Longtime Houston musician, Guy Schwartz, 71, has just released a solo album called Libretto, the second album he has come out with this year after releasing Classified Documents, Vol. 1: Norhill Heights 1998, with his other band The New Jack Hippies back in June,.
Classified Documents is a 25 song set of previously unreleased demos that he and longtime musical collaborator Roger Tausz wrote. Like Neil Young, Schwartz often records with a number of different musicians and releases albums under a number of different monikers; he plans on releasing yet another album early in 2024 as Guy Schwartz & The New Jack Hippies.
Of Libretto, Schwartz says, “A libretto is basically if you have a play, a musical play, the libretto is just the music, just the lyrics to the music, not including stage direction, not including all the dialogue between the actors and stuff like that and the libretto is the music and this album is basically the music for a play that has a major story arc and a couple of minor story arcs.”
Asked what this musical play is about, Schwartz says:
“At first I was just going to write about when I would go out and do these gigs 50 miles from town and 75 miles from town in smaller towns where the people were a little different then they are here in, you know, like in The Montrose and stuff like that, and half the audience would be people-you know we’d play in West Columbia and half the people there have never been to Columbia, they’ve never been to Bay City, they certainly have never been to Houston.
“They live in a totally different world than we do in the city to a great extent,” explains Schwartz. ” And I saw on break time when we’d sit around hanging out with some of the people I saw this — I don’t know what to call it. Skepticism, hate, somewhere in there really developing between what we call the right and the left and it worried me. And I started writing about that and I thought maybe I’d write a concept piece about this division that was happening.”
“Then came the elections with President Trump and the culture changed even more radically, and then the pandemic and culture changed even more radically and our lifestyles changed more radically and I couldn’t write about the one unless I cut it off. I had to write the other parts that were changing as well.
“So eventually some of the songs are telling stories of here we are having a good time and a good life enjoying ourselves then things get a little fuzzy and this guy doesn’t like you because you support this president or that president and this guy doesn’t like this president because of he’s a different race and this started coming out in songs.
“Then the pandemic. And the pandemic created personal, cultural differences that we each experienced while we were at home or while we were out there risking it so everybody at home had the stuff they needed to live. And then not everybody that gets out of the lockdown gets out of it and gets to go free out in the world, a lot of people had to be caretakers to folks that were damaged from covid or other things so my concept piece took that turn and then came getting out and getting back in the world but the world was different.
“Some people weren’t getting out anymore, some people were gone. They had passed away and the places we used to go were closed down for good or they were different places or no places or new places so that was another shift. More songs.”
“So the album basically takes our hero — I don’t know whether it’s a guy or it’s a girl or what, but it takes our main subject and life is great. There’s a song called “Here To Have A Good Time,” that’s what starts the album cause we’re ready to go, you know, we’re having a good time we’re out there having fun. And then the politics come into it and you know, got one called “Mole People” which were just people inside in the dark all the time during the pandemic and then later on we’re getting back out and “Good To Be Alive” is the last song.”
Asked why is it good to be alive, Schwartz says: “It’s been a tough few years in the world lately” as his album chronicles.”Our sound man, one of our roadies, and three of the musicians who’ve played in my band over the last ten years died during the pandemic; I find it good to be alive.”
One track “Angels in the Snow” sounds like especially, very personal heartfelt lyrics.
“That’s about losing somebody,” explains Schwartz. “If only she was here we’d be making angels in the snow like we used to do is the lyric. For one of the first people that passed away during the pandemic was a friend of mine’s wife and I was kind of feeling it for him and before the song was done being written then another friend’s wife passed away, then the friend passed away. It just kept going and “Angels In The Snow” is as close as I want to go to sing the things that heavy metal people have no problem singing about. The death part.”
Another one of the songs on the album that stood out is “Hold On To Peace.”
“‘Hold On To Peace'” is about you know, when I was young everything seemed like it was fun and cool It’s not so fun and cool right now and we should hold on to that peace even though things change, the important part is to hold on to the fact that we are able to enjoy life together and that’s the part to hold on to,” says Schwartz.
There are quite a lot of different people playing on this new record in addition to longtime collaborator Roger Tausz who plays bass guitar on every single track Schwartz explains why in a crash course on his songwriting that comes out of jam sessions.
“I like to do recording sessions of all different kinds, I like to write songs in all different ways, one of the ways I like writing songs is to just have some of my favorite musicians get together — and I love doing this with my band as well — just get together and jam and then take the musical parts of the jam and edit the pieces into song shapes that make sense to me,” explains Schwartz.
“I’ll use this part of the jam for a verse, and this part of the jam for the chorus, and put ’em that way, and then write melodies and lyrics over that. And some of these are jam sessions with — let’s invite this musician and that musician over and have a jam and I do a lot of it with the band ’cause then when I take them home and edit them into the song shapes and write lyrics and melodies I don’t have to teach the band how to play these instrumental parts, some of which they will pick up right away, some of which will be harder, some of which will go against their nature and the way they like to play things if I write a song all by myself at home,” continues Schwartz.
“But if I write a song using these tracks that we’ve all jammed together, then every bit of it is made from parts they played naturally. And when I teach them the song, the way the song eventually goes, it’s all parts that they naturally play well because they came up with those parts during the jam. And I find that to work quite well because during my life I’ve written a lot of songs that the band could never really cop the groove when I brought it into the session ’cause every band’s different, every band has different musicians who have their own personal grooves and then you’ve gotta look for a common groove that works with everybody at the same time.
“Well when I write a song this way I start out with a common groove that everybody plays the same way, the same time, cause that’s how the jam worked and I took the parts that worked well and it worked well cause everybody was playing something that’s real natural to them and they’re all fitting together nicely.”
“We like to jam and we like to jam with all kinds of musicians so we’ll invite a few people over to jam just to have fun and maybe if we’re recording it at the same time maybe something will come out cool that we make songs out of. Once in a while I will call somebody up and say ‘hey we’ve got this song mostly finished but it really could use’-let’s say a piano part in the style of piano that you play very well-and then we’ll have that musician come over and play that type of piano very well and so that’s another way we get other musicians on the recordings.
“But it’s usually a pretty organic situation where we just invite some friends over to let’s play and maybe something cool will happen that I’ll take and make songs out of.”
You can listen to the new Guy Schwartz album Libretto on the usual music streaming sites like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and YouTube, or contact Schwartz on Facebook if you want to buy a physical CD of the album and hear how all this jamming and songwriting came together for yourself.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
