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

A Christmas Carol and Embracing the Good We Do

Imagine attending a performance of the Dickens play, A Christmas Carol, except that this time it contained new information. Yes, Ebenezer Scrooge still finds his redemption toward the end of the play, but in a brief narrated postlude we learn that his kind and loving employee, Bob Cratchit, made a serious moral blunder just before dying at a young age. What moral blunder, you ask? Something short or child abuse, rape or murder, let’s say, but a detestable thing nonetheless, a very regrettable act. Which character – Scrooge or Cratchit – would we view in a better light? The one who brought misery to others for most of his existence except for a flash of philanthropy towards the finish line, or the one who lived a noble and loving life except for a flash of regrettable conduct toward his finish line?

Finish lines matter to us. When it comes to sports, it might be all that matters. I’ve often thought it’s a shame that as a fan you can experience jubilation for 8 ½ innings of baseball or 55 minutes of football, only to sour if the opposition scores six runs in the bottom of the ninth or two touchdowns in the final minutes of the fourth quarter, as if the previous joy you experienced never happened. It’s the ending that matters; the team that performed well for 90 percent of the game is a failure, and the team that performed poorly for 90 percent of the game is a success.

But what about human life? Is the finish line the be-all and end-all?

About twenty years ago I composed the following couplet:

Are we measured at the grave?
Or by the weight of equal days?

I had been contemplating the ability for humans to redeem themselves, to make up for past transgressions and finish life morally strong, perhaps with the hope that posterity will judge them for how they’ve completed the race rather than how they ran it. By contrast, if each of our days is weighed the same, then a poorly-lived life can never be overcome. If this is the case, then the legacy of a character like Ebenezer Scrooge would be far different than the one portrayed in the Dickens classic. Sure, we might applaud the miser’s late-life efforts, but we’d still condemn him for everything that preceded it.

I like to think that when it comes to the art of being human, we can view things less black and white than we do a sports game, granting ourselves and others a bit of latitude and allowing us to have it both ways.

Are we measured at the grave?

Yes. How horrible it would be to live life without believing in redemption, the ability to correct our errors, steer back on course, make up for past transgressions and strive to finish life with more wisdom and better conduct than preceded it. Without this, all of us at times would be unable to face another day.

Or are we measured by the weight of equal days?

Yes. How horrible it would be if we couldn’t take stock of the good we’ve done even after making a terribly regrettable act and happening to discover that our time has run out, that we’ll be unable to finish life the way we’d hoped.

As we begin the new year, let’s try to have it both ways: embrace all the good you’ve done and strive to do more good, and embrace all the good others have done, regardless of where they end up. After all, some never have a chance to redeem themselves. If Ebenezer Scrooge had died at the first site of Jacob Marley’s ghost, he never would have had a chance to rectify all the wrongs he’d committed.

Life can be tough. Let’s try to grant ourselves and others all the generosity we can muster.

Give More, and Give More Wisely

Recently listening to George Michael's 1990 release, Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1 (a fantastic album – if you don't know it, give it a chance), I was struck by the lyrics of the opening track, “Praying for Time,” a tune that intrigued me upon its initial video release on MTV back in the day, but one that I'd never properly absorbed lyrically. It's about the haves and the have-nots, or as Michael offers, the “beggars and the choosers.”

He sings:

The rich declare themselves poor
and most of us are not sure
If we have too much
but we'll take our chances
’Cause God's stopped keeping score

And something a bit more direct in verse two:

These are the days of the empty hand
You hold on to what you can
And charity is a coat you wear twice a year

Strong stuff, and the call to action implicit in “Praying for Time” is something that I think needs to be wrestled with. Whether or not you believe in God, I think it's better to live as if what we do matters, and if believing – or merely considering – that there is an entity "keeping score" of our actions is what spurs you into doing more to help others, so be it. Unfortunately, for many of us – even those who do believe in God – charity is indeed nothing more than a few articles of clothing dropped off at Goodwill twice a year.

To which I say, do more. Give like it matters. Give like someone is tallying all of your actions, keeping score, whether or not you think it’s nonsense.

I find it fascinating and frustrating that many who consider themselves Christians don’t take Luke 18:25 to heart:

Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.

I’ve heard preachers attempt to wriggle their way out of that verse, claiming it’s taken out of context, blah blah blah, but to me it sounds pretty fricking straight forward. Give. Don’t amass obscene amounts of wealth. If you do, you have a lot to answer for when you meet your maker.

Similarly, I find it no less fascinating and no less frustrating that many who consider themselves Jewish don’t take seriously the laws of tithing found in Leviticus 27:30, Numbers 18:25–28, Deuteronomy 14:22–24, and 2 Chronicles 31:5–6. 

Whether or not these Bible verses speak to you, you may find some assistance on how much to give and where to give on philosopher and philanthropist Peter Singer’s terrific website, The Life You Can Save. I’ve recently reevaluated the charitable giving for my household because of it.

Singer believes that not only do we not give enough, we don’t give wisely. We support charities that offer very little bang for the buck, eschewing the good we can do to the most destitute overseas in favor of helping far fewer here at home. I’ve chosen to take a middle-ground approach. I still have my favorite local organizations that I feel strongly about, but I am going to set aside a significant percentage to improving the lives of those who need it most (as well as to environmental causes). Singer’s website offers simple ways to give directly to the causes that you feel most strongly about: tackling climate change, saving lives, helping woman and girls, education…there’s certainly no shortage of worthy causes for you to focus on.

What I found particularly helpful is determining how much to give. If you take tithing to the letter of the law (and I’m not saying you shouldn’t), you give 10% of your income. Period. My family has been giving less than that, but now that we’ve paid our last tuition bill, I wanted to get some guidance on what makes sense for us going forward. Peter Singer’s website actually has a calculator that suggests a target amount for charitable giving, and if you want to know more, they include the formula used to determine the amount. Using this, my family will now boost our giving by about 50% next year. It may not be a perfect calculus, but it’s a nice guideline when asking the question, “How much should I give?”

Perhaps you won’t find the answer that works for you on the above website. But if charity for you has been “a coat you wear twice a year,” I urge you to reconsider your role on Planet Earth and what you can do to alleviate as much suffering as possible. You may have the power to do more good than you think.

Life's Close Calls

As invariably happens while driving down the Eisenhower Highway in Chicago, a car turned into my lane unexpectedly last Saturday, causing me to swerve to my left, honk my horn and shout out a few obscenities. My daughter, her boyfriend and I could easily have become statistics. 

After our close call, I posed the question, “How is it that natural selection hasn’t already taken care of this guy?”

“That’s just it,” answered my daughter. “He would have survived but we would have died.”

Perhaps she’s right that the morons among us will end up living the longest, but if I’m honest with myself, I could easily be considered Exhibit A if we were to test this hypothesis. If I carefully consider the number of close calls I’ve survived in my life, I probably should have died a dozen times over by now. That I’m still standing is a miracle, and as I look around my fellow flawed humans, it’s a wonder that any of us survive to see middle-age, much less our 80s or 90s or beyond.

Even overlooking the shameful acts of my youth when stupidity reigned, I can count off loads of times when luck kept my heart beating. Just seven years ago, the brake fluid leaked out of my Honda Civic while I was approaching the busiest intersection in all of Illinois (or so I’m told – Highway 83 and North Avenue), and when I pumped the brakes to no avail, I accelerated through the intersection unscathed. That should not have happened. When I tumbled down a ski slope in Crested Butte in 1990, I broke a vertebra in my neck, but didn’t sever my spine. When I took a left turn last year despite my vision being significantly blocked by a parked bus, I avoided the car that suddenly appeared from behind the bus by inches.

Luck. All luck.

And two Saturdays ago, my wife stood on top of a chair in our first-floor bathroom, only to lose her footing, fall sideways onto the toilet and break six ribs. Painful and scary, for sure, but we consider the fall to be the best worst-case scenario, because just 12 inches to her left could have meant cracking her skull or breaking her neck on the pedestal sink. We’ll take the six broken ribs, thank you very much.

But how are any of us still standing? Paul Simon once sang, “The planet groans every time it registers another birth,” and I find it mind-boggling that humanity has managed to amass 8.1 billion specimens - that instead of groaning the Earth doesn’t chuckle, “Here comes another one, but no matter, he’ll be dead in short order.”

Perhaps the planet would be better off if the more moronic among us weren’t so lucky. But I’m not about to raise my hand to go first.

Is Your Family Brunch-Close?

At a bed and breakfast in Asheville a few weeks ago my wife and I met a couple from Maryland, and over breakfast one morning we exchanged a CliffsNotes version of our lives: place of birth, occupation, residence, family members and the like. After learning that the couple’s daughter lived in New York, I said, “That’s not too bad. Fairly close to Maryland.”

“Yes,” answered the mother. “But she’s not brunch-close. People tell me how lucky I am that she’s not in California or some other state far away, but it’s not like we can get together for brunch on Sundays.”

Brunch-close. Precisely. That’s what I want. Instead, I have a daughter who lives five hours away, a son who lives six hours away, and another daughter who lives…well, a four-hour plane ride away (I’ve never gotten the gumption to drive to Los Angeles). The mother from Maryland’s point is well-taken; even five hours away is four hours too far to get together for a Sunday brunch.

I’ve lamented before that I raised three kids only to have them move away. Perhaps if my wife and I had refused to pay for out-of-state universities we’d have had a fighting chance, but we did well enough financially that we basically gave our children a green light to drift away, an irony that isn’t lost on me; I’d gladly reduce our 401k balance by half if it meant having our three children live nearby. Guess we mucked that one up!

The geographical distance between family members has other ramifications: it means we vacation less. When my wife and I lived on the east coast, we’d travel to Milwaukee, Chicago and Dallas regularly to see family, and with only two weeks of vacation allowed per year by our employers, that’s pretty much all we could do aside from a weekend camping trip. Now that our children have grown and moved far away, most of our vacation time is spent visiting our children in their respective locations.

Last week a friend of mine suggested that we meet some friends in Portugal next summer – a lovely idea. But we’re planning on visiting family in January (New York), March (Arizona) and April (Ohio), watching our son graduate from college in May (Ohio) and attending my daughter’s wedding in October (California), undoubtedly interspersed with other trips to see our other daughter (Kentucky). So sure, we can go to Portugal next summer, but it probably means we see our children less, a lousy trade-off to have to make.

I know. Such are the problems of a healthy, married, middle-aged white guy with solid financials. In the words of Joe Walsh from his classic song, “Life’s Been Good”:

I can’t complain but sometimes I still do

Yep. Nothing’s going to stop me until my kids live close.