There was a time, and it wasn’t all that long ago, when you would have to wait for stuff. No joke. For instance, musicians would spend years working on albums, release them, and then, it’d be years—sometimes decades—before fans could expect new music from them.

Not so in this digital age, where everyone’s free to binge virtually all forms entertainment. Today, music is released online in dribs and drabs, because appetites are never fully sated.

For three decades, lifelong musician Philip B. Price—who is perhaps best known for his enchanting work with Massachusetts indie rock outfit Winterpills—has written and recorded solo tunes he was just too busy to release. That is, until now.

Over the last year and a half, Price has been digging through his past, coming away with a dozen albums’ worth of material he has remixed, re-mastered, and in some cases, reinterpreted. “It’s been a little stressful because, well, it’s kind of a lot,” Price confides. “I’ve wanted to work on this project for years, and I really thought it would go quickly. For a while, I felt like maybe I bit off more than I could chew.”

But he got through it, and on Dec. 8, the 12 solo LPs—the result of Price’s “neurotic compulsion to write songs” in his downtime from 1980s art rock act Memorial Garage and 1990s power pop group The Maggies—will be released digitally. “I couldn’t help myself,” Price admits of the group of songs, which range from dance-noise to shoegaze. “And now, I’m quietly dumping a huge load of music on the world.”

Price understands 143 songs is a lot of music to unleash all at once, so he’s compiled a 39-track best of album he’s titled Without Your Love I’d Be Nowhere At All. “I’m glad this stuff is seeing the light of day and I can finally distribute it properly,” says Price, adding he’s working on new tracks for a solo album he’ll issue in 2018. “It feels good to get it all out there.”

Price, who plays guitar, bass, drums, and keyboards, has been a New Englander for most of his adult life, and lives in Northamption with his wife, Winterpills keyboardist Flora Reed. But he grew up outside of New York City before moving to Los Angeles, where his father, Eugene, worked as an established screenwriter.

He says he can’t imagine what his life would be like had he not moved to Massachusetts after graduating from Bennington College in Vermont. Price—a member of Fountains of Wayne frontman Chris Collingwood’s solo band, Look Park—says his songs are largely influenced by New England’s landscape, although he doesn’t discount the influence his peers have had on his style. “For an area of this size, it has a lot going on, and it has cycles of renewal,” Price says. “It’s like every eight years, it feels like it’s dying off and then, it surges back with all these new artists.”

A sampler from Price’s new collection is available here. To hear what’s on his playlist when he’s not combing through his musical archives, check out our Take a Listen Spotify Channel. You can also hear the playlists of other musicians we’ve featured.

Philip B. Price, guitarist and vocalist, Winterpills
Northampton, Massachusetts
Website
Facebook
Soundcloud

The post The Price is Right appeared first on Take Magazine.

In late 2007, Heather Maloney was studying music theory and operatic vocals at a New Jersey college when she decided to go on a meditation retreat in Barre, Massachusetts, between semesters. It was a transformative event for the accomplished songstress.

“It was just immediately clear to me that I needed to spend more time here,” says Maloney, a pianist and self-taught guitarist. “The retreat, it leveled me—turned my world upside down. I tried to get back onto a musical path, but I couldn’t shake my initial experience at this retreat.”

Not long after Maloney’s first visit to the Bay State, she returned, filling a vacant post at the meditation center. “I worked there for three years, and I’ve never left,” Maloney says.

Slowly, Maloney began writing, returning to her musical roots. She credits New England with restoring her creative nature. “When I play a show here in New England, I feel like [the audience is] really thinking about the concepts and the stories and the characters in my songs,” Maloney says. “They’re sort of thinking of the songs critically, and that can be super intimidating. If I play shows out West, people aren’t necessarily thinking of songs critically; they’re more ‘feeling’ them.”

“Living in this area made me more of a storyteller,” she adds, “and has made me more of a thinker when it comes to my songwriting.”

Both critics and fans love Maloney’s eclectic, rapturous indie-rock sound and her hypnotic, lush vocals, which have drawn comparisons to the likes of Joni Mitchell and Aimee Mann. She’s released four full-length offerings, including 2015’s Making Me Break, and a single EP. But soon, she’ll issue her second—a 6-track EP called Just Enough Sun.

Maloney says the forthcoming, mostly acoustic effort is “raw and cathartic,” and calls it “the most vulnerable thing I’ve ever created”—the kind of record she wouldn’t have been able to make in the Garden State. “I really have a love/hate relationship with New Jersey; yet, to be fully honest, I didn’t realize what it felt like to belong somewhere until I left,” she says. “I realized, living in Massachusetts in particular, that this is what it feels like to belong somewhere. It has a little bit of an edge but it’s a place where the arts are appreciated, and the people are creative. At this point, I’m definitely a Masshole.”

Want to hear what Maloney listens to when she’s not performing? Check out our Take a Listen Spotify channel. While you’re there, you can listen to what other musicians we’ve profiled have on their playlists.

Heather Maloney, Singer-Songwriter
Northampton, Massachusetts
Website
Facebook
Twitter

Top image: Heather Maloney. All photos by Kevin Hill.

The post Heather Maloney: From Opera to Singer/Songwriter appeared first on Take Magazine.

The world is often a funny place, and the strangest little influences can end up opening up possibilities you never even could have conceived. If Erin McKeown had attended a different high school in Virginia or the same school at a different time, the quirky song sculptress may never have planted roots in Massachusetts. Lucky for us, she admired a soccer star.

“Growing up in Virginia, I always imagined I would go to the University of Virginia or William & Mary,” says McKeown, who was featured in the first Take issue. “But then, the valedictorian a couple of years ahead of me in school, he went to Brown on a soccer scholarship. I thought that kid was awesome; he was a great mix of artistic and athletic. He wasn’t a great follower of the rules but somehow, made it all work.”

So when it came time to visit colleges, McKeown insisted on touring Brown’s campus, and “loved it.” She’s been in New England ever since, and believes the area absolutely shaped her eclectic, pop-sensible sound. “The winters here align with my psyche, sometimes,” McKeown says. “Three or four years ago, we had a really bad winter; it was like living in an ice palace for six months, with five feet of snow in the front yard. That winter aligned perfectly with how isolated and alone I was feeling. But I also think there’s nothing better than a western Massachusetts summer.

“I think if I had gone to school in the South and lived in North Carolina or went to college in West Virginia, I would be a very different kind of musician,” she continues. “I’d likely be in a band and we would have written much different music.”

McKeown, a close personal friend of onetime WRSI jock and current MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, has issued over 10 collections of songs, including her 2009’s Hundreds of Lions, which was released through Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records. She’s been touring the United States extensively since the spring release of her latest EP, Mirrors Break Back, and has concerts planned this fall for Australia, New Zealand, and Europe.

McKeown’s socially conscious, exoteric music reflects the musician’s formative years as a fixture of the New England coffeehouse scene. “I grew up taking piano classes, in an attempt to be a well-rounded student,” McKeown says. “But I started playing guitar at 12. From the moment I picked up that guitar, I started writing songs. It came so naturally, because I had always written stories as a kid. What I’m doing now is about trying to create something new and finding my voice as a writer.”

McKeown says she’s already started thinking about her next opus, but intends to spend much of 2018 focusing on Miss You Like Hell, a musical she’s written with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes. “It’s the story of an undocumented woman and her citizen daughter driving across the country together, trying to repair their relationship,” McKeown says. “We’ve been working on it for seven years. Of course, immigration has been an issue in this country for a long, long time, but we had no idea it would spark such a vitriolic political moment.”

Want to hear what McKeown’s listening to? Check out our Take a Listen Spotify channel. While you’re there, check out the playlists from other musicians we’ve featured.

Erin McKeown, singer-songwriter
Northampton, Massachusetts
Website
Facebook
Twitter
Bandcamp

All images courtesy of Erin McKeown

The post Erin McKeown: A Musical Work-in-Progress appeared first on Take Magazine.