MARK ERELLI RELEASES NEW SONG & VIDEO "THE GIG AT THE END OF THE WORLD"
AVAILABLE ONLY AT BANDCAMP
PROCEEDS TO BENEFIT THE PASSIM EMERGENCY ARTIST RELIEF FUND
NEW LP BLINDSIDED OUT NOW VIA SOUNDLY MUSIC
WATCH: “THE GIG AT THE END OF THE WORLD”
Today, Boston-based singer/songcrafter Mark Erelli has independently released "The Gig At The End Of The World,” a new song and video created and animated entirely by himself and his two young sons, Caleb and Owen. Of the song, Erelli explains:
”In early March, I went out to see my friend’s band play a late Wednesday night set at a small Boston rock club,” Erelli explains. “Concerns about the virus were just beginning to ramp up, but life was still normal enough that I convinced my wife I’d be fine. I’ll stand in the back of the room, as far from the crowd as I can, I told her. I was determined to unplug and just enjoy the music, but I kept overhearing bits of developing news in the changeovers between bands. The NBA is suspending its season. The president just banned travel to Europe. Tom Hanks is sick. The next morning, I woke up and wrote a tongue-in-cheek song about my previous night called ‘The Gig At The End Of The World.’ A day later, my kids’ school would be canceled for what has become the remainder of the academic year. Before the district fleshed out its plan for home education during quarantine, it was largely up to parents to preserve some sense of normalcy and structure. One of the tasks on our hastily-drawn agenda was ‘Home Recording with Dad,’ and over the next few weeks we worked daily on a full-band version of the new song I had just written. I recorded Owen playing drums and keyboards, and he would engineer for me when it was time to track vocals and guitars.
As the quarantine extended into the foreseeable future and the kids home schooling got more official, I needed a new project to preserve my own sanity. I didn’t feel much like writing or singing, and the normal tools in my creative toolbox felt blunt and useless. I don’t know exactly what made me begin work on a home-animated video for ‘The Gig At The End Of The World,’ but I quickly became consumed by the project and the creative challenge of working in a medium with which I have no experience. It provided me precious time out of mind (see the below picture of the flossing zombie from the video), and it kind of saved me at a time when I felt adrift and despondent.
It is, of course, not the actual end of the world. But right now I can’t envision when it will be safe again for me to travel to your town or to ask you to gather together for live music. Many artists will be out of work for a long time, and I want to use my home school recording project to help them during this unprecedented crisis.
The song is only available for download on his Bandcamp page and is not a part of his regular streaming catalog. Today, Bandcamp is waiving its revenue shares. and all proceeds from the sale of "The Gig At The End Of The World" will benefit the Passim Emergency Artist Relief Fund (PEAR). The PEAR Fund offers grants of up to $500 and is open to any musician who has performed or taught at Cambridge, Massachusetts folk mainstay Club Passim in the last decade. Visit passim.org/pearfund for more information. Click HERE to download "The Gig At The End Of The World.”
On March 27th, Erelli released his highly-acclaimed new album, Blindsided, via Soundly Music. Blindsided, an unflinching examination of the distance between innocence and experience from “the middle” of life’s fantastic journey, is a step in a different sonic direction for the award-winning artist. In it, Erelli contemplates the delicate tension between love and commitment, faith and family, disillusionment and hope. But this isn’t a confession from the therapist’s couch, it’s rock ’n roll, and Erelli is clearly taking his cues from heroes like Petty and Prine. Against the backdrop of Blindsided’s hungrier, hook-laden sound, with the inspired addition of a string quartet on half of the album, Erelli has never sounded more passionate or vital. Over the course of Blindsided’s 11 tracks, the message of each song is distilled to its purest form, as fearlessly honest in perspective as it is straightforward in its delivery.
LISTEN: BLINDSIDED
WATCH: “THE RIVER ALWAYS WINS”
WATCH: “I CAN’T STAND MYSELF”
WATCH: “BLINDSIDED”
