I’m proud to announce that my 40th album, Faint Heart, is hitting the streaming services this week. This one comprises piano songs, including some pop and folk numbers as well as a number of wholly improvised instrumental pieces.
If someone ever asks me how I started playing piano, I’ve got this quick answer at the ready: “I stared at the piano for 45 years, and then one day put my hands down on it and started moving my fingers around.”
A funny joke … if perhaps only somewhat true. In fact, I had a piano in my house for many years as I was growing up. But I was mostly afraid to do anything with it other than learn “Happy Birthday.” My parents had some stuff they liked to play (I remember my father liked playing “Green Green Grass of Home.”) But mostly I remember the family piano being ignored … and in hindsight think of all the opportunity wasted because I was too afraid to play it. We eventually abandoned our family piano (or sold it, I don’t remember) after we moved into a mobile home and couldn’t put it anywhere.
When I was in my 20s and in college, a roommate’s or friend’s keyboard would occasionally slip into my hands and I would add some notes to a guitar project I was working on. But it was just to add color or timbre to my arrangements. Later on, I threw some one-handed piano parts onto my recordings with a MIDI keyboard. When I learned I could program these, I asked myself, “What the hell did I buy this expensive-ass keyboard for?”
Everything changed when my wife got me an iPhone with GarageBand in 2016. I don’t want to turn this into an advertisement for Apple (Tim Cook doesn’t need my help) but occasionally I would run my fingers along the keyboard on the screen, playing along with some electronic thing I’d written, and some not-horrible music would come out. At one point I thought to myself, “Either these GarageBand developers are geniuses and make me sound like a piano player when I’m not … or I have some actual talent at this instrument.” I later composed a full piano piece, playing the right-hand and left-hand parts separately with my right hand on the keyboard. I’m proud of that piece, but I wouldn’t brag about the performance. Eventually, I turned on a cheap tape recorder and tapped out a piece called “Otto Half Soft,” which is the first time I ever composed my own tune with both hands. Because I approach every music project with a punk attitude–assuming that instinct and imagination and raw emotion will always trump technique and skill–I got cocky enough to make a whole album of piano songs in 2018. It was called Yipano, and aside from a few leftover GarageBand pieces, it mostly features me playing a piano two handed. My advertising pitch for that album was: “Pay for the scandal of hearing me learn how to play the piano in real time.” I figured it would drive away what few fans I have, yet I picked up some new ones. Some of the songs get listened to on TikTok.
I waited a few years to do something so arrogant again. The reason it’s happening now is that my son recently got a new 88-key keyboard for his birthday and I wanted to test it out. (My son is a great piano player, and has been trained properly, unlike his dad.) Usually, it’s when I’m “testing equipment” that I start accidentally writing new material. I like this method because the last thing you want to do when you’re writing is overthink.
The upshot is that I squeezed out 15 new songs over the last six weeks, and the result is Faint Heart. I had a lot of unused lyrics left over from past projects, so there’s quite a few new sung songs as well, something to keep things flowing if you get bored with the piano improvisations, classical pretensions or general arrogance of a project like this.
As usual, the new album was written and performed by yours truly in my home studio in New York in July and August. The album cover photo was taken by Natasha Zakharova.
The album is available only digitally on Amazon, Apple Music, Pandora, Bandcamp, Spotify and YouTube, among other services. I hope you enjoy! (Or if not, I’m sorry.)
Beauty is Imperfection 