NYC Indie Pioneer George Usher I Stevensonville

with celebrities, artists, music business insiders, and more.

George, are you doing today? I'm doing fine, thank you, do you hear all you? I'm very good, so you are in New York City, I think you mentioned the West Village, which is, that's one of my favorite areas of New York.

“I originally a Cleveland guy, I think, when did you originally move to New York?”

I moved in 1977. Wow, I wanted to talk to move to New York, right? Yeah, I was really exciting. I mean, when I moved here, it was such a different New York. It was a time when there were real neighborhoods, and neighborhoods you had to stay out of.

Right, you might walk, you might walk two blocks that way, and be in a real danger, or walk two blocks this way, and it might be an Italian neighborhood, four blocks that weighed, be a black neighborhood, but it were real neighborhoods, and one of the things that I really missed from that time was the, oh, were the mom and pop stores, because with the real neighborhoods, you had real people living here, and they had their stores and area, and it wasn't

so, um, a marginalized, so that now you have, you can go ten blocks, and you see the same stores, you know, it's the training stores, and a lot of the mom and pop places have gone, and because it's hard for, uh, let's say, uh, the average person to actually live in Manhattan.

They were, over the years, they've been squeezed out first into Queens in Brooklyn, uh,

somehow at the Statenway Island, but people sort of hesitate to go out to Statenway Island. Now out to the Bronx, maybe out to New Jersey, Hoboken, New Jersey City, and, uh, the

“joke, or if you want to call it that from, uh, the mayor Bloomberg days, is that, uh,”

everybody, uh, comes here to work for the people who live, who are able to live in Manhattan. Right. And, and it's, uh, actually, when we've, uh, toured there, we've often stayed in Brooklyn because we were playing at the house of blues over there. Uh, uh, uh, Brooklyn still felt like it's still, I mean, I, I wasn't obviously back, I wasn't in New York back then, but Brooklyn still had a little bit more of a neighborhood feel, I guess.

Brooklyn still has the neighborhood, the Bronx still has neighborhoods. Queens, too, to some degree, but all of those places, you're still being pushed out further and further. Yeah, it's expensive, you know. Yeah, yeah, even where I am now, and I'm really in the, I've got location, location, location. You know, I'm on, uh, positively West Fort Street.

You know, I'm right here, I've got, uh, sixth Avenue right over there. I've got, uh, you know, the park right over there. I'm more Dylan was, you know, 50, 60 years ago. And that's still a great area. Oh, yeah, yeah, but it's, but it's mostly NYU kids, because NYU's bought up most of the real estate.

And a lot of tourists who were looking for early 60s, you know, that vibe. And the thing is a lot of the bars and a lot of the establishments, the eating establishments, have sort of build up kind of uh, Ursats early 60s, you know, they have the, they try to make it all of their establishments. They look like it's the early 60s. So it's kind of like being in a theme park.

I could movie set. Yeah, it was really, yes, you know, although when they filmed that recent doing feature, they filmed it in Hoboken, because the architecture was a little more like it back then, you know. So you have, uh, to get, get back to the reason why we're actually talking is you have a new

“knob mount and you've actually had several solo albums. I think it's 7 am I, is this, is this the 8th or?”

Yeah, this might be the 10th. I'm not sure, you know, it's hard because I've done albums with pairs, I've done them, you know, right, right, I've just sort of keep putting them out, you know, one way or another. Yeah, well, I mean, you know, that's what that's what us creators do. Yeah. How's it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this new album Stevensville is really interesting, because it's actually, it's been a project of

passion of yours for many years. And you finally, yeah, and you finally got together with an illustrator and

did a whole story line. So tell me about this project. I wanted you first start to start this idea and how did this come

project is, you know, back in the, well, of course, I've been doing this in New York as a singer

“songwriter since the late 70s, and I've been in a lot of bands. I've been in various album projects.”

Sometimes like you do, you play in two or three different bands, you know, people that don't know your background. You've been in a lot of influential bands. You play, you did the CBGB thing. You've done, you have, you have quite a history. I've been around, you know, but in and out of different bands. But during that time, when I reached, let's say the late 80s, early 90s, at that point, you were still in a situation here where you, you know, this is still pre, for the most part,

pre computer, pre internet, that whole business. So you're still making cassettes and trying to,

you know, get them to A&R people to get them to come to your shows, try to get them to papers and magazines to come to your shows and review them so that other people will come to your

“shows. And let me just say real quickly, that it used to be a situation in New York where you could build”

followings because there were colleges here in New York. And the 18 to 21 crowd, you had a different new freshman every year and 18, and you know, they come and they come to your shows, they make girls or meet boys and they come to your shows and you build followings. And in 1981 or so, they changed the drinking age to 21. And at that point, it changed everything because then it again, it became how many friends of mine. Because the 18, you lost the 18 to 21. Okay, so that

changed the whole scene. So for the 80s, it was a real, you know, landscape change. So by the late 80s, early 90s, you were still in this weird, got to make cassettes, got to find some way to build a following, get people to your shows, you know, all that business. And so I was trying to come up with a little how am I going to, what can I do, to set myself apart. And of course, I thought, well, I, I have this illustrator, Lori Weber, and I thought, well, you know, I grew up, you know,

I'd be around forever already at that point now. And I'd, I'd seen yellow submarine, you know, I knew about the kinks in the village green society. I knew Tommy, I knew all of this different stuff where you could work illustration, multimedia things into your work. What if you could do that on a local level? And so I thought, well, I would start working with Lori Weber. She started illustrating my songs and on a small local level, playing CBGBs, playing the bitter end, playing

all the usual places that I would normally play. We started and going out with a band or solo, whatever I was performing, we would, you know, throw up a screen real quickly. This is all like, you know, before anything you could do this, because now, of course, you have screens that come down and you have, you know, all of this, no, no, we had screen projectors, we'd lug around and these big screen, yeah, we threw this stuff up on purpose screen and she illustrated my songs.

And we put the screen up beside the band or beside me. And we just threw up illustrations for the song and we tried to sort of build a different following by saying, well, this is what makes George Usher different. And we were sort of rebuilding a small following over time, because you still, you know, have to sort of, and I don't mean this in a condescending way. This is New York, you know, you still have to sort of educate what is your audience, you know, who is George Usher,

you know, why is he different? It takes months to sort of, you know, years to sort of get people to know who you are. And me, I say, you might spend six months getting a label that comes to you and then a band comes from London that's playing that same night and everybody goes sees them.

So I mean, it's one of those things. You're in New York, you know, you're always at the mercy of

what it was the same thing at LA. All right, I know, for exactly. So, you know, so anyway, I did have a publishing, the music publishing deal, you know, at the time, they were not into it. They could not

“conceive it, they said, well, what do you want to be? You want to draw pictures if you want to be a songwriter,”

you know, as well as still trying to write the best songs like, yeah, but on, look, it's plus that you get illustrations as well. They don't just have to look at my ugly face, you know,

They said, this is terrible. You know, and it was still hard getting reviews or it's still the same again. And so over time, but the plan, such as we had one, was I want to write a larger work that, you know, it takes this idea that has a larger work like a Tommy or like a village green where it's a whole album, you know, in those days, if you said, concept the album, people ran for the hills. But I didn't run. You know, I said, well, I'm going to write a thematic piece that's longer.

“Yeah, because you have to fully buy in it. Everybody else is growing. Right. I'm going to write the songs.”

The songs are going to be just, they're going to be great. The songs are going to be great. It's going to be a rock and roll album that illustrations are going to be great. No, you know, it's going to be thematically sound. It's going to be great. Everyone, you know, love it. And I've taught everybody to come and expect this because I've already, you know, done these shows

with the illustrations. But we never really got there because nobody, you know, my, my team,

my wife wasn't into it. My publishers weren't into it. And it was hard getting write-ups and stuff. We had a write-up with the college music journal that got killed, like the night before it was supposed to be printed, and that took the window out of our sales. And it just sort of seemed like

“everything was against us. And, you know, again, this was before you did things on your own,”

and you had, you know, your own, you know, your own. And so the idea of trying to mount the album and on the idea was an album, not a little CD, which now we were all CD's. Right, because you want to tell, you want to tell an entire story. Yeah, because now that now the illustrations and the CDs are tiny, you know, because the original plan was this album, you know, and with album-sized illustrations. And it's just sort of fell by the wayside.

There wasn't a money to do it. There wasn't the interest to do it. And I'm still writing 100 songs a year. And, you know, people, you know, I got a band. I got it's right to keep happy, you know, because people are coming in and out of the band saying, "Where's the gig? Is the gig worthy of me, you know, all of this?" Yeah. It's a tricky thing, as an artist, because you, you want to create art, but then there's also, in a way, the commerce of it. And as you mentioned,

“you got other people depending on you. So it's always, I think that every artist deals with that.”

It's kind of like navigating that and figuring out how am I going to keep this all together? Is that,

is that kind of like always, it's probably always been a challenge, right? Absolutely. And we just,

oh, you know, we sort of tried to start it. And then we saw, we didn't have the finance, you know, I have all of my albums. I've always cobbled together with chewing gum and Scotch tape. You know, and I mean, they've always been the most of us grow. They've always been recorded in 20 different studios. Can we get time after midnight? You know, all the different things, you know, and what happened was, I hope I'm not taking it too much time with all of this. But what happened

was who and way back to the late 70s, when I first moved here, I came here and not knowing anybody, you know, like you do. And those days, I got a job in a record store and I wound up being a manager in a record store in Manhattan. And there was a teenager, you know, I was in my early 20s, and there was a teenager who would come and hang out at the record store after school every day. And he was a nice kid. And we talk about music. We talk about whatever

problems he had, you know, being a kid, you know, Manhattan, a teenager and a great kid. And I was sort of like a big brother. And we stayed in touch over the years. And he wound up going into finance, and did pretty well. And I, of course, kept true to my calling as the poor musician, you know, through the years or the decades. And a couple of years ago, we were having dinner. And he, he said to me, well, George, you know, if you had a project that you had one project

to do before you died, I know that sounds kind of sinister, but it wasn't. It was just sort of a conversation. If you had one project to do, you know, rock would it be? And I didn't have to think very, you know, as well, you know, I, I do this project Stevensonville, you know, and I had, you know,

this Lori did all these illustrations. And we never, we never got a chance to really do it. I

think I performed it once or twice in a small kind of, you know, just to say, I did it. And that

I said, but you know, and he said, well, how much money would it take to do to do the album? And I, I thought, well, you know, I'm not going to, you know, and I, but I wrote down what I thought was a relatively honest figure that I could bring in, because I do everything under budget. I said, well, here's I wrote down a figure on a piece of paper, and I, and I showed it to him. I said, but look, it's this much money, you know, and he took the piece of paper and he wrote it, figured down,

“and he handed it back to me, and he doubled the figure. Wow. And I said, you kidding?”

And he wasn't. Wow. And from that point on, you know, it was the very first time in my life that I ever had a budget ever. That's a man. And that's amazing. And it's just old friend that I'd befriended when he was a teenager and tweeted him right. And he came back, you know, as an old friend,

you know, we said, I want to, you know, I've always believed in you, and now we're going to try to do

something together. And that's really what started this leg of it. And it was the first time that I was able to sort of say, well, in that case, let me find a producer who has their own studio because I wanted to start the project and end the project in the same place. I've never done that. Yeah, and your producer Tony, Tony Shan. Yeah. And actually, too, I should say, like, there's

“some amazing people on this on this record. I'll just go down the list, Andy York from John”

Nolan Cabb and Brian Griffin from Brandy Carlyow, Black Crows, Andy Burton on Keyboards, Ian Hunter, David Mansfield on Strings, Bob Dylan, who's played with Bob Dylan and other people. So it's like, what a, what a great. Yeah, and Tony's been playing with Patty Smith. He's her right hand man, many, many years. And he played bass and produced. So it was, he brought in most of the players. I brought in my old friend Mark Sidgwick. That was my contribution. He's, he's played with me in different

configurations since the early 80s and he's a Brit. He came over with Holly and the Italians. Oh, okay. How's it? Well, it's nice. It's nice, too. Like you mentioned, it's nice to have these old friends in your corner who know you, who know your, who know your work and your

“body of work. Because you have a huge body of work. You've been out of for many years and have”

definitely worked with some amazing folks. Got some great ride ups. I know village boys was one of them

from, right way back when. So it's great to have that sort of building it together with a good team, almost like a family. Is that something that's been really enjoyable for you? Is to have a great team around you? Yes, it is, it is a true family of sorts. Because all of us, since the, I sort of began really making my way in the early 80s. I played in the late 70s, Max is Kansas City, you know, when it was still around all the places. But people began

noticing me in the early 80s with a band called the decoys. Who's only things come around you. The decoys were a power pop band I had. We played Max's and see these in all those places. And just recently, which are, what I should say are all iconic clubs. Oh yeah, I grew up in LA. We were doing gizaris and the whiskey. And when you're, when you're doing that stuff in a way, you kind of don't really realize, you know, it's their cool places to play. But you don't realize the impact. And then

later, decades later, they start making films about those places. You go, oh, that was, that was a cool time. You know, yeah, you were in the European history. Max's Kansas City, like all those,

all those places are iconic. Yeah, as well as lots of places you've never heard of and never will.

So, we were playing, we would play anywhere, you know, because we, we, in those days, you might not play your headlining set until two in the morning. You know, in CBs, you might headline a set at like one or two, you know, it was, that side was. And you know, but you know, people, you know, people hang out and stay and don't leave. Oh, yeah, all right. But that's the interesting that the decoys put out in Indie 45 and like 1981. And now, cherry red records just put out a

three CD collection of 80s power pop. And they included the decoys 45 and on this set, there includes a lot of bands from that time, you know, that I did I know the bongo's and beat

you know, so that they're, they're obscure 45, I mean, they're only sold like 50 copies and

“Sweden or something. I don't know what, you know, it's suddenly, it's available again. Yeah,”

how old were you when you when you came to New York? I was 21. Wow. So were you, were you like overwhelmed or you just like fascinated? What was, what was your vibe back that would you for? I was fascinated. Right. I, uh, when I, when I was in Cleveland, I knew that I had to either go West Coast or East Coast, because in Cleveland, the thing was I'd been writing my own material from a very, very young age. That doesn't mean it was good, but I knew that that was what I wanted to do. I have recordings of,

of my own stuff going back to like 67. Right. You know, and, uh, the thing about Cleveland, and it may still be true. Uh, it was that you really were not allowed to play original material. And so yeah, it was all, it was all the cover. He had to play cover material. When I saw

“bands like raspberries or the James gang, yeah, who had youths back in the late 60s, early 70s,”

they, of course, would play, you know, stuff from their first record, but they were playing covers too,

because they even they had to play covers. You know, and a lot of the bands that later got renowned for being original, like Perubu or a lot of Tin Huey or the names and bands, they were actually from Akron. Oh, okay. And, you know, so there, it's, I know it's a slight distinction. Very blue collar towns, very working man. But it's a distinction because if you actually went to Cleveland property, you had a harder time doing that, you know, and Cleveland,

and even then you had to be pretty quirky to do your wrong thing. And I wanted to write, you know, accepted more accepted material. And if you were trying to write that kind of material, they didn't want to know you. Yeah, you had to go to New York or Relle and I knew that. So I really didn't play live that much in Cleveland because there really wasn't any right. I would play church churches, and that is where I were going to have. Basements, parties, things like that. And so I was

really excited to come to New York. I came here not knowing anybody or anything, and I wound up getting living in an attic in Coney Island. In a family attic. You know, it was like a fine. I thought it sounded like fun. And this was in the winter time. I didn't know that nobody went to Coney Island in the winter time, you know. Well, I was telling you, so I played based on a bunch of bands, but we used to play house a blues in New York. And we were there in the winter. And I'm like,

how would I go do something? But I wanted to do something different because I'd always take the

train in, you know, in the city. And I'm like, I'm not a go to Coney Island, and this is literally like January. So I took the train out and it was kind of funny to spook you because they're still everywhere. Really called the ride. Yeah, all the rides that there's nothing going on. There's a bandage. There's like a couple of the food, a couple of the food places. And like, you know, the hot dog. It was neat. I opened the hot dog. It was open. So I just thought that I was like, that was just a funny

weird thing. I always had the back of my head. Like, because you always hear about Coney Island, you always hear about these iconic places. And I'm like, well, I may not ever be here again, so I'm going to go check it out. Yeah. Right. Right. So yeah. So that's, so you're doing CBGB to do

“this kind of clubs. And who were some of the people that you were kind of running into in these places?”

That later became a big deal or became famous. Well, you know, I didn't really run into any, but well, at the time, I would, I would open. Like, one of my the decoys opening was for Lenny K. Oh, okay. Yeah. So you'd run into people like that. You'd meet them. But you didn't really hang out with them that much. Right. You know, they're kind of doing the same clubs. Yeah. They'd be doing the same clubs. But they were the headliners in television and people like that. You know, you get to me.

They were always good people. They never, a lot of that first wave of CBGB's type bands. They never

loaded it over you. But it was known that they were the headliners. And you were the support acts. Or, you know, you'd meet them and they treat you with respect. But then they'd be gone. Yeah. Everybody's kind of just trying to make it and kind of kind of at different levels. And you are. Yeah. And it wasn't until maybe there was a band called The Rock Cats.

very visual. They were regarded more as a visual band than a, you know, they did rockability music.

“But they had the look down. They were all really good looking guys. But probably the stray cats”

came along and were maybe overall accepted as better musicians, whether they were not as up for grabs because a lot of the rock cats were really great musicians. But dry and sets are sort of stood apart and, you know, yeah, they kind of ended up owning that. Right. On Steven's film, to go back to the album project, you're doing, at part of the project, or big part of the project, is you're doing a limited number of vinyl pressings.

It's 12 inch. So tell me about that in the idea behind doing vinyl. I, I like the, of course, I like the idea of having the record jacket and having that tactile thing. Because today,

it's always, everybody's doing the streaming thing because it's easy. But tell me how you just,

“why you decided to do the vinyl idea and the limited numbers and all that stuff?”

Well, that was my partner Larry's idea. And of course, I listened to him because he, he was my partner put the money. But he, but obviously, he was, he was going to record store. So he's still like, he had a lot of stuff. He was also on top of the pulse of, he says, well, this is really sort of what's happening. You know, and I, I'll be honest with you, I, I'm a lot more in touch with, you know, what kind of music I want to make and what sort of, you know, I'm not really

on the pulse of what are people buying, what are people interested in paying for? I'm aware that there's a thing called record store day. But, and they do, you know, special releases, you know, when, you know, I grew up working in a, in a record store in Cleveland, and the coolest record store on the west side. And in the project, you know, so I went through, I got a job there when I was like 12 or 13. Yeah, there's just hung out in the record store, and they said, "Oh, George,

take the register." You know, because it was run by hippies and they'd go for a break or something, you know, and so during, you know, I'll through high school, I'll through college, I had this job, and so I am asked a large vinyl collection. And my timing being off usually, I got rid of it

“in the late '90s, right before a vinyl came down. Yeah, that's, you know, so I think a lot of people”

did that. Like, "Oh, which I slept, I mean, when he's on the dollar, I got rid of all kinds of wonderful things, and it's not even so much that the money." The thing was, I'd already, I'd been in New York for many, many, many, many years, and the vinyl was still in Cleveland, in my family home. Hey, what do you get to do with this? There was nowhere I could bring it here.

I'm living in these little apartments in New York. Well, I finally said, "Well, you know, my

sister was moving to West Virginia at the time." And I said, "Well, you know, let me just, you know, what happened was I was putting out my CDs on a small label out of Illinois." And the person there drove to Cleveland with his father, took all my records back to Illinois and they sold them there. So I'm out of touch with the vinyl thing. I didn't know really to what degree, but the original idea for Stevensonville was to do it as an LP because that's the size of the art. You know,

the actual artwork that Lori did are massive painting us. There was something like five by five or so. Oh, how? It's lame. And they've been in storage for 30 years now and they're coming out there. Where I'm doing the record release show is the 503 social club in Hoboken and they're going to show the paintings for a week. Oh, awesome. Before I do the show. So it's going to be kind of a Stevensonville week at this place. But anyway, the Larry had the idea, my partner, that let's do it the way you

originally envisioned it. Let's just, but let's, you know, make it sort of something that people actually will treat as a valuable coffee table type book where, you know, can I tell them all people are going to yell at me? It's a concept. And I assure them that the music was valid and I'll be the you know, and he said, let's just do it. And you have a 28 page booklet that comes out with this album.

full page of the illustration on the right and and some other, you know, large,

photographs and different. It's a, it's a very nice package. And because we wanted to make the package, once in a lifetime, you were investing in it. And if you're going to buy it, you know, you're going to pay a little extra then you normally would for, let's say a CD or something. You know, not astronomical, you know, we're not trying to, yeah, but it's really, it's music, but it's actually is a complete work. The whole package of art, it's a, it's a, it's a coffee table

package that you can have as artwork, as music, as a piece done by George Usher and Laurie Weber.

And this is it, you know, who were some of the people that you look up to as a young songwriter,

piano songwriter? Well, you know, I was, I was so lucky in that I had two older sisters. One was 12 years older and one was seven. And, and, well, you know, my story is relatively ubiquitous. And in that, you know, I turned on Ed Sullivan. And I have to say at the risk of sounding like

“everybody else under the sun, I saw the Beatles and for my money still because I remember not just the”

music, their impact was up here and everybody else is kind of starts down here. So you start with the Beatles and everything that they do now. And unless we're back there, you might not appreciate just how they impacted everything. The modern people these days don't realize as that back then, there was what maybe three different TV stations. There was many, yeah, it's awesome. This really half the country, half the United States is watching at Sullivan on any given weekend or

night. And, and that they changed, they put out in, because capital would put out a new album every three or four months. They would change trends every three or four months in some fashion. It might be how they looked. It might be what they wore. It might be what they said. It might be what they did along the same lines, of course. You know, because many other people have said this, that the world went from black and white to color overnight. And that sort of what happened. And if your eyes

were opened like my young eyes were at the time, you suddenly became aware of people like Dylan and you became aware of when they came along, the stones, the kinks. But for all, we're all

revolutionary when they were coming on. The birds, everybody that was around back then, was new and

“important and valid. And they were contributing. And you were able to, you know, people”

forget that the bands had rock and roll, Hall of Fame careers that only lasted like two years, like the momma's in the poppers at 11 spoonfuls. And bands like Creme that were only around for two years, had such a huge legacy. And people point to the Beatles and say, "Oh, so and so has now outsold them." But they don't know that like the industry was not the industry like it is now. The Beatles played chase stadium with like transistor radio speakers and

they didn't even have monitors and stuff. You know what I mean? There wasn't even a business like it is now. You know, and the people that were running the A&R departments, even when I moved in New York in the late 70s, early eight, the people running the A&R departments were like 65-year-old Jewish guys. They weren't like the hip people that you think, you know, you know, flowing with flowing hair and all this stuff. You know, it was real business people,

took it very seriously, you know. And it was different times. And there was so much to learn, almost from everybody. You could take a little bit, look at the West Coast, you know, when

“if you want to start with, I don't know who the Beast Boys are, the momma's in the poppers,”

and then who came Buffalo Springfield, and out of that came all the, you know, Crab herself was a massive young. I knew a young, you know, I have a very high tenor. And wasn't I happy when you were young started making records, you know what I mean? I was like, "That guy sounds like me." You know what I mean? Yeah, it's funny you mentioned, you know, because that's what I was listening to your, your new album. I was like, "Oh, I can, yeah, I could hear him in there. It's

funny." You know, I don't sound like Paul McCartney. We should do it. Or even John Lyon. But hey,

something that, you know, it's very, it's a very powerful thing because guys like Neil Young, I mean, were they the best singer I don't know, but, but the thing is that they, they, they worked storytellers and they were able to sell. Exactly, they were able to touch people.

The other thing is that you hear two words and you know what it is. And you know, I always

equate that to, you know, like Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, same thing like, or they the best singers, I don't know, but the thing is that that, just in the billions of people in the world, for them to sing a couple of words and you know, who it is, such a rare, rare thing, right? Right. What's some advice that you can give to people? Because I know you've been doing that just in the, in the artist's things since, since the very beginning, really.

What's some of a couple of important lessons that you've learned at first singer songwriters, people that that want to get out there and, and maybe the younger, and they're trying to figure out what to do, what, what some thoughts that you could give? Let me think for a second, because now, you know, even here, we're, I'm sometimes known in certain pockets here in New York and I'm, held in, I'm held as sort of in the grand old man in certain pockets, you know, because I've been

“around a lot, well, see now that that's one of the things you have to stick it out. If, if you're going”

to do it, you have to keep doing it. There's a, there's a poet named, who's passed on, and W.S. Merwin, and he had won all the awards, and how he's passed on, he did his great reward, you know, won, he wrote a poem that I can't actually quote, but he wrote it about his meeting John Barryman, another poet who is moved on, and he talked about speaking with John Barryman and asking his advice. And he, and this is part of the poem, although I can't recite it, but he asked John Barryman,

how do I know if a poem I've written is any good, and Barryman's answer was, you don't know,

you can never know if you have to know, don't write. And that's, and that's just another way of saying,

what one, you know, a lot of young songwriters come to me for advice, and one of the things I tell them is you have to keep doing what you're doing, no matter what anybody tells you. If somebody tells you that it isn't good, and that sets you off your path, then you're not meant to be doing it.

“But I also tell them, and this is key, what you have to do is you have to keep editing.”

Exactly. Do not, do not go with your first draft. And this is where I, I diverge from Neil Young's most recent output, because Neil has been quoted quite often in recent years as saying, oh, you know, I, I write, I wrote the song at 9 o'clock, and I cut the track at 915, and there you go. And then he didn't even, even to do that. I can listen to a lot of his earlier work, and I know for a fact that he labored over that stuff. Right, frankly, in a good way,

it sounds like he did. It sounds like he puts some time into it, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

The initial spark is always valid, but it is important to go back three, four, sometimes five times

in edit. You can always go back and neck a song better. Yes, it's true. You can go back, and I think the amongst songwriters, the, the suggestion is you're stealing down it too much. You, you, you, you

“over, yeah, you overthink it, and you can find that happy medium, but you have to be willing to edit.”

You have to be willing to go back and say, you know what, maybe I'm maybe I'm a genius in maybe I'm not, you know, maybe the genius comes from the editing. The genius comes from knowing when the edit and when not to. And when the stop, you know, had that come, I mean, a lot of that too, it just comes with experience. Yeah. You get to, you get to, I, you know, a work, you know, it doesn't work, but you know, also you want to be willing to still take risks, no matter what age you are,

and like maybe it's going to work, maybe it's not, but that's really the excitement of creating art. I, I approached the 12 songs from Stevensonville completely ready after 30 years

lyrics that, you know, don't work anymore, or maybe some chord changes there, you know, yep. I, you know what, I didn't change anything. Yeah. There were some arrangement ideas in the studio that the band go to, and oh, let's repeat the chorus here. Oh, that's a good, you know, let's do this part a couple of times or take that part, you know, but just get it, keeps it, it keeps it fresh, right? It keeps it. Oh, yeah. But what would the spirit, the spirit is still there.

“That's the important part of it. You know, because each song is a different person in Stevensonville,”

that was a conceit that I stole from spoon river anthology, where every poem is named for a different person. Yeah. And so for each song, when we approached each song in the studio, we hung a, a print of one of Lori's paintings in the studio. That's a good idea. It inspired, right? And then we would tackle that song, and we would try to have the print inspire us to bring that kind of whatever it was, and it was really exciting because it was like, well, on one hand,

these are my songs. But it's not like I wrote them yesterday, you know, I'm so precious, you know, I don't want anyone to mess with my new song, you know, I'm, you know, it was like, well, they are my songs, but all, everybody can contribute, everybody, give me your ideas. Yeah, you want to, you want to breathe, you want to breathe life into the songs. And yeah, you give me your ideas, you know, they are mine, but yeah, I'm not as close to them as I used to be.

“And so bring your talent to my songs, because I, I want it. Well, I think that's awesome that”

you're still open to letting them grow and letting them flourish in new ways after after so many years and bringing new life. And it gets important as artists to keep it, keep it fresh and keep it to where you're excited, to for people to hear what you've, you've, you've created, but also recreated, which is, which is exciting. George, tell people how they can, again, the album comes out March 20th, but tell people how they can find you and also if they want to order the album,

how they would do that. Well, there's going to be a, I don't want to get it up there too soon. There's going to be, it's going to be sold through band camp where you can go on band camp and you'll be able to order it from me through band camp, but I didn't want to put it up there yet,

“because they're going to be numbered copies, with a certificate signed by both Lori and me,”

there is one of 200, the first vinyl copies. And, or at this point, the only vinyl copies,

you know, it may be, we may make it available online streaming, straight later, streaming, yeah, because I, I want the music to be heard, make it available, streaming, and make the illustrations available in a similar way. But, but for this initial, you can order it from me, and I will single-handedly mail it to you, mail the vinyl copy to you, but that will be after March 21st, we'll make it available then, because the, the first copies will be sold at the record release show

on March 21st, because it's, it becomes available in March 20th. Yeah, and again, mention where that, where the record release party is. It's going to be at the 503 social club in Hoboken, that's Jim Mastro's club. He and I played together in, in the bongo's, back in the 80's, I did play for a brief period of time, and the bongo's, I was not a member of the bongo's, so some, some, some folks in the bongo's get upset, because they think I'm trying to

claim I was a member, I was never a member, I played with them for about two and a half years,

but I was not a member. Yeah, we all know, that's the stories. You know, yeah, you know, that kind of the, and in fact, when I played with bands like Pete Rodio with the bongo's, you know, I never, I was on a beat, rodeo album, I'm on a bongo's album, but I never, like, would have my picture taken with the band, because I always had my own thing going. Right. And I never wanted to be that guy from Poco, and I'm just, I'm picking on, I'm picking on Poco.

No, I've come up with a poster, I had so many, so many changes through the years. And I never wanted to be that guy who was with Poco on the 6th album, but and maybe he's back again on the 9th

album. I never wanted to be that guy. I don't know, like, you know, you can hear me on the recordings,

you know, yeah, but it's good because I also too, like, I mean, you know, as we know, as musicians,

“you're often asked to play on other people's projects, and it's good to really kind of clarify”

because over the course of time things get a little murky about who who is on what album. A lot of people don't care, but then, but the fans do care, so they like, well, the bongo's, there was just, there was a situation where, and I just mentioned, it's because it was so goofy. I was playing with the bongo's, and that was sort of like I was hired to be a keyboard, extra rhythm guitarist on acoustic guitar, right? And I wound up, at a particular time,

they were looking for a new deal, and as it happened, I co-wrote a song with their leader, and it was intended for my project, okay? Because, you know, it was, you know, and what happened was, I did a demo of it with Mark Sidjwitt, my buddy, who's, you know, playing with me at the, the 503 social club, who in their record release show for this, right? And who also played with me on the Stevenson film, and we did a demo of this song, and I went to the leader of the bongo's,

and I said, hey, how about the song that we wrote? You know, and it's, for my project, my house of Usher project, while he heard it and said, oh, what a great song, and I said, well, yeah, you know, and then he wanted it for the bongo's. Oh, I got to get it. Okay, and what happened was, of course, he had the record, or, you know, they'd had a record deal with RCA,

“and I remember about, and they were looking for a new record deal, and he, of course, had management,”

I did not. Right. And so this became the flagship song for the bongo's trying to get a new record deal. How funny. And in the process, my name, it came synonymous with being the bongo, who co-wrote the song that is being, you understand? And so suddenly, suddenly it became George Usher of George Usher of the bongos, and it's made the leader crazy. You know, so that we got

a falling out and got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, and I never said I was a bongo, you know,

but anyway. Bye, no, and I get that. I, you know, way back when, when I was 18, I was playing with the champs, the group that's in Hila, and Danny Fanny Flores, who was a sax player, the original guy, he's the guy that says Tequila, oh, we would do all these huge festivals, and people would bring up champs albums and ask me to sign the album. And I'm like, I wasn't even alive. I wasn't even fond of what this happens. We can't have, I'm like, I'm not going to sign my Sundays, you know,

I'm not going to say credit for anything. But so I, I've been dealing with that since I was a teenager, but George, thanks so much for joining me. And you have such a huge history. Again, people should look up your other albums and look up your background, because it's really interesting. And I, you know, I have a, this Taoist, I, for that, that period in New York, that sort of 70s, 80s, 90s, because there's a lot going on still. There's still a lot going on, but it's a different way.

But I really admire the ambition of this project, you know, checking out the songs and the artwork. It's, it's really a great package. And it's awesome that you have somebody supporting you,

“helping you put this out after all these years. I think it's, it's really, it speaks to your”

ability to kind of hang in there and to keep going. And I, and I, and I really admire that. I'm, I'm kind of the same way. I'm 60. You know, I've been doing this for a little long. Yeah. But I've

been doing this since I was 15, and I still love what I do. And I always tell people like it's

important as a musician or an artist to not forget why you started doing it in the first place. Well, you know, now it is at the first time I've put out in a few years. And you know how all of my all of my reviews begin. They all begin like this, continuing to toil in obscurity. So, you know, all the reviews can now begin with that again. Well, you know, but you know what, the thing is, you never gave up. No, that's, that's, and I'm still editing. But that's that's the story.

And it deserves attention. It deserves the validity. Because a lot of people gave up a long time ago. You hung in there and you're still putting on still doing it. Yeah, and you're still putting up quality stuff. So that's, that's very exciting. Did you have a website, George? You know, I, I did and then

Yeah, but they're even half-asht now. Yeah. But I think, if you, if you go to, if you go to

“something called GeorgeRussia.com, it'll, it'll send you the sort of a half-assed Facebook page.”

But I, I will answer you if you write me there. Okay. Follow up. But it's not really like a,

it's not really a comprehensive thing. You can find a couple of videos. You can go to YouTube and

“find some, yeah, some half-assed stuff. You know, when my, when my GeorgeRussia.com went south,”

it was one of those things where like I had somebody looking after it, you know,

I guess it costs like $10 a year or something. And somehow I missed it. My $10 cut off or something.

“And it just went south. Yeah. Well, you have to, you have to do something. Yeah, you have to,”

well, band camps totally valid too. But you'll have to get something where people will definitely can find you if they want to buy it. I, I really should. But it's just so much work. And I know, I don't, I don't know. Let's say I know. That's my whole life as dealing with that stuff. But we'll get a, we'll get a contact for you. And we'll put it on that when we release the podcast and I'll get all that information from, from our friend Howard, the publicist. Oh, I'm, it was a great guy.

So yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you so much, George. For joining me. Thank you. Well, we'll send you links when this gets published. It'll be a little bit over a week from now. And then, and yeah, hopefully we get to some attention for the albums. So thanks so much, George. You're of a, thank you man. How do you run? Thanks for joining us. And please consider subscribing to our podcast and follow us on our social media pages for guest announcements.