Geoffrey Welchman, the “One Band Man,” Arrives Baltimore, MD, May 15, 2007—One Band Man, the long-awaited second album by Baltimore-based singer/songwriter Geoffrey Welchman, has finally emerged. “To quote the Rutles,” Welchman said with a sigh, “the first album was recorded in twenty minutes—the second one took even longer.” The reclusive artist recorded his critically acclaimed debut (“Comfort Noise”) in a single afternoon session in 2001, while One Band Man
took over three years to complete, with Welchman handling all the
instruments (guitars, bass, keyboards, drums) and multi-tracked vocals. The
former writer for such magazines as Rolling Stone, The New Yorker,
People, and Might had long dreamed of just such an exercise in
megalomania. “This was truly a life-long dream,” he says, “which
started as four-year old listening to Sgt. Pepper and thinking I want to do that.” Recording
began in February of 2004 at the Chicken Coop Studio in Fulton,
Maryland. Engineer Scotty O’Toole admits he didn’t know what to make of
the new material at first. “He built the songs from the ground up,”
O’Toole said, “starting with drums, then bass parts over the drums. I
didn’t hear guitar or melodies for three or four sessions—but he always
knew where he was.” With
years of experience playing guitar and bass, the drums were a new
challenge. He started playing them in 2002, “Really just for fun—I
think all guitarists are secretly closeted drummers.” After a couple of
years of practice, he decided not to hire a session drummer, making One Band Man possible. “I finally got in touch with my inner Ringo.” One
of the first songs he completed is “Out on the Road,” a serio-comic
depiction of a nervous breakdown. With a taut beat and a chunky
acoustic groove, the song mixes wild west imagery with desperation. “I
wrote that during a rough time out in California, after a night where I
tried to get in my car and literally drive out of my life.” One Band Man’s
range is startling. Based in a style he calls “folkrocky blues,”
Welchman nonetheless weaves in English folk (the celtic outro of “Is It
Okay?”), classic 4/4 rock (“Wendy”), backwards-guitar textures in the
psychedelic mashup “Unforgiven,” even bottom-heavy funk in “Fender
Bender.” “I
always loved the variety-show feel of the Beatles’ albums,” Welchman
said. “They took such care to make each song sound different from the
last. I’d hate to stay in one groove for a whole record.” In
the liner notes, he thanks influences as varied as author Neil Gaiman,
singers Joan Armatrading, Marvin Gaye, and Louis Prima, and trip-hop
band Moloko. He also cites an album of music by the 15th
century German nun and composer Hildegard von Bingen, which begat a
sensual tribute (“Hildegard”) that begins with a quiet harpsichord
passage. “Hildegard” follows the raucous “Here, My Dear,” a thought
experiment that had Welchman amassing multiple rhymes for ear (final total: 21). But
it is the acerbic wit of the album’s centerpiece, “Crowd Control” that
supplies some of the most memorable moments on the album, as in the
first verse: “Weapons of mass destruction/cheeseburger and fries/blow
up a whole nation/change the system from inside.” “I
don’t set out to be controversial, or topical,” Welchman said, “because
I don’t necessarily plan to write what I write. I just tend to blurt
out things that I’m thinking about. Songs like Crowd Control or Hildegard came very quickly.” Bypassing
labels and producers—“CDbaby and the web make those things seem a lot
less necessary”—Welchman produced the sessions himself, even providing
the cover art drawing. The self-financed One Band Man was finally mixed at Nice Package Studio in early 2007 and mastered by Gary Sweda—making it a totally Maryland-produced album. Praise
is already starting to trickle in. “My son says he’s going to buy the
album as soon as it’s on Itunes,” Welchman said with a chuckle. High praise, indeed.
