Back to the top

new song

New Song! “Were Those Really Days?”

Microphone with blue and light blue rays

“Were Those Really The Days?”

Were Those Really the Days?” the new opening number for the stage version of The American Songbook: Redacted, just went live on bandcamp!  It’s now part of the full studio album, available individually, OR you can get a free download code with any merch purchase between now and the start of the show’s run at the Edmonton International Fringe Theater Festival!

As the staged version of The American Songbook: Redacted evolved, through the development of the lyric videos and the refining of the stories and jokes between songs, I worked to come up with a new opening number that would capture the energy, intelligent silliness, and the vein of dark satire running through the show. I’m really happy with how “Were Those Really The Days?” hits all of those notes, with its nostalgic wall-of-sound production and its allusion to how people use false (or at best idealized) memories of the past to influence the present.

The sharp-eyed among you may notice that the previous opening song, “Remember It Better,” which hits the nostalgia theme through the lens of Heartland Rock, now closes out the album. I still really love the song and I think it makes an excellent epilogue for the project. If and when I get the budget to do a proper video special of the show I imagine this song running over the closing credits (complete with a Cannonball Run-esque blooper reel).

If you’re free in mid-August, come on up to Edmonton, Alberta, and check out The American Songbook: Redacted at the Fringe. I’ll be performing at the lovely Chianti Yardbird Suite, which is a nice mid-sized jazz club and the perfect environment for this show. Until then, enjoy “Were Those Really The Days?” and “Remember it Better” as the nostalgic bookends to a satirical look at American history and culture!

New Single is Out!

It’s Heeeere!

The first song from my non-comedy music album project is out! Start Over Again is now available on all the streaming platforms! Here it is on Spotify! And Apple Music! It’s even on YouTube and something called Amazon!

My inspiration for the project is early 80s post-punk, like Echo & the Bunneymen, Psychedelic Furs and others, mixed with some early 2000s rock revival, and I think this first track reflects more of the post-punk vibe. The full album will be released this fall and I’m planning on it having 10 originals and one cover (which I think will be a really fun surprise).

It took a while to decide which song would be the advance single and I think this one captures the mood and attitude of the album with a solid arrangement and a (hopefully) memorable hook. And the title “Start over Again” and the theme of starting over is the perfect subject for a song introducing a project that’s a pretty big departure from what I usually do.

“Why the departure?” you may ask? In a word: 2020. The pandemic shut down all of my comedy performances, the social upheaval and contentious election cycle really kept me out of the mindset of doing my usual brand of intelligently silly comedy, and the only thing that kept me going creatively was music. My weekly cover show Cover Tuesday was a welcome escape from everything that was going on, and learning and playing 12-14 new songs a week sharpened my ear so much that when I decided to do this project I was off and running at unexpectedly fast clip.

You can listen to the new track right in this nifty embedded player!

I really like it and I hope you do too, and I can’t wait for you to hear the rest of the album!

© Paravonian