Multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and arranger producer, Josh Kaufman‘s debut instrumental album, “What Do the People in Your Head Say to Each Other” is available now from Historical Fiction Records. The seven tracks sprouted from a recording session stalled by a technical glitch. With collaborators standing by, Kaufman used the downtime to explore ideas and fragments, voice memos collected over the years, creating arrangements on the spot that would be finished as time allowed over the next four years.
The resulting seven tracks bear the hallmarks of Kaufman’s musicianship and production heard as a member of Bonny Light Horseman & Muzz and his work as arranger producer and instrumentalist with artists like Grateful Dead founder Bob Weir, The National, This Is The Kit, Hiss Golden Messenger, Josh Ritter, Craig Finn, The Hold Steady and The War on Drugs.
Listen:
for licensing or press inquiries, please contact:
fritz (at) historicalfictionrecords (dot) com
with:
Josh Kaufman (acoustic and electric guitars, piano, electric bass, synth, organ, vibraphone, harmoniums, harmonicas added percussion)
Logan Coale (Upright Bass) –
Jason Bemis Lawrence (Drumming)
JT Bates (Drumming, loops)
Justin Carrol (Hammond Organ, electric and acoustic pianos)
Stuart Bogie (Tenor Sax and Flutes)
Jordan McLean (Trumpet)
Annie Nero (Vocals)
Alecia Chakour (Vocals)
Produced By Josh Kaufman and Steve Salett
Recorded at Reservoir Studios, NY, NY
Engineered By James Yost (with additional engineering by Josh)
Mixed by D. James Goodwin
Mastered By Fritz Myers
Can you remember those old overhead projectors, the ones we had in school growing up? I don’t mean the ones now, that Airplay your iPad and your Powerpoint. I mean the old ones, with big brontosaurus necks.
The teacher would roll it out on a wobbly metal stand; ask the kids near the windows to pull the shades, dim the classroom lights to grey; the projector’s belly would brighten like a firefly; and then shadow puppet hands would write out math equations or annotate maps on transparent sheets of paper as you dozed or daydreamed or passed folded-up notes desk to desk. But maybe what I’m trying to invoke isn’t even the projector, but the transparencies themselves, printed on, marked up, satisfyingly noisy, magical in the most boring way.
An old, long friendship is like a stack of those transparencies, and you can see the memories through one another, a jumble of lines and images, blurring, overlapping, waiting to be illuminated again. I can remember me pointing at Josh’s Bob Dylan t-shirt on the first day of sophomore year and I can remember us smoking on a rooftop in Dumbo just after we both turned 40, and me saying “We still dress the same way we did at 15.” I can remember us driving through a field of sunflowers at dusk in Toulouse, and I can remember the overnight train to Toulouse when Josh, drunk, came back from the bathroom and announced solemnly that he’d dropped his watch down the toilet. I can remember the first time I saw him play, in an E.R.-bright froyo place on Long Island, and I can remember the most recent time I saw him play, in a big sold-out venue, the stage lit purple and red, and everyone could mouth the lyrics along with Bonny Light Horseman. It’s all one memory, really; all of it lingers.
It lingers, is the only thing he’d tell me, when I asked him about the new instrumental album “What Do the People in Your Head Say to Each Other,” recorded in bits and pieces over the past four or so years, and then he said, “Explaining it might ruin it for me.”
So instead I’m going to tell you about the cover. “Le Tire Bouchon” was painted by Stuart Kaufman, Josh’s grandfather, a career painter who did romance covers and magazine covers and portraits in oil. It was done not from memory but from a photograph, probably taken in the 70s, of a corner in Montmartre. The funny thing is, Josh’s grandmother, Phyllis, was a framer and sometimes got a little overzealous in her work, and you can tell that this painting was unfinished when she grabbed it; the bottom third has weight and color and detail, the browns and reds of the walls and the people on the street, but it gets sketchier and airier and bluer toward the tops of the buildings and off in the background. The man in the brown jacket has gravity, the couple to the left are ghosts of people, waxing or waning, not yet filled in.
But that unfinished quality makes Stuart’s painting linger, too, gives it a tenderness and a glow; you can still feel his hand working on it, like the shadow of the teacher’s hand sketching out a geometric proof on the overhead. It isn’t a memory, but a process. That’s “What do the People in Your Head Say to Each Other,” too. Every song feels like it’s being made as you’re listening to it; you can hear hands at work, voices deciding to suddenly chime in; and when it ends before you’re ready, it still glows, it lingers.
—Mark Lotto