Rockasteria: Kevin Vicalvi - Songs From Down The Hall (1970-74 us, fantastic folk bluesy psych rock, 2002 remaster and expanded)

Saturday, August 3, 2024

Kevin Vicalvi - Songs From Down The Hall (1970-74 us, fantastic folk bluesy psych rock, 2002 remaster and expanded)

During the late 60's - early 70's my hometown of Worcester, Massachusetts was not very receptive to local bands that played songs they had written themselves. If you were a band that wanted work, you played the hits of the day with some oldies thrown in - not too bad a gig for someone in his late teens (me), because the AM pop and FM "underground" music that prevailed included The Beatles, The Stones, Hendrix, Dylan, Cream, The Kinks, Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Procol Harum, etc., etc....

But I began to write my own songs, and soon I had a few that I considered good enough to perform and record. In the "cover tune" climate of that time, performing these songs live was out of the question - although we'd sneak one or two into a performance unannounced. In 1969, I began recording these songs with my bandmates at Northeast Recording, a 2-track studio in the nearby town of Shrewsbury. Over the course of a year of so I had amassed about 30 demo tapes of songs, most of them amateurish at best. I tried to improve, writing more tunes on my own time while still "playing the hits" on weekends with the band. Here I was with all these songs and no outlet for them except on tape.

In 1973, I ran into Dwight Glodell at Union Music, the local music retailers. Dwight was an acquaintance he was a friend of one of my cousins. We had jammed once or twice and we respected each other's musical abilities. I mentioned that I had all these original songs with no means of exposing them to the public, and when I expressed an interest in possibly cutting my own LP he told me that he was beginning his own small studio above Union Music in the same building. He suggested that we work on my LP project together, and I agreed.

Dwight's studio was a cramped office suite sitting three floors above Main Street in Worcester. There was a tiny control room with homemade speakers for monitors, Ampex preamps and an Ampex 4-track machine, a mixing board with APSI Modules, a few high-quality microphones, a good baby grand piano, an ARP 2600 synthesizer, some insulation stuffed into the windows, and not much else. Armed with these tools and Dwight's fledgling recording chops, we set to work on the recording you are holding in your hot little hands. Oh, did I mention that the studio was named Starizon?

Anyway, as I said before, this was an office suite - surrounded by other office suites filled with 9-to-5 people who wouldn't appreciate someone banging on musical instruments during the day. We could work on weeknights and weekends when I wasn't "playing the hits", so we settled into this schedule immediately. I enlisted Dave Rice to play drums, my then-girlfriend Dorrie Powers to help with graphics and background vocals, and my buddy and musical right-hand man Denis delaGorgendiere to help on vocals and bass.

We worked with the attendant difficulties of recording 4-track analog - - - calibration problems, tuning problems, noise problems (both environmental and electronic), overheating problems, humidity problems, string players who couldn't read charts properly, running-out-of-tracks problems....AAARRRGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!

In order to have more tracks to record on, we eventually transferred this never-ending project to a Scully 8-track professional 1-inch recorder.

I don't even remember how long it took to record these songs. Tracks were scrapped. Tracks were accidentally erased. Tracks that sounded perfect the day before now refused to play in tune. The string section for "Michael Henchard" had to be scrubbed and replaced with the ARP synth. We laughed; we cried. And then towards the end of the project Dwight approached me with the idea of scrapping the whole thing and starting over, no extra charge. I couldn't do it. I couldn't return to that circus of temperamental equipment and human error. I had new songs to record with more ambitious arrangements, and I was chomping at the bit to move on. I decided to release it, even if parts of it were unfinished. The year was 1974.

In the early to mid 70's a local independently released LP in Central Massachusetts didn't stand a chance. Most record stores would not carry a record that wasn't handled by a distributor. Distributors wouldn't touch a record that was on an ad hoc label. Publicity was the "local boy makes his own LP" story in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. "Songs From Down The Hall" died on the streets after a few months and even fewer initial sales.

Denis, Dorrie, Dwight and I began recording new songs, and when Starizon Studios folded in the mid 70's we moved the new recording project into Northern Recording Studios in Maynard, Massachusetts. The Starizon LP was becoming an afterthought, and as the new project took shape I abandoned "Songs", a record that I believed was an important learning experience, but a dead issue commercially and not as good as the new recordings.

Skip ahead about 25 years. With the advent of internet directories, letters about "Songs From Down The Hall" started appearing in my mailbox. I began to get requests for copies of the LP from places like Texas, New England, New Jersey, The United Kingdom, Austrailia and Switzerland. Who'd-a thunk it? The thing took on a life of its own, finding a home in record collections across the planet. I began to receive requests for any additional unreleased recordings, too. So consider this re-release on CD the first chapter. There are a few 2-track demos from the Northeast sessions with Denis on bass and Dave on drums, demos of two unreleased songs that aren't TOO embarrassing, and a finished version of "Old Richard" (released in an unfinished version on the LP because of tuning problems with the harmonica).

by Kevin Vicalvi, 2002