A wonderful juggle: completing a recording while writing a book …
Many musicians juggle composing/performing careers with academic positions. For many years, until my recent retirement from teaching, I’ve been one of these people. I’ve also been among the subset of musicians whose work includes large scale writing projects within what I’ll term (pun intended) a “three-channel mix.” I refer to the trifecta of making music/teaching/writing. This balance act has been a good thing for me. Playing informs how I understand the music I write about, teaching sharpens how I articulate and explain my ideas, and writing (and the musical listening involved) influences my playing and composing. I enjoy this mix while very much appreciating the period following the conclusion of any of these projects, and with that, having the opportunity to regroup and consider where it all has brought me as a musician. The opportunity to relocate my own voice as a composer/player after submerging in other peoples’ work is really important. These points of calmer, more narrowed focus are also always great learning experiences, since everything has changed in some way, shape, or form.
I’ve now completed the first release of my new recording And Every Fleck of Russet. The recording became available exclusively on BandCamp on December 1. A second release will occur when the recording becomes available on multiple streaming platforms including Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal… on January 5, 2024. The “official” release date is January 15, 2024. At the same time, I await page proofs for the new book Pat Metheny: Stories Beyond Words. My task will become proofreading the manuscript and paginating the index. I’ve already chosen the musician names, terms, and key words that will be listed. While this aspect of a writing project may be a bit tedious, it is important to me. The index offers a way to present alternate paths by which readers can navigate the book; thus I carefully choose what terms are included and which subtopics are prioritized.
Here is the way the album, titled And every fleck of russet (Electricsongs Music, 2024) is described in the advance publicity:
“…a playful, musical boundary-crossing collection of Bob Gluck’s recent compositions. After a decade and a half of work that centers interaction between fellow musicians, And every fleck of russet, composed and recorded 2020-2023, is an introspective solo album. The music ranges across a broad canvas of emotions and textures, from evocative ballads to whimsical and fantastical regalia. The album concept has roots in Gluck’s long fascination with Bill Evans’ multitracked solo piano album “Conversations With Myself” in its interplay between melodic directness and layered complexity. And every fleck of russet expands this sonic pallet beyond the piano to electronic sounds rooted in Gluck’s early recording career, and his fascination with precursors of keyboard instruments including the dulcimer.”
The album title, incidentally, is inspired by a line from the Robert Frost poem “After Apple Picking.” I was looking for a line from a poem that fulfilled one single purpose, a reference to the color field captured in the front and rear photographs I took of the brown, orange, and yellow autumn leaves just as Summer shifted into Fall. Russet seemed about right and Robert Frost being a favorite poet of mine… it all fell into place.
The liner notes, addressing each individual track, can be found on my Bandcamp page (https://bobgluck.bandcamp.com/album/and-every-fleck-of-russet). One aspect I do not address there are the ways that writing about Pat Metheny influenced this musical work. These are not obvious when you listen to And every fleck of russet. Listening closely to Metheny’s work pointed my attention to certain ideas about musical form, as well as some elements of his sonic vocabulary, each of which found their way into my musical work. For example, a few tracks include layers of plucked string sounds; among these are the ballad that opens the album, “Something Happening,” which sets up a timbral contrast between plucked string sounds and several layers of pianos, and the intentionally humorous third track, “Abundantly,” which takes an unexpected turn when masses of plucked string instruments suddenly jump to the fore within the mix.
The plucked string instruments aren’t guitars but rather a variety of hammered dulcimers. To some degree, the “stringiness” of some of the textures have a loose connection in my mind to aspects of Pat Metheny’s sound palate (particularly his Pikasso 42-string instrument and, from “Imaginary Day” and later, an unfretted acoustic guitar). Even so, the specific sonic choices more deeply speak to my interest in precursors of the modern piano, specifically harpsichord and clavichord. I’ve come to think of the hammered dulcimer as a clavichord without the wooden enclosure or its mechanical striking mechanism initiated by depressing a key. While I’ve been playing hammered dulcimer this past year (often processed with various kinds of electronics), the dulcimer sounds on this recording are sampled, the goal being to access a broader range of dulcimer sounds than my own can produce.
The other Metheny-influenced idea that seeps into And every fleck of russet is multi-section musical forms that gradually and steadily unfold as if walking through a railroad flat apartment, at times featuring bass lines that move stepwise, sometimes clouding how one might mentally and emotionally process the ambiguous harmonies that result. As multi-sectional works with unusual harmonic movement, tracks five, “Lost World,” and seven, “24 of December,” most directly fit this description. Other, unrelated influences inform additional tracks, for instance track six, “Enmeshed,” which is a playful homage to the spinning motion of the Bach’s C-minor Prelude from the Well Tempered Clavier. Also here, dulcimer sounds make a surprise appearance towards the conclusion of this track, returning us to the theme of “stringy” sounds.
And every fleck of russet was created over a two-year period. I have been recovering from an auto accident that made it impossible for me to sit at a keyboard. For this reason, I spent my musical time composing, playing, and recording while standing up during 20-30-minute intervals. It came as a surprise to me to discover that I had created solid versions of forty minutes of material. This realization suggested the possibility that I had a nearly completed album. I did some re-recording, added a new fifteen-minute piece with a new modular analog synthesizer with an extended keyboard synthesizer solo, and voila, the album was complete.
The timbre I use for this solo instrument (performed on a Roli Seaboard, an unusual keyboard that looks like a long strip of black foam imprinted with key-like shapes) was influenced in equal measure by Pat Metheny’s Roland guitar synthesizer playing and Robert Fripp’s long-sustained fuzz Gibson Les Paul guitar sound. The timbre is one part cello, one part trumpet, and one part fuzz guitar, and I play it in a manner akin to a cross between a synthesizer ribbon controller and unfretted guitar.
The book project emerged in large part from my experience playing some of Metheny’s repertoire during performances in 2019 and 2020, concluding nine months prior to the auto accident. My set-up for each of these dates was a piano or digital keyboard plus the Roli Seaboard, and I often drew upon the cello-trumpet-fuzz guitar timbre. Thus, my return to this sound on the final track of And every fleck of russet is a reprise of the instrumentation on those gigs (with the addition of the “stringy dulcimer choir,” as I affectionately call it). A few of those Metheny-centered trio sets took place in a wonderful remote studio that easily accommodated pandemic era trio sessions (separate rooms, great ventilation, and wonderful musicians); two were live broadcasts and all were well recorded. One of these will become available during this coming year; it is being mixed right now and I am thrilled with it. You’ll hear more about the recordings and the musicians at a later date!
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