LIVE AT 2:00 P.M. CDT
Halsted: "Life Underwater" was recorded in an old Victorian House in San Francisco during the rainy season of this past winter. Most reels of tape have higher price tags than our budget for this album, yet I
consider it the most dynamic, sweeping and ambitious record I’ve ever made.
The story behind this album starts in the summer of 2008. After years of writing songs, touring and a self released EP or two, “Marigolds”, my first proper LP was released on a small independent record label. Reviews were positive, I spent the first few months after its release touring around the country, and one song even managed to get on the television, underscoring a particularly cathartic moment for a group of very attractive doctors. All seemed to be going well until I returned home from tour to discover that my label had folded, leaving me with a large stack of unpaid bills.
As the financial world collapsed around us, I was forced to perform my own mini-bailout, building desks and file cabinets in order to pay back radio promoters and graphic designers; dark times indeed. Yet it was during this dark time, over a couple of beers with my buddy (and the eventual drummer and engineer for this record) Peter Craft, that I began to feel a pull to gather a group of friends and try to recapture the inspiration that had lead me down a path that, at the time, felt like pure punishment.
Friends were gathered, songs written and practice spaces filled. While we fleshed out arrangements, tossed around production ideas and learned how to play as a group, I rediscovered something that felt like the inspiration that had so quickly evaporated the previous fall. In the spirit of this idyllic atmosphere, this album has taken on a project name, Halsted, rather than another Ryan Auffenberg record. Halsted was the first street I lived on after deciding to play music for a living. This album and project are a tribute to the purity, passion, naïvette and downright stupidity that leads people to choose a life of music; the feeling of standing in the crowd or listening to a record in your room, hoping one day to channel a glimmer of the magic someone else’s songs have made you feel, before the spread sheets, contracts, press reports and invoices....
The folks on this record were brought together by a simple passion for music and a desire to make a piece of art we could be proud of. These songs are an act of defiance, a refusal to let circumstances beyond one’s control entirely control one’s fate. Ours was a straightforward goal to create an unwavering statement of hope in the face of what has felt at times like insurmountable adversity. We hope it makes you wanna drive just a little bit faster.
Sincerely,
Ryan Auffenberg
Singer/Songwriter/Multi-Instrumentalist – Halsted
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