For many music fans, the word Woodstock carries special meaning. Whether it’s personal memories for those who went to the New York-based festival, nostalgia for the past or connotations for those looking back, the word and location remain very pertinent.
It’s partly why East Coast based band Birdfeeder – which features Kevin Salem, Chris Harford and Mark Mulcahy, all of whom have been performing since the ’80s – decided to pick it for their long-awaited debut album, which is out Friday, April 12 on Soul Selects. They recorded the album at Salem’s studio in Woodstock.
“Mark thought of it and I think when we discussed it, he was thinking it’s such an iconic thing in everybody’s mind, and then it is in fact where we recorded it, so we just figured we’d name the place where we made it,” says Harford.
The origins of the group are also steeped in history. Salem and Harford both cut their teeth in the ‘80s as musicians in the Boston music scene. They later met each other in the UK while Salem was in the band Dumptruck and Harford was in 3 Colors. They’ve been friends and occasional collaborators since, with each having success with other groups and their own music (Harford with Band of Changes and Salem with artists such as Yo La Tengo and Freedy Johnston). Mulcahy also came up through the East Coast scene, fronting New Haven, Connecticut-based Miracle Legion and later found success through a solo career and bands such as Polaris.
In the early ‘90s, Harford and Mulcahy spent a weekend jamming and recording some demos in the basement of Harford’s home outside Princeton, New Jersey. Harford described the experience as magical. While they both knew the music was special and even got an offer from a major record label, life happened and it got put on the backburner for another day.
A few years ago, Harford decided to dust off the demos and shared them with Salem, who described them as “amazing, just full of spirit.” They later recruited Mulcahy and the three musicians met in Woodstock to record. On the album, Harford and Salem split up guitar work while Mulcahy handles lead vocals and drumming. They were able to get in a groove quickly, recording the album in only a day and a half.
“I really enjoyed the stripped down, simpleness of the approach that we have,” says Harford.
Scummy Water Tower recently caught up with Harford to discuss what it was like revisiting the demos and playing with longtime friends,
It sounds like Kevin’s studio is very DIY. What do you like about recording there?
Yeah, you would never know. The cover of the album is his studio, so it’s this little outbuilding behind his house. And, quite honestly, it’s a little depressing inside. There’s no windows really and he actually does have some pretty good gear, some old mics, and he’s got a really good knack for getting beautiful sounds and he really knows his way around the rooms and the equipment. We just had a hunch that he would be the right guy to make that record. And it proved to be true.
You’ve known Kevin since the ‘80s playing with your respective bands in Boston. What do you recall about the first time you found out about him and later met him in person?
It’s funny, although we were in bands in Boston, we didn’t meet until we were in London. I met him in a pub in London. He was recording with a band called Dumptruck and 3 Colors was over there living and we connected and that’s where we really hit it off. And we’ve been making music on and off ever since really.
I imagine you bonded quickly over your shared experiences with coming up through the Boston scene?
Absolutely. We hit it off right away, had a blast in this pub in London, and then just kept in touch. And he had a similar experience as Mark. Mark was playing in different bands. Mark was even a drummer for a moment in Dumptruck, but before Kevin joined. So it was all, in a way, a pretty small scene down from New Haven, Connecticut, all the way up to Boston to London, really.
Would you say that kind of music scene was very conductive for you and Kevin and Mark?
Yeah, absolutely. It was a fervent, very vital, alive scene back in those days. I don’t know if it’s still like that in Boston, but there were so many students there and so many bands that it just felt like a really fervent place to be in a band and to be exposed to it. There were something like half a million students going to school there. So you were around a lot of young people.
I imagine there’s a little bit of a friendly competition between the Boston bands.
Yeah, I guess there was. Yeah, absolutely. I’m in a band now with Warren Zanes who was in The Del Fuegos back then, and it felt like that back then, so it’s fun to be in a band with him, what? 30, 40 years later.
Are there any songs from the new album that made you think back to when you originally did the songs?
Yeah. It kind of brought the decades between the two sessions, it just made it seem like not that much time had passed. It was just like, “Oh, yeah, this is what we do.” So it was back at it, like no time had passed almost in a weird way.
The origins for these songs and this project started back in the ‘90s when you and Mark got together to jam and write some songs. What do you recall of the lead up to that and what were those sessions like?
I was such a huge Miracle Legion fan, and I always loved Ray [Neal]’s contribution, the way he played guitar and the way they were able to collaborate. And I always wanted to work with Mark in that way. I had started a family, I had a little daughter, and Mark came down to visit and I had a four-track set up in the basement with a drum set. And we went down there with no expectations, just really to have some fun. I had a couple of chord things lying around and he’s pretty prolific with lyrics. So within a day, we had most of the songs written, and in two days we had them all written and demoed.
And the demos are pretty strong. We had talked about instantly what we could do with them. We even got offered a demo deal by a major label based off those demos, but it wasn’t right. It wasn’t the right deal. And then life sort of took over and we all went back to our various lives and projects. And in the back of my mind, I was like, “Someday I’d really like to finish that. Really love to just go back and finish those songs.” So right before, I guess, COVID we got together at Kevin’s, Mark and I rented a little Airbnb down the street from Kevin’s and we went there again for another day and a half or two days and just recorded the songs.
And this time, we enlisted Kevin, who wanted to play some guitar on it, which was a no-brainer. So it was basically me and Kevin on acoustic guitar, Mark played drums and I would add bass, and sometimes Kevin would add a couple of different sounds. But we kept it pretty simple. For the most part, they were all done live, with Mark singing for as many as we could.
I meant more if you had listened to the original demos and if that was what helped motivate you to seek out the others?
Yeah, we did. We listened to them. Again, it was just something that I really loved the demos and it wasn’t so much we were trying to make them exactly like that, but… In fact, the last song on the record is from the demos. We just didn’t feel like we could do anything different than the demo itself, so we just included the demo version of “Super Diamondaire.” So it does sound a little different than the rest of the record, and that’s why.
I imagine that helped with the thinking about projects that you might’ve put on the back burner like that.
Yeah, there’s so many and it nags at you. It never leaves you alone. It’s always in the back of your mind. You’re like, “Man, I’d love to…” It’s almost like cleaning the closets out and it’s hard to move forward until you do that. So yeah, it felt kind of necessary that even though so much time had passed, it had to happen and I was determined to make it so. So I kept bothering Mark like, “Come on, Mark, let’s make this. Come on, Mark, let’s do this.”
What was it like revisiting the songs with the addition of Kevin? How did the three of your styles compliment each other?
Fluidly and smoothly and without incident. It was so natural. Kevin had played a show with us a year or two prior in Philadelphia at World Cafe, and we had remembered how good he was and just his sensibility is so keen and he’s so dialed in on serving a song. What does a song need? He’s really good at that. And what doesn’t it need? He doesn’t want to put too much on it, but his playing and his way of listening is sublime and really beautiful.
What was it like working in that kind of environment and getting on a roll like that?
Time stops when you’re in a situation like that, you don’t even know what time of day it is. You just are in there and eight, nine, 10 hours can pass really quickly and you’re just focused and concentrated on the songs and the playing, and you’re in a little bubble cocoon kind of, especially with the no windows thing. It’s just like this dark womb kind of, little incubator.
Was there a song or two that really shaped the direction of the sessions?
Not really. As you hear the record, it’s really pretty much like that. It unfolds itself in that manner. So I think the first song is just the two of us, Kevin and I on guitar and Mark singing, and then it gets into drums and bass and stuff and electric guitars. But that was how organic it was. Just keep it simple. Two guitars, sing the song, do it live, and see how it goes.
The band chose to use the demo version of the song “Super Diamondaire.” Why was it important to keep that version intact?
I think we realized pretty quickly that what we liked about that was Mark’s drumming and how unusual it sounded and we were pretty confident that we couldn’t do it again and make it like that. That was just one of those things that was captured like that. Without that song, the album felt a little too short, so we decided we would include that rather than painstakingly try to recreate it. And then at some point maybe we would like to release some of the demos so people can hear the early version and the later version, get an idea of what it’s like. But I felt like we wanted to use the demo because it sort of tied in the whole thing in a way. It’s a pretty unusual song.
How would you describe the band’s sound and what do you think makes it most unique?
For me, it’s Mark’s voice and his lyrics. I’m such a big fan of his. I find it really easy to write music to his words. It just flows out very easily. I don’t have to put much thought into it. It’s more just celebrating the genius of Mark Mulcahy for me. He’s one of the greatest singers that I know. I try to emulate the way he sings a lot. People hear it and they’re like, “So that’s you singing?” And it’s like, no, no, that’s Mark. Mark even harmonizes with himself. I just think he’s just a fantastic singer and lyricist.
He also came up with the band’s name. Can you talk about how he came up with the name?
I think he had that name from the beginning and we both liked it so much, and then back in 1996 or whatever, we just said, “That’ll be the name of the band.” And then since then we’ve realized there’s a lot of bands called that. So if you look up Birdfeeder, you’ll find all these other groups, which we weren’t aware of, of course, and we feel like we were first. But Mark even uses it as an email address, so it’s just something that meant a lot to him. I think he had a couple bird feeders in his backyard.
There’s a quote in the press materials from Kevin where he says “recording is super easy if you let it be. Do you agree with that? How do you think your process now compares to back when you started?
Yeah, I’d have to agree with that completely. And even when we started with the demos on the four-track cassette, I had gotten my chops down as an engineer on the cassette deck to the point where that was super easy to do. I’m always surprised at how good those cassettes sound. And then, of course, working with Kevin, it’s true. He makes it seem really easy. He’s one of those guys that it’s like, “how are you doing that exactly?” Playing guitar and then going back into the control room, tweaking some knobs, coming back out, picking up the guitar, playing. Just made it look really easy. He’s a consummate professional, Kevin.
Were there any specific songs where that was really the case?
I think that first one, “Big Chairs and Candy” is a good example where the two of us are sitting down playing guitar, and you just see Kevin, just how he’s able to let it flow.
It sounds like one of the goals for the album was making a document or time capsule of this time period making music.
Yeah, that’s something that Kevin pointed out. Kevin really felt like, more than anything, that he was documenting something rather than just recording some songs. He was actually making a document of something which made it stand out for me in that way. That was his idea and I understood it, and I’d never really applied that idea to the idea of capturing songs. It’s a document of an event. It’s a document of some things that were written down on paper and played in chord form. I found that a really interesting way of looking at it.
What are you most looking forward to in the months ahead? Is the band planning to play any shows?
That remains to be seen. I know Mark is going to be doing some Miracle Legion dates. I’m busy doing a bunch of other things, as is Kevin. I know I would love to play, but more than anything, just the idea that this record can reach people. So far, the people that hear it really like it, and the whole point was like, “This is too good not to release and put out.” So I’m just really looking forward to when the album fully comes out and people can share it and listen to it and enjoy it, really.
You can find more about the band at x.
Joshua is co-founder of Scummy Water Tower. He’s freelanced for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites, including: Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Guitar World, MTV News, Grammy.com, Chicago Magazine, Milwaukee Magazine, MKE Lifestyle, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, A.V. Club, SPIN, Alternative Press, Under the Radar, Paste, PopMatters, American Songwriter, and Relix. You can email him at josh@scummywatertower.com.
