It’s Not Far to My Heart

I’m pleased to finally have a my best song uploaded to the interwebs.

Click the link to listen to It’s Not Far to My Heart

In wrote this song in the early 90’s and recorded it over a weekend with the help of the masterful Fred Drake.

Listening to it brings back so many memories – Leaving Quorum Software in the middle of the day to walk around San Francisco and cement the song in my mind, hanging with Fred in the studio in Hollywood which had all the mythical and magical overtones of Francesca Lia Block’s Weeztie Bat, writing the song’s interlude during a dream… I’m very proud of this particular piece of work and feel exceedingly lucky to have spent a weekend recording with such a gifted and lovely musician.

Enjoy.

Music Page

I’ve added a music reference page to my site at http://www.kehle.com/music/ This is a reference page for all of the pop music that I’ve either been involved in creating or performing. Some of the recordings on this page were used for live performances and won’t contain a vocal track. I am putting the reference page up first but plan on writing blog entries to go with each of the bands. The reference page will link back to the blog postings for more detailed information about the songs.

Songs that I have written are “Escape with Me”, “Give it up to Rhythm” and “It’s Not Far to My Heart”*. All the other songs were written by other artist.

*due to technical details I can’t upload “It’s Not Far to My Heart” yet – which is a shame because it is my best work. As soon as I get the technical issue worked out, it will get a post of its own. In the meantime, enjoy the music.

Modern Men

modernman

Modern Man

During my MIT years, when I wasn’t studying for Calculus tests or dancing in a cage (that’s another story), I was in a band called Modern Man. The band had four members, all from my fraternity ADP. They were Jeet Singh (founder, lead singer, composer), Joe Chung (base player, backing vocals), Mike Fleshman (guitar), and yours truly (keyboard with a bit of lead singing). We wrote and recorded our own music and played around boston. It’s been decades so I am hoping that instead of threatening me with legal action for posting their music the band will refresh my memory with some entertaining stories to add to this post. A few things I do remember are:

  • Performing at one rather famous place for live music (the name escapes me but I’ll update the blog once I get the story straight) and seeing that tons of bands had signed their names on the dressing room wall including “The Cars” and “The Ramones”.
  • Playing at the Battle of the Bands at Harvard and almost cracking open someones skull when I kicked the mic stand onstage (oops)
  • Playing at our frat for a crowd of screaming women with big bows in their hair (our Fab Four Moment for sure)
  • Getting airplay on Boston’s local alternative radio station WFNX.

I can’t think of any funny PG-13 stories about the band at the moment but I did want to post some of our music for old times’ sake.

Forever Lover You Are Escape with Me Tomorrows All Right

PS. Thanks to David Eccles for pulling all of this music off of a 23 year old DAT tape that’s been through a lot.

PPS. All you facebookers will have to go to my site (http://www.kehle.com/2009/08/14/modern-men/) until I get this music player thing sorted out.

Will You Be There?

Confession Time: Ever since the 7th grade, I have wanted to be a pop star. In the 90s this took the form of Hunter Sunday.

As Hunter, I  wrote and recorded some music, did some photo shoots and performed around San Francisco.

My favorite and final gig was at the “Halloween in the Castro” street festival. To prepare, I rented a gorilla suit without the face mask, bought a plastic orange jack o lantern and purchased several bags of candy. The event was staged at the South East corner of Market, Noe and 16th Streets. I showed up about an hour before my 11pm “curtain”, changed into my costume, filled my jack o lantern with candy and gave my music to the sound engineer. I was all set.

What I didn’t expect was the crowd. The performers were hanging out behind the stage and had no sense of the audience.

(Note 1 to Reader: To get a feel for the experience, start playing the music now)
(Note 2 to Reader: No player? Try http://www.kehle.com/2009/08/12/will-you-be-there/ )

Will You Be There?

When my music started, I remember climbing the stairs to the stage and looking out at a sea of people. Every single street for as far as I could see was packed with human beings. I was exhilarated. I began throwing candy into the crowd and shouting “Trick or Treat!”. Much to my amazement, in spite of the late hour, children started coming out from this sea of adults to grab the candy. And they were so happy! So excited! I don’t think I have ever made so many people so happy with such a simple act. I was a wonderful gift to me and was a great way to end my adventures as Hunter Sunday.

PS. I want to thank the engineers at SGI who made a workstation that read DAT tapes and had a great digital audio editor. This event not have happened without your equipment. And special thanks to Kerry Jaggers for making sure the live performance sounded good and finally to Fred Drake for recording my tracks at the Rancho De La Luna. Love you guys!