In 2004 I started promoting the album Should Confusion by mailing out CDs to addresses I found in the Indie Bible. It seemed like it was mostly a wasted effort and by 2005, all I had succeeded at was getting myself at the top of Google, above some high school athlete whose name in long lists of athletic stats kept getting search results.

I was single for the first time in many years, and I moved into an apartment with Damian (MC Frontalot) in Brooklyn and started writing sad songs about my failed relationship, some of which would later end up on Underhill Downs. I was working as a receptionist in the Empire State Building and feeling frustrated about my music aspirations when an internet radio show called Indie Pop Rocks! started playing some of my tunes. Suddenly I started getting emails about my music from complete strangers, like this guy from Florida:

Mar 14, 2005, Chris Harry wrote:
I'm sure you're quite busy, but I'm a drummer/writer in florida, and I think your music is great!  I heard 'someday when we're old' on indie pop rocks mp3 radio...  I wanted to ask if you're into collaborating on songs?

Mar 14
Good to meetcha. I live in Brooklyn. What do you have in mind? I love trying to write songs over other people's beats, it just takes a long time to finish I guess. Been dabbling in some new musical directions.

Mar 16, 2005, Chris Harry wrote:
(Beats attached) I gave you a fairly wide variety of styles so....  enjoy!

Mar 16
Hey these are great, this will be a lot of fun.  I'm a little slow... I over think everything, but I will definitely try to put something over some of these loops and find out what you think. The melodies are easy. It's the words. Thanks for the inspiration. Very very cool. Glad you took a chance and wrote. I won't have any time until maybe next week but I'll try to get to it soon.

Mar 21
Hey, I've finally got some time so I'm kicking back seeing what I can come up with. I'll tell you if I stumble onto anything I like. Sorry I'm so slow, that's how it is with neurotic self-doubting perfectionists.

Mar 29
Gah! I have some melodies all worked out, but my basement just flooded so I had to dismantle my studio and mop and shit. 

Jun 19
Okay! My job ended on Friday. I got the words and melody done, now I just have to re-record it. I don't normally work THIS slowly, but I also got distracted by a bunch of contract negotiations with a music publisher and a theme song we wrote got picked up for TV and more love-life ups and downs and some travel and shows... but - this is gonna be good, thanks for being patient.

Jun 23, 2005, Chris Harry wrote:
what have you been listening to lately?  i'm really diggin the new coldplay, new ben folds, live aimee mann, and bloc party

Jun 29
Rilo Kiley - the execution of all things
Iron and Wine
The Streets
The NoTwist

Jun 29, 2005, Chris Harry wrote:
oh..  i checked out Iron and Wine (had heard the cover of Postal Service on Garden State)  and checked out where they recorded (Engine Studios) which has a contest to use these loops off his site..  and the prize is two 10hr days at the studio. deadline is tomorrow..  if I win (hope hope hope), then you're going there with me to rock some songs...  no questions...

Jul 14
I figured it has been so long I should at least send you this scratch vocal. This song is basically about my ex-girlfriend's anxiety disorder. Sorry I slacked for so long! I wrote this one in a strange process: I sang nonsense words and had those contrapuntal melodies within a few weeks of you sending me stuff, but it was tricky finding a subject matter and words to fit into the phrasing I had gotten attached to. It was originally "Come up... ba nup..." and "let me sleep, let me go..." and all these random tidbits.

Jul 14, 2005, Chris Harry wrote:
I like it a lot man!  Nice work.  I can totally relate to the lyrics..  my gf has anxiety...  blah..  wish i could just wave a wand....
I won the contest last month for that studio thing! 

Despite the contest, the song recording was actually started at Slaughterhouse (for tracking) and finished at Notable (for mixing) where Dan Cantor and I spent almost an entire day trying to decide about the little moment where the song stops and there's a rim click. I shared the lyrics with MC Frontalot and he made some edit suggestions and I ran back to the studio to re-record some changes to the lyrics on a different day, but the new takes sounded different than the old takes so I had to re-sing the whole song again. Frontalot insisted I change the word cured in the line "cured her of her nicotine and tar" because it sounded to him like a totally self righteous line about how smoking is bad, as well as an unsympathetic line about how hard it is to stop. He was in the middle of trying to quit smoking at the time. For a while he had a game on Twitter where he would roll d20 for "saving throw vs smoking" to determine whether he was allowed to have a cigarette.

Apr 1, 2010

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