Universe of One

Acoustic Guitar

I love the acoustic guitar. I love how direct it is as a medium of expression - there’s nowhere to hide, but there’s also nothing unexpected to overcome. In a way, a solo acoustic guitar album feels like the most honest possible expression of myself as an artist. 

I have always performed almost exclusively on electric guitar, but I began to get serious about acoustic playing during the COVID quarantine. The Martin I had sitting in my bedroom became a great centering force during that time of uneasiness; no matter what was going on in the world, here was a mirror, reflecting exactly how good or bad I was playing that day. Again, nowhere to hide. But also no barriers to entry: whenever I wanted to play, it was ready for me. 

My relationship with the acoustic guitar deepened as I began to explore its history as an instrument with the same curiosity I had taken to the electric guitar. Just as I had studied Wes Montgomery and BB King, I began to study Tony Rice and Mississippi John Hurt. I got serious about playing Bluegrass, about playing fingerstyle, about strumming, about playing on the open strings; not because these things were very relevant to my professional career but because I just love the way they sound. 

This album is a synthesis of a lot of different kinds of music. But the acoustic guitar is the center of it all. I am very excited to be sharing this project with all of you. 

A 100th Birthday Gift

The guitar that you’ll hear on almost this entire album (apart from the alt. take of Folk Folks) is a 1923 Gibson L4 archtop. I borrowed this guitar from my friend Scott at Queen’s Vintage Guitars for a week, with no intention of doing anything except playing it and enjoying it. But I quickly began to explore how it would sound recorded, and before you know it I had a record made. There are four new compositions on this album that I wrote on that guitar (The Birds, Folk Folks, Round & Round, and Softly), and I like to think they were in there all along, waiting 100 years to be brought out. Writing them was as easy a time as I’ve ever had composing; it was just a matter of finding some of the many things that sound good on an instrument with that much character. 

The Songs

After The Rain - This is a tune I first encountered on Kenny Garrett’s Pursuance album, and I don’t think I even heard the original Coltrane recording for a long time after that. Regardless, it’s always stuck with me as a perfect kind of meditation. I like to think it sets the tone for the rest of the album. 

The Birds - I love when birds congregate on telephone wires, as if to say, you can pave over our forests but we’ll still find our trees! This is a song about that image. 

Ramblin’ - To me, the greatest Ornette Coleman tune of them all, and he wrote a lot of great ones. It’s a synthesis of everything that made him one of the masters - blues feeling, dancing rhythms, great melodies. Above all, it’s really catchy. 

Poem for Maya Angelou - I wrote this tune during the pandemic, when I was reading all of Maya Angelou’s autobiographies in order (a highly-recommended endeavor!). At the same time, I was obsessed with the Pat Metheny and Charlie Haden duet album Beyond the Missouri Sky. This tune is the product of those things. 

Folk Folks - This tune feels like the heart of the album to me - everything is acoustic, but this song is really acoustic. It’s full of strumming and open G chords and bluegrass licks. But me being me, it’s also got a key change in the middle and about 5 different sections. It’s my take on folky acoustic guitar playing. 

Ask Me Now - One of the most brilliant tunes in the whole jazz standard repertoire, and one I’ve enjoyed playing for probably a decade at this point. Two all-time moments in this tune: one, who writes a song in Db major, where the first chord is C7? And two, everything about the last measure of the bridge. Monk was really one of one. I tried to capture some of that magic with this rendition, with a nod to my old teacher Peter Bernstein, who used to say that if Monk were a guitarist, he’d love the open strings. 

Round & Round - This tune was kind of an etude for me, but an attempt to make an etude that you’d actually want to listen to. I say that because a large part of writing it was figuring out how to execute the string skipping cleanly (let alone make it musical). Sometimes our brains are ahead of our hands as composers! But that’s where the growth happens. I think I had Elvin Jones in my mind as well. 

Softly, Sweetly - I consider myself a Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings super-fan. I like to play slow songs the way they do - soft and sweet. 

Folk Folks (Grass Take) - Several months after the recording of the rest of the tracks, I was able to go to West Virginia to study with the great Bluegrass guitarist Jake Eddy. I recorded this alternate take shortly after that trip; not in an attempt to out-do the original, but just to lean into the grassy elements of the tune a little harder. This was recorded on my 1933 Martin 0-17. 

Epilogue: Blues -  Playing the blues is always right. 

The Production

I recorded this album by myself at home. It was mixed by Michael Spearman and mastered by Dan Levine. Mikel Patrick Avery took the photo you see on the album cover; I made the album art myself. Mikel also shot the videos I released as companions to the two singles from this album, and consulted on the release. Special thanks again to Scott from Queens Vintage Guitars for the use of your beautiful L4. Special thanks as well to Ben O’Niell for lending your ears to an early version of the album and giving me timely encouragement on its quality, and for your great mentorship through the years. And most of all thank you to my parents; my dad for driving me to late night jam sessions when I was 15 and letting me skip first period the next morning, my mom for teaching me my first guitar chords (among many, many other things).