Top 5 Original Recordings of 2023
2023 was a busy year for me. I finished my undergrad at Lawrence University, moved back home, and started playing and calling for dances more regularly. As I’m stuck at home with a very mild case of COVID, I thought it would be a great time to reflect on some of the things I’ve done over the course of the year (in the recording/mixing/mastering process).
All the following works are licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International.
(each title is a streaming link on Internet Archive)
The Viking Room is Lawrence University’s one and only on-campus bar, known for its wooden, scratched-out booths, cheap drinks, and good times. On this evening, my (now former) folksong group Larry’s Privateers led a bunch of shanties and non-shanties for a crowd that was mostly not listening. The bartenders, however, cheered enthusiastically. At one point, you can even hear as they drop something from behind the bar! Matthew DeChant later published a condensed version of this album on streaming services.
I found media hype around the Titan submersible incident to be frustrating, in addition to the premise being, frankly, ridiculous. So, I did what any good folk musician would do and wrote a song to vent my frustrations. I am not particularly one for writing lyrics, let alone good ones, but this song worked out surprisingly well. For once, I cross-posted this song on Internet Archive and YouTube, which was a good move in hindsight. This unexpectedly became my most popular song, garnering upwards of 80 thousand views on YouTube. I hypothesize that part of that was due to when I finished composing and recording the song, the 22nd of June, the day that the wreck of the Titan was found.
I had an all-star group of friends at Lawrence University to take part on my senior recital (consisting of entirely original compositions) with me. With myself on piano and djembe, Evan Snoey on fiddle and sax, Eli Hooker Reese on fiddle and piano, Gideon Lucard on mandolin and vocals, Tashi Litch on mandolin, and Matthew DeChant on accordion. We rehearsed every week, hashing out the arrangements from the lead sheets which I had written out for them. The performance began with an experimental piece sampling a tape digitization I had done of my deceased fiddle-minded relatives (grand-uncle Austin Greer and grandmother Mary Boehlke) as an ode to them. Overall, I couldn’t have asked for a better recital, and even my lone surviving grandparent Catie Rynkiewicz made it! We were all jamming on stage so hard that it was more of a rock concert than a recital — the audience even begged for an encore, something which I had never seen in student recitals (which generally I saw as stiff and not entertaining). Many thanks to my studio teacher Matt Turner and my advisor José Encarnación for making this all possible.
Eli Hooker Reese and I had an opportunity to play a dance as a duo for the first time, and it went amazingly. With Lisa Leedham calling, the bandstand was filled with entirely 2nd-generation folkies. We ended up playing mostly tunes that I had written, which made for a really fun and hip night. I truly have a preference for playing for live dances rather than an audience that is just there to listen — the dancing factor is just so important. My mother frequently listens to her copy of this album (split on two CDs) in her car, which just warms my heart.
We came into the gig with nothing but sheets of paper with tune names written on them, but left with a great evening under our belts. The hall reverb (of Sokol) on the recording just sounds so unique compared to the many recordings I’ve done at Tapestry Folkdance Center. The sonic quality of this record is what ultimately made me name this my #1 original record of the year. My favorite track is definitely Moneymusk / Muskmoney / Monekymusk. I find myself coming back to listen to this record over and over, especially for Moneymusk.
Here’s to 2024!
As an appendix, here is a list of everything I participated, recorded, mixed, and/or mastered in 2023.