Hey there, folks.  The album release for A Place to Remember the Dead is finally upon me/us, and I’m feeling really good about all of it.  Rehearsals have been terrific, and promotion has gone well, which means I won’t be sweating turnout and can really just focus on my performance.

I’m actually writing this entry mostly for archival purposes.  My good pal Brendan Getzell, host of the Hotel Utah open mic, gave me a really sweet, thoughtful write-up in the newsletter last week.  Unfortunately, the newsletter section of theutah.org isn’t really set up as a blog with permalinks, so I’m reproducing the whole review here for linking purposes.  If you really want to see it on the original site, go to the newsletter page and scroll down to the 2/17/14 edition.

Here’s Brendan.  Hope to see you tonight!!! xo

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There’s a certain truth to the cinematography in the music video for the lead single of Shareef Ali’s A Place To Remember The Dead, “Tuscon” (YouTube). In it, Shareef (backed by bassist Maia Papaya and lap-steel plucker Brian Belknap) is disarmingly close to the lens, pouring personality into his performance as if his life depended on it, but with a measure of charm that prevents him from overwhelming the viewer. Whether a conscious choice or not, this immediacy is entirely fitting, for it mirrors the intimacy of Shareef’s nimble baritone on APTRTD, both in performance and production. His records have always been to some extent showcases for his lyrics, which are multitudinous while leaving space for intrigue and mystery beneath metaphor, but here a convergence of factors contribute to this release’s success.

On APTRTD, Shareef’s really comes into his own as a vocalist; the emotion has always been there, but it comes packaged with a strong sense of control. He’s always done defiance well, a fact readily apparent on shitkicker tunes like “Stone’s Throw” and “There’s a Reason to my Rage, There’s a Folly to my Fear,” but it’s that sense of control that really propels the beauty of the more delicate melodies found in songs like “For the Rest of my Life,” “I Want to Kiss Death,” and standout track “The Tenderness In Me.” Aaand is that an Elvis-style quiver I hear in the 2nd chorus of “Tuscon”? Dude is full of surprises.

That our first stop is at Shareef’s vocal performance isn’t to devalue the other aspects of the album in the slightest. His guitar work is excellent and varied; even his take on an ol’-time 12-bar blues, “Marigny Love Song,” has copious pieces of flair attached to its familiar structure. The arrangements always serve the song and not the other way around, and the vocal harmonies can take you by surprise with their precision strikes, sometimes bringing chills (I’m thinking especially of “The Tenderness In Me” here). Hotel Utah veterans Mr. Andrew, Erma, Brian Belknap and others add a great many tasteful frills to the listening experience and are integral to both the vibe and the soundscape of the album.

Lastly, a quick shout-out to my favorite song on the album after the first several listens, “Ain’t Nothing Sweeter (Train Song).” Having heard Shareef perform this song a number of times dating back to mid-2012 at a house concert I hosted (#humblebrag), I always got the feeling that Shareef was searching for the performance and the melody he really wanted. He definitely found it on the album version; it’s a jazzy shuffle with as sophisticated a chord progression as he’s ever concocted, with a complex-yet-natural melody. He also uses the song to pay tribute to both names of the past (lyrical hat-tips to Johnny Mercer, Conor Oberst & others) and sounds of the present (the instrumental section recalls the relaxed jamming on “Nothing, I Love You Is All” from 2011’sHoly Rock & Roll). That, and a reference to sex on a train without taking the easy tunnel-based way out. Bravo.

And I have to say folks, I’m feeling really good about it.  Like surprisingly good.

You’ll recall that in my year-end retrospective, I tried to speak frankly about the cost and benefit of the Serious Business of releasing an album.  It probably won’t surprise you that at the time I was still sifting through a dizzying amount of blogs, trying to figure out where would be appropriate to send my record, and then firing (literal) scores of emails off into the ether, not knowing what if anything might return.  I don’t mean to be overdramatic, but it really is quite tedious, more so because there’s almost no way to evaluate one’s success or lack thereof.  I was still feeling this way as recently as two weeks ago, but in the last few days something’s changed.  I’ve crested some sort of hump I was struggling to get over, and now I am legit really excited about putting this record out again.

What changed?  Well, for one thing, my partner and I announced that we’re expecting a wee one in August!  We knew that people loved and supported us, but the outpouring of warm wishes was really overwhelming in the best possible way.  (There’s much more I could say about the prospects of being a parent seven short months from now, but not within this blog post.)  I got a bunch of my ducks in rows for the non-show aspects of the release: finished emailing all the blogs and publications requesting coverage, placed orders for LPs and t-shirts, picked up the CDs, worked on getting the tracks ready on iTunes, Spotify, etc.

And lo! Some of the fruits of my earlier toil have begun to appear. My first music video for my song “Tucson” dropped earlier this week, and was quite well received, despite an initial snafu regarding the spelling of the (ahem) title*.  And Christopher Millard over at Examiner.com wrote a really nice, thoughtful review of the record.  And then everyone has been so goddamn sweet about all of it, sharing the review and the video and the picture I took of the CDs when I picked them up.  Jesus, it’s like you guys really support me! *wipes tear*

So basically I’ve reached a point where 1) my to-do list for the release appears to have a finite number of items, few enough that I can keep them all in my field of vision if I step back, and it doesn’t seem insurmountable that I could actually complete them in the next couple weeks; and 2) I really just have the feeling that, barring some unforseeable catastrophe, there’s no way this couldn’t be a great fucking show.  I know what I need to do is remember to savor times like these, and remind myself of them when it’s feeling like a complete slog.

So regarding what I wondered in my last post: yes, I think it has been worth it.

This is going to be a good year.

See you at the show,

Shareef Ali

*This is super silly I know, but there are like 250 views on the initial video we put out. Add that to the 300 on the corrected one, and that’s already a couple hundred views more than any other video I have out. In like four days! Feels good :)

Another year to review, for no one’s benefit except my own really.  I’ll try to keep this brief.

This has been the year of Making A Record The Serious Way.  At the end of last year, I knew I had an album’s worth of material, my strongest yet, and I wanted to take a stab at Doing It Right.  Well, you know.   It’s all I’ve been talking about all year: mastering, crowdfunding, vinyl, videos, promotion, the whole nein.  There’s still a couple months left of all this business leading up to the RECORD RELEASE SHOW ON FEBRUARY 19!!!!!!  …But since we’re reflecting now, I’m gonna just go ahead and say, I don’t know if it’s worth it.

What I mean by ‘it’ is going super hard on the ‘business’ end of music and not hard enough on the music end.  Folks, I have been mostly unemployed for most of the past year, and let me tell you, it is trivially easy to make music your full-time job and forget to make music.  Of course there’s always more you can do on either end, but what I missed the most over this past year was touring–lord but I love traveling and seeing friends and playing music every goddamn night, what could be better really–and writing songs.

I will say that I was pleased and gratified that I was able to perform pretty regularly throughout the year as a result of being asked to join many bills.  It’s easy to lose sight of what I’ve ‘built’ over the past five years in this local scene, because it’s not something I can point to or touch, but I guess it really is the relationships, huh?  Aw, come here, alla youse, group hug group hug.

But I did write half a dozen songs, which I guess after the past five years or so of keeping track appears to be my low-water mark.  I can live with that.  Here they are, in order of appearance:

1. Fledgling Feeling (A Lone Damn Tin Piranha)
2. Lullaby (for Fynn) – I wrote this for my dear old friend Robyn on the occasion of her son’s birth.  Hadn’t really thought of it as a public offering, but I performed it at my last show to fairly good response, so maybe that’ll be a thing..?
3. Servant Wedding – In which I paraphrase (plagiarize) a lovely speech my friend gave at his wedding about spoon rings and love as resistance.  Haven’t gone public with this one yet, but sometime soon perhaps.
4. Tinder
5. The Anti-Capitalist’s Guide To Getting It On
6. David

I got a couple irons in the fire, also, but maybe those’ll make a nice head start in the new year.

Anyway, when I say “I don’t know if it’s worth it”, don’t think I mean I regret it or anything.  Just figuring it all out, y’know?  And *certainly* don’t think I’m not totally stoked for my ALBUM RELEASE FEBRUARY 19!!!!!!!111!!!  Because I am.

So yeah, goals for 2014, pretty simple really:

1. Put out this goddamn album.
2. Go on a gaddamn tour.
3. Write at least six (maybe twelve?) gaddumn songs.
4. Fucking A, put out another thing, why not?  There has, in fact, been talk of a split cassette with some of my fav indie artists.

Cheers, folks.

After being hell of broke for hell of long, I finally scraped together enough coins last week to download Rin Tin Tiger’s new full-length disc Splinter Remedies, which came out at the end of August. I think I’ve put it on at least once every day since then.

When I first saw the emo-folk duo Westwood & Willow that would grow into Rin Tin Tiger a few years back, I was struck right away by their acerbic attitude, obvious musicianship and sharp songcraft. But things really started to get interesting when Mr. Andrew added his give-no-fucks garage rock drumming into the mix; suddenly there was this powerhouse of a band, all shouting and playing the shit out of their instruments and generally making way more of a racket than an acoustic guitar-fronted three-piece has any business doing.

Rin Tin Tiger grew up a lot on this record. Though always clever and self-aware, there was a note of angst in some of the band’s early material like “Red Pony” and “Ghost Door” that’s now been tempered with some good old-fashioned cynicism. “Go on now, leave me with bad feelings, and we’ll both get some good writing done,” shrugs frontman Kevin in the rollicking Piedmont-picking folk singalong “Aluminum”.

Splinter Remedies accomplishes that enviable, paradoxical feat of asserting a band’s voice more confidently by actually tackling more styles, not less.  The band gets positively raucous on numbers like “Michelangelo” and “Precaution”, with Sean’s throbbing, asymmetric bass lines and Andrew’s rabid-hound thrashing underscoring stark, deranged lyrics reminiscent of At The Drive In.  And while RTT has always traded in the blues, most notably on the song “Toxic Pocketbook”, they sink even deeper into that cool mud with “Waterfront Blues”, which contains some of Kevin’s most biting lyrics to date: “I’ll pay a handsome ransom to retrieve that hostage sense of myself…I’m tired of making you come.”  Yet their familiar ground of countrified crooning is firmer than ever beneath their feet on such tearjerkers as “Haunted Now” and “Suffer No More”.

It’s my feeling that even some of the most beloved albums are weighed down a little by at least a song or two that just isn’t up to snuff (see: Radiohead, “Bones”).  But while I’ve got my favorite moments, I wouldn’t call any of the twelve songs on Splinter Remedies duds.  Besides having eclectic, interesting tunes, with all three members exploring the full melodic, rhythmic and textural palettes of their respective instruments (and all being fine singers to boot), Rin Tin Tiger seems to have achieved the power trio equivalent of using every part of the slaughtered beast.  I’ll leave it to them to divulge who’s the skull, the horns or the bladder.

You can stream and download Splinter Remedies here.

We’re making a video for the new record (actually a couple, hopefully).  Do you wanna be in it?  Or give a hand?

Things I’m looking for:

• people who can lend costume elements, including hats, ties, glasses and blazers
• people who can stand around looking cool in the background (for female-identified folks, looking cool in drag)

This would be all volunteer, but I’d feed you and give you a free copy of the new record. Likely shooting date is still TBD, but probably about a month from now.

Interested? Message me at shareef@shareefali.com, and I’ll tell you more of the deets!

Hey folks. My Indiegogo campaign is officially over! This’ll be my last note on it. I just wanna say thanks to EVERYONE, not just folks who donated, but everyone who blasted the campaign out to their circles, everyone who encouraged or congratulated me, and everyone who just put up with having that in their social media stream 24/7.

As an anti-capitalist, it seems to me that there are few relations that are more fraught than asking for or being asked for money. The fact that we need this invention to pursue creative projects, but we also need it to eat, to keep a roof over our heads, to pay off our debts, and this leads to uncomfortable, unresolvable comparisons about who ‘deserves’ to have money. In the world I dream of and fight for, we would all have the things we need and deserve to survive AND lead rich, fulfilling lives, and not one of those things would be money.

But in this world, I recognize that scraping together a chunk of cash for a friend, comrade or new acquaintance and trusting that they’ll use it to create something meaningful and true is really a profoundly generous act. I am deeply touched and humbled by all of you, and I don’t take a single cent for granted.

Also, I promise not to do this again for AT LEAST three years.

Hi folks,

The crowdfunding campaign to fund the release of A Place to Remember the Dead is almost over!  All in all, it’s been a very gratifying, touching, humbling experience.  Thank you so much to everyone who’s helped out.

Right now, we’re sitting at 60% funded, with four days left on the clock.  It’s not an all-or-nothing campaign; I’ll still get the money raised even if we don’t reach 100%.  I’m prepared to adjust my budget and goals for this release based on that, but I’m still hopeful that we can make it here in the last couple days.  Also, Indiegogo takes a smaller cut if you meet your target, so I’d really like to do that to maximize the value of everyone’s contributions.

Please check it out if you haven’t yet!  Remember that for donations of $5, $10, giving is essentially like pre-ordering the album, except you actually get the digital download months in advance of the official release.  Thanks everyone!!

<3

Shareef

Dear blog readers,

Gosh, I’d meant to post something here last Friday when the campaign went live, but you know how it goes.  Anyway, I’m thrilled to report that as of this writing, we’re already more than 21% funded! :D

There’s a whole pitch on the campaign page, but the long and short of it is that I’m incredibly proud of this record (you knew that already) and I’d be thrilled and gratified if you helped out at any level (probably knew that too).

Also note that any donation of $5 or up has a reward of an advance digital download.  Basically it’s kind of like pre-ordering the album, but better, because you get to hear it months in advance of the ‘official’ release.

Thanks folks!

Hey everyone,

So I’ve been in the studio recording for my next full-length album for a few weeks now, and am probably overdue for an update on how that’s all going.  But there’s a more immediate thing I wanna tell you about first, and potentially get some of y’all involved in.

As you probably know, I was involved in the Occupy Oakland action and mass arrest that happened on January 28 of last year, and I wrote a song about it.  You can hear a live version of it here, and read the lyrics at the bottom of this post (obvious trigger warning for the events of that day, and police repression generally).  This is definitely a stand-up-fight-back kind of song, so I’d like to invite comrades, radicals, anyone involved in the struggle to be a part of the recording that we’re about to make.

What this will basically entail is showing up this Tuesday afternoon at 3 PM to Shipwreck Studio in Oakland, all standing in a room together, and singing/shouting along to some parts of the song.  Definitely the last verse, maybe some other lines here and there too.  In the final mix your own individual voice won’t really be distinguishable, it’ll just sound like a crowd.  The whole process will probably take a few hours.

Other things to note: I can’t pay you.  I do intend to make the song available for free download, as I did with the first song I wrote about Occupy, “Witness”, but it will also be included on my album, which I will be selling (but also giving away a lot, as I tend to do).

Anyway, if you’re interested and available, I would love for people to be involved in the archiving of this song.  Email me at shareef at shareefali dot com.  The only preparation is to listen to the song once or twice with the words; it has changed a little since the live recording above, but I’ll send a more current version once we’re confirmed.

Excited to share this with you.

Shareef

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“Stone’s Throw (J28)”

“The fight is dead,” the riot cop said as he sat me on the curb
with my cramping wrists, piss and apple cider vinegar.
Though I’m trembling still, from nerves and chill, I will have to call your bluff
if you think you can stop this struggle with a pair of ziptie cuffs.

A clear sky storm of flash-bangs, beanbags, hazy and surreal;
a scarlet letter spray-painted on a makeshift trashcan shield.
But they tossed our stuff before they loaded us on a stolen public bus:
goggles and a spray bottle, the only LAW I trust.

They held us twenty to a tank of cold concrete and steel,
where you’ll lose your mind trying to keep time by counting orange peels.
I don’t know which is worse, missing the warm bath of daylight,
or waking every hour to the same fluorescent night.

I got released to a fast food feast on the front steps of the jail,
but we know our work ain’t finished until we empty every cell.
So you can ban us from the Plaza, stay away from City Hall,
but sure as we burned that flag, that edifice is gonna fall!

So we rage on like a Greece fire, I heard they torched a bank today.
And we raise a fist to Cairo, we’re just a stone’s throw away.
If you’ve got a pot to piss in, don’t be afraid to call it black,
or you’ll never break the kettle and take your city back.

I’m in the process of transferring things over to my newly redesigned site on WordPress, and so two of my bits of ‘praise’ that are preserved in the form of screenshots need to find a home here.  So, reliving past glories, here’s the time Amanda Palmer retweeted my Occupy song (hilarious mentions before and after left in, of course):

And here’s some sweet words that Pete Kane said about the Folksonomy on the MSN Postbox blog (which honestly is awful and completely unviewable, let alone permalink-able):