THE BEAT: Both Sides Now Lang Owen explores stories and sounds on his new album "She’s My Memory"

By Kevin Oliver

Columbia singer-songwriter Lang Owen’s new album She’s My Memory is a relationships album, but not in the classic boy-meets-girl pop music mold. Rather, the sixty-something Owen has collected what amounts to a lifetime of thoughts here on friendships of all kinds, from romantic partners new and old to co-workers and the people we see on TV screens and newspaper bylines. In putting the album together, he also relied on musical relationships built over the past five years since he emerged onto the local scene. 

 

Owen enlisted fellow songwriter and guitarist Todd Mathis as his producer, with a diverse cast of additional players on board and additional recording and mastering from Carl Burnitz. The result is a shimmering statement of purpose, a beautifully rendered collection of songs that tell stories in a way that captures the heart and the imagination. Musical touchstones from James Taylor to Joni Mitchell, Emmylou Harris, Todd Rundgren, and more reveal themselves upon repeated listens, but Owen has firmly established his own sound and style with this new album.

 

There are stories both told and implied here, from the simple work ethic of “Man With A Broom,” to the internal evaluation of “Where Does The River Start?” Of the latter, Owen says, “On the surface the narrator is dealing with a breakup, but in my mind, he’s questioning himself–how did I get to this point, where am I going from here, and especially, how have I made some of the choices I did along the way?” 

 

Some of the choices Owen made in recording these songs included expanding his musical palette well beyond just himself, with the assistance of producer Todd Mathis. It was all in the preparation, Owen says.

“We sat down with scratch tracks of the songs I recorded on my own and brainstormed what kind of instrumentation would work with each,” He recalls. Guest musicians who ended up participating include drummer Mike Scarboro (The Runout), guitarist Zach Bingham, and backing vocals from Becca Smith of Admiral Radio. Bass duties were split between Chris Paget, Jeff Gregory (The Runout), Mathis’ former bandmate Kevin Kimbrell, and Mathis himself, who also filled multiple other instrumental roles. 

 

Being in a “band” situation isn’t exactly a new thing for Owen, though it had been a while, he admits.

 

“I played in bands in the 1980s, and I enjoyed playing with other people,” He says. “When I picked music back up in 2017(after decades as a teacher, visual artist, and social worker), I played by myself mostly because I just didn’t know any other musicians.” 

 

There are story songs here that those who have followed Owen’s solo acoustic shows the past few years will recognize as falling directly in his usual style, such as the topical “Last Gasp Of The News.” This time around there are also songs where the sound falls more toward the “band” side of things, with a particular vibe that a simple acoustic guitar arrangement wouldn’t be able to achieve as vividly.

 

“Collection Day” is one such tune, with an unhurried, yet rhythmic indie rock feel not too far from bands such as Yo La Tengo. “Smile From You” leans on Owen’s strummed guitar, but the other elements contribute to the song’s unsettled, foreboding atmosphere of an uncomfortable snapshot in time.

“We spent a lot of time on working out that one,” Owen says. “It went through a lot of different variations to get where it did–any time you work with great musicians, they’ll come up with great ideas.” 

 

Even with the expanded arrangements and feel of the recording sessions, Owen’s flair for narrative shines through. The title track “She’s My Memory” is a story song about telling stories, where a comment from a co-worker about remembering his life better than he does prompted a story of a person losing their memory who is still able to remember it through his wife’s anecdotes.


“I think that song sets the tone for the album,” Owen concludes, “which in part is about the importance of relationships to our well-being.” 

 

In “Everybody Here” the opening lines, in their own way, reach that same conclusion–we all help each other, whether we realize it or not: 

 

“Everybody here’s my therapist

I need all the help I can get

I look around, I’m losing my ground

I don’t like what I see one bit

I float by like a whisper, you hand me a megaphone

In our own little worlds somehow, we’re not alone

We’re not alone”

 

Lang Owen releases “She’s My Memory” officially on all platforms June 17th. The release show, featuring a full backing band of many of the players on the album, happens at Curiosity Coffee on Saturday, June 18th, from 5-8 p.m. $10 

 

Facebook Event with ticket link

Kevin Oliver's THE BEAT: Caught Up In a Feeling--The Runout and Jeff Gregory Build Community Around Music

“We discovered that we like eating, and we like drinking, and we like making music, preferably all at the same time,” - Jeff Gregory

For many people the ongoing pandemic has been a rollercoaster ride, but for Jeff Gregory and his band The Runout it was the catalyst for a creative community which birthed the band’s latest album With Your Eyes Closed. Early on, as artists found their footing online with live streaming to replace live in-person shows, Gregory and his wife Kelley hit upon a simple format of the two of them, a guitar and occasional piano, repeated on Wednesday nights, that resonated with them and a core group of friends and fans.  

“The pandemic really had us down, so Kelley and I found something to do to make ourselves happy and remember what singing together in high school was like,” Jeff Gregory says. 

The Runout was already a band with a couple recording sessions and a first album out, along with a number of live shows featuring an evolving lineup that currently includes Mike Scarboro on drums, Moses Andrews on bass guitar, keyboards, and organ, and Chris Compton on electric guitar alongside Jeff and Kelley Gregory. But as the pandemic dragged on and Gregory took some soul-searching, nonmusical personal time, the community drew him back in, he says.

“Thank God for Chris Compton, Patrick Leitner, Lang Owen, all of those guys asked me to get involved on their projects, just a song here and there,” Gregory says. “It spurred me on to wanting to do music again myself.” 

The community that gathered around the Gregorys shared one crucial thing, and, surprisingly, it wasn’t music–it was food. 

“We discovered that we like eating, and we like drinking, and we like making music, preferably all at the same time,” Gregory says. “It sounds silly, but a lesson we’ve learned is that when you have friendship, and good vibes, then you can have some creativity and exploration in what you’re doing.” 

The musical result of this camaraderie was The Runout’s latest album With Your Eyes Closed. The record pulls together the intimate feeling of those livestream nights with an expanded lineup that allows for full band arrangements. The tracks progress through deceptively feel-good anthems such as the bouncy Americana-esque opener, “Feelings,” and more raucous, rocking rave-ups like “Coffee and Weed.” Gregory also delves into deeper territory on tracks like the ethereal “Crooked Canyon,” a metaphorical journey to the center of one’s psyche that’s equal parts terrifying and glorious in its imagery.  

Gregory has that rarest of qualities–the ability to turn a clever phrase, but also imbue its delivery with raw, honest emotion that connects on a deeper level than the average pop song. The centerpiece of the album is “Give Up,” an irresistible tune that began life on those now long-ago livestreams with just Jeff and Kelly harmonizing to an acoustic guitar. The album version adds shimmering electric guitar to the natural connection their voices make on lyrics that anyone in a long-term  relationship can relate to: “I’ve been wanting to give up, I’ve been thinking it through…it seems I need a few more hours down this road with you.”  

Those few more hours have become months now, in pandemic times. In lieu of a club gig for the album release, The Runout staged a mini-festival they dubbed “Stump Fire Fest” at a friend’s property. They invited a hundred of their fans and friends to come celebrate outdoors with them, a culmination of the community that had sustained the band to that point.

“We’re thankful for that community,” Gregory says now. “We weren’t really aware of it until that night–I think it was the result of the pandemic filtering out everything that didn’t matter, and the music was what was left.” 

The Stump Fire Fest may have set an unrepeatable precedent; in addition to the Runout, several other bands played on a small stage built just for the night, poet Al Black read between sets, and Dick Moons and his drum circle formed up around a nearby campfire as participants ate, drank, and moved between the different moving parts of the evening.  

“It really crossed scenes and generations,” Gregory says of the festival. “It wrapped up what had been a really meaningful time of making the record, too–Hanging out with Chris Compton, Sean Thomson, Patrick Leitner, Moses Andrews, that meant more to me than I realized at the time.” 

It’s the mentality of helping others, Gregory concludes, that has to survive the pandemic.

“People are wondering what’s going on in the world right now, and the answer is that nobody knows,” He says, “So what must our response be? It has to be art.”