When you think about the new disc Goodnight Stranger in general terms, what’s it about?

Hmmmmm, well that’s a pretty loaded question… or more so a loaded answer, lol.  This was a really hard and personal record for me to write and even harder for me to listen to now.  In a nutshell I would say that when I was writing these songs I was in a very dark and confusing place in my life.  I felt I had lost a lot of my spirit, peace and the happiness.  I sort of became this person that I didn’t know.  When you listen to the record you hear a recurring theme in the lyrics of unfamiliarity and loss of one’s self…  and so the title “Goodnight Stranger” is referring to me as the Stranger.   I felt the title suited this chapter in my life…

How was it working with producer JP…

What was the first guitar you ever owned and what was the best thing you recall about it?

My very first guitar was given to me by my teacher, Father Duffacy at Saint Francis Cabrini.  I was 13. It was a white Kingston and he also gave me an amplifier. I couldn’t believe it – my family could not afford to buy me one.  What a wonderful, generous man.  I loved that guitar.  I polished it, slept with it… The best part about the guitar was that it was my very own.

ANY GUITARS YOU’VE HAD OVER THE YEARS THAT YOU WISH YOU STILL HAD NOW?

One guitar I wish I had now was a cherry red Gretch Country Gentleman. It was a reissue of 1967 Chet Adkins model.  I lost it when my basement flooded in 1998. I was on the road, out of town at the time.  It was completely ruined by the time home.

IN TERMS OF PLAIN OLD FEELING GOOD, DO YOU PREFER PLAYING GUITAR AT HOME ALONE, IN THE STUDIO OR LIVE ON…

How did Esquela come together? 

John ‘Chico’ Finn  and Keith Christopher have a long history together. And so, when John wanted to start his own band, it only made sense for Keith to be his partner in crime. While recordingEsquela’s first album, “The Owl Has Landed”, I was invited to do some backing vocals. Soon thereafter, Chico asked me to take over lead vocals. Todd Russell, a friend of Chico’s from high school, was a perfect fit on drums for the evolving band. Chico asked me if I would be interested in playing mandolin, which would have tricky…

What earlier Mr. Henry record has the most in common with your new project Waiting For Henry, Ghosts & Compromise?  

Man, I hope it’s not a cop out to pick two… but I think Ghosts falls somewhere between the first couple of Mr. Henry albums.  It has the grit and new-band-energy of As Good as the Ground, but I feel like it also has the song strength of Jackhammer.

You took a brief-to-longer-than-expected hiatus from playing live, recording and touring until now: does the material and lyrics on the disc tell any part of that story?

Yeah I did and yeah it does.  Story’s in the title song…  “Let’s…

1.0 – Labels aside, the music on Tracks is hard to pin down, is that part of your vibe as a dude?

1.0 – What’s the first song you recall moving you as a kid?

1.0 – What is it about rock & roll that makes people feel good?

For me its the feeling I got when I heard Lou Reed “Walk On The Wild Side” on the radio when i was a boy has never really gone away. It made me love rock so much. I was probably 8 or 9. The song was so exotic. Such a trip far from my world. I was so hooked on this thing that came out of the radio. “Jumpin Jack Flash” on an AM transistor radio in Philly in the early 70′s was pretty magical.

So its escape and energy and fantasy and freedom for 3-6 minutes when tuned in. That feeling is hard to beat.

1.0 – What’s the best thing about Barn Sessions?

Perhaps that it’s real, it’s live, and you can see a mouse suddenly appear behind John’s lovely head in the “Hiding”‘ video.  That’s just my personal opinion.

It was more of a feeling I wanted people to remember.  The entire landscape of music has gone through drastic changes.  I wanted to do a live experiment with talented people to see how the variables would change the result.  It evolved as things do, once my team of amazing artist friends helped it become what it is.  The sum of their talent and personality, combined with other elements, created the sound.

Interview with RANDY BERGIDA

1.0 – What’s the best thing about The Letter Yellow’s WALKING DOWN THE STREETS?

I really connect to these songs.  They were extremely natural to write and being that the majority of the songs were written one after the next in a span of a few months, there is a continuity that weaves

throughout all the different feels and colors of Walking Down The Streets.  I also love the freshness of the songs on the record in that we had never performed prior to recording tracking.  The idea was that the songs had a well rehearsed touch, but they hadn’t been overanalyzed and over structured.  If a section wanted to extend through the live tracking portion of the record, we went with it.  The

spirit is in the recording and beyond all the fancy things you can do post production, it’s the spirit that lives in the performance that I’ve…

Interview w/ Christmas Davis of The Tall Pines