It only now occurs to me that this album might require some creative bookkeeping. Since, for all intents and purposes this is a collection of New Ams “covers” I may have to actually pay myself some songwriting royalties. Might be an accounting nightmare but that’s really above my pay grade. It does beg the question though, why do this? Why re-record your first “side project” album under a new name a quarter century later? Oh, so many reasons. I’ll explain…
The New Amsterdams as a concept was born out of the desire to do something completely on my own. Only me and guitar, just to see if I could do it. I drunkenly declared this to be the name of the project during a particularly intense infatuation period with Elvis Costello and that song in particular. TMBG might have been swimming around in my head a little as well. So, at the turn of the century I headed into a studio in Lawrence, KS and chickened out of the whole solo folk singer thing. I put a band together and recorded an album that was a little more orchestrated than I originally had in mind. I like the album, I think the songs are good but I’ve found that first albums are never quite what you expect them to be and that’s alright. Sometimes those experiments yield delicious if not imperfect fruit.
Cut to twenty five years later and I currently find myself in the album anniversary business, at least for the moment. When this little bundle of joy turns the big two-five I knew I wanted to mark the occasion but in a different way. As I write this, I am currently in the middle of another silver anniversary world tour and knew there was not enough time to do both. The solution, as I saw it, was to do something simpler, smaller and honestly to bring the whole project back to the original intention. I want to do something completely on my own.
So, in my little home studio I recorded the twelve songs that make up “Never You Mind” in the kind of coffee shop folkie style I originally heard them in my head. Just me and a guitar .. and layered vocals, some keys and a banjo. I also hired a fella to play strings on two songs but everything else is performed by own self. Since The New Amsterdams don’t really exist anymore I decided to release it under my own name. I was too timid to do that the first time, all the solo projects had band names back in the day anyway. I’m releasing it on my own label and keeping the distribution of it intentionally small. The vinyl is only going to be in my web store for now, maybe at any solo shows that I play in the coming year. Here’s a little taste to whet your whistle. You can pre-order the record here starting on 12.25.24. I hope that you do. Happy Anniversary.
Be well.
- pryor
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