Feature

Interactive new album for Hest features innovation

Ari Hest

Date: Sunday, Sept. 7

Time: 7 p.m.

Venue: Callaghan’s Irish Social Club

916 Charleston St.

443-9374

Tickets: $10 at the door

Most musicians want nothing more than to be signed to a major label. Singer/songwriter Ari Hest saw this dream come to fruition when he was signed to Columbia. However, he found sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for, and he parted ways with this industry big dog.

Hest has since undertaken an extremely unique and grueling task called the “52 Project,” where he is writing one song a week for one year, and his fans (through an online subscription) are in charge of selecting the track-list of his next album. With the 52 Project more than halfway to completion, Hest is feeling the burn, but the overall success of this project so far has been motivating.

SC: You were signed to a couple of major labels, which seems to be the dream of every musical act. However, you parted ways with your label and went back to the indie side of things. What was about being signed that chased you off?

AH: The same thing that made me want to do this project, which is that I had a lot of material that I wasn’t able to put out because I was with them because they do things in album cycles that are, at least for me, once every couple of years. I had a lot more music than that. That was one of the reasons I left. In general, I’m happier being my own boss and not having to have everything filtered through a big machine.

SC: What gave you the idea for the “52 Project?” Did you just have a bunch of material to get out?

AH: I do have a lot of songs every year that I write. I think the combination of that and my brother, who has been my manager throughout my whole career, came up with the idea for the subscription service. We just kinda put our heads together and decided to do something like this instead of putting out another album, which would have been fine, but this is more interesting.

SC: Coming up with a song a week could be a great challenge for most musicians. So far, what’s the experience been like?

AH: Definitely a challenge. I started out thinking that I was a little ahead of the game; because I had a few songs written before I actually started back in January. I was kinda hoping to keep a case where I would not really run out of having that little cushion, but I ran out somewhere in the middle of this year. Naturally, things happen, and you go on tour, or just like every day things that happen to people and pop into your life have happen to me as well. I get lazy occasionally and don’t want to work on the songs.

I’ve gotten where I’m literally writing and recording every week what I put out on Monday. That’s a lot more challenging than what it was in the beginning, which was more taking ideas that I new I had already and flushing them out and putting them out at a little bit of an easier pace. It’s not a challenge that I can’t handle. It’s just a little harder than it was before.

SC: How are you taking care of the studio side of things? Are you going once a week or doing it from home?

AH: I do everything from home. I have everything set up in my apartment. Most of the recording gear is in the bedroom where I sleep. I mix and master in my living room next to the television and studio monitors. So, that makes things a little easier instead having to travel around and do this.

SC: That’s great. So, you’re totally immersed in this project?

AH: Yeah (laughing)!

SC: I’ve read where this whole project is “stretching the boundaries” of your past compositions. Can you elaborate on that for me?

AH: I think lyrically I’m coming out of my own head a little bit. I’m trying to write about other people and what they’re going through and what I see from people that I know and people that I don’t know. It makes for a little more variety of topics that I can write about. It makes things a little easier for me. I want each song to have a unique quality to it. That can’t happen if you’re writing about the same thing each time. I really tried to take in a lot of information from everybody else and bring them into my own songs and try to imagine myself in other people’s shoes. So, that’s the biggest change. I think also the focus of the music is more on my voice than it has ever been. There’s less production to these songs. There’s less color around my vocals. The voice is at the forefront of everything, and that’s the way it should be.

SC: Well, you’re at the halfway mark with this project. What’s going through your mind at this point?

AH: Well, I don’t know if I would do it again, but every week that I finish a song, I get excited that I got one more done, and I’m closer to the finish line. I think it’s a manageable thing to do this. You really have to put the rest of your life on hold. I’m lucky that I don’t have a family to feed or even a wife. I’m just doing this on my own, and I can have time for it. I look forward to finishing it out strong. Next year, we’ll see what I decide to do. I don’t think it’s going to be this, but I may be something similar.

SC: From a business perspective, one thing that I find unique about this is that you are able to get a grasp of who your fans are and what they like. What have you learned about your fans?

AH: I think I’m learning that they have different things about me and my songwriting that they like. Some of them love my voice and want to hear my voice all the time. Other ones appreciate my songwriting more than anything. It’s nice to see the variety of comments. Occasionally, somebody writes something bad about a song or that they wished that I had done something differently. Those are important comments as well, and I can learn from them, too. I just like the people who are taking part in it, and that was one of the goals of this project was to make sure that anybody who subscribes is involved in the process of critiquing these songs and then voting on their favorites in the end, so we can make an album next year. That’s the way it works. So, I’ve enjoyed reading all the comments on the page.

SC: After the 52 weeks, what’s going to be the final move? Will you go back into a full studio and re-record everything?

AH: I’m not going to do a whole lot of re-recording. I think more of it will be re-mastering. I will probably play a few things over. It kinda depends on the songs that are picked, and that’s completely up to the fans. Once that’s all set, I’ll probably go into the studio for some drums on a couple of songs. For the most part, I can do everything here. Along the way, there are probably some takes of a bass track or a guitar track that I might have done a little hastily because I had to get it done by a certain time. So, I look forward to re-recording those, but I can still do that in my apartment.

SC: What are you going to do with all the songs that don’t make the cut?

AH: Well, they’re out. People can get them, and I’ll play them live still. They’re better in the position they are now than in the past few years when I was with Columbia. I had a lot of songs that never saw the light of day and never will. At this point, they’re old to me, so I don’t even want to put them out. At least these songs that I’m writing this year have a place to download on iTunes, and like I said, I’ll be playing them live for sure.

Stephen Centanni is Lagniappe music editor. Contact him at scentanni@lagniappemobile.com.

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