Today I have been recording some final vocal tracks in my room. In a couple of weeks I’ll travel to New York City for mixing in the snow. I feel grateful that this unjustifiable pursuit is continuing to engage me so fully.

The project started shortly after I recorded A Cure for Sleep. For several weeks, as I was settling into San Francisco, I dared myself to write and record a song every day. The results were varied. I accumulated lots of little hooks and sketches, some calling out to be turned into real music, some not.

As a working journalist it has not been easy to parlay all these odds and ends into a finished songs. Writing a song is easy, or should be; writing a song you’re going to want to sing once a week for a year is not. Usually it doesn’t come out all at once, and the editing takes some skill and lots of patience. I feel lucky to have learned to compose in the era of GarageBand, whose effortless layering makes it much easier for a lone songwriter to flesh out ideas, and to hear what’s working.

Playing shows with a full band in San Francisco and New York City has spurred me to finish the songs I want, and to road-test the songs I have. And then I discovered the miracle of writing retreats at my cousin’s country estate in high Northern California, where, free from the chatter of Internet and friends, there was no choice but to finish what I had started. Without any of these components, there would be no album.

I’ve been working with some really fine people. Leo Sidran has been a very generous producer and engineer in New York City. Jesse
Olsen has been the same in San Francisco. Many friends have come to shows. Some have listened to songs and given advice and encouragement. Many people in my neighborhood have heard my vocal exercises, which resemble the mating calls of an insane clown.

The result of all this will be an album (or a pair of EPs; I haven’t decided yet). My working title is “The Future Limited”. I think you’ll like it. For an early celebration, I’m playing a pair of shows:

Weds Dec 8 at 7pm
The Future Limited: A house concert
at the home of Scott Roy in San Francisco
Warm, free, dinner provided. Bring alcohol.

RSVP for address

Weds Dec 22 at 6pm
The Future Limited: A public concert
Rockwood Music Hall
196 Allen Street, NYC
6pm, warm, free.
RSVP for fun

In January I’ll be traveling to a songwriting retreat in the
Mojave Desert, and then Sundance Film Festival. But I’ll be back on the San Francisco scene in February and beyond.

And thinking ahead a bit…

Mon May 2
Jascha vs. Jascha
Live in the atrium of the JCCSF after a lecture by Geoff Dyer
Talk at 7pm, concert at 8:15pm

On my last album I set a pastoral poem by D. A. Powell to music:

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Now here is a sketch of a brand new song based on its companion poem, “corydon and alexis”.

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When I record it for the next album, I’m aiming for a string quartet.

Earlier this month I was lucky enough to attend a Brooklyn meditation class led by my dear friend Jesse Johnson, during which she said: “Let yourself off every hook.” The line, I believe, was borrowed from her teacher David Wagner. Naturally, I decided to fashion that line into a hook of my own:

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Here’s a vocal sketch for a futuristic ballad I wrote in a somewhat apocalyptically humid New York City last month:

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Incidentally, my dictionary has the following definition of the word “past”: “gone by in time and no longer existing.”

Earlier this week I was delighted to see a review of my first album in The Deli, a magazine about local music. It began:

Folk-pop, down-tempo philosophical musing, romantic longing and infectious harmonies all find their place on A Cure for Sleep, by San Francisco musician Jascha vs. Jascha.

read more…

Last week I played a show for the San Francisco Songbird Festival. It was not such a good day for my voice, which was pretty hoarse from a mild throat infection. But I think it was one of the best performances I’ve ever given. Partly this is due to my recent songwriting retreat, which has given me a handful of fresh songs. Partly it’s just a cumulative comfort with the stage. But I think the main difference is in the band backing me up—Adam Roszkiewicz on guitar, Daniel Fabricant on bass, Jason Slota on drums—which ROCKED. Take a listen to this little murder ballad gone electric:

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I just spent a week on my cousin’s land in rural Northern California, staying in a little solar-powered yurt by the creek, with some books of poetry and a makeshift recording studio, writing and revising songs all day.

Here is one of the first fruits, a song-in-progress about a helicopter accident:

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Come hear me play a version of this tune, and some other new ones, at the Cafe Revolution in San Francisco this Saturday night.

Oh, and that white noise you hear in the background? It’s not tape hiss. It’s the rush of the creek.

“A Cure for Sleep”
NYC Release Show
Rockwood Music Hall
184 Allen Street (at Houston)
Weds May 12 at 6pm (sharp! free!)