominated producer, Justin Craig, and the ever excellent engineer, Andrew Gerhan, available the same weekend. So we laid down the drum tracks and then finished the rest at Justin's Foxhole Studio.
There’s a lot of the things I love in this music. There’s clearly a little Neutral Milk Hotel, some acoustic Beck influences, a smidge of Bright Eyes, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Arcade Fire, and The Beatles. It probably exists somewhere between “London Calling” and “Damn the Torpedoes.” More than that, though, I hope it expresses how I feel.