New Video from Little Silver

Little Silver at the Asbury Park release show for Somewhere You Found My Name back in July

"One Stepper"

Hey. I've been sharing lots of the one-off things like individual videos and songs over at Check This Out, but I wanted to give this one a special shoutout. Our good friends in Little Silver just released a video for Somewhere You Found My Name track "One Stepper."

The song is upbeat power pop in the vein of something like The New Pornographers, but it deals with some pretty serious subject matter. The video, directed by Alexis Fleisig, places Steve Curtis and Erika Simonian inside one of those old, tube TV things. Remember those? I do. We even had one where we had to jam half of a clothespin under the tuner dial in order to get the channels to come in clearly, so the constant adjustments in the video ring true.

Little Silver's Somewhere You Found My Name is available now. I've started working on my year-end list of favorite albums, and I'll be using that to talk about some of the many, many records I listened to this year that I was either too lazy or too distracted to write about here. So... yeah...

Premiere: New Song from Little Silver. They Play The Asbury on 7/20.

Photo: Addie Juell

"You Slept Through Summer"

CDMHQ is in Little Silver, NJ. It's a small, riverside borough near the Jersey Shore. Small creeks run throughout the town, and there's still a good bit of marshy woodsiness in a few spots. Little Silver is also the town where I grew up; and, I guess, it exerts some kind of pull on people because -- after years of living away from the town -- I came back. Erika Simonian and her husband, Steve Curtis, decided to name their band after the town where Erika spent her childhood.

Simonian went off into the world and has played with bands like The Erics. Curtis is a founding member of the influential Americana / folk band Hem. The four-piece Little Silver, with Ray Rizzo (drums) and David Tarica (bass), make music that's perfect for those contemplative moments you can find as you sit in your small town backyard alone after the guests have left your summer party.

The band will be releasing their debut full-length, Somewhere You Found My Name, on July 21st; and today we're premiering "You Slept Through Summer" from that collection. The song is a slow build as the band fills the space around the vocals of Simonian and Curtis until things take off into the atmosphere.

Of the song, the band says, "'You Slept Through Summer' is a song about attempting to reach someone you love, as you watch them wall themselves off or drift away. It's a call to fight, to wake up, to come home."

You can listen to "You Slept Through Summer" below, and you can pre-order Somewhere You Found My Name from the band.



...andandand...

Little Silver will be celebrating the release of Somewhere You Found My Name with a show, brought to you by yours truly, at The Asbury Hotel on Thursday, July 20th. Joining Little Silver on that bill will be Renee Maskin of Lowlight and Rachel Ana Dobken. It's kind of a homecoming show for Erika. There's no cover. I'll see you there.

Guest List: Little Silver's Top 10 of What We Liked, Loved, Listened To, and Watched in 2013

To Old Friends and New...

I've gone on -- perhaps a little boringly -- about the many cool things that have happened as a result of my running this blog: meeting new people, making new friends, taking lots of pictures. Well we need to add to that list "reconnecting with old friends."

The first interview I've ever done outside of a school project came earlier this year with one of my dear friends, Little Silver's (the town AND the band) Erika Simonian. It's up over at Speak Into My Good Eye, and it's called "Less Than 10 Questions with Erika Simonian of Little Silver." Funny thing is, it's actually exactly 10 questions; but I think I wrote down the number 7 next to two of them in my draft, so... my bad.

Anyway, for a variety of reasons -- many of which, I hope, will become apparent below -- I asked Erika and her partner both in life and in music, Steve Curtis, if they wouldn't mind putting together a Best of 2013 list for us here. The rules for these things are very loose at CoolDad Music; and I'm happy to report that Erika and Steve took advantage of that fact to share with us not only those "New in 2013" things they shared with each other this year, but also some of the things that they discovered and re-discovered together in 2013.

Little Silver’s Top 10 Of What We Liked, Loved, Listened To and Watched in 2013!
by Erika Simonian with Steve Curtis

If you were a member of our family, you could say 2013 flew by to the soundtrack of "The Wheels on the Bus," which, if you have any experience here, you might have noticed delivers more immediate gratification than “Old McDonald." (You get to the animal sounds a little faster.) Anyway, you’ll be relieved to know neither made our "Best Of" list.

This list will include the "Best Of, According to Steve," "Best Of, According to Erika," and then the rarest category of all: "Best Of, Agreed upon and According to Both of Us." And then come the sub-groups: "Best Of That Actually Came out in 2013" and "Best Of What We Listened to / Watched / Experienced / Re-discovered in 2013." Try to keep up.

Thanks so much, CoolDad. When you ask, we (try our best to) deliver.

10. Film: Honeysuckle Rose

This gem came out in 1980, but Steve and I have re-discovered its entertaining goodness. It stars Willie Nelson and Dyan Cannon, and you can’t not love the music (all Willie’s), the band (Willie’s band), the outlaw fights in the desert, and the overall messin-up in life. Willie plays Buck Bonham, who is, let’s face it, Willie Nelson and acting out Willie Nelson's life story.

9. Music: Repave -- Volcano Choir

This is just a beautiful album.  Justin Vernon and friends: members of All Tiny Creatures and Collections of Colonies of Bees. Anyway, I fell face-first into this one and its been a definite favorite of mine from this past year.

8. Video: “Bad Dancer” -- Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band

This particular video could win "Best or Worst" video, whatever you prefer. The fact is, the video is really fun, actually, and the song was mixed by Mike D and Ad-Rock. They appear in it (as dancers) as well. It’s a gimmick of a song, but a fun video. To get the experience, you can watch it exactly once -- maybe even just half of it -- and never revisit it.

7. Band: Schwerveon!

Anything this band does is awesome. It is one thing to listen to their recordings, which I do think are great; but if you ever have a chance to see them live, they are dynamic to the nth degree and will light you up inside. Matt and Nan are a couple, he plays guitar and sings, she plays drums and sings. And sometimes there’s even some awkward couple-banter in there, which is interesting in this case because they are both entertaining people without even trying.

6. Theater: Fun Home  -- The Public Theater, NYC

2013! If you've read Alison Bechdel’s disturbing and brilliantly written graphic novel, you know the story. The brilliance of the book came in her storytelling. She told it through all the crazy, corner-of-the-mind detail that little kids notice and remember. It’s a tale of her father’s not-really-repressed homosexuality and her own coming-out story. Michael Cerveris plays her father in this musical production and the piece, overall, was really arresting. The young, 8 year old version of Alison delivers an amazing performance; it’s almost freaky to see a child actor in that much command of her body, facial expressions and voice. It's still running so I recommend seeing it before it goes to Broadway.

5. Music: Departure and Farewell -- Hem

So, obviously, this comes from me, Erika, as Steve would sooner stick needles in his eyeballs than tout his own music; but Hazel and I played it on repeat while Steve toured most of this summer and fall in support of this long-awaited album. My love affairs here are with two tracks in particular: "The Jack Pine" -- which we in Little Silver cover from time to time -- and then the final song on the album, “Last Call,"  incredibly beautiful music; plus I’m a sucker for good drinking songs.

4. Music: Muchacho -- Phosphorescent

If you can’t tell by now, I am most drawn to fuzzy, dreamy, (some may say depressing) music. I feel like this album is the same speed as my blood flow, which would mean I am the somatic equivalent of a mid-tempo rock and roll song; but there is a sort of heart-swelling quality to this album that I really love.

3. Music: “Knuckleball Catcher” -- Gillian Welch and David Rawlings

Steve and I heard them perform this song a few years ago and have been searching for  a recording of it ever since. The closest we’ve come is a live video of a performance at the 2008 Newport Folk Festival. Well, I can say that this song brought both of us to our knees. Living in Boston, Gillian got really into baseball and used to watch Fenway games from her roof-top. The song depicts the intrinsic let-down of being invested in, let’s face it, a game. Here’s the brilliant, punch-you-in-the-gut line: “That’s the last time I let a stranger / Break my heart this way”.

2. Music: Aheym -- Bryce Dessner, performed by Kronos Quartet

These four pieces by Bryce Dessner  (The National) are incredibly captivating. AND... this particular selection happens to fall into two overlapping categories: "Actually Released in 2013" and "DING DING DING DING DIIIIINNNNGGGG! Steve and I agree!” These pieces are an odyssey for both of us, and we just get lost. We even stop talking when we listen to it, which is very, very rare. I should’ve added that as a category above: “Released in 2013 and Makes Steve and Erika Stop Prattling on about Household Logistics.”

1. Music: Dream River -- Bill Callahan

A bit of a moody dreamscape, Dream River, and hence true to its name.  Though I happen to really like Bill Callahan, I find men LOVE HIM. So I think it can only be one of two things here: He’s either saying something that men particularly relate to, or his voice is so low that they are unconsciously recalling hearing their father’s voices in utero. What this second choice means is that Bill Callahan is EVERY MAN’S FATHER -- no small thing -- and so his album deserves the #1 spot on this list.

Extra Thing That Everybody Loves:

Comedy, and truth: Louis CK

Just love this guy. He says everything I’m thinking but don’t even realize I’m thinking it. Until he says it, of course.

First-Ever CoolDad Interview: Erika Simonian of Little Silver

Catching Up with a Friend

I had a chance to interview my old friend -- old as in "long-time," not old as in "old." We're not old. -- Erika Simonian of the band Little Silver for Speak Into My Good Eye. We spoke, live and in-person, and reconnected at Little Silver's Glasslands show in February. Afterwards, we exchanged a few emails in which Erika answered a bunch of questions for me about Little Silver's songwriting and recording process and how becoming parents has affected their lives as musicians.

This was one of my favorite answers:


Has becoming parents affected your songwriting?

Becoming parents has affected our songwriting in the sense that it’s harder to find flexible time to do it, the way we did when we were childless. Pre-baby, if an idea struck, you could pick up a guitar right then and there and start working. Now it’s about quickly recording a semblance of the idea that floated through your head, and waiting for nap time or bed time. Actually, one morning Steve woke up saying, “I just dreamed the coolest lyric,” and he related to me this confusing and enigmatic line. I responded with, “I just woke from a dream that we washed Hazel’s winter coat, and I was so sad to wake up and realize it’s not true.”

My own father was chastising me the other day over the fact that CoolDaughter #2's winter coat was so dirty. If you're working, blogging, exercising, making music, trying to keep your house together, you don't always have as much time to wash the kid's winter coat as you'd like. It would be great if it could just happen while you slept.

Go over to Little Silver's Bandcamp page and get yourself some of their music.

Little Silver Performing in a Basement

...and at Glasslands on February 5th

I'd been meaning to post this since I saw it a couple of weeks ago.

Secret Sound Shop posted a great looking and great sounding video of Little Silver performing two songs from their 2010 EP, The Stolen Souvenir, in a Brooklyn basement.  The husband and wife duo of Erika Simonian and Steve Curtis do a quiet and intimate version of "Sleep 'til Morning" along with their cover of Simonian's All the Plastic Animals track, "Food from the Cow."

If you'd like to hear more from Little Silver, you can check out their Bandcamp page.  They'll also be appearing live at Glasslands Gallery in Brooklyn on February 5th.

And, on a personal note, I would just like to express my thanks to the band for naming themselves after the location of CoolDad Music HQ.

Little Silver

Dress Up Covers EP 

I love cover songs.  I used to think I just liked hearing my favorite artists perform songs I knew.  But more and more, I think there's just something special that happens when an artist chooses to interpret someone else's song.  That theory is given weight by this EP from Brooklyn husband and wife duo Little Silver as I had heard the original of only one of the selections, The Cure's "Pictures of You," prior to listening to the collection.  Little Silver are Erika Simonian and Steve Curtis.

Each of the songs gets, in the words of the duo's website, "an honest barebones LS treatment," and does achieve something special.  Most of the tracks include just Simonian and Curtis singing and playing their guitars.  The lone exception is a full band cover of The Speedies' "Let Me Take Your Photo," which probably represents the biggest departure from the original.  As with all good covers, the fact that Little Silver are fans of these songs comes across clearly in the performances.

Full disclosure:  Little Silver take their name from the town where I currently live, and Erika and I both grew up here and are old friends.

So don't take my word for it.  You can listen to Dress Up yourself for free and then purchase it directly from the band at their website.