A Few Thoughts On The Songbook Project

For over two years myself, Dave Palmer, Jay Bellerose, And Perla Batalla have been building out the "Richard Edwards Sings The Margot & The Nuclear So And So's Songbook. Here's some thoughts.

We began dipping our toes into what something like this Margot songbook might look like during the waning days of the Covid pandemic. Directly after finishing Sling Shot To Heaven I was struck by a very strong instinct that, while I loved the songs and performances, we should go to New York and do it over again at Electric Lady. My C Diff diagnosis and the subsequent year spent dealing with it derailed that ambition. Now, with stay at home orders in place and a new album (The Soft Ache And The Moon) in the can, I proposed to Dave Palmer that we attempt some richer and more complex versions of some of the songs from the Margot band. Since setting up my studio in order to get TSAATM vocals recorded (I had suffered some kind of post C Diff abdominal relapse and lost all told about 45 lbs). My mobility was shot and though setting up the studio came at great cost and an even greater learning curve)n Palmer and I began what has essentially become a non-stop recording project. Dave liked quite a few non-Sling Shot To Heaven Nukes tracks too and recorded piano for “NYC Hotel Blues” without telling me, as a sort of pitch I think. I took him up on it and we began recording reimagined Nukes songs. We brought in some of Dave and I’d favorite collaborators, Jay Bellerose on drums, Perla Batalla, Erin Rae, and Andrea Van Allen on vocals. Originally we issued those recordings on 2 now out of print volumes. In the Summer of 2023 I was told another surgery was needed. Directly following it I told Dave it was time to start back up. I hoped to do two things: 1. Finally follow through on my vision to record a solo version of Sling Shot To Heaven that could reside comfortably alongside my other solo albums (it’s always felt like the beginning of the solo years rather than the end of the Margot years. It’s most likely a bit of both) and 2. To record additional reimagined Margot tunes in order to create an expanded and definitive 2xLP which will hopefully exist as a whole, unalterable, thing long after I’m in the ground. The sessions following surgery consisted of 6 new recordings, 2 to complete the Sling Shot To Heaven Director’s Cut and 4 to complete the Songbook album you hold in your hands. There’s been a lot of physical pain accompanied with singing since my C Diff (and a lot of physical pain in general) but only during these post surgical sessions did Dave ever comment on it. He did so while comping the vocals.

“These takes are great but they sound like they hurt. Are you sure we should be doing this right now?”

Like I always do, I said “yes”.

After my first abdominal surgery in 2014 I woke from sedation to my grandmother asking “Did you learn anything” and, according to her, the answer she received from her dopey grandson was “my voice should be a thing attached to the string of a kite”. I guess another way of saying that is just to call it a kite. But something changed after I almost kicked the bucket. My voice changed, what I could do with it, like some self imposed or arbitrary limitations had been removed. What I have access to from a performance standpoint is a completely different planet than before the illness. For that reason, and because I miss performing live, those nights where I fired up the microphone and the accompanying gear became something like a sacred time. Usually around 7:15, after a few sips of an IPA. Usually after a day of Dave’s piano in my headphones, learning about his performance, all the little nooks and what-have-you, in the hopes it would deepen my own. It wasn’t a re-recording project really, every night while singing these songs I tried to give Dave a performance. Not just one, every take I wanted to be, even if only subtly noticeable, a different performance. His taste, the way he comps me (he likes it when I sound like a wild dog, half drunk or crazy) is a huge part of the record’s identity. The way this collection feels is very much like what I imagine would happen if the two of us just got on stage at Largo or somewhere and performed these 14 songs. I hope some people experience it sorta like that. Eyes closed, lost in the performances. I hope we’ve done an adequate job of making something worthy of that kind of attention.

My Memere passed away just before the sessions to complete this album took place. Her last note to me was inside a card with a painting of a robin on the front (“sorry about my penmanship, my hands are SWOLLEN”). It was a response to a note and copy of the original first volume of this project I had sent to her. We were very close when I was young. She seemed to understand something about me that no one else did. Maybe I imagined that. In her last note she wrote to inform me that she did in fact have a record player at her retirement home and that she and her friends there had been playing the album I had sent. The next time I saw her it was a surprise FaceTime from my mother who’s comportment was an instant giveaway that something was wrong. I told Lorraine Nadeu Holden how much I loved her. She tried to answer but couldn’t. But her eyes came open just a little bit. Hers is still the only death I’ve experienced that doesn’t feel rational. She took a piece of the world with her and its absence is never far from my mind. Sometimes I’ll be riding an electric scooter and a thought of her will come to me uninvited and a tear will begin to form. Then I realize how silly it must look for a grown man to be riding an electric scooter with a fully formed tear, for that or any other reason, and I’ll try to think of something else. Anyhow, this thing is dedicated to her. I can hear her from beyond the grave saying, “gee, thanks a lot”, giving that certain smirk, and then pivoting to a complaint about some psychic ache. Apple didn’t fall far.

We completed the album in August of 2023. It was a balm on some subtle bummer that had crept in over the Summer. It was a time of late night movies, solitude, tinkering with a screenplay and long walks. One night, slightly buzzed from something in a gummy bear, I put it on for some reason and was overcome with something like love. Love for that anxious little weirdo who wrote the songs, for my current collaborators who helped me bring something out of them I’d hoped was there but was never sure, and even love for the Margot songs themselves which I have been known to disparage both publicly and privately. And it’s safe to say

I love this record. Love it so dearly I can’t imagine a time when it didn’t exist. It is one of the things I am most proud of having made. Getting older is strange (ya don’t say) and if you’ve been fortunate enough to spend a life making things there’s a point where all of it starts to come into focus in a new way. I’m not even sure the contours of that evolving understanding of the growing pile of made things but I feel acutely aware of its presence in my life. Maybe it’s something like finding religion when there’s suddenly less in front of you than there is behind. Some small and sudden measure of peace or delusion. A transition from chronic creative restlessness and dissatisfaction to something like pride. Or at least something pride-adjacent. Hopefully just a pit stop. I like the kid who wrote these songs. Didn’t always, but do now. That T.S. Eliot quote comes to mind:

“We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time”

I am very pleased you are holding this album. Listen loud.

-Richard.