Howe Gelb
Future Standards

What can I say. Apparently, the first (or was it the second) time I attended a live performance of Howe Gelb and Giant Sand, that particular day marked my existence of listening to music and rock music tout-court. It happened more than ten years ago now, here in Naples, the city where I was born and where I still live today after having traveled a bit here and there. The city that Howe himself wanted to pay homage to with one of his most beautiful songs, 'Napoli' indeed, contained in that great album 'It's All Over The Map', released in 2004 on Thrill Jockey.

There weren't many of us in that small theater that evening and in the same neighborhood where I was born and where I live and where my parents were born and lived before me (they still live here). It's not such a bad place to live actually, despite the reputation and certainly dilapidated and decaying appearance of much of the structures and buildings that make it up. Well, it's definitely a place I would describe as suggestive and particular. Very particular. I think many people might also not catch its actual charm, but, well, in my opinion, if you can't grasp it, then you haven't understood much of Naples. In short, if you really want to see Naples, you have to see these places and possibly be able to understand and 'accept' them for what they are with all their flaws and limitations and infinite complications. A place where narrow alleys intersect with one another and where we all live squeezed together in an almost desperate way. It's a chaotic and warm place and at the same time miserable, almost pathetic, I would even say tragic as only a 'classic' can be (and Howe knows exactly what I mean). Like a standard. There you go.

At that time Howe, shortly after the album 'Cover Magazine', had broken up with Joe Burns and John Convertino, who had decided to devote themselves full-time to Calexico. Not at all burned by what happened, he set up a new band in Denmark (among them was already the bassist Thoger T. Lund, who is practically still the bassist of Giant Sand and who also plays on this solo album of Howe) and where he still continues to live today, at least part-time, after marrying a Danish woman, Sofie Albertsen, who among other things is also an excellent vocalist. So without getting discouraged, once again, he reformed the Giant Sand and continued and still continues today to record new records with the band or as a soloist. Something that in a certain sense might also make no difference because after all, the Giant Sand has always been and will always be a creature owned only by Howe. In short, in the end, who the hell cared about Joe Burns and John Convertino? Not me. I didn't care then and I still don't care now (and I like Calexico anyway, eh).

Well. That time radically changed my way of approaching music and somehow profoundly marked my own existence. It was a moment of renewal. Of big changes and not just in terms of music. In a certain sense maybe it was an inevitable transitional phase. Who knows. Maybe it had to happen. You see, I have always been a music listener, but that time simply changed my approach. In short, school had ended a couple of years ago, university had gone to hell, and I was already spending my entire days at work. I no longer had any points of reference and I was sincerely fed up with listening to the same crap we were bombarded with during those years, grunge, fucking pop bands like Radiohead. From that moment on, everything in this sense was different, and it still is today. Let's say maybe I just became curious. Indeed, I discovered that I am curious. After all, we all are, that's true, only that the point is that until then I didn't know it. I didn't know that I was.

Why this happened right at a Howe Gelb concert (of Giant Sand) and not at a different moment, I couldn't say exactly. We could say it was just a coincidence or that, well, I mean, Howe is a great musician, so why not? Why not during a Giant Sand concert. But I like to imagine that this happened because of a particular characteristic, that is because of the incredible magic and charm of the songs that Howe writes. Songs that have a timeless charm and that open endless landscapes and distant destinations before the eyes of the listeners, apparently unreachable and which must be unreachable because they have no end. Surely Giant Sand and Howe Gelb, when we talk about all this, we are talking about a relevant part of American rock music of the last thirty-plus years. But apart from this, we are talking about something that truly has an important meaning for the city of Tucson, for Arizona, and for what the 'desert' can signify. After all, the so-called fucking 'desert rock' was invented by him, that mix between the usual old charm of the far west, always so influential then in our Italian culture, and for those remote imaginaries and those endless dusty roads that cut the USA from one side to the other. A different dimension from the one in which we all live and this is in a physical, geographical, and structural sense, but also, metaphorically, in a spiritual sense.

In short. In the desert, ideally, we could say that the concepts of space and time do not exist and this same fascination is what Howe Gelb then managed to make his own and transmit through his music. He writes songs that are timeless (but not space either, I mean, after all 'Future Standards', literally, 'Starts in Amsterdam, ends in New York, and in between, there was only Tucson') and it is also for this that he can and wanted to at all costs write this album which would then be a tribute to the old standards of people like Monk, Cohen, Bacharach, Merle Haggard, Chet Baker, Cole Porter, obviously Sinister and even Django Reinhardt! An album that he obviously then wanted to call 'Future Standards' and which will be released on Fire Records on the next 25 November. A title that might even seem pretentious, but that Howe himself wanted to clarify, truly presenting the album as an attempt to write a series of songs and melodies that ideally can last and by virtue of their peculiar structure, be remembered as 'standards'.

More. Howe wanted to meticulously describe what would be the process that led him to write each song. A process that consists of completing three phases. 1. Write a sophisticated chord sequence that has its own clear and recognizable definition. Something that is at the same time cohesive and familiar, but which nonetheless arouses a certain charm and an unexplored, unknown side, all to be discovered. 2. Lyrics that are expressions of pure joy. That are expressions and revelations of love or of that desire to seek and celebrate it, that lament its absence, but at the same time always show themselves vulnerable and eager for new searches and knowledge. 3. An execution that can be defined in some way 'defined'. As if you could visually visualize each of these songs as if they were an old standard. Intimate and common at the same time. Sharing them with others, instead of making it something intimate and precious. Designing melodic lines with what might be called a natural serenity, which persistently follows the rhythm of the song, offering a new opportunity to love instead of giving it up, through the resonance of its notes.

Finally, when all three of these moments end up combining in the rhythm and in the rhymes of a song, simply play it and always and in any case with the aim of reminding us, of strongly confirming, of reassuring us that, 'It's not us who decide to fall in love... It's always love that chooses us.'

Produced by Howe Gelb himself and recorded at J.B. Meijers' Fireball Studio in Amsterdam, Netherlands; at Tom Gardner's Rift Studio in New York City; at Chris Schultz's Wavelab Studio in Tucson, Arizona; the album was mostly recorded by the formation that today defines itself as, 'The Howe Gelb Piano Trio', and composed specifically by Howe on piano and vocals, Thoger Lund on bass, and Andrew Collberg on drums. But between one studio and another, several guests alternated, after all, we are talking about three recording sessions in three different parts of the world. Particularly evident and worthy of mention are the contributions of guitarist Naim Amor and especially that of vocalist Lonna Kelley, who made a significant contribution to making these dusty and evocative melodies and ballads 'eternal'. These standards of the future.

The rest, as Howe Gelb says, only has to do with love. And to love in a certain sense is the same as being born in a place. In short, you can decide where to live your lives, but you can't in any way decide where to be born. And we could say that in this sense it is the place that chooses you. Who knows. Mine is this neighborhood, which in the years after World War II, was advised against access with so many signs to passing American soldiers here due to the presence of one of the largest NATO bases in the Mediterranean. But American soldiers still came here in search of entertainment and easy transgressions, literally raping to the core the poor worn veins of this city. They did it. Literally. Believe me. This is a painful part of the history of the Western world and at the same time particularly for what concerns my city, as ancient as it is infected over the centuries by those who were occupiers coming from all parts of the world to conquer and who in the end went back and returned to their own country they too were somehow conquered and infected by what could be defined as a real virus. Living in a big city is difficult; more, as mentioned, it's something tragic, in the romantic sense of the word. It's a drug and I'm an addict. I know I'm addicted and I don't think things will change today or in the foreseeable future. Just as I will continue to fall in love every day and more times a day and always with a different woman. This is also a standard at the end of the day. A 'standard' in the present time but also in the future.