Indie Spotlight: Jay Leibowitz

 

When you're born at the Jersey Shore the same year Born to Run is released, it's more than likely that a little Bruce Springsteen might have slipped into your DNA. When singer-songwriter Jay Leibowitz started making music on the keyboard he bought with his bar mitzvah money, The Boss' musical presence was virtually "inescapable."

 

There aren't any anthems or epic songs on Leibowitz's understated debut album Pedestrian Life, but there are flashes of Springsteen's lyrical sensibility. On the song "Stuck," for instance, there are echoes of the "The E Street Shuffle" and "Blinded by the Light":

        "Police on the corner doing the shuffle/ 

         I heard Scooter got hooked up in a scuffle/          

         Yeah I played it loud/ I played it loud"

Several years in the making, Jay Leibowitz took a break from acting, took hold of his Telecaster and wrote Pedestrian Life.

How would you describe your sound?

American Rock Music? Good truck drivin’ music? Especially if you aim to drive yourself off of a cliff after 35 minutes. I’m just kidding. Unless that helps sell records. Does it? Probably not. I actually said that to a guy who owns a pretty big label at a party earlier this year. He laughed. Then his wife yelled at me. Needless to say, I’m not on his label.

How do you think your acting informs your music?

Well, the album is actually about a time when I quit theatre to go figure some things out. So, in a way, it’s all about the absence of theatre from my life. Music was always the thing I did just for me, and when I left the theatre, I went into this prolific writing phase. I bought a Danelectro and plugged in. I played out a little.

After a long while, I had some material that seemed worth recording, and I didn’t really see the point of just doing it for myself anymore. I got into the studio and when it finally came time to sing, I found myself very far removed from the emotional reality of the moments that the songs were about. Because I’m an actor, I already had an approach on how to get there in my head and, even though I was singing about events that took place years ago, I could put myself back and craft those moments in the studio.

What are some of your influences, musical or otherwise? 

I was born down the New Jersey shore on the same day Blood On The Tracks was released. Born To Run was released later that summer and Bruce’s early music really worked on me from the time I could think. That’s pretty inescapable. I’m a classic rock guy and a singer-songwriter, I guess. This record is me trying really hard not to sound like Bruce and trying really hard to sound like Jeff Tweedy. I love The Pixies and The Replacements and the epic indie rock of the late 80s and early 90s. Also, there’s this old school rockabilly thing that I love to do, too. 

It took you a while to record Pedestrian Life, your first record. What were some of the obstacles that you had to overcome?
The first track is an actual recording of a voicemail I left for my producer and dear friend, Zac Lasher (previously of the popular indie prog rock band, U-Melt). It was supposed to be a two month project but it took two years! When Zac and I sat down to begin work on the record, I had about five different ways of playing each song. There was the solo coffee house version, the band version, and everything in between. I needed help to figure out which style worked for each song and how I could fuse the parts together.

I actually played so much that I threw my back out. As soon as I could stand up again, I left town for a bunch of theatre gigs. Zac went on the road again. Life just took over for a while. The whole thing was a side project and, at least for me, a labor of love. It was a beautiful exercise in patience. 

Describe the songwriting process for this particular record.

Writing lyrics and writing music are two different muscles for me. The lyrics were written before smart phones, in notebooks and on loose paper. Ideas come in fragments, rants. I play the guitar and the piano and let the music settle in. Then I go back to the words I’ve been writing and fit them together into a song. There’s only one song on the record that I just sat down and wrote and that’s “If I Ever." I was real mad that day. About a lady.

What song are you most proud of? 

“Stuck” is the song that Zac and I worked on first and it set the tone for the whole sound and our collaboration. We were both at the time really connected to the mood of that song and it was one of those that I could play a million ways. The mix is just right. Zac’s arrangement of the track still blows my mind.

What theme would you say runs throughout the album?

Most of the record was written when I lived in a pretty shitty neighborhood on the proverbial "edge of town." Our street was beautiful and tree-lined, but it felt like there was crime and darkness around every corner. I was in that place for way too long and things had gotten off-track. I was paralyzed and depressed and going nowhere.

One night, walking home, I got jumped by four kids trying to get into a gang. I fought them off and left town forever a week later. Choice made. I spent the next several months making the demos that would later become the record. Also: women.

What’s the reception been like for Pedestrian Life?

Really great! A lot of people really connect to a lot of different material. Everyone seems to have a different favorite song, which I hope speaks to the diversity of style and content on there. The last song, “Sentimental Song”, is one that a lot of people really connect to the most. That’s interesting to me because it’s really the most personal of all the songs. The more honest we are, the more we connect. A lesson I learn over and over.

Who plays on the record? Who produced it? Where was it recorded?

Zac Lasher produced the record and plays keyboards. We tracked most of the guitars at his previous band’s studio at the McKibbin lofts in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Josh Parrish, who was the sound engineer for U-Melt, did an excellent job mixing the record. Zac and Josh come together to form Brooklyn Sound Lab. I’m playing all the guitars except for the lead on "Pedestrian Life." That’s the incredible Vin Stanton who also plays with (another Riffraf artist) Jem Warren. Dan McNaney is our terrific bass player - except on “Stuck” and “Sentimental” - that’s me on those. Prolific indie punk drummer Jack “Fantastic” Criswell tracked the drums at Rad Studio in Brooklyn with Damon Dorsey engineering. Steve Berson from Totalsonic mastered it.

What’s next musically?

I’ve got a great band in rehearsal and, in the spirit of the tardiness of the record, a record release will happen finally this Fall. Or Winter. I’m writing a lot of material, and I’m hoping to get back in the studio again next year. The new music is shaping up to be a lot more sparse and subtle.

Zac and I are very busy right now creating and workshopping what we’re calling a “Shakespeare Rock Show” based on Shakespeare’s As You Like It where everyone acts, sings, and plays. But it isn’t a musical. It’s a Shakespeare Rock Show.

              

Comments

[Red Sole Shoes]

Even the house at 41 Elmwood mutated, with creation of an apartment on the third floor.

[Chinese localization]

A lot of people really connect to a lot of different material. Everyone seems to have a different favorite song, which I hope speaks to the diversity of style and content on there.