tl;dr: I wrote a weird concept album while on chemo in a pandemic to keep my mind occupied, and now I’m sharing for free (with a pay-what-you-want-option) and I want you to at least listen to it at least twice.
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The Longform Story…
Getting a cancer diagnosis in the middle of a global pandemic adds a bit of complexity to life. As I sat down to write the backstory of my new full-length album, “The Senary,” I realized that trying to describe this project is equally complex. I’ll eventually work on my quick elevator pitch, but in the meantime, I’m only seeking out skyscrapers with long elevator rides, since I need a lot of time to say everything I want to say. I’ll start at the beginning, and if you make it all the way to the end, you have to text me, so I know you’re the real deal. Buckle up, and stick with me for a few.
I’ll hazard a guess that most of you think of “music” when my name surfaces. I’ve loosely committed my interests to all things musical for about 30 years, and I’ve often said that if I would have just focused on mastering one instrument, I probably could have gotten a gig that was worth something. But, alas, my curiosity has always gotten the better of me. Almost every time I’ve put a fair amount of effort into one instrument, I’ll long for another (just to leave the first behind until I make it around the horn again).
This being said, I really don’t think of myself as a singer, guitarist, bassist, or a keyboardist (definitely not a banjoist). I have enough licks on most instruments to make you think I know what I’m doing, but you should know it’s a ruse. I guess it’s fair to say I identify as a drummer, but beyond that, I’ve always kicked myself that I didn’t take any music lessons over the years. I’m sure a general understanding of music theory could have really helped me. Oh well… I don’t typically read assembly instructions either.
As a musical generalist, I’ve always wanted to write music, but I’ve never had any luck. I’ve written a handful of acoustic guitar songs that are pretty, but when I’ve tried to put a vocal melody or lyrics in the mix, it would quickly turn into hot garbage. I know songwriting comes easy for a select few, but it’s just plain hard work for me. I decided my easy, privileged, simple life with my Zen-master soulmate didn’t churn up enough angst to make any of my lyrics worthwhile, and I’ve found it beyond my means to sing a melody that can stick in your head. I quit trying and decided it would be perfectly fine to play covers at bonfires.
A Concept for a Concept…
Fast forward to 2015(ish), when I realized that in the absence of being confident in my ability to write a great lyric or song, I could enlist the help of a gimmick to build my songs instead. Inspiration finally struck, when I thought, “I should write a song from the perspective of a character in a movie!”
Recognizing this idea might actually have gas for me, I promptly Paulie’d it by making it waaaayyyy harder than it needed to be. I realized I could apply the idea over multiple movies and multiple characters. Now, instead of writing just one song, I had to write a whole album – and not just any album, but a concept album with no seams, endless jams, and recurring themes. This is going to be epic!
Unwilling to stop while ahead, I dug myself into a deeper hole by writing out several non-negotiable rules for myself:
- Enlist one arbitrary fact (a proprietary secret to my project) that unites 10 unique characters from ten various 80s movies. “The Senary” title may or may not be an Easter egg for you.
- Write each song from a character’s perspective. (10 track album)
- Make the lyrics of each chorus a direct quote from the selected character from the movie.
- Pick the movies first and discover the characters later (no changing the movie if I didn’t like the outcome).
- Assign the track order of the album to the release year of the movie.
- Keep it lyrically abstract enough to make the songs stand alone, not easily guessable, but add some easter eggs to make it fun once people realize whose perspective I’m singing from.
- Make it a seamless piece of music, where each previous song fuses with the next.
You still with me? I’m exhausted by typing it all out at once, and I’m now realizing that I was likely just avoiding the actual task of trying to write — keep in mind that I really hadn’t written a song at this point in my life, so there was no basis in reality for me wanting to add this many layers to my attempt. What the hell is my problem? I embarrass myself.
With all my rules in place, I rolled up my sleeves, and promptly did absolutely nothing. Every once in a while, I would capture a pretty little guitar lick or melody idea on the voice memos on my phone, but I never put any effort into lyrics, and I never even picked the movies or the characters. The idea was totally dead.
A Second Try…
Fast forward a couple years (2017?) when my musician friend said, “we should work on a project.” I took a deep breath and did my best to roll out my idea for this concept album. He humored me, I got excited, and we picked out 10 movies from the 80s. Game on, y’all, here we come! I grabbed my guitar, quickly wrote “I Want to Talk to You,” and sent a demo of it his way. Plowing ahead, I even got most of the idea for “Someone Else’s Wishes” on paper.
Then, to no one’s surprise, we took all that momentum and promptly did a lot more nothing. Once again, the project was totally dead. And since my buddy will probably read this, he should know that I totally blame him for it stalling out, since I’m never to blame for anything.
So, it sat. Fun idea, but way too complicated and complex to actually work. Too many rules, and not enough room for art to happen. Not a problem since I’m not a songwriter anyway.
Back to the Present…
Then, like most stories that are written after 2020, COVID-19 hits, and the world shuts down. Like me, I assume you heard about the great historical things people have done with their idle time, and you want to be one of them, right? In previous pandemics, people have discovered the theory of gravity, gotten in great shape, or wrote their novel… I was thinking about how this could apply to me while looking at my “recording studio” in my basement, and I realized that I desperately missed playing music with my friends. If I can’t play with them, though, I have this extra quarantine time on my hands. I can at least play with my gear, and it’s time to dust off THE IDEA again.
I looked over the list, and since my friend had previously picked five of the movies, I substituted five that were more meaningful to me, and I hit the go button. I scrolled through my audio memos and started fusing my existing song ideas with characters, and then I dug into Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and IMDB for character quotes and lines to inspire lyrics. I wasn’t on fire, but I at least was on a roll. I believe I wrote “Forgot to Call” and “Leave Him Alone” during this stretch, but the details are a little murky, since a dark cloud appeared in my timeline.
The Kind of News You Don’t Want to Hear…
It started with some persistent abdominal pain that seemed a little different than what I’d felt before. It was a pandemic, and we weren’t supposed to go anywhere, so I tried to ignore it. I didn’t feel comfortable going to my doctor, but I soon realized it was time to go in — the pain was mild, but persistent. My doctor thought it sounded like gallstones, so she ordered an ultrasound to take a peek. I drove in (praying that I didn’t get COVID), went in the clinic (praying that I didn’t have gallstones), and ended up on the table with a tech-in-training. I was impressed, since she seemed meticulous, super-persistent, and thorough. But then I got scared when she brought in her boss, who was much more persistent and thorough (why is this taking so long? Why are they way down there? Why am I now praying that I HAVE gallstones)?
I won’t go through all the details of the next several weeks, since that’s not why I’m writing this, but I will say the first few weeks of living with an unknown cancer was quite bleak for me. The next test would get scheduled a week out, then I’d wait for the results and the scheduling of the next — it’s a super slow process, my mind would wander, and since I didn’t know if they were going to name a disease after me or if I had something curable, it got scary and dark pretty easily.
An Appreciation…
What amazed me, though, is once I got my official diagnosis, my experience shifted into something really light and wonderful. I saw, heard, and tasted things that I was desperate to experience. I started noticing how much I appreciated the love that surrounded me. I re-centered, became the most present I’ve ever been, and I realized how amazing and sweet it all is. I was thirsty for it all. I had gushy conversations with those I love and told them some of the things I should say more often.
If you would have given me a journal in 2017 and asked me what I think it would be like to get a cancer diagnosis and go through chemo, I would have had it all wrong. Previously, I’m sure I would have summarized it mostly with fear, pain, and suffering. Now having gone through it (and if I can compress my experience into a bite-sized chunk), it’s surprisingly filled with light, love, and gratitude (once you let it in).
At the beginning, it was too easy to land on “why me,” but as soon as I was able to flip the script to “why not me,” it became palatable. If cancer is going to strike my home, this is where I want it. I can feel it, I can understand it, I can fight it, and I’m the only overweight bald one, so it’s only fair. I realized that I knew I could handle this setback, and I was encouraged by all the great statistical things my doctors had to say about curing aggressive B-cell Lymphoma.
But here’s the rub… It still sucks. Really bad. And we’re in idle time, my mind wanders, and the steroids keep me up all night. When I wasn’t keeping my mind busy, the fear would creep in and take hold.
Through this, my idea of writing “The Senary” became increasingly more important for me. I’m not exactly sure of all the reasons why, but along with just keeping my brain busy, I know there’s also a large mix of legacy involved with this being recorded work — my kids were getting to know the songs, and I wanted them to be able to listen to it if I was gone – and not just my kids, I wanted you to be able to listen to it if I was gone. No matter what happened to me, I realized I really wanted the ability for everyone I’ve ever met to dial up an hour where you can hang out with Paulie whenever you’re so moved.
Also, I wanted all of you to know that in the face of the hardest challenge of my life, I was determined to make something beautiful, and even if I couldn’t continually pull off “beautiful,” I could at least settle for making something “fun & interesting.” Something that’s complex, nostalgic, and epic.
Pen to Paper…
So, I just started writing. It’s not really the type of music I initially intended to write (like 80s middle-school ballads), but it’s the music that just kept coming out. I’d get pumped full of chemo, watch random clips of my favorite 80s films, then work out melodies, bass lines, banjo riffs, synth rolls, and drums. I’d pop my prednisone and work out lyrics and ideas for ways to transition between tempos and keys. I wasn’t able to sleep, so it was critical that I had something non-medical to think about.
Not too long ago, Carrie said “I think that project saved you.” It’s a pretty bold thing to say, but I trust her, so I explored it a little. Maybe that comment made me feel a little weird because I felt pretty selfish working on it throughout the process? I admittedly spent way too many evenings and weekends locked in the basement during this project. I’d think “If I have limited time left, will I regret being down here rather than watching my family grow?” Sometimes it was the right question to ask myself, and I’d hang it up for the night and join the party upstairs. Other times, I’d hear the kids screaming, and realize that no one needed me around on prednisone, cause Paulie couldn’t deal, man. Wow. Also, while we’re here, know that Carrie is a saint. My hero.
Coming back to this project “saving me,” idea, I know she’s right. I learned that I have a lot of respect for a project that’s bold enough to keep my mind completely occupied. When I was setting up the room and the mics, I wasn’t thinking about chemo or the next Lumbar Puncture. When I was recording the millionth take, there wasn’t any room for daydreaming about the “what ifs.” When I was mixing down the performances, I was saturated and overwhelmed, so I wasn’t worried about my next test result. Simply put, I distracted myself out of worrying too much. And it was awesome. And not just for me, since I get to share the output with all of you.
I Get By With A Little…
Back to the process, I had all the takes I needed, but as I was trying to mix it down, I realized I was in way over my head on the mastering side of things. Having surrounded myself with music and musicians for most of my life, I know some great players, but I think I only know one person that has fully committed to the industry, a dear old friend named Justin Glasco (who I met in a high school when we tackled “Godspell” together). I was so proud and a little jealous of Justin when he went to Berklee — I was stoked when I’d see he was scoring big gigs, nationally touring, and bouncing between Nashville, LA, and Brooklyn. I’d learn when he was going to be on Letterman, The Today Show, or Jimmy Kimmel, and I’d watch and shout at the cameraman when he wouldn’t stay pointed at the only guy on stage that mattered. I’m his fanboy, so I already knew he bought a studio in LA and was interfacing with some of my favorite players.
Naturally, I’m sure you’ll agree that this professional surely wants to give a guy he hasn’t talked with for 20 years some mixing tips on his crazy basement project, right? It was a bold call, but I’ve heard that you have to believe in your art, so I sent Justin a 45 minute version of the first seven tracks on 1/1/21. He called me back almost immediately, and we picked up our friendship just like there hadn’t been all these years and life changes between us. I thought I was just about to get some “turn down the reverb here” and “bring up the kick there,” and instead got a “can I help you get this across the finish line? Why don’t you send me the files?”
Seriously?
I’m sure you can’t believe that this part of the story gets even better, but Justin reached out to another audio engineer (and mutual high school friend & ’97 Godspell cast member), Eric Thibaut, so now we have another set of professional ears on the mix. Eric is amazing, calm, my pure-hype-machine, hilariously dry, and he spends his days installing massive conference systems with insanely complicated audio gear, so he was willing to take on the tedious task of exporting, importing, and weeding through some terrible workflow decisions I made from when I was feverishly and frantically recording in my basement.
Here we are five months later, with a record that sounds SO MUCH BETTER than I would’ve ever dreamed. Sure, these gents spent countless hours mixing & mastering the whole project for me, but the real favor was being there and being my friend in the most challenging and vulnerable part of my life. I can’t even begin to tell them how much their friendship and help means to me. They need to hear that every upload, call, check-in, and text was like Christmas morning over here. I have so much love for these amazing humans, and I hope you join me in telling them you love the way it sounds, and you appreciate their profound commitment to radness.
The Senary released on May 7…
Hopefully you already know it’s done and ready for download. Finished. Wrapped up. Released.
The full run time is one hour and one minute of nothing but Paulie and his chemo-infused creativity in a basement recording studio, mixed and mastered by a couple of pros. I’m proud of it. I almost deleted it about 80 times, but I’m proud now. I’m especially lucky that I get to blame all the bad parts on the chemo, while taking credit for the parts you like.
I dropped “proud” twice above, and pride is a fickle thing, so I want to unpack this a bit. I don’t think I’m wired in such a way that the musical outcome will ever be good enough for me. I want to write a better hook, infuse profound lyrics, and sing and play like Stevie Wonder or Prince. I think most artists are wired the same. But here it is. We never really know how we’ll react to adversity until it stares us down. I’m proud that this is what I did with my time. I know that a cancer diagnosis in a pandemic brought me a little artistic purpose. I now know I’m wired to try to make something beautiful to share with you when I’m overwhelmed and scared. I’m proud of my reaction since I would expected to have found myself just crying in bed for the nine months of my treatment. I’m proud to have focused on something playful – something full of love. I’m proud my kids will know that I decided to make music when I was scared for my future. I’m proud I made something you can listen to whenever you’re in the mood.
Please listen harder…
If I had a blue-sky vision for your listening experience, I’d love it if you found a comfy spot away from distractions, put on a good set of headphones, and carve out an hour to listen to it in one go. Pretend you’re a 13-year-old kid in your parent’s house and treat it like you did when you bought a new record or tape from the record store. Why are you so busy now, anyway? Take an hour for yourself. Take an hour for us. Get lost in the synthesizers, and if you find yourself caught in the lyrics, you can rest assured that there’s an official quiz that you can take to guess both the movie that inspired the song, and the character that’s quoted from the movie. My blue-sky vision for you also includes you sending me a message or a text whenever you listen to it. I’d like to know if it’s being heard.
Pay-what-you-want…
So, here’s where I sit tonight. Lymphoma is persistent, so I probably won’t be out of the woods for a stretch — I’ll keep having these follow-up scans, and even though I just want it all behind me, that’s not how it works, and there will be some unknowns for a bit. I know this, though. No matter what it is, I’m going to keep getting news that I can handle and face as things progress. Know in the world of fight or flight, I’ve always been one of the slowest runners, so all I know is fight. I’m on it. Don’t worry.
Among the things people offer to do for you when you have a cancer diagnosis is set up a gofundme. I get it, and I understand why (even with amazing insurance, medical bills are no joke), but it just isn’t my style. Instead, I realized that I could give you all this lane if you want to financially support my journey. I released “The Senary” on bandcamp.com for free, with a pay-what-you-want option.
Since I never even planned on any of you hearing these songs, monetizing this project feels foreign to me. If you don’t have the means, please just listen to it (as many times as your ears can handle). If you want to throw money at my art or story, here’s your chance. I’ll be forever in your debt.
Previous to the release, I reached out for advice from several musician friends. All of them gave me the nudge to focus heavily on what I’ll call the “second wave” of releasing an album. Since most self-promoted musicians are just exhausted from getting their album out in the open, they forget how to save the stamina to maintain momentum and keep moving it onward. With this first batch of associated media interviews, I think the first wave’s title has proven to be “man with cancer wrote an album and you can buy it to help him pay his bills.”
As we approach the second wave, the pretentious artist in me wants it to be about the music. Without cancer and Covid, this album wouldn’t have happened, so I know it can’t be scrubbed from this story. But I’m sure you agree we already give the bad stuff too much attention. Let’s make that part secondary. I want the first part to be about the adventure. I want it to be about how much fun you had listening to it. When you read this story, when you listen to this album, when you share it with a friend, can you help me shape this narrative to something more like “A really fun concept album (that you have to hear) was entirely written, performed, and recorded by Paulie in his basement (consider stopping here, or if you have to:) during a pandemic while struggling with cancer?”
That feels better to you too, right? Let’s make this another reminder that we all need to focus more on the good stuff, and less on the bad stuff. Bad stuff happens, and it will keep happening, and about the only thing we can do about it is to find the strength to know it’s gonna be there, but it doesn’t have to be the lead story. There’s nothing but sunshine, as long as we take time to see.
Love you bunches,
Paulie
*did you make it to the end? Don’t forget to text me so I know you’re the real deal.