My new rock album, Pop and Circumstance

POP AND CIRCUMSTANCE (2024)

Listen on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Amazon, Tidal or this website.

1. What Love Can Do
2. Get Out While the Getting’s Good
3. Your Work Day
4. One Good Turn
5. A Thing For You
6. Stretched Too Thin
7. Codependency
8. Long

Music and Lyrics written by Paul Heinz.

Drums – Josh Holm, except track 6, Sam Heinz.
Bass – Johnny Furman, tracks 1-3, Julian Wrobel, tracks 4-8, PH, supplemental bass.
Guitar – Brandon Schreiner, tracks 1, 2, 7, solo on 5, Griffin Cobb, tracks 3-4, Roy Anderson tracks 5-6, 8, PH, supplemental guitar.
Backup Vocals – Jessica Heinz and PH.
Second Vocal on track 2 – Anthony Calderisi.
Paul Heinz – vocals and keys.

Copyright 2024, Paul Heinz. All Rights Reserved.

Cover art by Sarah Heinz based on a concept by PH.

Drums engineered by Mark Walker at Kiwi Audio, Batavia, IL, on July 10, 2022.
Mixed by PH with helpful feedback from Mark Walker, Johnny Furman, Brandon Schreiner, Sam Heinz and Anthony Calderisi.

Mastered by Collin Jordan of The Boiler Room, Chicago, IL.

Thanks to all of the musicians, engineers and artists, as well as to Isaac Triska for giving it his all.

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The short version is that I’d hoped to be completed with this project by December of 2022. Oops.

Here’s the long version. Still just clawing our way out of the pandemic in the spring of 2021 and immediately on the heels of completing The Human Form Divine, I decided to tackle what I thought was a brilliant idea: take the original recordings from my 2000 album, Better Than This, and mess around with the mixes. Maybe re-record the vocals of a 32 year-old me and replace them with my more mature voice, add some live drums, get things properly mastered. It would be a blast! So I took out my trusty CD-ROMs upon which I’d stored all the tracks, only to discover that most of them weren’t retrievable. Gone. I even took the CDs to a specialist, and the conclusion was the same: I either had to live with what I recorded back in 1999 or completely re-record the tunes.

Well, why not? I relearned my piano parts, got a proper click-track programmed, recruited my son Sam to record drums, and even tracked down the original guitarist from the original album, Andrew Portz from Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, Sam didn’t get the songs down during the summer of 2021 and was soon back off to college. I was in a bit of a bind.

I searched for a replacement drummer, and after hitting a few dead ends, Josh Holm entered the picture, recommended to me by my friend and current podcasting partner Chris. Our initial conversation went something like this: would you like to play drums on an album? If yes, we have two options: completely re-record Better Than This or record a new album of what was shaping up to be a collection of up-tempo tunes, possibly in the realm of power pop. Josh chose the latter, thinking it would be a lot more fun to create parts for new tunes rather than reproducing parts for old tunes. Probably a good call (though I’d love to revisit Better Than This one day).

This was in September in 2021. I hadn’t really written any songs yet but had snippets, some of which I’d shared with Chris a year or two earlier, hoping to do some collaborating, but he didn’t have the bandwidth to address them at the time. So I started writing in earnest, going back to song ideas I’d recorded on my phone over the years, and even one that I started composing over two decades ago (”Long”). It’s funny how once you make a commitment to finishing something, you actually finish something! I started marrying ideas together to complete songs, and as always happens once I start a project, I also wrote several songs from scratch in the ensuing months.

In December, I finally had a demo to send to Josh, a song called ”Your Work Day,” taken from a guitar line I’d written the previous March. Later that month I finished “Get Out While the Getting’s Good,” the chorus of which I’d written the previous February and that I eventually combined with a verse I’d written in November of 2019.

“Codependency” was written in short order on guitar in July of 2021. It’s one of those chord progressions that I would never be able to write on piano. With guitar, I place my hands down and don’t really know what’s going to come out, and sometimes happy accidents occur. I finished the demo for this tune in January.

The phrase “What Love Can Do” was taken from a comment I made during a Packers game in January of 2022. Someone asked me if I wanted Aaron Rodgers to come back the following season, and I answered, “I want to see what Love can do” referring to the team’s second-string quarterback, Jordan Love. Someone said, “That would be a great song title.” And it was! I just needed to write a song. I started composing the tune and by the second week of February it had come together, with just a few lyrics to be ironed out.

I thought of “One Good Turn” in December of 2021 with the chorus pretty much complete. The verses came together that January, and the tune was ready save for a few lyrical phrases later that month.

In April I completed the demo for “Stretched Too Thin,” a song I began way back in 2010 when I still carried around a hand-held recorder. The verse and melody of the B section were fully formed right out of the box, but I wasn’t sure what to do with it beyond that. The bridge “…trying to be a good husband” was written in 2017, and then the tune sat on the backburner until I finally got the motivation to take it to the finish line.

The origins of “A Thing for You” came while I was cutting the lawn in May of 2021, with the verse melody pretty much complete. That September I composed the pre-chorus and chorus, the latter from a riff that I had written a year earlier for an entirely different tune.

Lastly was “Long,” a song I began writing in January and August of 1999 (I still have my original notes) during my stint in Emmaus Pennsylvania, nearly fully formed except for a few key lyrical phrases. Funny how just a few lines can really muck up a tune! It took me a “long” time, but I finally put this one to bed in May of 2022.

I met with Josh at his home to talk through the songs, and on July 10, 2022, he recorded drums at the now defunct Kiwi Studios in Batavia, IL, where I’d recorded at least parts of every album I’d made since The Palisades in 2016. Since my son Sam was back from school by this time, he played drums on “Stretched Too Thin,” and both he and Josh did a terrific job of injecting new life into songs. Real musicians do something that no amount of programming can accomplish. At the controls was Mark Walker who also assisted me on my last recording, and as is always the case at Kiwi, the session was low-stress and productive. We celebrated our achievement at the end of the day with drinks and stogies.

Because the music on this project resembled power pop, I recruited my old bandmate Johnny Furman to play bass, as we had played in a power pop band called Block 37 last decade. I knew he’d be perfect for my new batch of songs. Opting to play on three of them, he sent me tracks in August of 2022. Next on bass came my trusty assistant, Julian Wrobel, who’s played on my last three projects. Julian is a force on bass, employing lines that I couldn’t dream of in a million years. He came over to my house on two dates in August and knocked off the other five songs in short order.

On guitar, I first recruited another old bandmate from a long time ago, Roy Anderson, who I played with in Milwaukee back in 1991-1992. He had played guitar on a few tracks on The Dragon Breathes on Bleeker Street way back in 2003, and we’d recently gotten in touch again. I sent him tracks to a few tunes that I thought would be up his alley and he didn’t disappoint, adding parts to “Long,” “A Thing For You” and “Stretched Too Thin.” Griffin Cobb of Louisville, KY returned after doing a stellar job on my previous album, sending me tasty tracks remotely for “Your Work Day” and “One Good Turn.” Finally, a new musician friend of mine, Brandon Schreiner, came to the rescue on the remaining tracks, coming over a few times in the fall and early winter of 2022, taking the songs “What Love Can Do,” “Get Out While the Getting’s Good,” and “Codependency” to the finish line (at least guitar-wise. I still had a long way to go), and adding the solo to “A Thing For You.”

For vocals I was uncertain about what to do, as admittedly, my voice is not that strong for this type of music. My friend and fellow musician Isaac recorded a few tracks for a couple of tunes in January, but I ended up recording vocals myself, often with the attitude I desired but without the finesse and skill I wished for. I knew I needed help on at least one song, and my old cohort Anthony Calderisi came to the rescue, providing the second vocal for “Get Out While the Getting’s Good” in June of 2023. As ever, on backup vocals was my daughter Jessica, who knocked out her parts with professionalism in an hour or so. I’m glad she didn’t inherit her old man’s vocal chops.

I started mixing in earnest in July of 2023, but after a month or so I decided I hated everything I’d recorded and had to take a break. This happened with my last album as well, and after a few months of hemming and hawing, I ran into Brandon at an impromptu music jam in friend Rob’s basement, and he gave me the pep talk I needed to resume mixing. I also bounced an idea off him that I soon put into action.

Enter Mark Walker once again, the audio engineer who led the drum sessions over a year prior. I asked if he could help me take the mixes to the finish line once I got them to a decent place, and on December 3rd he came to my house and together we dialed in the bass and kick relationship that I so often struggle with, along with a few other issues. I handled multiple rounds of additional tweaks for the next week, and finally got the files sent off to Collin Jordan of The Boiler Room in Chicago for mastering.

For the album cover, I once again employed my in-house artist, daughter Sarah, who’s now done covers for four out of my last five albums. I had the idea of incorporating as many uses of the word “pop” as possible, and Sarah didn’t disappoint, completing the art in short order, long before I’d even finished recording.

So there you have it! Next up is (I think) an album of moody music composed around a particular theme, hopefully with my daughter Jessica contributing on vocals. We shall see if it comes to fruition.

PH

New Album ready for Streaming

The Human Form Divine is ready for streaming! A long 15 months after I started recording demos, this pandemic-produced album (really more of an EP at 23 minutes) is complete! A snappy, stark album with prog-rock leanings and recurring musical themes, it’s the best-sounding album I’ve ever produced, with stellar guitar, bass and drums leading the way thanks to Griffin Cobb, Julian Wrobel and Sam Heinz.

Listen to The Human Form Divine on:

• Spotify

• Apple Music

• YouTube

• This website

Here’s a bit of background on the project:

On June 19, 2018, a few months after completing my album The Great Divide, I wrote down the song order for what was to be my next album. I thought I was all set. I took some time to pursue a few other activities, including scoring my daughter Sarah’s brilliant animated short, and by the fall of 2019 I was ready to tackle a new project, but when it came time to start laying down basic tracks, I found myself uninspired. Bored. Unexcited. I needed to scrap my plan and start over.

Around that time, I purchased a harpejji, an amazing stringed instrument I’ve written about before, and started messing around with a few musical motifs, including some chromatic odd-timed stuff, and I wondered about doing a sort of prog-rock type project. I went back to a bunch of song snippets I’d recorded on my phone over the years, and one that grabbed my attention was a little tune I’d hastily written in April of 2014 while taking a walk around the neighborhood. I called it “Bunker Song,” and it provided me the jumping off point that I needed to proceed with a thematic album.

I composed the Phrygian mode melody from the title track while attending High Holiday services in the early 2000s, when a reading captured my attention, taken directly from Reform Judaism’s Gates of Repentance prayer book: “Disfigured lies the human form divine, estranged from its center.” I love that line! I even half-thought about doing an album of Jewish-themed content at that time, but instead set the melody and lyric aside, only to find over a decade later that they would work wonderfully in the context of my new project.

Additional important propellants were the compositions my son Sam created in his high school music production course. He had a half a dozen instrumental recordings, and between these and several half-formed compositions that I’d jotted down over the years, I was gradually able to whittle things down to several musical motifs that I used to flesh out a number of songs, most notably the title track and “Sea Song,” which comes from a piece of music Sam wrote called “C Song” because it was – you guessed it – in the key of C. I wrote the intro of what would become “Sea Song” in January of 2015, the instrumental intro to “Obfuscation” in August of 2016, the chordal theme from “The Human Form Divine” later that December, and most of the music for “Race to the Bottom” in May of 2017. Sam composed the suspended themes from the title track and “Sea Song” in the spring of 2017 and the brilliant chord sequence of “Unsettled” in December of 2018. I added a melody and B section for that song, but tossed out the B section for this recording. I’d like to do another version of this song as a bossa nova with a jazz band for my next project.

From there, songs came together quickly. As always happens, a few pieces were written contemporaneously. The vocal section of “Why Not” was written on December 26 of 2019, and a few weeks later “Obfuscation” started to come together, as well as the completion of “Bunker Song” and the lyrics to “Race to the Bottom.” I decided to keep the project short and snappy at 23 minutes, and in hindsight this was plenty to keep me busy.

I completed song demos in March of 2020 and then the pandemic hit. Sam and his bassist buddy Julian Wrobel (from The Great Divide) rehearsed the songs on their own, eventually getting together during the buildup to a late-July socially-distanced recording session at Kiwi Audio in Batavia, Illinois, engineered by Brad Showalter and Mark Walker. As was the case for the previous album, both Sam and Julian created parts for the songs rather than just winging it, and the results are gratifying. Check out Julian’s bass riff during the title track or Sam’s drum break in “Obfuscation” – those are parts I could never compose, much less execute!

My daughter Jessica may not have participated directly in this recording, but she came through in a big way by recommending her friend Griffin Cobb to add guitar tracks remotely from Louisville. What a godsend! Throughout August and September Griffin tirelessly recorded scores of guitar tracks, transforming what I heard in my head into real-life performances. How gratifying! And we were never even in the same room!

Meanwhile, my daughter Sarah completed the album cover in short order after sharing a few rough sketches with Sam and me for our approval. She captured the struggle of being human perfectly. The album cover was completed a good six months before the album was.

I added keyboards and vocals in September and October, and then – as I always do – struggled mightily with the mixing process. I shelved the task for a few months over the holidays, and then began in earnest in January, finally completing the mixes in March with the help of a few of my friends. I sent the mixes to Collin Jordan of The Boiler Room, and viola! The album was finished! All it took was 16 months of hard work. I gotta find an easier way to do this next time.

New Album is Available for Streaming/Purchase

The Great Divide by Heinz and Wrobel is complete!  To stream or purchase this ten-song album, check out the following locations: 

• Amazon

• Spotify

• Apple Music

• This website

The album will be added to several other streaming sites shortly.

Heinz & Wrobel are:

Julian Wrobel – Bass
Sam Heinz – Drums
Paul Heinz-  Keys and Vocals

Tracking by Brad Showalter at Kiwi Studios, Batavia, Illinois
Overdubs engineered by Paul Heinz
Orchestration on “Cold” and “End Game” by Jim Gaynor
Mixed by Paul Heinz with the help of Julian, Sam and Anthony Calderisi
Mastering by Collin Jordan of The Boiler Room, Chicago, Illinois

All songs written by Paul Heinz, except “The Unexamined Road,” music by Sam Heinz and Paul Heinz, lyrics by Paul Heinz

Cover art by Sarah Heinz, based on a concept by Sam Heinz
Photograph by Sam Heinz

We’d like to thank Brad for his easy-going nature and diligence, Collin for his expertise Anthony for his objective listening skills, and Jim for giving two songs the lift they required.  We think “End Game” is the best song on the album thanks to you.

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After completing The Palisades in August of 2016 I wrote the following on my website: “I’m toying with the idea of doing my next project in about two days – all in the studio with a live band. A guy can dream, can’t he?”

Well, The Great Divide didn’t exactly take two days, but it was a hell of a lot faster this time around, for which I’m grateful.

In Spring of 2017, I began to ponder the next project, and Sam and I decided that we should record together in the studio and pound out the entire album in a day or two.  The issue was I didn’t really have any songs – only half-written melodies or a refrain or a verse that didn’t go anywhere.  It wasn’t until the summer when Sam was at camp for seven weeks that I began to diligently evaluate which half-written pieces of music were worth pursuing and which should be scrapped.  It took a while. 

That summer, I initially decided to create a thematic album called “Confessions and Confrontations,” with several instrumental interludes and a few musical themes that would repeat throughout the album, a pretty bold idea for someone who didn’t really even have any songs completed.  I worked hard on songs called “Eat Crow,” “Shouldn’t I Get Some Credit,” “Stretched Too Thin,” “I Once Fell in Love with a Girl,” “The Line,” and “Something Lost.”  Alas, none of these made the cut. 

Instead, a few other songs with working titles of “What Are You Going to Do” and “I Don’t Want to Talk About It Now” began to take shape, along with some very old ideas, such as one called “Same Old Shit,” which originated in the summer of 2013.  I also resurrected two song that I had, in fact, completed: one called “Cold,” which I’d written in 2001 and even recorded a demo of in maybe 2006; and “Put You Away,” composed sometime around 2009, but it never felt right with previous projects.  This time, it fit perfectly with the minimal instrumentation we were providing. 

One of the pieces I worked on in July of 2017 was a little chord intro that Sam had composed prior to leaving for Wisconsin.  This eventually evolved into a rather intricate little ditty called “The Unexamined Road,” a song that was known as “Untitled” up until November because I wasn’t happy with the lyrics.  Eventually this song sounded so darn good that it became the album’s opener.

I wrote most of the music for what became “Lies of the Damned” in April of 2006, but there it sat until 2017.  I needed an idea to help drive what I knew was an angry song.  Eventually, I came up with a sketch of a type of person I’ve met over the years: an odd combination of extreme self-centeredness, yet monstrously insecure.  I’ve known three or four people who fit this mold to a “t,” and once I knew the object of my angst, I was able to pound out the song very quickly!

“What is True” developed from a tune that came to me in a dream in December of 2016.  I was meeting my friend Scott Baldwin at an outdoor bar tended by none other than Rufus Wainwright, who was suffering badly of a cold.  He said that recently the “juices were flowing,” meaning he was composing a lot lately.  I asked him to fix me a sandwich, and he began singing his latest creation, “You say, I don’t want to talk about it now…”  I woke up and wrote it down and eventually developed it into a tale inspired by a friend of mine.  Similar to “I Can’t Take You Back” from Warts and All, it’s the heartbreaker on the album.

“Are You Gonna Fight For Her,” was nothing more than a verse and unfinished chorus in April of 2016, but in the summer I managed to write the bridge and instrumental sections that really made the song work.  I was the least confident that this song would work on the album, but once drums and bass were added, it all came together beautifully.

“Your Mother’s House” started once again with just a verse in May of 2014, and in April of 2015, as I was trying to write a chorus for the song “The Palisades,” I came up with a chord progression that eventually fit perfectly as the second half of the chorus for the former.  But I still had to write the first half of the chorus, which I finally completed at the end of August, along with the middle bridge.

I wrote the first several verses of “End Game” in September of 2016, just after completing The Palisades, but I didn’t finish this tune until over a year later, when I composed the build-up leading to the end of the song.  The “bombastic” section of the tune came in July, written originally as an instrumental theme to insert between songs, but then I recognized it would fit in the actual tune with a lyric.  How this all came together is a bit miraculous, and I’m grateful that it came off as well as it did.  By October I had to come up with a title, and “End Game” came to me in a flash. 

Little by little, songs were completed, while others were discarded.  Sometime in the summer, Sam asked if Julian would be up for recording with us, and he was excited to join the project.  On August 21 I drove Sam and Julian and a friend of theirs to Missouri to watch the total eclipse, and along the way I mentioned the name of the upcoming album and the concept.  They were both rather unenamored with the idea of “Confessions and Confrontations,” so I took this under advisement until I finished the song “Diverge,” a tune I’d written the first verse for back in 2012 but didn’t complete until October of 2017, the last tune written for the album.  I was so happy with this song that I was certain it would lead it off and that it should spawn the title for the album.  Eventually, “Diverge” gave way to “The Unexamined Road” as the opening track, a song which remained untitled and which I struggled mightily to come up with a different refrain, but none fit as well (An Energizing Trail?  A Uninspired Path?)  This is one of those instances where the lyrics don’t quite reach the same level as the music.

I liked the idea of The Great Divide as a concept and considered viewing the new album as a collection of songs about conflict.  I remember that the band Big Country had a song with this title off their Steeltown album, and after scouring through the lyrics of this song I came up with a list of possible titles for the album: “Sighs and Youth,” “Fire Away,” and “The Token Door.”  Eventually I thought, “Screw it.  Just call it The Great Divide.”  So there you are.

Once we knew the title of the album, Sam came to me with a concept for an album cover and I shared it with my daughter Sarah on January 8th at 3:38PM.  I wrote: “The drawing would be in the simplistic style of The Far Side comics and the Duke album by Genesis, and it would be a close-up of a inexpressive guy holding a baggy at eye level filled with water and containing a gold fish, and the gold fish staring back at him.  Hence, ‘the Great Divide.’  Get it?”  At 4:29PM she sent me the cover of the album.  Tell me she wasn’t looking for a reason to procrastinate finding an internship!  Sam and I looked at the cover after his drum lesson and immediately fell in love with it.

On October 26, I met with Sam and Julian and went through the whole album and how I wanted to approach things.  We discussed recording in February or March and decided not to record vocals at that time; it would be difficult enough to get the instrumental parts down.  We began rehearsing in November, and I was amazed at the parts that Sam and Julian created, producing a much better product than I ever could have managed on my own, and because we had so much time to rehearse, it ended up sounding better than if I had outsourced things to professionals.  Sam and Julian created “parts” for the songs; they didn’t just play along to a chord chart.

On February 17 we spent thirteen hours at Kiwi Studios in Batavia, Illinois, where I had recorded basic tracks for The Palisades, and finished piano, bass and drums for all ten songs.  Pretty impressive.  Brad Showalter engineered this time, and he was laid back, unhurried and flexible, making the whole experience very enjoyable.  Once again, Sam and Julian played like pros, punching in seamlessly, playing to click tracks for some songs and others on the fly.  The most difficult tune to record by far was “Lies of the Damned.”  By some minor miracle, “End Game,” which we recorded without a click track, we achieved on just the second take.  It is our favorite on the album.

I recorded vocals over the next few weeks into March, and then added a few backup vocals, percussion and synthetic strings, but what I really wanted was for composer Jim Gaynor to record orchestration for “Cold” and “End Game.”  In late March he was ready to add some tracks, and the results are superb. 

After several grueling rounds of mixing (an art form I still struggle with mightily on every album), I finished things up and set a date to master the product at The Boiler Room in Chicago, where Collin Jordan put the finishing touches on the album.  It helped that we had set an album-release concert for May 5th, which required me to wrap up the album quickly, whereas I’d normally spend another few months mixing everything to perfection (but never achieving it). 

We sent things off to Diskmakers and made physical CDs for the first time since my album in 2003, The Dragon Breathes on Bleecker Street.

All in all, a very satisfying and enjoyable project, made all the more meaningful by having my son and his friend, along with my artist daughter, involved.  And my vocalist daughter is able to join us on stage for the record release concert, so all three of my kids were involved in some meaningful way.  Now, if I could only get my wife involved somehow on the next project!

Join us on May 5th at 7PM, as Heinz & Wrobel host a record release party to celebrate the completion of our new album.  Email me for details. 

The Completion of my New Album, "The Palisades"

Album?  Tape?  CD?  I guess none of the above, but despite not actually making a physical product and putting it up for free on my website, I still call the project I began last October an "album." After months of demo recording and distribution of arrangements, a day in the studio to record drums and bass, followed by months of recording guitar, keys, vocals, clarinet, French horn, tuba and violin, and then a few months of mixing and mastering, The Palisades is complete.

The goal was to record an album that my wife Alice would like from start to finish. On that note, I've already succeeded. If anyone else likes it, well that would be nice, too!

Seriously, I'm happy with the result, and I'm thrilled with all the musicians who performed on the album and many others who helped with recording, equipment, or just lending an ear.

I'll highlight all eleven songs over the next several weeks. In the meantime, you can stream and/or download the album, plus check out lyrics and how the whole thing came together. Let me know what you think.

This is my ninth album, and I'm not finished yet. I think the next one is going to be a balls-to-wall rock and roller, but I'll have to see if I've got enough anger in me to pull it off. Ask me on November 9th!

Short Story Wins 1st Prize and Publication

"I saw the pictures on-line.  I've got a monster's cold, blue blood pulsing through my veins."

My short story "I, Monster" is now available to read on-line or to download onto your Kindle or other digital reader, and it's also available in paperback at Amazon as part of the Summer 2015 issue of Sixfold.  Sixfold is an interesting publication whereby writers determine which stories get published and offer comments and constructive criticism for each other.  For my story, which won the latest contest and its thousand dollar prize, I recieved over fifty comments from readers.  If I ever decide to rework the story or expand it into a longer work, I'll have a good idea where to begin.

Please give "I, Monster" a read, and if you like it, go to Amazon and give it a positive review.  You never know where this could lead with a little help.  Thanks in advance.

Here's a quick synopsis of the story:

Seventeen year-old Shelby is the same age her mother was when she was kidnapped, raped and imprisoned by the man who would become Shelby's father.  Believing she has "a monster's cold, blue blood pulsing" through her veins, Shelby now lives her life as an outsider, but when she notices a car stopping alongside a classmate on the way home from school, she has a chance to change the outcome, and maybe herself.