About/Contact
KeithHandy posted in Featured Posts on May 23rd, 2007
I’m an independent rock musician, composer/songwriter, and recording artist with several albums’ worth of material that I’m in the process of cleaning up and compiling.
I don’t have any biographical affiliation with anyone you’ve heard of. I’ve been in and worked with several bands, particularly in the late 1980s, and on and off through the 1990s, as a keyboardist, guitarist, bassist, vocalist, engineer, and co-producer. Although I would like to work with other musicians more often today, the traditional way of making music would not give me as much freedom to explore what I’m most interested in: the ability to carve out specific sections of a song and re-interpret them to make them sound like… yes, they could have been physically played by a rock band… but no, no one (including myself) could have, or would have, thought up such an arrangement in real time. For example, knowing how I want all the instruments and voices to magically reach some destination together, and then working backwards from there to write the lines leading up to it. Or grafting unrelated musical ideas together — sometimes with more than a decade of age difference between them — and somehow making them sound seamless, like they were always part of the same song.
I work very slowly on my recordings, while trying to manage all the non-musical aspects of my life. I occasionally “finish” things. In fact, I usually finish the same song more than once. When I’m not being demonstrably productive, I continue to feel a “responsibility” for my music, and hope that my subconscious is in fact doing the work that a subconscious allegedly does. Because the songs stay with me through my life — even the “shitty” ones — I get to know them really well, inside and out, which makes it that much easier to rework things without getting completely lost. Once enough time passes, I can face the realization that some of my accumulated ornamentation might have been distracting and superfluous, so that an older, wiser, and more skilled me can strip out some of the shit, and restore the song’s spirit. It sort of parallels the three phases of life: naïvety, cynicism, balance.
My music, though glued together on the standard “drums and guitars” foundation, is characterized by uncommon chords and chord progressions, wide dynamics, drama, and the occasional lapse of shame. People tend to consistently like my guitar work, as well my lyrics… although my singing voice sometimes rubs people the wrong way. I have a strong sense of pitch, having taught myself at the age of 10 or 11 to transcribe melodies in my head without an instrument, initially by mentally counting up and down the scale. Because scale degree and chord recognition is so second nature to me, sometimes I try to outsmart myself when writing. I’ll throw myself a musical curve ball, so I’m not quite so conscious of the identities of the notes and chords when listening back, and can experience a moment of blissful ignorance. But more importantly, I find unexpected chords to have a strong emotional “pull”, if they’re played with confidence.
I want you to enjoy my music as a “pure experience”, without thinking of it as tricky or over-intellectual. However, I realize that the musical experience is just as much associative as it is objective, and the associative part of that has a stronger connection to your emotions. So all I can do is continue to throw this stuff at you until something sticks.
For collaborating, booking, interviewing, stalking, wishing me a happy birthday (December 21), or just telling me I’m a dork:
Keith Handy
274 N Goodman St #99
Rochester, NY 14607(585) 230-0968
k e i t h h a n d y @ g m a i l . c o m
