– Charlie’s Blog –
by Charlie Barnett | Mar 2, 2021 | Charlie's Blog, Home Page, News
If you order a
Chaise Lounge CD from Amazon or another big retailer, you’ll receive it from a warehouse somewhere. But people who don’t make and sell records for a living are often surprised to learn that the CDs and merch they order via
the band’s online store are packed and shipped by yours truly, from a “warehouse” that doubles as my basement. If you also sell your group’s recordings, you can probably picture the shelves and boxes.
Selling CDs is a joy for me. It’s my favorite chore. I love filling orders for fans we have known for years, but I also love it when the buyer has an unfamiliar name. How did they hear of us? Are we in heavy rotation in Muncie this week? I always write a note on the outside of the padded envelope. We jokingly call our fans “Chaise Lounge Nation” and say it’s a small nation, but mighty. Each time I send off a note to a new CD owner, the nation feels just a little bit larger.
by Charlie Barnett | Feb 2, 2021 | Charlie's Blog, Home Page, News
For five years or so, I have been affiliated with a company called Score a Score that provides music for TV commercials and indie film projects. I sporadically send them tracks to add to their catalog. It’s done “on spec,” meaning I don’t get paid unless the track is selected for use by one of their filmmaker or advertising agency clients.
Lately, though, in my downtime, I’ve been writing daily pieces for Score a Score — more than 50 in the past two months — and recording the songs in my home studio. Of necessity, the tracks feature me on every instrument…even, occasionally, drums, which I barely play. I’ve discovered that it’s a great way to start my day. If I feel like a rhumba, I write a rhumba. Or if I feel like a lonesome cowboy, I go with that. Most of these pieces will stay in the Score a Score catalog, untouched and un-monetized, but a few have been chosen for use. There’s a fast food chain in New England that is featuring a piece of mine in their commercials this month. A few bright-blue political candidates used my work in their campaign ads in the fall, which I was happy about. I won’t claim that this is the most artistic thing I do, but it has been a great exercise — and it’s the only way my drum skills will ever earn me a penny.
by Charlie Barnett | Jan 2, 2021 | Charlie's Blog, Home Page, News
I think about my mother a lot these days. She was a farm girl from Maine with a very no-nonsense approach to life. Once, when I was just starting out in music, I complained to her that I didn’t have enough work. She thought a bit and responded, “When we had downtime on the farm, we would go out to the shed and sharpen all the tools.”
I know that for a lot of people, especially those with small children, there has been precious little downtime since the pandemic began. Others, though, have had the opposite challenge: not enough work to fill the days. For me, it helps to keep my mom’s story in mind. When there’s no work to do, I practice piano. I practice guitar. I write music that nobody asked for. It doesn’t solve every problem, but it helps keep my creative tools sharp.
Hopefully sometime in 2021, after everyone has been vaccinated, we musicians can emerge, blinking, from our woodsheds and get back to the business of making music together. I wish you strength and health as you sharpen your tools until then.
by Charlie Barnett | Nov 20, 2020 | Charlie's Blog, News
We in my jazz band, Chaise Lounge, have been huddled on our bar stools and dreaming about the gigs we wish we could be playing. Luckily, right after our Christmas shows last year, we jumped into the studio and recorded all of our newest holiday songs. We finished most of the work in February, right before everything shut down. All that was left to record were the background vocals from the DMC (the Disinterested Men’s Chorus), which we guys were able to lay down remotely, each in his own quiet house.
Ace engineer Ken Schubert at Cue Recording Studios was able to take all the various tracks, put them together in a martini shaker, and voila! – a really cool new Chaise Lounge Christmas album, our second. Out Under the Sky features a mix of fresh originals like “Trimmin’ the Tree” along with our versions of traditional numbers. Our take on Blind Willie Johnson’s “Soul of a Man” features me on slide guitar and saxophonist Jeff Gray with a searing tenor solo. The CD is being pressed now and will drop on October 12. If you’re in a rush, you can already buy the digital version at our online store.
by Charlie Barnett | Oct 25, 2020 | Charlie's Blog, News
Everything we do right now is colored by our present circumstances. Sometimes, it works out well. I was recently commissioned by the Cantate Chamber Singers and their redoubtable conductor, Victoria Gau, to write a choral work that reflects the current moment. The text for the piece, I Hold Your Name, was commissioned from the poet Adrianna Smith. It was my first opportunity to work with a poet in such an interactive way. Her original libretto was beautiful, and if I asked for an alternate word that might include, say, more long vowels, she was right on top of it. My hope is that I fashioned the music in such a way that all of her lines are clear and understandable. The goal is to have some sort of performance in the spring. If a choir can feel safe singing a public performance, then we’ll know that we are somewhere close to normalcy.
by Charlie Barnett | Sep 16, 2020 | Charlie's Blog, News, Reviews
So here’s an unexpected development: My new solo album is on the FAI Folk Chart for August! “All By His Own Self” is #17 on the album chart; two songs from the album are on the song chart (“Hold Still” at #16 and “Corinna, Corinna” at #22); and I am #24 on the “Top Artists” chart.
If you’d like to hear selections or buy the album, you can find it at my online store.
