“Children with the Blues” comes out on February 24th — pre-save it today.

We are releasing our first new song in three years. This is what the art looks like.

You can help us out for free by “pre-saving” it. Here’s what that means.

Spotify playlists are one way that our music finds new ears. They (‘they’ meaning some odd combination of algorithms and playlist editors… I think?) have the ability to put new music onto popular playlists, sharing that song with many new listeners. Some will not like our music, and others will. That’s just how it goes.

I sometimes think of songs like little tools. They exist to help people do something. Sometimes the purpose is just to facilitate a quiet moment of reflection, sometimes an invitation to grieve someone you lost, sometimes an opportunity to turn the fuck up and dance it all away.

Pre-saving our new single will give our little song more of an opportunity to be useful to people, from close friends to people we haven’t met yet. I am optimistic that this song may make some people feel less lonely — so I’d be eager for your help getting it to the right ears.

Consider this a long-winded invitation to click this link to pre-save our track. Or even buy tickets to the release show on February 24th at Rambling House with Eliza Edens.

Best wishes,

sam


New song on 2/24 + release show w/ Eliza Edens at Columbus' Rambling House!

We are playing a **SINGLE RELEASE** show with Eliza Edens (NYC/Boston) at Rambling House on Friday February 24th. We will be playing as a four-piece band and celebrating the first single of 2023, “Children with the Blues.” Come join us for a nice, nice time. Click for tickets.

Also, dozens parcels with stickers and merch are headed through the door and out to Idaho, Maine, Oregon, California, Utah, Wisconsin, and all across Ohio.

I managed to find a few extra mugs, aprons, and first pressings of the first record. Inventory is updated on the website — if they are listed, I’m ready to ship them to you.

A few folks ordered handwritten lyrics! I do those for any song that I’ve written. Feel free to check out examples on the website and contact me there if you’ve got other questions or requests for your *bespoke* artwork.

Stickers are still free! Up to two per order now, so we can keep it going longer! Go get em!

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Handwritten Song Lyrics

Turn your favorite song into a one of a kind art piece!

All lyric sheets are personally handwritten by the songwriter on high quality 8.5x11” white cardstock with Pilot Precise V5 Extra Fine pens. Choose to have simply lyrics, or request a few small (but relevant) doodles!

Safely ships via USPS in a manila envelope reinforced with recycled cardboard.

Free stickers!

I’d like to ship you free stickers through the mail. No strings attached. No questions asked. No shipping fee.

Hello Emerson Logo Sticker Hello Emerson Logo Sticker
Hello Emerson Logo Sticker
$3.00

Literally just free Hello Emerson stickers and a small note in a little envelope from my home to yours. Up to five per order, if you’ve got room in your life for them.

Why do I want to do this?

One: I have extra stamps, stickers, and envelopes.

Two: Social media is a fraught beast to continue feeding. In order to communicate with a lot of the people who like our music, we are cajoled by tech companies to pay them ad money to make sure you see our updates. It’s much easier and cheaper to just send you an email once in a while. In exchange for your email at checkout, you get stickers! (But if that doesn’t work for you — you can always opt out!)

Three: We would like to see where we should come play shows. As we plan out some short tours, we will be more likely to come to places where we know we have listeners — and we’ll be able to email you directly to let you know when we’ll be near your zip code for a show.

Four: I don’t really want to ask you to stay plugged in to social media to know what we’re up to — especially if it can be quietly harmful to you, like it is to me. So the website, and the email list, will always be there.

So, that’s it. I’d like to do this until the end of March. See you in your mailbox soon.

sam

“How to Cook Everything” turns three // our plan for 2023

Our second record turns three today. We didn’t know it at the time, but we released it several weeks before COVID would break out and change everything forever. I’m still proud of the record, still thrilled when people reach out with small gratitudes about its place in their life. Here’s our plan for 2023

We will release our third record in Spring 2024.

Yesterday, I received our third record first master via email. This is what it looks like. I explain the record this way.

Several years ago, my dad pulled over to help move some tree limbs out of traffic after a storm. While dragging it, a limb snapped and threw him to the ground. His head hit pavement, and he spent nine days in the ICU with a severe brain injury. He pulled through with minimal long term damage, minus his sense of smell and memory between stepping out of the car and waking up at the hospital. The record walks through my family’s experience of that week and a half, held together with interview clips from my father at the center of it all. It’s been beautifully embellished by Dan Seibert’s expanded arrangements for piano, clarinet, bass clarinet, vibraphone, and violin — played by Columbus’ own chamber outfit, Knisley.

If you know a small label that is curious about the record, send them our way. We’d love to get it to as many ears as possible.

We will release new songs throughout this year.

You will hear between 5-10 new songs this year; they are not on the upcoming record. We are recording them and releasing them quickly to celebrate the sheer joy of making things with friends that nobody asked us to make. If you followed our “song-a-day” activity on instagram, you will recognize many of them. We will be recording these at home, trying new strategies, learning how to mix, and keeping the stakes low. I am particularly excited to spend some time learning how to mix and arrange, make short videos, and dig deeper into songs that don’t take themselves too seriously.

We will play shows out of town.

We aim to spend about 4-6 weekends out of town playing shows. I’ll be reaching out later more directly about this, but I’d love to play in houses, basements, living rooms, and backyards for people who have taken a liking to the music (looking at you - NYC, Philly, Toledo, Ann Arbor, Detroit, Indy, Dayton, Louisville, Cincy, Chicago, Bloomington, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, others). If that’s you, reach out at the contact form at our website — we will come to where the people are.

I will write weekly at the blog.

I still think that spending too much time on social media is particularly damaging to me, but I think that I can start to approach it on my own terms. I don’t think my approach is terribly optimized to be particularly algorithmically engaging, but I don’t think I really want my life to be about being particularly algorithmically engaging. I’d like to grow as a songwriter, as a photographer, as a videographer, as a reader, as a writer, and as a person. I think that our plan for 2023 will allow us to do that.

Here’s to deciding how to grow and not losing yourself in the process. Wishing you all the best.

sam

(also, listen to Angela Perley’s new album — because you owe it to yourself.)

GCAC artist fund grant applications due february 1st!

Back in early 2022, GCAC awarded us a grant to offset costs of making our third record. We sent them demos of all of the songs, links to our past work, and a plan for how we would spend the money. Then, we worked with our talented recording and mixing engineer friends who live here in Columbus to make something beautiful — and all the money was spent within the city.

We’re thankful. The only reason I knew that this opportunity existed was because of other musicians in the city talking about it. I think I saw a post in 2021 from Devin Copfer that finally got me on board. I’m thankful for that. Then, just a week or so ago, I saw another post from Micah Schnabel talking about it. So, now we’re talking about it so maybe someone else can get some money to make things worth making.

If you make things in Central Ohio, go to GCAC.org. Click on the “grants” link. “Funds for Artists” is probably your best bet. There is up to $1,700 available explicitly to assist artists with making new art, growing artistic skills and marketing to a broader audience. The deadline is February 1st.

Check it out. Ask some questions. Submit an application. And keep making things.

Feeling like public radio rockstars in Bremen / "Am I the Midwest?" live performance and interview

Sam here. When covid first hit, things got hairy. We had just recently gotten home from a tour in Germany and released our second record. We had our hometown release show with a full string and horn section about a month before all the bars shut down for the first time. Because of all of that hullabaloo, I never got around to posting some of our final tour blogs! In the spirit of sharing stories and reminiscing, I’m going to share some more stories here in this space. Wild to imagine what all has changed since January 2020.

When we first got our tour dates, we had two days off and 15 shows. Then, we got a message from a public radio station called Bremen Zwei - they wanted to have us do a video, interview, and spend an hour with them on the radio. 

So, of course, that's a big hell yes.

We rolled in and met Arne Schumacher - decked out in a cheerfully loud button-up shirt that screams, “I’ve worked in public radio since the 90s.” He then told us that he has worked in public radio since the 90s and that he considers his job as just having fun for a living. I like Arne. 

Things were a flurry of activity when we rolled in. We had forms to sign, instruments to set up, a small live promo to pop into another studio for, then back to soundchecking in the original studio. We paused to shoot a video and more in-depth interview about the Midwest song, then Arne treated us to some local Italian food.

Arne knows what he’s doing. He took our orders when we arrived, so we had an hour to walk around the corner, sit down at a little table for the four of us, and dig into the food that the staff brought out right away. 

We talked about the tour - how much we do it every year and what else we do for a living. He said that most of the people that play at his station have a bit of a patchwork quilt lifestyle - not many folks who make their living exclusively on their music play on the station. That made me feel a bit less alone, a bit more comfortable with the balance that we’re striking.

I asked him how he found out about our record. He said that he had gotten the first record at the station blind; he didn’t ask for it, didn’t see any names that he recognized, but still gave it a listen. He said that the first two songs had a real voice, an interesting voice. It was different. So, he played our first CD on the station a bit.

K&F partnered with a promoter named Carmen for the second record. She reached out to Arne about this sophomore release, and he recognized our band. He requested the record, listened, and reached out to feature us.

After the show, he put us up in a super nice hotel down town. We all had king sized beds and individual rooms - a first for tour. With a big breakfast spread in the morning, he made us feel like rock stars.

Arne is so straightforward and earnest in an uncool way, so much that it flips around and he’s cool again. He likes songs, he likes supporting artists, and he likes sharing songs with the world. As we were leaving, he kept insisting the point that songs can change people’s minds, worldviews, outlooks, personal lives, etc. He sees that as his role in radio - to give songs the opportunity to affect one person who never would have heard it otherwise.

Arne (and everyone at the station buzzing around making this happen on a Monday night) makes a big difference. He was another reminder to me that songs are important, songs are worth writing, songs are worth arranging, songs are worth recording, songs are worth standing behind, and songs are worth sharing with strangers.

Thanks, Arne.