Yes, that’s both the name of the album and the name of this post. And this is Andrew Steck writing the post, but I also wrote the album. So there ya go.
In August of 2023, I had just released my album, Sore Thumb. There were a few projects that I had in mind to work on next, but I thought I could stand to have a little break and just tinker around with some new studio projects. It’s good to not have an end goal in mind sometimes when you’re working in your home studio. I decided that I would continue my usual work routine of waking at 6AM on weekdays and putting in two hours of some kind of music work before going to the job that pays the bills. Only for the next month, I would come up with a new musical idea every morning. Most mornings I would start the idea before my coffee was brewed and I wasn’t even close to fully awake yet. This allowed me to write with less inhibition or adhesion to worn paths and tendencies.
Admittedly, there were some days that I revisited something from the day before, but after about 40 days, I had about 20-22 ideas, or “germs” as I like to refer to them, ready to work off of (or not). The next month, my focus was on completing production of the “Drinking With the Devil” single, which I had already written the music for, but wanted to get a clear, cartoonish sound for it’s pre-Halloween release. After that, I worked on preparing The Electric Nutcracker. I had this one mostly arranged, but again wanted to give some time to fine tune it before it’s pre-holiday release. Throughout the finishing of both of these recordings, I regularly revisited some of the germs I had laid down at the end of that summer.
By December, I was noncommittally sculpting those shorter ideas into more full fledged pieces of music. I was brainstorming what a theme could be for my next album. A few things came to mind that I won’t get into, but at one point I turned to my wife and said, “I’ve got it! Songs!” And she said, “What?” And I said, “I think for the next album, I’ll do songs! Maybe.” And she looked at me like I’d just said the most confoundingly obvious thing in the world. But from that point on, the focus had been dialed in.
Once the number of pieces were pared down and developed a bit, they were arranged in a logical order. During a weekend in April 2024, I bought a six-pack of beer and sat down on the couch to “let the lyrics appear” while watching Nicholas Cage movies. Not sure if any elements of those movies crept in to the lyrics, but after two days, nearly all the lyrics were written for the album. I had previously, as I often do, made sort of brainstorming lists for the themes of each song. This was essentially rapid writing things that came to mind and “vibes” I felt while listening to the tunes. The theme quickly emerged of each track representing a stage in development over the course of a lifetime. I jokingly referred to the in-progress album as “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Shitass,” noting the parallels in formative vignettes. Though, I had already been labeling it as “Regular Human Music Album.”
The title is tongue-in-cheek in a few ways. More than a few people have already pointed out the Jackie Daytona connection (Matt Berry’s Laszlo’s “human bartender” from WWDITS), but though I’m a big fan of the show, that wasn’t the intended joke of it. One is that I was making fun of myself for thinking an album that contained “songs” was such an epiphany, and that such an approach would be so different than my usual m.o.. Another is the dry, socially distant view of providing music for people while feeling not entirely a part of “regular human” practices. I can’t pinpoint what exactly that is, aside from just generally feeling like an outsider. And then there is the theme of the album of going through stages in life. Though some of these relate more towards the artistically inclined (“Secretive” expressing diverging urges of hanging with friends and listening to music; “Magenta” having a theme of being drawn towards the muses; “New Illumination” being a projection of the ecstasy of inspiration), I felt that it was nonspecific enough to be representative of some regular person somewhere perhaps. I can’t deny that the ironically generic title was appealing to me also. The digital distributer that I used (the company that places the music on all the streaming services) declined the album title of Regular Human Music Album. After I suggested I just drop the word “album,” they agreed that it would no longer be flagged as “generic.” Goofy bastards.
I might write more about this later. Perhaps a song-by-song breakdown would be interesting to some? In the meantime, please enjoy! And don’t forget the cheap/free/easy things you can do to help support independent artists: follow on streaming sites and social media, save content and add it to playlists, play it for or mention it to your friends, and if you can, buy music, merch, and concert tix. On that note, CDs are for sale of Regular Human Music as well as digital downloads. See the SHOP to purchase.
Thanks for reading, but mostly, thanks for listening!
Andrew Steck
