Christmas In The Dollhouse

Hi!!! Here’s a compilation I put together over the past month or so. It’s called CHRISTMAS IN THE DOLLHOUSE and features new music by Cheap City, Max Kennedy, and lots more. All proceeds are going directly to the NH Food Bank so please take a listen and donate below:

Cheap City Live in Portland

This Saturday! Cheap City will be performing at SPACE in Portland along with Lahnah and Fon Fon Ru. Tickets available at space538.org. see you there <3

7. x7"

“New music from Cheap City” alert! From The Diary of Raymond Wessex Pt. 1 is on this wacky 7” compilation with 6 other bands. It’s called 7.x7” Check it out!

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Junkluggers

The final entry in Dollhouse Lightning’s 2020 run of cassette singles is Cheap City’s Junkluggers. This latin-jazz inspired track is really a public service annoucement. Are you planning on visiting Cheap City? Make sure you take a listen so you know how to properly sort your trash and recycling for pickup. AND GET A CASSETTE BABY.

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The Missing Piece

Hi! Very excited to announce that my new opera THE MISSING PIECE will be debuting online on October 28th. This campy horror opera was written specifically for the internet as a venue and will be performed by Strange Trace (and me!) You can preorder the CD now and RSVP to the live online premiere of this beautifully edited performance .

Five Events From January 2014

In 2014 I wrote a semi autobiographical string quartet called Five Events From January 2014. It’s only been available on bandcamp until NOW! Thanks to cassette technology Dollhouse Lightning has released a super limited edition of SIX. Get them NOW.

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Social Media Song

Here is the new video from Strange Trace! Music by Felix Jarrar from his opera Mother Goose. This was performed by Erin Matthews, and it was my first time trying out animation:

Strange Trace presents another entry in our Opera Excerpts Project. Today, Erin sings "Social Media Song" from Felix Jarrar's Mother Goose. Directed, recorde...

The Pierre Boulez Memorial Remix

About a year and a half ago Cheap City put out a song called The Pierre Boulez Memorial Discotheque. THEN we remixed it. Today we decided to put out 6 copies of this on cassette. They’re cheap! They’re cassettes!

https://cheapcity.bandcamp.com/album/the-pierre-boulez-memorial-remix

Close Your Eyes

For the next few weeks Strange Trace will be premiering our performances of excerpts of Felix Jarrar’s opera “Mother Goose.” The first video, “Close Your Eyes” is out today!



Emails From Gary

In 2017 I wrote a micro-opera about a pretty traumatic work experience. I used the actual phone calls I had with my boss at the time and transcribed everything we said. This year I revised the work (and finally got around to changing his name oops!) and tonight Strange Trace is premiering it!



COAXIAL

I was very honored and excited to recieve a commission from LA’s Coaxial Arts Foundation for a video work to be included in their summer series. It premiered last Saturday night and will stay up on their twitch channel for a couple weeks at which point I’ll add my video to youtube:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/704815020

I HAVE REALLY COOL STUDENTS

If you’ve ever worked with kids maybe under the age of 10 or so, you know that their attention spans are really short. I mean I’m about to turn 26 and I get pretty bored with just about anything after twenty minutes. So when I’m teaching private lessons I try to make sure I have like, 7 or 8 short activities ready for the younger students. When I can feel them getting particularly bored one of my favorite things to do is to just start improvising on the piano and have them narrate a story. The prompt is usually something like, “If this was in a movie, what would be happening?”

So last summer I was teaching a lesson and I could feel us getting to that point where the student was totally losing interest and I was running out of things to do so I had us try narrating some music. Here’s what she came up with:

“So one night this guy is sleeping in his bed next to his wife. At the same time a giant asteroid hits Mars and breaks into a bunch of pieces and one of those pieces comes hurtling towards Earth. It crashes into this lake next to the guys house and water goes flying everywhere. But only this one guy hears it. So he gets up and is walking very quietly down the stairs because he doesn’t want to wake his wife up, who is a very heavy sleeper. That explains why she didn’t wake up when the asteroid hit the lake. So this guy goes out to inspect the source of the noise and the water and he walks out towards the lake and sees that all the water is gone and there’s a giant asteroid in the center of where the lake used to be. ‘Wow!’ he says. At that very moment ANOTHER asteroid hits this guy and kills him. This time his wife wakes up and she walks out to find him crushed to death beneath this asteroid. So she opens a museum dedicated to these asteroids and it makes her a lot of money and she gets remarried and is much much happier. The end.”

Last week I tried the same activity with another student. I had my Real Book open to Nica’s Dream (which I’m writing an arrangement of for Cheap City right now but that’s another thing) so I started playing it for him.

“Well, Nica’s Dream is… First she dreams of mountains. Big mountains. But scary mountains. That’s Nica’s Dream. I mean, Nica’s dream is always sad. But it’s always happy. That’s Nica’s dream. Now she dreams of trains and clouds and being very quiet. That’s Nica’s dream.”

I really like being in a position where I get to help kids explore their creativity. I like teaching them piano too but I also think it’s a little boring (at least for me) for it to just be, “Okay here’s the one or two songs we’re going to learn this week and that’s it.” I obviously want to teach that stuff too but I also think it’s really important that my students learn pretty quickly that being a musician isn’t necessarily just reading notes off of a page.


The first music I really loved was punk music, so I started a band when I was in middle school. And the first thing that we did was just start writing our own songs, partly because none of us were necessarily good enough to play covers (but we did anyway) and partly because we thought that was the only thing we were supposed to do. And when I started really studying music theory and composition I really thought that everyone in classical music was a composer. My impression was that orchestra musicians were like the cover bands of classical music, and that was just their gig while they work on composing. Which is definitely true for some people, but I had this notion that all musicians must be writing. It wasn’t until I was almost out of high school, which is a little embarrassing, that I realized that I was totally wrong. I think that my first impulse towards becoming a composer was completely misguided, but I like that.

I wonder how the musical landscape would change if composition and / or improv were a standard part of education. I know there are some schools that value this, but I think studying composition outside of a standard theory class is pretty rare. I did my first degree at Hampshire College, and no one walked out of that music department without improvising A LOT. I really value that experience. Right now I’m teaching a group class called “Intro to Piano and Songwriting,” where my students (about 7 of them) get to write their own music in conjunction with learning the basics of piano and music. At least one of them has said to me that they like writing more than they do playing, which is pretty cool for me because I think that’s relatively rare. This student is also in like third grade. Obviously I want them to love playing piano too, but one thing at a time.


BREAK UP SONGS ARE DUMB?

Should we be writing break up songs?


I guess I want to be a little more specific than ‘break up songs,’ but should we be writing songs that make references either explicitly or indirectly to the actions of romantic partners? It’s one thing to write something expressing loneliness or unrequited love, but it’s totally another thing to write songs in the vein of the misogyny early 2000s pop punk bands. I’m sometimes torn on the situation because I’m primarily interested in storytelling and I feel like all stories are valid in one way or another. So it boils down to the presentation of the story. I think if David Berman and Jeff Rosenstock and Laura Jane Grace can all write songs that are obviously about break ups without needing to call someone a ‘bitch’ or a ‘slut’ to get the point across then Taking Back Sunday and whoever else can probably do it too?


I’ve been thinking about this lately because my partner recently reminded me that their ex had written a song about their relationship. It’s particularly hateful and makes a lot of insensitive and fucked up comments about mental health. I don’t know what it feels like to know a song is definitely about you, and that there have been people singing along to it. It probably doesn’t feel very good. And I’m sure that my partner’s ex has the right to his feelings, I wonder if there was a more sensitive way to write a song about them?


When I was in my first band in high school I wrote this song about a relationship that didn’t work out the way I wanted it to. I went back and listened to it today and I don’t think there’s anything explicitly in the lyrics about the person it was directed at. But what I remember happening is that I wrote this song and my band played it and someone along the line said to this person, “Oh Greg’s band wrote this song about you.” I shouldn’t have told anyone what the song was about to begin with but when that person was (understandably) pretty upset about it, instead of apologizing I just dug my heels in and confirmed it. I was an angry and depressed 16 year old and was telling myself that I didn’t care about others feelings, which of course wasn’t true but it was too late. I’d like to think that if I ended up in the same situation now I’d handle the whole thing differently. But in retrospect I made that person feel really shitty, even though I think I was entitled to being initially upset. I guess the thing about these kind of songs is that it makes moving on from the situation pretty tough, because then I had to play that song with my band every weekend. I mean, I don’t think there was one show where that song wasn’t played. And I didn’t do myself any favors because even though I knew I had really bummed this person out, I wrote ANOTHER one. A pretty explicit song actually.


And did I learn my lesson? Nope. I did the same thing in college (although it was super indirect and the object of the song told me that they thought it was pretty cool but it doesn’t matter). I’m at a point in my life now where I’ve graduated to writing about more interesting topics, or at least I’m less mean.


The whole point I’m trying to make here is that mean songs maybe just aren’t cool? Maybe just be nice? Or like, if you’re sad about getting dumped you don’t have to be a fucking misogynistic prick about it probably.


TEACHING MUSIC + CONSENT

Hi!


The past two months have been really busy and crazy for me.


  1. I GOT MARRIED TO MY BEST FRIEND. The wedding was so fun and amazing and then we spent a few days in Montreal and then came home to see David Lang’s new opera in Boston.

  2. Cheap City went on tour and it was really fun. Our next show is January 11th at Pink Noise in Somerville (where we’ll be recording our new full length in February)

  3. I applied to PhD and DMA programs. Nothing to say about it except bye bye money and hello waiting game.

  4. The Mazumal duo premiered my piece “Describe Vapor Again” with text by Glynnis Eldridge. And Kelvyn Koning and Alissa Voth premiered my piece “Offertory For My Upstairs Neighbor.” Quorum Boston will be performing “Things At The Apex” twice in December.


Okay so I haven’t written here in a hot minute but I’m planning on CATCHING UP this month and the first thing I want to talk about is teaching music with physical consent.


I’m really lucky to say that I’m in a position where 90% of my time is devoted to music. I have one side job these days but the rest of my time is spent writing, practicing, performing, and teaching and that’s pretty cool. This fall I started teaching group classes. First at the community music school school in Nashua that I teach at, and recently I started teaching a few classes at the local boys and girls club.


Tonight something happened that made me really happy. When parents were picking up their kids one of the moms came up to me and said, “Thank you for not making {daughter’s name} give you high fives.” I said “No problem,” but then it occured to me that I hadn’t actually realized how important that was until she said something. I feel like every once in a while that article will float around on facebook about we shouldn’t force young relatives to give hugs or kisses at holiday gatherings and this is the same thing. So what the mom was referring to was that last week when this girl was leaving I said, “Good job today! Do you want to do a fist bump?” She said, “No.” Then I said, “Do you want a high five?” She said, “No,” and I said, “Okay!” and that was the end of it. As I’m writing this I’m thinking back to being much younger and having to give my grandmother these really uncomfortable hugs that I always dreaded.


So tonight I’ve been thinking more in depth about consent when it relates specifically to teaching music and here are some thoughts.


  1. If possible, be somewhere where you’re not blocking the door to your studio. Your student should feel like they have complete agency to leave the room if they need to. This is kind of harder to do if you’re teaching piano or a large stationary instrument but i think it’s worth it, and it’s a subtle effort that counts for a lot.

  2. I can’t speak for other instruments, but when I teach piano, particularly to younger kids, it’s easier to physically show them how to do something than it is to describe it. So sometimes when my students are just starting out and they don’t understand which finger to use,, I’ll ask them for permission to move their finger for them. I’ll gently push their finger down on the correct key so they know, and that’s the end of it. But the important part is that I always ask if this is okay with them. Sometimes a student will say no, and to be honest it makes the task a little more difficult if they’re already not understanding what’s going on, but giving them the option of expressing their consent to be touched is so important.


I can think of at least five or six instances in my education where I felt like my personal space was being violated by a teacher. And I want to be clear that these were never instances of abuse or explicit misconduct, but rather moments made me feel uncomfortable enough that focusing on my lesson wasn’t really an option. For example, I briefly took lessons in the Taubman piano technique, which I hated. Not just because it was really hard to unlearn over a decade of playing habits, but because my teacher had decided that the only way she could show me how to get from point A to point B was to just aggressively handle my fingers. I was never in pain but it was deeply uncomfortable. I wonder how many people have ended up not continuing music lessons because of something like this (or worse) and then I think about how easy it would be for music teachers across the board to implement simple but more physically respectful teaching styles.


But it’s not just about making sure that kids (and adults!) are comfortable in their music lessons. It’s about teaching people that they have the right to control their own bodies and giving them a space to feel comfortable in.


LONG DAY IN HOLYOKE

The other day I drove out to Holyoke, MA for a rehearsal with Cheap City. We rent a space about two or three blocks removed from kind of the center of downtown. So I got there earlier than I intended to be and decided to drive down the road to this gas station that has a Subway and Dunkin Donuts and whatever. My partner had just texted me asking if I could pick up some flu medicine and some batteries for smoke detector which had started beeping that morning. And I was starving so I figured I had plenty of time to get these errands done and get to practice maybe even a little early still.

While I’m pumping gas I see this guy wandering around the parking lot. His clothes are disheveled and tattered and he looks very confused. This particular gas station often has a lot of people asking for change, so when he’s approaching me I figure that he’s going to ask me for some money. Sure enough he comes up to me and says, “You got any change for me?” I say, “No I’m really sorry.” He suddenly screws his face up in anger, as if he can’t possibly believe what I’m saying to him. “You’re a n****r!” Well both of us are white and I could smell some alcohol on him and I didn’t really know what to say. “Okay.” And then he walks away.

So I head inside the gas station so I can buy something at Subway. There’s this dude in line in front of me. Super tough guy. Like, he’s wearing a t shirt and his muscles are just bursting out of this shirt and he has a teardrop tattoo and the whole thing. But I notice he’s having a really hard time ordering his food. The girl working there (who admittedly wasn’t moving too quick either) is asking him what kind of bread he wants and he seems genuinely confused that they have multiple kinds of bread. He has the same sort of reaction to the selection of meat and don’t even get me started on his fascination at the toaster. It was like he was in The Twilight Zone and came from a universe without toasted sandwiches. I’m trying not to get impatient with him but he looks at me and says, “I’m really sorry man. I’ve been in jail for the past twenty years. I got out today and this Subway thing is confusing.” “No worries,” I tell him. “Take your time.” Even though internally I’m thinking, “They probably had different kinds of breads available twenty years ago. Maybe even in jail?” I’ve never been to jail and I definitely can’t speak to the trauma of incarceration. Maybe he was truly attempting to process freedom in such a way that he was unable to choose his bread. I don’t know and I’m not judging. I’m just observing, albeit with a certain extent of wonder. So the girl behind the counter is almost done making his sandwich and she asks if he wants any spices or sauce or whatever. He says, “I honestly have no idea. What do you think?” She says, “Well I think oregano would go great on this.”

“What the fuck is that?”

“Oregano? Well, it’s like an Italian herb. It’s good. I think you’ll like it.”

“O-re-ga-no? Well they didn’t have that shit back in my day but I’ll give it a try. Why not? It probably won’t kill me.”

I’m thinking to myself how tragic it would be if he somehow turned out to be allergic to oregano. So he finally pays for his sandwich and I order mine which somehow takes this girl a good 15 minutes to make - I’m starting to get nervous about being late for practice. I order simply a bunch of veggies on toasted bread. That’s it. The girl stops putting things on the bread and says, “You know I’ve seen a lot of things before but I’ve never seen anyone just eat veggies on bread before.”

“Okay,” I say, waiting for her to please finish making the sandwich so I can get going.

She’s still just standing there staring at me. After what feels like an eternity of silence she says, “Well I guess I should finish making this.”

“Yes please,” I say making an admittedly lame attempt at being polite and not annoyed. At this point I start to wonder if I have a problem with patience. On one hand, it’s really not the end of the world if it takes a couple extra minutes for me to get a sandwich made. On the other, it’s a little annoying that this woman keeps stopping to chat with me when I obviously look like I’m in a mild rush.

So she finishes the sandwich and I remember that I’m supposed to buy batteries and medicine. This is the gas station where those things are behind the counter so I walk up and wait at the cash register. The cashier is having a conversation with another employee so I don’t say anything and just wait patiently. At one point she realizes I’m there and stops talking, turns and stares at me, and then turns around again to keep talking. Finally I muster up the courage to say, “I’m sorry to interrupt but can I make a purchase?”

She turns slowly.

“Yeah?! What can I get ya?”

“Could I get a nine volt battery?”

“We don’t got those.”

“Oh, I can see them behind you. They’re on the top shelf there.”

She turns slowly.

“Oh you mean these triple As?”

“No the nine volt please.”

“Oh you mean these double As?”

“No the nine volt please.”

“We don’t got those.”

“It’s the square one?”

“Oh you mean the rectangle.”

“Yes.”

She hands me the battery.

“Can I also get some Day-Quil and Ny-Quil?” I ask.

“We don’t got those here neither.”

“They’re on the bottom shelf.”

“Oh okay.”

She grabs some Advil.

“Oh actually could I please have the Day-Quil and Ny-Quil? They’re in the bottles. It’s liquid?”

“We don’t got those.”

“I can see them. Bottom shelf to the left.”

“Oh yeah.”

She grabs them and says, “Oh you don’t wanna buy these here. They’re way too expensive.”

I can see the price. They’re $5 each. I don’t buy Quils often so I’m not sure if that’s an expensive price or not but it doesn’t seem too bad to me. “No that’s okay. Can I just get them please?”

“Hey it’s your money.”

So I make the purchase and walk back to my car, realizing I’ve been in this gas station for about 35 minutes and am now very late to practice. As I get in my car I see some cops talking to the guy who asked me for change earlier

To totally change subjects, I’m getting married on Friday! I kind of can’t believe that it’s actually happening. Not in the sense that I have cold feet, but in the sense that we spent the past year and a half planning this thing and it’s finally here. Of course everyone I’ve talked to about weddings told me that the last week before it is the most stressful and I really didn’t believe them but holy shit they were right. We have people telling us they can’t come, people saying that they CAN come after all, people trying to change their meals, people trying to bring last minute guests, bubbling family drama, and I STILL haven’t written my vows and we’ve got about 72 hours to go here. On the bright side I’m wearing a tie decorated with rubber ducks, I get to marry my best friend, and our first dance is a Silver Jews song.

Even three or four years ago I wasn’t super interested in marriage. I mean, I liked the idea of it - I like the symbolism of commitment I mean. But I don’t think I was ready for the commitment. I know a lot of people will say that getting married doesn’t change anything, that you don’t have to prove your love to the state, only to each other. And I agree with that to a certain sense but I really think it does change things. It’s interesting to me because a few years ago I had no interest in this. I was relatively neutral about marriage and didn’t really want kids. Now I’ve totally flipped and I’m all about that domestic life. I really enjoy just making coffee in the morning, doing some laundry, and teaching some piano lessons. I love being on tour and doing the band thing, and don’t plan on stopping that anytime soon, but I’ve realized I’m really happy with how my life is set up.

A few weeks ago I came on a local radio show to help promote the Nashua Community Music School, where I teach a few days a week. The guy hosting the show played some of my music and asked me some questions about my work as a performer and teacher. At one point he said, “Why don’t you just move to New York or LA and make a ton of money? You’re talented enough.” This guy is from a different generation. He grew up playing drums and guitar in New York in the 70s. I tried to explain to him that moving to a big city to “make it big” is a myth. I also tried to explain that I’m really happy living in New Hampshire. I get to teach, I get commissioned to write pieces, and I play in a band that puts out records and tours. And I’m not paying a billion dollars to live in a closet. What more could I ask for?

I guess I wish more people would realize that there are so many ways to be an artist, and there’s not one right way to do it. Some people act like if your band isn’t playing a show every week then you must not be active. Some people think that if you’re not living in a huge city then you’re never going to “make it.” That raises a whole separate question about what “making it” means. It looks different for everybody. I’m just happy to be doing what I’m doing. I want to keep moving forward with my life and make the things I want to make and not worry about what anyone else is working on.