The AmeriKarma album was released in 2023 and it became something bigger than I ever could have expected. It was a career-defining moment. My streaming numbers jumped 6-fold to over 3 million streams on Spotify! But the stage had been set a few years earlier. At that time the very idea of an AmeriKarma album was non-existent. How did it happen?
At the core of AmeriKarma are 4 songs: Live, Shadow Walk, Fly and When The Angels Sing. Back in 2013 I was working on a Sync Project for TV. I was up in New Hampshire in a private studio for 3 days and recorded 15 tracks. These were all instrumentals for about 2 minutes each. When I finished recording, I came home to listen to the results. There were a few tracks that I thought were very cool and decided to flesh them out a bit more, recording bass guitar and some extra guitars. I did this on my Tascam 8-Track Digital recorder, putting the studio mixes on Tks 1 & 2. This gave me 6 extra tracks to work with. Once I finished overdubbing the extra tracks, I mixed the 8 tracks down to 2-Tk stereo. The last song I recorded was Live and that was the only song not recorded in the studio. I did it all on the 8-Tk.
I found myself listening to these 4 tracks in particular. I could hear the potential of turning them into real songs with melodies and lyrics. I kept coming back to them off and on, trying out melodies and possible arrangements. I could make this a verse and this a chorus. But it wouldn’t be until 2018 that I finally started writing them as songs. I knew I needed to start thinking about a new album. It was already 2 years since my last one Rock’nRoll Romantic. With the competition in streaming, I was behind the eight ball. The days of putting out an album every 2 or 3 years were over. You might as well be starting from scratch every time.
I had this track called The Wish, sitting in the can since 2010. The track was done but I never finished the lyrics for it. So in January 2018 I decided I was finally going to finish it. Generally, what usually happens when I start being creative, ideas for other songs start coming in. While working on The Wish, I began to look at these other 4 tracks and finished 2 of them—Live and Shadow Walk. By October I had booked studio time at The Spa with Stevie DeAcutis. I cut 4 tracks in the 1st week of October and a couple of weeks later went for my annual physical. That did not go as well. My doctor said my blood count had dropped to 7! (This is time for a blood transfusion) He wanted me to come in for a bone marrow test…not fun!
On Halloween 2018 my doctor called to tell me the results of a bone marrow test. The diagnosis was MDS, short for Myelodysplastic Syndrome, a pre-condition of Leukemia. When I met with the Leukemia doctor, he said my body was making irregular cells called Blasts at 12%, which is considered high because at 20% it’s full-blown leukemia. He said I had 3 months to get it under control and then get a Stem Cell Transplant to cure the MDS. He said I was good candidate for a new Drug Trial he was heading up, if I was interested. Of course I’m interested! 3 months later my Blasts fell to 2% and I was ready for the transplant. It literally saved my life.
When I came home to recover, I went back to the music I had started working on before going into the hospital. I decided I wanted to add a 3rd verse to Live. The strange thing about the song Live was that I thought I wrote the lyrics after my transplant. I had been in such a fog in the hospital that I forgot when I had written it. It wasn’t until I went into my workbook when I was finishing writing the lyrics to Shadow Walk that I saw the date for the lyrics of Live—January 2018! Talk about life imitating art!! They say that truth is stranger than fiction and here’s a case that bears that out. Somehow my subconscious was telling me I needed to have a positive frame of mind for something that was coming my way. I had written a song about wanting to live life to the fullest, 10 months before I was diagnosed with MDS!
It was only 6 months after my transplant that the world was hit with the Covid-19 pandemic. Now everyone would get to experience what I had just gone through—Isolation, Quarantine in their homes. It was crazy. It was also historic. Nothing would ever be the same as we knew it before. It was under these circumstances that AmeriKarma started to take shape. I went to work on my music. Fly came quickly. It was one of the last tracks I recorded in New Hampshire and something about the turn around chords reminded me of Peggy Sue by Buddy Holly, which is what I called it (Buddy Holly) before it became Fly.
After having written 2 intense kind of songs with Live and Shadow Walk, I looked at Fly as sort of “comic relief”. I kept singing “I just want to fly, I just want to fly’. Let me out of here, you know? It’s simple, why not go with it? So, I did. It came together easily enough. Now I had 3 songs finished. The 4th track that was my favorite was called Acoustic Heart. I loved the vibe of the track and its simple acoustic lines. But for some reason I could not get a melody for it. I mean I worked on this song off and on for years! I decided that I would turn it into a rocker on piano. I even had a title—Birds of A Feather.
In 2021 we moved from our home of 43 years, 90 miles down the NJ Parkway to Ocean County to be closer to the ocean. When we finally moved into our new home I was unpacking my computer and started listening to my iTunes. Acoustic Heart came up. I hadn’t heard it in quite awhile and I was pleasantly surprised to be hearing it now. And then it happened…as I was listening I suddenly realized why I hadn’t been able to write a song from it. The simple acoustic guitar lines had been in the way all along. I also realized that if I sang those acoustic lines as the melody, I could write the song!
I quickly picked up my guitar and started to try it out. YES!!! It worked!!! This would become When The Angels Sing. If AmeriKarma was going to be about the pandemic, I needed a song about Death. Like many people who lost friends and family to Covid-19, Death was something that touched everyone. I lost my cousin and my engineer of 20 years within 24 hours of each other. No funerals, no paying final respects, NOTHING. I worked with Ben Elliott for 20 years at his Showplace Studios. In his last days, his partner was selling the studio from under him. I can’t imagine the stress it must have placed on him. Ben had recorded everything by DownTown Mystic. Where would I go to record?
Having made the move to Ocean County put me within 30 minutes of Shorefire Studios in W. Long Branch, NJ. I hadn’t worked there in 35 years, when Garry Tallent was a co-owner. Garry sold his share in the 90s. The new owner was a guy named Joe DeMaio, who bought the studio in the mid 90s. I called Joe and asked him if still had that old board, which was one reason I never went back. He said he sold it and replaced it with one of the last Helios boards ever made. This was the board used at Trident Studios in London where The Beatles, Stones and the cream of the English music scene record all those classic albums. I didn’t know it at the time but I had found my new home. 😊
I had been planning to record once the pandemic had passed. I sent the demos to drummer Steve Holley and bassist Paul Page and planned on a session for January 2022. One day Steve calls me and tells me how much he’s knocked out by the songs. This is Steve Holley! He said he was blown away by the demos. He can’t stop listening to them. Now I’m blown away! I’ve never had a conversation like this with the great Steve Holley. The man’s a legend. Something is happening. I feel like I’ve arrived! On January 15, 2022, a week before my birthday, the 1st sessions for AmeriKarma take place at Shorefire Studios.
For most of 2022 I was in the studio overdubbing and mixing the album that would become AmeriKarma. Actually, the album had no name at this point. Every month I worked with Joe DeMaio, averaging 25-30 mixes on each song. By May I knew I had to release Fly as a single. I had not been that big a fan of the song, but Steve Holley said it was a great song. I had Steve come back to do harmonies and background vocals. He’s so talented. Probably the best all-around musician I’ve ever worked with. Once I put the 12-string Rickenbacker on the track and cut the lead vocal, I could hear that Fly was the lead track for the album. Things started to fall into place as if by magic.
Having had the incredible experience of having my life changed by the transplant to creating the album of my life fills me with gratitude. It’s so hard to put into words because the feeling and emotions go so deep. It is in this spirit that I decided to put out The DownTown Demos for the 2024 Holidays as a thank you to all who listened and streamed AmeriKarma, as a way of giving back to share my story. I’m so grateful to be alive and making the music that I want to make. I want to offer hope to those who might be facing hard times in their own lives. Stay in the moment and be positive. If I could do it, so can you. Peace. 😊
