I miss you Fugazi.

I’m thrilled to announce that I have a new record of songs titled The Bellows, coming in April, and the first single is available today! You can pre-save the LP at iTunes, Spotify, or preorder vinyl.

You can grab the first single The Crane here: (and at your other online haunts).

Happy Mag writes:  “After years lost in experimental soundscapes, Jefferson Pitcher returns with something grand and deeply human. ‘The Crane’ is indie rock at its most expansive—New Order basslines, The National’s brooding pulse, and a sense of storytelling that soars. It’s a song that feels weightless yet grounded, a reminder that great songwriting can still hit like a gut punch.”

Edgar Allen Poets writes: “Drawing the listener into Pitcher’s refined sonic world, his experience composing is evident, as every melodic sequence and arrangement feels well thought out. The sound expands into a vast space, conjuring a crepuscular atmosphere reminiscent of Nick Cave and Brian Eno. Pitcher’s vocals carry subtle shades of Bono at times further enriching the song’s depth. His ability to balance mood and structure with such precision makes The Crane an immersive experience showcasing an artist with a masterful touch.”

I wrote the songs, played guitar, and sang. Austin Hatch played bass, keys, guitar, and did the band arrangements. Michael Anctil played drums. Andrew Oedel engineered and mixed the record. Harris Newman @ Grey Market Mastering did the mastering. We all worked so very hard on this. A bunch of you folks have been bugging me about releasing the demos for the record, so if you twist hard enough…

The video is out for The Crane (here too) and I should note a sneaky little secret…this version of the song, for the purposes of single release, is only the first half. The LP version has a glorious ambient noise section and an outro, which I feel is perhaps the greatest thing I’ve ever made in my lifetime. Period. But you’ll have to wait.

As I work on trying to get this record into peoples’ ears and hearts, I find myself ruminating on listening, something that has been on my mind for many years now.

I recently read a sad and rather harrowing piece in Harper’s about some of the nefarious practices showing up in online streaming. To quote:

“A model in which the imperative is simply to keep listeners around, whether they’re paying attention or not, distorts our very understanding of music’s purpose. This treatment of music as nothing but background sounds—as interchangeable tracks of generic, vibe-tagged playlist fodder—is at the heart of how music has been devalued in the streaming era. It is in the financial interest of streaming services to discourage a critical audio culture among users, to continue eroding connections between artists and listeners, so as to more easily slip discounted stock music through the cracks, improving their profit margins in the process. It’s not hard to imagine a future in which the continued fraying of these connections erodes the role of the artist altogether, laying the groundwork for users to accept music made using generative-AI software.”

You can read the Harper’s article here.

About a month ago, I took my thirteen year old daughter to see a fairly successful band, fronted by a young woman. I will not name names. Said band sold out to a crowd of about 1500, and the opener was another young woman. The show began with just young woman #2 holding an acoustic guitar and drummer on stage, her voice a powerful marvel. The harmonies began, then the keys and strings, and I was confused. I was scanning the stage for where the other musicians might be hidden. Were there curtains that had yet to rise? I looked at my wife inquisitively, she furrowed her brow, and I continued scanning the stage.

Then it hit me. There is no curtain, there are no other musicians. And remarkably, the audience doesn’t care. It was a heartbreaking moment for me to realize the degree to which the facade, the spectacle of it all, has begun to erode our humanity.

Yeah, yeah, I know, this began long ago, but I was just stunned. How have we come to this? How have we reached a point where people want things to sound so much like the recording, that they just play along with the recording? I do not want that. I want to see people on stage with all of their messy humanness, standing on the edge of a cliff, hoping that they don’t fall off. I want to hear mistakes, I want to hear tempo drift, I want to hear changes made in an instant because it feels right. I want honesty. And how can music be honest when it’s all a ruse, when you’re too afraid to take any chances? Bowie, Leonard Cohen, Coltrane, Jeff Buckley, etc., etc. etc., are all rolling in their graves.

I think the answer lies to some degree in something I witnessed the following week. Another young person showed me a video of someone performing a cover song “live” at their piano. I could tell immediately that this was someone singing along to a studio recording, not live, but I kept my mouth shut until the vocal harmonies entered. I told the youngster that the vocal harmonies make clear this isn’t live, and they replied that they hadn’t noticed. Well, not until I pointed them out repeatedly. But here’s the crazy thing: the youngster didn’t care. They still felt like it was a “live” recording and whether or not it was “live” by my definition, didn’t seem to matter.

But it does matter.

What have we left if live music all becomes people playing along with their records? (I know that this will never happen in some circles/genres). I began watching the performer onstage like a hawk, trying to determine if she was even playing the guitar. I determined (with binoculars) that she was probably playing her acoustic, but the acoustic we were hearing, was coming from the computer stage left. When the headliner came running out amidst flashing lights, my trust was gone. Would they also just be playing along to the record?

In the end, I think they were doing some things live, but I could see the song chugging across the computer screen throughout the whole set, strings included. The crowd was a screaming conflagration. I wonder if anyone else noticed…

I miss you Fugazi. I miss you.

Be well dear reader. Stay safe, try to be kind and empathetic to your foes, and give yourself the time and space to love music; it is, after all, the great lifter of spirits.