For the large part, my musical life has been spent delving into the music of past decades, starting with the 1950s, rockabilly and doo-wop especially. That was back in high school and college, and it was easy enough to be exposed to the ’80s and ’90s stuff then, as it was all around me, and ’60s and ’70s stuff was still quite ubiquitous in the culture. So I gravitated further backward, and now have spent most of my listening energy on the early American recordings of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s—blues and jazz and the big bands. The Alan Lomax field recordings, Charlie Christian, Charlie Parker, Helen Forrest, early Sinatra with Tommy Dorsey, and everything in between.
Owning the Colony has naturally been an eye opening (ear-opening?) experience in getting to bring in bands that are well established to younger audiences but have not naturally crossed my path. I’m quite pleased to find I’ve truly loved a lot of the stuff coming out these days, and now I avidly listen to alternative indie channel Sirius XMU. Some of the albums that have really bowled me over of late: Cool About It by Boygenius, Nightshift by Lucy Dacus, The Edge of the Edge by Panda Bear (it samples the early ’60s doo-wop classic “Denise” by Randy and the Rainbows, which delighted me when I heard it), Honey by Samia, Should’ve Been Me by Mitski, Swooning by JW Francis…the list goes on. Going a bit further back, I’ve always had a great love of Muse, Kings of Leon, and Social Distortion. As a songwriter, my greatest influences have been Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, and Nick Cave. I’m all over the map, I guess, but it keeps it interesting.
This article appears in January 2024.
