State of the Scene: CT Music

Take a peak inside Con­necti­cut’s local music scene through real, down-to-earth con­ver­sa­tions with the tal­ent­ed cre­atives involved. Host­ed by Kelti John­son, this pod­cast shines a light on the pas­sion, cre­ativ­i­ty, and authen­tic­i­ty at the heart of Con­necti­cut’s music com­mu­ni­ty. Artists like pro­duc­er Eric Lichter, own­er of Dirt Floor Record­ing, and musi­cian Ben­ny Miku­la, share their sto­ries, and dis­cuss how music has the pow­er to con­nect us to some­thing big­ger than ourselves. 

Resources

Script:

Nar­ra­tion: Music can con­nect peo­ple to a com­mu­ni­ty and bring a depth and Mag­ic to life like no oth­er. I’ve always loved music and thought it con­nect­ed me to some­thing much greater than myself and for that rea­son, I was extreme­ly excit­ed to talk with pro­duc­er, Eric, Lichter and musi­cian, Ben­ny Miku­la about just that I’m Kelti John­son and today we’re div­ing into the local music scene in Con­necti­cut. Eric Lichter is a pro­duc­er and own­er of Dirt Floor Record­ing in Had­dem Con­necti­cut cur­rent­ly, but he actu­al­ly start­ed his career doing the Trou­ba­dour thing play­ing gui­tar and singing. 

Eric Lichter: Yeah, I start­ed off in high school real­ly, you know, it was the only thing I was real­ly good at in high school. I mean, in high school I used to get in trou­ble all the time and our soc­cer coach also was the band and cho­rus teacher, and he put on, he was also the guy behind like musi­cals and so he need­ed a cou­ple of more boys for this cho­rus. He was like you’re doing it or I’m gonna fail you. You know, it was one of those things and I was like, what­ev­er and I did it and I was like, nerds do that. I don’t want to do that. But I did it and it turned out I could sing which I did­n’t know and I still thank him to this day because I may not have cho­sen that path with­out his belief in me. I did­n’t know I could sing like I loved play­ing gui­tar, but a lot of kids played gui­tar then

Nar­ra­tion: Lichter was­n’t even sure of his singing abil­i­ties until he was 17 or 18.

Eric Lichter I did­n’t know I could sing like I loved play­ing gui­tar, but a lot of kids played gui­tar then. It was just like smoke pot play gui­tar and do what­ev­er but singing you’re putting your­self out there.

Nar­ra­tion: It was reas­sur­ance feed­back from oth­er tal­ent­ed and pas­sion­ate peo­ple that real­ly helped Lichter, be sure himself.

Eric Lichter: I think that any artist or any­one, any­body, no mat­ter what you do. You know, it’s good to have that kind of reas­sur­ance from peo­ple. We need that as artists or cre­ative types. Hav­ing peo­ple say, you know what you’re doing great. From real peo­ple. From peo­ple who you respect, where it does­n’t feel like you’re like, ask­ing them. It puts fuel in your tank, I find. And here at 54, I still feel like it’s the begin­ning of some­thing. It’s my call­ing, the only thing I’m real­ly good at.

Nar­ra­tion: when I talked to Ben­ny Miku­la, a mem­ber of the Alpaca knomes, a band that’s gained trac­tion in Con­neci­cut, he seemed to feel sim­i­lar­ly about music 

Ben­ny Miku­la: I did­n’t get into it to make mon­ey. It was some­thing I loved, and I was just try­ing to, you know, mim­ic bands like Pearl Jam or Rage Against the Machine and like all the, you know, I think just peo­ple that I looked up to.

Nar­ra­tion: Lichter and Ben­ny alike, have said, one of the key most help­ful things that’s hap­pened to them in their career is just work­ing with oth­er musi­cians and meet­ing oth­er tal­ent­ed people.

Ben­ny Miku­la: The peo­ple I met from the first band, there was a band called down­pour out of New York City which was, you know, Mon­u­men­tal get­ting to know real­ly tal­ent­ed musicians.

Nar­ra­tion: While Ben­ny got the oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn and meet plen­ty of tal­ent­ed musi­cians Lichter had a more starstruck experience.

Eric Lichter: We grew up part­ly on Martha’s Vine­yard, and so, we spent a lot of time with Car­ly Simon.

Nar­ra­tion: Lichter was not only a good friend of Car­ly’s, but he also did some back­ground vocals on song she’s worked on.

Eric Lichter: And so, we were always around a lot of these icon­ic 70s artists and the bands, the musi­cians that played on all those records, because a lot of the artists of that peri­od were using a lot of the same back­ing band. It was pret­ty cool. Yeah, and so we end­ed up spend­ing a lot of time with a lot of those peo­ple like in the swim­ming pool at Car­ly’s house.

Nar­ra­tion: Lichter end­ed up mov­ing to New York City, to pur­sue his dream of being a singer-song­writer, using his con­nec­tions to Simon. In 1998, he signed to the record label, Mer­cury. Lichter felt like the label want­ed to con­trol who they want­ed him to be, dimin­ish­ing the authen­tic ver­sion of himself.

Eric Lichter: I could­n’t con­trol what I want­ed to do. They want­ed to con­trol what they want­ed me to be. Which was sort of like this urban folk singer I sup­pose you know, I remem­ber hav­ing square-toed shoes that I had to go to like Banana Repub­lic and I had a suit and they want­ed me to be that guy and it was like, no man. I want to be like Neil Young, you know, I want like patch­es on my jeans, you know, that’s it. That’s the guy I want to be. I don’t want to be, this is too pol­ished. So, remem­ber call­ing Car­ly on the phone and I was like, you know, I’m real­ly con­cerned about this is not at all, real­ly what I want. And she was like just play along, play along and if you get to a point where you have enough clout, then you can be who you want to be, but for now if you want this bad enough then kind of play the game. So, I did, but the whole time it just it was uncom­fort­able for me, and then the label dropped me anyhow.

Nar­ra­tion: Lichter cer­tain­ly takes being authen­tic seri­ous­ly. Oth­er than some­times not work­ing with a musi­cian If they’re putting too much pres­sure on them­selves or the project Lichter will only work with some­one if he believes them. The musi­cians, he works with must be gen­uine with the music they make.

Eric Lichter: I want to believe them. So, if they are singing some­thing, I want to believe what they’re singing to me, and the peo­ple I work with, I believe what they’re say­ing, rather than okay, this feels forced, this feels disin­gen­u­ous, I can’t put up with that. I can’t, I can’t do that every day.

Nar­ra­tion: Lichter and Miku­la have actu­al­ly got the oppor­tu­ni­ty to work togeth­er. Lichter helped pro­duce Mikula’s, eight songs solo album “Again and Again.”

Ben­ny Miku­la: Eric had always been on my radar, Dirt Floor, I always looked at. Nev­er reached out, just always admired from afar. And then when I felt it was time for me to record some solo stuff, I wrote one place in New Haven and he got back to me and they threw some dates out and they were kind of like, well what do you want to do? And I’m not quite sure I’m try­ing to fig­ure it out. So that night I remem­ber lying in bed is like 10:00. I’m like I’m gonna write Eric, I’m gonna write Dirt Floor and I just email them and 15 min­utes lat­er I got a response from him, hey man, he’s like, hey I heard of you, and I would love to meet. Here’s what I do. Come on up, have a cup of cof­fee. Let’s talk about music. We hit it off. I played him three songs, he liked, what he heard talked about a vision, He goes for a run every morn­ing, so he’s like, I’m gonna lis­ten to him a nd then he wrote like these stand out for me and I had some that I want­ed to do. So out of that, we kind of came up with eight.

Nar­ra­tion: Miku­la said that he that he and Lichter tried to work on an addi­tion­al song pri­or to the oth­ers that didn’t end up work­ing out, but some­times cre­ativ­i­ty strikes when you least expect it.

Ben­ny Miku­la: The next time I went up, I wrote a song on the way there in the car, the whole song in my head verse, cho­rus, melody and then I stopped on the side of the road, actu­al­ly, by the Con­necti­cut, Riv­er to okmy gui­tar out, to try to find the chords and I went there, and I told him, I was like, hey, lis­ten, I know we came here last time and I had a new sol­id. I did­n’t work, but I’m like, I have anoth­er one. I think it would be awe­some if we could do it. He’s like cool. What do you got. Did it for him. He came up with some chords. Move this around. Boom, we were done by 4:00. It’s called again. And again, as for me, I went there, look­ing for him for that input. So, it was­n’t like a push and pull of like cre­ative con­trol. I went there with that thought in mind. Yeah. Easy for me to let go and be like, you know, go ahead. Here’s the song. Yeah. Like, what do you think? You can guide it? You can dri­ve It. And then I can say like, well I would love Ped­al steel on this song. And then he would do it or I would love ban­jo on this and then I let him, you know, adjust some chords here that he thought it would make it sound bet­ter, and he gets a lot of peo­ple from all over. I know he’s had some folks from Nashville in New York.

Nar­ra­tion: Lichter explained that it’s impor­tant that he has a rela­tion­ship with the peo­ple he makes music with, not just so that they can make good music but also that he could help out local musicians.

Eric Lichter: I nev­er would have had these incred­i­ble rela­tion­ships. If it weren’t for music,

Nar­ra­tion: Lichter explain, he finds him­self suc­cess­ful because he loves what he does. The rela­tion­ships Lichter has gained have helped him get where he is and he finds com­mu­ni­ty very important.

Eric Lichter: it’s impor­tant because it’s it becomes a cycle, I’ll use Ben­ny. So he’ll come in and he’ll spend that mon­ey and make that record with me. Then I’ll go out and I’ll buy that record and I’ll help pro­mote that record. So it then become a cycle and I’m con­stant­ly doing it, you know, I’m still doing it, you know, where I’m turn­ing peo­ple on to his stuff with the record that we made. So it then it real­ly does become a bit of a cycle. I think the tighter the com­mu­ni­ty, the loy­al­ty is impor­tant because I feel like there’s a loy­al­ty there, you know, I know that Ben­ny will come back. You know, when I, when I do the absolute­ly best I can and he knows it and we devel­op a rela­tion­ship and it’s like that with everyone.

Nar­ra­tion: Lichter said he does have hope for the local music scene in Con­necti­cut and he even spec­u­lates a reas­sur­ance of singer song­writer music in the near future. Here’s what Lichter had to say about that success.

Eric Lichter: The geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion of it, you know so close to prov­i­dence and Boston and New York City its in a per­fect spot, and in fact I think it could do bet­ter. Right now, as far as the jam band scene goes, it’s the biggest, I don’t think there’s a big­ger state for the jam band peo­ple, because you got peo­ple like goose and eggy, and a few of these oth­er jam bands that are real­ly doing well that bring atten­tion to it. It’s actu­al­ly put Bridge­port on the map. You have um, you have park city, which is a real­ly great spot, so, I’m wait­ing for the reas­sur­ance, the singer song­writer reas­sur­ance to hap­pen. That still I don’t think has tak­en a hold yet, although there are a lot of real­ly great singer-song­writ­ers and artists here. That hasn’t fol­lowed yet. It’s great that we have John May­er, he’s like our home­town guy, but you know hav­ing that is a good thing for us, but lots of great song­writ­ers in the state now, it’s get­ting even big­ger and bet­ter than ever.

Nar­ra­tion: Miku­la agreed with Lichter that Connecticut’s music scene is great.

Ben­ny Miku­la: Ya I think it’s a strong place to be, its com­fort­able its easy to trav­el, it’s nice to shoot up to Boston or shoot to New York City, or we went to Nan­tuck­et this sum­mer it’s fun to be close enough to be able to do that. But yeah, I think it’s a very sup­port­ive music scene.

Nar­ra­tion: While Lichter and Miku­la have been able to expe­ri­ence the Con­necti­cut music scene from the inside, every­one can enjoy the com­mu­ni­ty of music just by going to see local artists.

I encour­age you to check out some local venues in Con­necti­cut, and sup­port local musi­cians. If you enjoyed the music in this pod­cast like I did, go check out Mikula’s solo album again and again.

Thanks for listening!

[Again & Again by Ben­ny Mikula]