Michael Menager

Part I: The Beginning The recording of this new collection of songs took place in winter 2020 - at the height of Covid lockdown here in Australia, when the outlook for nearly everything (including independent music) was pretty grim. 

My plan had been to do the tracking of Line In The Water as part of a third consecutive Northern Hemisphere summer of touring in Europe and the UK. Audio engineer James Lehman’s studio in Lochgilphead, Scotland was to be at my disposal for a week, with my longtime friend, LA-born producer and singer/songwriter Everett Jaime, on board to carry the project through. Everett had a grand piano lined up and had a couple of local musicians - a fiddler and a cellist - on call. I’d booked my tickets for Glasgow, arrival set for a couple of days before beginning recording on May 9th, 2020.

I’m sure it would have been a delightful summer in Lochgilphead - with its standing stones and its little corner pub with local whisky that is the best thing this side of heaven. But that was not to be. 

June 2020 - midwinter Down Under. And Covid was raging, and the bands weren’t playing any more. I was pretty down, and confused. I’d recorded the album demos (thanks to my good mate Sam Martin of Sam’s Caravan PL) and the feedback I’d had from him and several other trusted sources made feel that yes, the songs had substance and that they could come across. 

Throughout the near-decade I’ve spent composing and performing my own songs, one of the most important sources of feedback I’ve had has been Heath Cullen - a deeply talented man, and close friend and neighbour here in Tantawangalo. Tapping into Heath’s music is like sipping from a well that holds the rarest of waters - it’s an experience I heartily recommend.

In any case: one day in early June 2020, Heath gave me a call. 

“Hey, I know you’re disappointed about the Scotland recording thing not happening. But here’s something for you to think about. We could do it here, on the quiet and on a budget. I could set up my studio for recording. We’d have to wait until the truck traffic quiets down on the road out the front ... but we could make it work.”

Looking back, I can’t recall that I paused to think at all. I remember saying something like, “Jeez Heath, that’s unbelievable - I never would have asked - let’s do it!” 

And as for the rest of it: we got to work. We made the album. We produced a snapshot of a moment in time, of a line of thinking, of a creative association, all within a background of uncertainty, as we and the entire world continued to journey into unknown territory.

Part II: The Process My Italian Grandfather, Francesco Porrini, was amongst many other things a great sausage-maker. Growing up, I’d sometimes watch him ply his trade on the long stainless steel work table in his “office” at Little Joe’s Italian Restaurant on North Broadway in Los Angeles. 

His life plan had been to become an architect, but experiences of bullying by newly-minted fascists in his village in Italy convinced him that, with what was coming,  he should emigrate. So there he was, in Southern California, practicing another art entirely.

Papa Francesco always started out with excellent ingredients: the finest cuts of pork and veal, with just the right blend of spices for that genuine Northern Italian taste. But the skill was in squeezing all of that good stuff into a casing that would hold it together while he hand-cranked it through his sausage machine and then tied it off into sections as the long meaty tube emerged from the machine’s mouth. 

So, back to Line In The Water, my new album. Somehow, the totality of its components - the thought behind the lyrics, the lyrics themselves, the melody, the tempo, the feel, the technical production, the embellishing with other instruments and effects - all of these things have needed to be processed and squeezed into a final package that can be consumed - like Papa’s sausages. Maybe over a glass of nice red, with some antipasto.

Yes, let’s not forget the taste! Albums, like sausages, need to be tasty.

And this one is just that - tasty - I truly and proudly feel.

It’s been masterfully produced and mixed by Heath Cullen, a man whose attention to detail is, in a word, impeccable; masterfully mastered for both vinyl and compact disc by Kim Rosen at Knack Mastering, Rosewood NJ; artfully set on its way with colour and imagery by Laura Jackson of Work Horse Design, Australia; with all elements now chopped and blended and ready to go through the machines at Zenith Records and MAD CDs, both located in Melbourne town.

And hopefully, after that ... into your hands. Perhaps to become part of your landscape of thoughts and sounds.

Part III: The Process, Continued: Where You, my Reader, Come In

What this Pozible pre-sale promotion is ultimately about is as written above: getting Line In The Water into people’s hands as a finished product somehow, some way. That’s the whole point about music: it’s a thing that literally calls out to be shared. That is in search of ears that are willing and able to hear it.

So my hope is that some of you, maybe even quite a handful of you, will take me up on one or more of the Reward offers that I’ve listed here - all of which will lead you right into the music, and to my finally sharing it with you. Thank you in advance if you make this choice!

The other thing that this Pozible campaign is about concerns the investment already made on the project. So far, I have managed to get to the printing and pressing stage with personal funds and with the help of a generous benefactor whom you’ll find out about as you read through the credits on the cover of your CD or LP copy of Line In The Water. Sometimes it takes a great spirit to get the spirit moving!

                       Bob Gardner on East Rainy Butte, North Dakota

As the CD and LP offers are hopefully taken up, a return will be generated which I then can put back into the project to further it along its road.

Some of my ideas for the use of such funds follow in point form:

Expanding the sweep of publicity for the album to the UK and Europe, where I’d very much like to return and tour;

Underwriting accommodation, travel, etc for myself (and possibly for Dan Efraemson and Sats Kramer, my comrades in The Michael Menager Trio) for regional and interstate touring within Australia;

Covering incidental costs for promoting the album’s profile both in Australia and overseas via in-person radio and TV platform appearances;

And (importantly) ensuring that final LP and CD production costs (skyrocketing like everything else in this world) can be comfortably covered.

So in closing - thanks for tuning in and for listening to the story thus far. Make whatever considerations that you need to make, within your capacity to make them, and if you decide to catch a lift on this moving train ... enjoy the ride, and all of the songs along the way.

Kind regards, 

Michael Menager