Co-written by Carolyn McCoy & William Wayland

The music of Physical Suicide Deterrent System Project (or PSDSP for short) is complicated. We could easily plop them into the genre of “grunge," but it’s more than that. The trio, guitarist/singer Eli Carlton-Pearson, drummer Michael Pinkham and bassist Brian Wilkerson pull from jazz and psychedelic genres while adding some hardcore ass-kicking punk for kicks. The songs the band creates often eschew the typical “verse/chorus/bridge” construction to create a river of sound that takes you on a sonic journey with intelligent and poetic lyrics that uphold deep imagery to tell a story of both darkness and hope.
 
The band’s songwriting process is definitely a collaborative effort. “I write all the songs, though several come about from jams, or at least evolved within them,” states Carlton-Pearson. “Michael and Brian contribute a lot in the way of arrangement, rhythmic conception, and what's perhaps the most significant thing, how much fire they cook up playing. That then permeates the whole ‘thing’; it changes the way I sing the lyrics I wrote; it gives the song more real-life meaning. {The song} has to be a living thing, and that happens because of the band.

​PSDSP has just released their latest album, Luddite, on vinyl, an old trend that seems to be resurfacing as a common practice among musicians lately. The album culls from new and old songs that have never been recorded before. Inline with the definition of “Luddite” (one who eschews or is mistrustful of technology when creating), the band decided to record in analog, raising funds via a Kickstarter campaign so that they could make the sound they were looking for.

​The band traveled to New Paltz, NY, to work with Tom Deis at Pineapple Room Studio. “I've known Tom for 16 years now. We've been in bands together and worked together a fair bit, but moreover, we're just really good friends,” says Carlton-Pearson. “Tom worked so fucking hard on this record it's ridiculous. He signed up for one of the gnarliest hazings an engineer could go for, going into a 100% analog recording process from a largely digital workflow and buying several pieces of equipment specifically for Luddite. All the technical limitations we experienced just wound up being the magic on the tape at the end, which is why we chose to do the whole thing as we did.”
 
“I wanted to work with Tom basically because I trusted him. I trusted him musically, and I trusted him personally. He gets it. He gets that music is a spiritual entity you access through the physical world. I guess this whole recording was way more intense and vulnerable than I'd like to admit. I trusted his understanding of how to use technology to capture the spirit of things.”
 
When asked why the band decided on analog, “Because it sounds better,” replies Carlton-Pearson, “It just does.“ 

It’s one of those warm, early autumn evenings here in Northern California; the crickets chirp away, the stars sparkle in the sky, and summer begins to drifts off into the past. In the wake of the vast West Coast fires, we now have a respite from smoke and fear, and I breathe in the fresh night air. As I sit and experience all this, Marin County singer/songwriter Jeremy D’Antonio’s new album Spinnin’ Wheels wafts softly from my room, seemingly in conjunction with the multi-faceted songs of local crickets. It’s a fitting venue, the night, to listen to this fantastic EP.

D’Antonio is most known as part of Marin County’s Americana band, San Geronimo. His first solo record is a refreshing breath of fresh air in a time of fires, lockdown, pandemic hell, economic collapse, and political upheaval, yet has nothing to do with any of that. It’s a journey unto itself that helps one forget the woes of the world for a while. For D’Antonio, Spinnin’ Wheels is a detour from San Geronimo’s sound in many ways, taking a healthy dose of Country and mixing it in with D’Antonio’s hard-hitting songwriting. 

“I never intended to write a country song or have a ‘country vibe’. I actually mostly listen to old soul music,” states D’Antonio. “Only recently have I dug into some of the ’60s and 70’s country classics, mostly because people assume I know all that music and request me to play it live. I think any music that is honest is good; you can immediately hear the difference. I grew up in New Mexico and Colorado, and I guess there is something about that landscape or the blue-collar lifestyle that comes out in what I do.”  

“Lyrics stem from feelings more than physical experiences. A feeling can make you experience a thousand different emotions without ever physically doing anything. I think this allows me to write about scenarios that have happened in my head but not in the physical realm,” D’Antonio states on his songwriting. “I know a lot of people write a story and put down the words first, but I usually start with a feeling. I get so deep that it is hard to be around others, and I am able to dive down pretty far and extract what is most honest about whatever “funk” I am in. From this usually comes a melody and the words follow.”​

When a musician channels music and brings it into the corporeal world, sometimes there is no rhyme or reason for what kind of music they create. When Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Zephaniah OHora
started his musical career, it was Country music that somehow manifested itself through his being. I am sure Zephaniah will credit his spiritual upbringing as well as the circuitous circumstance and available opportunities to play music in NYC for maneuvering his career towards traditional Country. But whatever fates drove his train, he is now on the fast track towards becoming a star in the Country world. 
 
“I’ve been influenced by so much music because I listen to quite a variety,” states OHora. “But as far as Country music artists, I’ve spent many hours studying Jimmie Rodgers, Ernest Tubb, Lefty Frizzell, Marty Robbins, and more recently Bobby Bare, Don Williams, and Merle Haggard.”
 
OHora has just released his second album, “Listening To The Music”. It upholds classic, old-school Country in the true tradition, but with the flavors of modern New York tossed in for kicks. “Listening To The Music” is a great album not only because of OHora’s songwriting skills, but the album hosts such big-time players as harmonica player Mickey Raphael (Willie Nelson) and guitarist Norm Hamlet (Merle Haggard).