NYC Indie Pioneer George Usher I Stevensonville

Welcome to Music Matters Podcast with Daryl Craig Harris, talking about all things music with celebrities, artists, music business insiders, and more. George Usher, how are you doing today? I'm doing fine, thank you, Daryl. How are you? I'm very good. So you are in New York City. I think you mentioned the West Village, which is that's one of my favorite areas of New York. Originally a Cleveland guy. And I think when did you originally move to New York? I moved in 1977. Wow. And what a time to move to New York, right? Yeah, it was really exciting. I mean, when I moved here, it was such a different New York. it was a time when there were real neighborhoods and neighborhoods you had to stay out of. You might walk two blocks that way and be in real danger or walk two blocks this way. It might be an Italian neighborhood, four blocks that way, it'd be a black neighborhood. But they were real neighborhoods. and one of the things that I really missed from that time were the mom and pop stores because with the real neighborhoods, you had real people living here and they had their stores and it wasn't so homogenized so that now you can go 10 blocks and you see the same stores. It's the chain stores and a lot of the mom-and-pop places have gone because it's hard for, let's say, the average person to actually live in Manhattan. Over the years, they've been squeezed out first into Queens and Brooklyn, some out to Staten Island, but people sort of hesitate to go out to Staten Island. Now out to the Bronx, maybe out to New Jersey, Hoboken and Jersey City. And the joke, if you want to call it that, from the Mayor Bloomberg days is that everybody comes here to work for the people who live, who are able to live in Manhattan. Right. Yeah. And it's actually when we've toured there, we've often stayed in Brooklyn because we were playing at the House of Blues over there. And Brooklyn still felt like it's still, I mean, I wasn't obviously back, I wasn't in New York back then, but Brooklyn still had a little bit more of a neighborhood feel, I guess. Brooklyn still has some neighborhoods. The Bronx still has neighborhoods. Queens too, to some degree. But all of those places, you're still being pushed out further and further. Yeah, it's expensive. Yeah, yeah, even where I am now. And I'm really in the, I've got location, location, location. You know, I'm on positively West 4th Street. You know, I'm right here. I've got 6th Avenue right over there. I've got, you know, the park right over there. I'm where Dylan was, you know, 50, 60 years ago. And that's still a great area. Oh, yeah, yeah. But it's mostly NYU kids because NYU's bought up most of the real estate. and a lot of tourists who are looking for early 60s, you know. Yeah, vibe. And the thing is, a lot of the bars and a lot of the establishments, the eating establishments, have sort of built up kind of a ersatz, early 60s. You know, they try to make all of their establishments look like it's the early 60s. So it's kind of like being in a theme park. Like a movie set. Yeah, it really is. Although when they filmed that recent Dylan feature, they filmed it in Hoboken. Oh. Because the architecture was a little more like it back then, you know. So you have, to get back to the reason why we're actually talking, is you have a new album out. And you've actually had several solo albums. I think it's seven. Is this the eighth? This might be the 10th. I'm not sure. You know, it's hard because I've done albums with pairs. I've done them, you know. Right, right. I just sort of keep putting them out, you know, one way or another. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, that's what us creators do. That's what I do. Yeah. So this new album, Stevensville, is really interesting because it's actually, it's been a project, a passion of yours for many years. And you finally, yeah, and you finally got together with an illustrator and did a whole storyline. So tell me about this project. When did you first start this idea, and how did this come about? Well, you know, even the work I did with the Illustrator was done 30 years ago. Oh. The whole project is, you know, back in the—well, of course, I've been doing this in New York as a singer-songwriter since the late 70s. And I've been in lots of bands. I've been in various album projects. Sometimes, like you do, you play in two or three different bands, you know. People that don't know your background, you've been in a lot of influential bands. You did the CBGBs thing. You have quite a history. I've been around, you know, in and out of different bands. But during that time, when I reached, let's say, the late 80s, early 90s, At that point, you were still in a situation here where this is still pre, for the most part, pre-computer, pre-internet, that whole business. So you're still making cassettes and trying to get them to A&R people, to get them to come to your shows, try to get them to papers and magazines to come to your shows and review them so that other people will come to your shows. and let me just say real quickly that it used to be a situation in new york where you could build followings because uh there were colleges here in new york and the 18 to 21 crowd you had a different new freshman every year and 18 and you know they'd come and they'd come to your shows they'd meet girls or meet boys and they'd come to your shows and you'd build followings And in 1981 or so, they changed the drinking age to 21. And at that point, it changed everything. Because then it became how many friends of mine? Right, right, right. Because you lost the 18 to 21. Okay, so that changed the whole scene. So for the 80s, it was a real, you know, landscape changer. So by the late 80s, early 90s, you were still in this weird, got to make cassettes got to find some way to build a following get people to do shows you know all that business and so i was trying to come up with well how am i going to what can i do to set myself apart and of course uh i thought well i i'm have this illustrator lori weber and i thought well you know i grew up you know i've been around forever already at that point And I'd seen Yellow Submarine. You know, I knew about the kinks in the Village Green Society. I knew Tommy. I knew all of this different stuff where you could work illustration, multimedia things into your work. What if you could do that on a local level? And so I thought, well, I started working with Lori Weber. she started illustrating my songs and on a small local level, playing CBGBs, playing the Bitter Rand, playing all the usual places that I would normally play. We started going out with a band or solo, whatever I was performing, we would throw up a screen real quickly. This is all like, you know, before you could do this. Because now, of course, you have screens that come down and you have, you know, all of this. No, no, we had screen projectors. We'd lug around in these big screens. Yeah, we'd throw this stuff up and put up a screen. And she illustrated my songs. And we'd put the screen up beside the band or beside me. And we'd just throw up illustrations for the song. And we tried to sort of build a different following by saying, well, this is what makes George Usher different. And we were sort of rebuilding a small following over time because you still, you know, have to sort of, and I don't mean this in a condescending way this is New York you still have to educate what is your audience who is George Usher why is he different it takes months years to get people to know who you are and may I say you might spend six months getting a label to come see you and then a band comes from London that's playing that same night and everybody goes and sees them So, I mean, it's one of those things. You're in New York. You're always at the mercy of whatever. It was the same thing in L.A. All right. I know. Exactly. So, anyway, I did have a publishing, a music publishing deal at the time. They were not into it. They could not conceive it. They said, well, what do you want to be? You want to draw pictures or do you want to be a songwriter? I said, well, I'm still trying to write the best songs I can. But look, it's plus. You get illustrations as well. they don't just have to look at my ugly face. You know, you can look at the pictures, you know, right. Yeah. They didn't care. They didn't want any part of it. They said, this is terrible, you know, and it was still hard getting reviews or, and it's still the same game. And so over time, but, but the plan such as we had one was, I want to write a larger work that, you know, takes this idea and has a larger work, like a Tommy or like a Village Green where it's a whole album. You know, in those days, if you said concept album, people ran for the hills. But I didn't run. You know, I said, well, I'm going to write a thematic piece that's longer. Yeah, because you have to fully buy in or nobody else is going to buy in. Right, right. I'm going to write the songs. The songs are going to be just, they're going to be great. The songs are going to be great. It's going to be a rock and roll album. that illustrations are going to be great. No, you know, it's going to be thematically sound. It's going to be great. Everyone's going to love it. And I've taught everybody to come and expect this because I've already, you know, done these shows with the illustrations. But we never really got there because nobody, you know, my team wasn't into it. My publishers weren't into it. And it was hard getting write-ups and stuff. We had a write-up with the College Music Journal that got killed like the night before it was supposed to be printed, and that took the wind out of our sails. And it just sort of seemed like everything was against us. And, you know, again, this was before you did things on your own and you had, you know, your own, you know. And so the idea of trying to mount the album and the idea was an album, not a little CD, which now it was all CDs. Right, because you want to tell an entire story. Yeah, because now the illustrations in the CDs are tiny, you know, because the original plan was this album, you know, and with album-sized illustrations. And it just sort of fell by the wayside. There wasn't the money to do it. There wasn't the interest to do it. And I'm still writing 100 songs a year. And, you know, I got a band I got to try to keep happy, you know, because people are coming in and out of the band saying, where's the gig? Is the gig worthy of me? You know, all of this. It's a tricky thing as an artist because you want to create art, but then there's also, in a way, the commerce of it. And then, as you mentioned, you've got other people depending on you. So it's always, I think that every artist deals with that. It's kind of like navigating that and figuring out how am I going to keep this all together? Is that kind of like always, it's probably always been a challenge, right? Absolutely. It was just you know we sort of tried to start it and then we saw we didn have the finance You know all of my albums I always cobbled together with chewing gum and scotch tape You know what I mean Most of us have They always been recorded in 20 different studios Can we get time after midnight? You know, all the different things, you know. And what happened was, I hope I'm not taking up too much time with all this. But what happened was going way back to the late 70s when I first moved here, I came here not knowing anybody, you know, like you do in those days. I got a job in a record store and I wound up being a manager in a record store in Manhattan. And there was a teenager, you know, I was in my early 20s, and there was a teenager who would come and hang out at the record store after school every day. And he was a nice kid. And we talk about music. We talk about whatever problems he had, you know, being a kid, you know, in Manhattan, a teenager and a great kid. And I was sort of like a big brother. and we stayed in touch over the years and he wound up going into finance and did pretty well and I, of course, kept true to my calling as the poor musician, you know, through the years or the decades. And a couple years ago, we were having dinner and he said to me, well, George, you know, if you had a project that you had one project to do before you died, I know that sounds kind of sinister, but it wasn't. It was just sort of a conversation. If you had one project to do, you know, what would it be? And I didn't have to think very, you know, I said, well, you know, I do this project Stevensonville, you know, and had, you know, this Lori did all these illustrations and we never, got a chance to really do it. I think I performed it once or twice in a small kind of, you know, just to say I did it and that was it. And didn't really follow through with it. Didn't really, you know, manufacture it or anything. And I said, but, you know, and he said, well, how much money would it take to do the album? And I thought, well, you know, I'm not gonna, you know. But I wrote down what I thought was a relatively honest figure that I could bring in because I do everything under budget. I said, well, here's, I wrote down a figure on a piece of paper and I showed it to him. I said, well, look, it's this much money, you know. And he took the piece of paper and he wrote a figure down and he handed it back to me and he doubled the figure. Wow. And I said, are you kidding? And he wasn't. Wow. And from that point on, you know, it was the very first time in my life that I ever had a budget. Ever. That's amazing. That's amazing. And it's this old friend that I had befriended when he was a teenager and treated him right. And he came back, you know, as an old friend. Right. You know, he said, I want to, you know, I've always believed in you. And now we're going to try to do something together. And that's really what started this leg of it. And it was the first time that I was able to sort of say, well, in that case, let me find a producer who has their own studio. Because I wanted to start the project and end the project in the same place. I've never done that. Yeah, and you're a producer, Tony Shandy. Tony Shandy. Yeah. And actually, too, I should say, like, there's some amazing people on this record. I'll just go down the list. Andy York from John Mellencamp band, Brian Griffin from Brandy Carlisle, Black Crows, Andy Burton on keyboards, Ian Hunter, David Mansfield on strings, Bob Dylan, who's played with Bob Dylan and other people. So it's like, what a great. Yeah. And Tony's been playing with Patti Smith. He's her right-hand man for many, many years. And he played bass and produced. So he brought in most of the players. I brought in my old friend, Mark Sidgwick. That was my contribution. He's played with me in different configurations since the early 80s, and he's a Brit. He came over with Holly and the Italians. Oh, okay. Awesome. Well, it's nice, too. Like you mentioned, it's nice to have these old friends in your corner who know you, who know your work and your body of work, because you have a huge body of work. you've been at it for many years and and have definitely worked with some amazing folks um gotten some great write-ups i know village voice was one of them um from right way back when um so it's great to have that sort of building it together with a good team almost like a family is that something that's been really enjoyable for you is to have a great team around you yes i i it's uh it is the true family of sorts uh because all of us through since the i sort of began really making my way in the early 80s uh i played in the late 70s max's kansas city you know when it was still around all the places but i people began noticing me in the early 80s uh with a band called The Decoys, whose only things come around. The Decoys were a power pop band I had. We played Max's and CB's and all those places. And just recently. Which I should say are all iconic clubs. Oh, yeah, yeah. I grew up in L.A. We were doing Gazzari's and the Whiskey. And when you're doing that stuff, in a way, you kind of don't really realize. You know they're cool places to play, but you don't realize the impact. And then later, decades later, they start making films about those places. And you go, oh, that was a cool topic. Yeah, you were part of history. Max's Kansas City, like all those places are iconic. Yeah, as well as lots of places you've never heard of and never will. Because we would play anywhere. You know, because in those days, you might not play your headlining set until two in the morning. You know, in Seabees, you might headline a set at like one or two. You know, that's how it was. And you hope people hang out and stay and don't leave. Oh, yeah, right. But it's interesting that the decoys put out an Indy 45 in like 1981. and now Cherry Red Records just put out a three CD collection of 80s power pop and they included the decoys 45 on this set that includes a lot of bands from that time you know that I know the bongos and beat rodeo and different bands I played with at the time you know and the decoys are right on there you know so that this obscure 45 I made that only sold like 50 copies in Sweden or something. I don't know what, you know, suddenly it's available again. Yeah. How old were you when you came to New York? I was 21. Wow. So were you, like, overwhelmed? Were you just, like, fascinated? What was your vibe back then when you first? Well, I was fascinated. When I was in Cleveland, I knew that I had to either go West Coast or East Coast. Because in Cleveland, the thing was, I've been writing my own material from a very, very young age. That doesn't mean it was good, but I knew that that was what I wanted to do. I have recordings of my own stuff going back to like 67. Right. And the thing about Cleveland, and it may still be true, was that you really were not allowed to play original material. Yeah, it was all the cover. You had to play cover, Mature. When I saw bands like Raspberries or The James Gang, who had deals back in the late 60s, early 70s, they, of course, would play stuff from their first record. But they were playing covers, too, because even they had to play covers. You know, a lot of the bands that later got renowned for being original, like Perubu or Tin Huey or name some bands, they were actually from Akron. Ah, okay. And, you know, so I know it's a slight distinction. Very blue-collar towns, very working man. Right. But it's a distinction because if you actually went to Cleveland proper, you had a harder time doing that, you know, and Cleveland. And even then you had to be pretty quirky to do your own thing. And I wanted to write, you know, accepted, more accepted material. And if you were trying to write that kind of material, they didn't want to know you. Yeah, you had to go to New York or L.A. And I knew that. So I really didn't play live that much in Cleveland because there really wasn't any. I would play churches and basements, parties, things like that. And so I was really excited to come to New York. I came here not knowing anybody or anything. And I wound up living in an attic in Coney Island. Oh, okay. In a family attic. That was all I could find. I thought it sounded like fun. And this was in the wintertime. I didn't know that nobody went to Coney Island in the wintertime, you know. Well, I was telling you. So I played bass in a bunch of different bands. But we used to play House of Blues in New York. And we were there in the winter. And I'm like, I want to go do something. But I want to do something different because I'd always take the train in, you know, into the city. And I'm like, I want to go to Coney Island. And this is literally like January. So I took the train out. And it was kind of funny and spooky because there's snow everywhere. all the rides there's nothing going on there's a couple of the food places the hot dog the hot dog so I just thought that that was just a funny weird thing I always had in the back of my head because you always hear about Coney Island you always hear about these iconic places and I'm like well I may not ever be here again so I'm going to go check it out so you're doing CBGB's you're doing these kind of clubs And who were some of the people that you were kind of running into in these places that later became a big deal or became famous? Well, you know, I didn't really run into any. But, well, at the time, I would, I'd open, like one of my, the decoys opening was for Lenny K. Oh, okay. Yeah. So you'd run into people like that. You'd meet them, but you didn't really hang out with them that much. Right. they're kind of doing the same clubs yeah they'd be doing the same clubs but they were the headliners in television and people like that you know you get to me they were always good people they never were a lot of that first wave of CBGB's type bands they never lorded it over you but it was known that they were the headliners and you were the support acts or you know you'd meet them and they treat you with respect but then they'd be gone yeah everybody's kind of just trying to make it and kind of kind of at different levels yeah yeah and it wasn't until maybe there was a band called the rock cats and they were let's say the original local stray cats and they and they were a lot they were very very uh visual they were regarded more as a visual band than a you know they they did rockabilly music but they had the look down they were all really good looking guys but probably uh the straight cats came along and were maybe overall accepted as better musicians. Whether they were or not is up for grabs because a lot of the Rockettes were really great musicians. But Brian Setzer sort of stood apart and, you know. Yeah, they kind of ended up owning that. Right. On Stevensville, to go back to the album project you doing a part of the project or a big part of the project is you doing a limited number of vinyl pressings 12 inch So tell me about that and the idea behind doing vinyl I like the, of course, I like the idea of having the record jacket and having that tactile thing, because today it's always, everybody's doing the streaming thing because it's easy. But tell me why you decided to do the vinyl idea and the limited numbers and all that stuff? Well, that was my partner Larry's idea. And, of course, I listened to him because he was my partner putting the money. But obviously he was going to record stores, so he had a lot of money. He was also on top of the pulse of, he says, well, this is really sort of what's happening. you know and I'll be honest with you I'm a lot more in touch with you know what kind of music I want to make and what sort of you know I'm not really on the pulse of what are people buying what are people interested in paying for I'm aware that there's a thing called record store day but but and they do you know special releases you know when you know I grew up working in a in a record store in Cleveland and the coolest record store on the West side. And in the project, you know, so I went through, uh, I got a job there when I was like 12 or 13 because I just hung out in the record store and they said, Oh George, take the register, you know, cause it was run by hippies and they'd go for a break or something, you know? And, uh, so during, you know, all through high school, all through college, I had this job. And so I amassed a large vinyl collection. and my timing being off usually uh i got rid of it uh in the late 90s right before vinyl came down yeah it's you know so i think a lot of people did that they go i wish i slept pennies on the dollar i mean you know i got rid of all kinds of wonderful things and and it's not even so much that the money the thing was i'd already i'd been in new york for many many many years and uh the vinyl was still in Cleveland in my family home. What are you going to do with this? There was no way I could bring it here. I'm living in these little apartments in New York. I finally said, well, you know, my sister was moving to West Virginia at the time. And I said, well, you know, let me just, you know, what happened was I was putting out my CDs on a small label out of Illinois. And the person there drove to Cleveland with his father, took all my records back to Illinois, and they sold them there. So I'm out of touch with the vinyl thing. I didn't know really to what degree. But the original idea for Stevensonville was to do it as an LP because that's the size of the art. You know, the actual artwork that Laurie did are massive painting us. There's something like five by five or something. Oh, okay, wow. It's range. And they've been in storage for 30 years now, and they're coming out there. Where I'm doing the record release show is the 503 Social Club in Hoboken, and they're going to show the paintings for a week. Oh, awesome. Before I do the show. So it's going to be kind of a Stevensonville week at this place. But anyway, Larry had the idea, my partner, that let's do it the way you originally envisioned it. Let's just, but let's, you know, make it sort of something that people actually will treat as a valuable coffee table type book where, you know, because I told him all people are going to yell at me. It's a concept album. And I assured him that the music was valid and everything, you know. And he said, let's just do it. And you have a 28-page booklet that comes out with this album. Yes, yes. And it includes the lyrics on the left side of the page with a, you know, full page of the illustration on the right and some other, you know, large photographs and different. It's a very nice package. because we wanted to make the package a once-in-a-lifetime. We're investing in it, and if you're going to buy it, you're going to pay a little extra than you normally would for, let's say, a CD or something. You're not astronomical. We're not trying to... Yeah, but it's music, but it's actually a complete work of art. It's a whole package of art. It's a coffee table package that you can have as artwork, as music, as a piece done by George Usher and Lori Weber. And this is it, you know. Who are some of the people that you look up to as a young songwriter, senior songwriter? Well, you know, I was so lucky in that I had two older sisters. One was 12 years older and one was seven. And, well, you know, my story is relatively ubiquitous. And in that, you know, I turned on Ed Sullivan. And I have to say, at the risk of sounding like everybody else under the sun, I saw the Beatles. And for my money, still, because I remember not just the music, their impact was up here and everybody else's kind of starts down here. So you start with the Beatles and everything that they did. And unless we're back there, you might not appreciate just how they impacted everything. Modern people these days don't realize is that back then there was what, maybe three different TV stations. There was many. It's literally half the country, half the United States is watching Ed Sullivan on any given weekend or night. And that they changed, they put out, and because Capitol would put out a new album every three or four months, they would change trends every three or four months in some fashion. It might be how they looked. It might be what they wore. It might be what they said. It might be what they did. along the same lines, of course, because many other people have said this, that the world went from black and white to color overnight. And that's sort of what happened. And if your eyes were opened like my young eyes were at the time, you suddenly became aware of people like Dylan and you became aware of when they came along, the stones, the kinks. But we're all revolutionary when they were coming out, right? The birds, everybody that was around back then was new and important and valid. And they were contributing. And you were able to, you know, people forget that the bands had Rock and Roll Hall of Fame careers that only lasted like two years. Like the Mamas and the Papas or the Lovin' Spoonful. And bands like Cream that were only around for two years had such a huge legacy. Yeah, exactly. And people point to the Beatles and say, oh, so-and-so has now outsold them. But they don't know that, like, the industry was not the industry like it is now. The Beatles played Shea Stadium with, like, transistor radio speakers. They didn't even have monitors and stuff. You know what I mean? There wasn't even a business like it is now, you know? And the people that were running the A&R departments, even when I moved to New York in the late 70s, early 80s, the people running the A&R departments were like 65-year-old Jewish guys. They weren't like the hip people that you think, you know, with flowing hair and all this stuff. You know, it was real business people took it very seriously, you know and uh it was different times and there was so much to learn almost from everybody you could take a little bit look at the west coast you know when uh if you want to start with i don't know who the beach boys or the mamas and the papas and then who came buffalo springfield and out of that came all uh you know crosby stills and mash and young Neil Young, you know, I have a very high tenor. And wasn't I happy when Neil Young started making records? You know what I mean? I was like, that guy sounds like me. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's funny you mentioned Neil Young because that's when I was listening to your new album. I was like, oh, I can hear him in there. It's funny. You know, I don't sound like Paul McCartney. Wish I did. Or even John Lennon. But hey, I can sound like Neil Young, you know. Well, you have a real storyteller voice, and that's something that, you know, it's a very powerful thing because guys like Neil Young, I mean, were they the best singer? I don't know. But the thing is that they were storytellers. They can create themselves. Exactly. They were able to touch people. The other thing is that you hear two words and you know who it is. And I always equate that to, you know, like Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton. Same thing, like, were they the best singers? I don't know. But the thing is that that just in the billions of people in the world, for them to sing a couple of words and you know who it is is such a rare, rare thing, right? Right, right. What's some advice that you could give to people? Because I know you've been doing that just in the artist thing since the very beginning, really. What's a couple of important lessons that you've learned for singer-songwriters, people that want to get out there, and maybe they're younger, and they're trying to figure out what to do? What's some thoughts that you could give? Let me think for a second, because now, you know, even here, I'm sometimes known in certain pockets here in New York, and I'm held as sort of the grand old man in certain pockets, you know, because I've been around a lot. Well, see, now that's one of the things. You have to stick it out. If you're going to do it, you have to keep doing it. There's a poet named W.S. Merwin, and he's won all the awards, and now he's passed on. He did this great reward, you know. And he wrote a poem that I can't actually quote, but he wrote it about his meeting John Berryman, another poet who has moved on. And he talked about speaking with John Berryman and asking his advice. And this is part of the poem, although I can't recite it. But he asked John Berryman, how do I know if a poem I've written is any good and Berryman's answer was you don't know you can never know if you have to know don't write and that's just another way of saying a lot of young songwriters come to me for advice and one of the things I tell them is you have to keep doing what you're doing no matter what anybody tells you. If somebody tells you that it isn't good and that sets you off your path, then you're not meant to be doing it. But I also tell them, and this is key, what you have to do is you have to keep editing. Exactly. Do not go with your first draft. And this is where I diverge from Neil Young's most recent output, because Neil has been quoted quite often in recent years as saying, oh, you know, I wrote the song at 9 o'clock and I cut the track at 9.15 and there you go. And he didn't use to do that. I can listen to a lot of his earlier work, and I know for a fact that he labored over that stuff. Quite frankly in a good way it sounds like he did It sounds like he put some time into it and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that The initial spark is always valid but it is important to go back three four sometimes five times and edit. You can always go back and make a song better. Yes, it's true. You can go back, and I think amongst songwriters, the suggestion is you steely-dan it too much. You over yeah you overthink it and you can find that happy medium but you have to be willing to edit you have to be willing to go back and say you know what maybe i'm maybe i'm a genius and maybe i'm not you know maybe the genius comes from the editing the genius comes from knowing when to edit and when not to and when to stop you know uh and that come i mean a lot of that too just comes with the experience. Yeah. You get to, you get to, like, you know it works, you know it doesn't work, but also you want to be willing to still take risks no matter what age you are. And like, maybe it's going to work, maybe it's not, but that's really the excitement of creating art. I approached the 12 songs from Stevensonville completely ready after 30 years to say, okay, I'm going to have to approach these 12 songs with an eye towards, you know, lyrics that, you know, don't work anymore, or maybe some chord changes, you know. Yep. You know what? I didn't change anything. Yeah. There were some arrangement ideas in the studio that the band put in. Oh, let's repeat the chorus here. Oh, that's a good, you know, let's do this part a couple times, or take that part, you know. Which is good. It keeps it fresh, right? Oh, yeah. But the spirit is still there. That's the important part of it. You know, because each song is a different person in Stevensonville. That was a conceit that I stole from Spoon River Anthology, where every poem is named for a different person. And so for each song, when we approached each song in the studio, we hung a print of one of Lori's paintings in the studio. That's a good idea. To be inspired. Right. and then we would tackle that song and we would try to have the print inspire us to bring that kind of whatever it was and it was really exciting because it was like well on one hand these are my songs but it's not like I wrote them yesterday you know I'm so precious you know I don't want anyone to mess with my new song you know I'm you know it was like well they are my songs, but oh, everybody can contribute. Everybody, give me your ideas. Yeah, you want to breathe life into the songs. Yeah, give me your ideas. You know, they are mine, but yeah, I'm not as close to them as I used to be. And so bring your talent to my songs because I want it. Well, and it's awesome that you're still open to letting them grow and letting them flourish in new ways after so many years and bringing new life. I think it's important as artists to keep it fresh and keep it to where you're excited for people to hear what you've created, but also recreated, which is exciting. George, tell people how they can, again, the album comes out March 20th, but tell people how they can find you and also if they want to order the album, how they would do that. Well, there's going to be a, I don't want to get it up there too soon. there's going to be it's going to be sold through band camp where you can go on band camp and you'll be able to order it uh from me uh through band camp but i didn't want to put it up there yet because the they're going to be numbered copies uh with a certificate signed by both laurie and me that is one of 200 uh the first vinyl copies and uh or at this point the only vinyl copies You know, it may be, we may make it available online. Streaming. Later. Streaming, yeah. Because I want the music to be heard, make it available streaming, and make the illustrations available in a similar way. But for this initial, you can order it from me, and I will single-handedly mail it to you, mail the vinyl copy to you. But that will be after March 21st. We'll make it available then because the first copies will be sold at the record release show on March 21st because I guess it becomes available March 20th. Yeah, and again, mention where the record release party is. It's going to be at the 503 Social Club in Hoboken. That's Jim Mastro's club. He and I played together in the bongos back in the 80s. I did play for a brief period of time in the bongos. I was not a member of the bongos. Some folks in the bongos get upset because they think I'm trying to claim I was a member. I was never a member. I played with them for about two and a half years. But I was not a member. Yeah, we all know those stories. Yeah, you know that kind of thing. And in fact, when I played with bands like Beat Rodeo or the Bongos, you know, I never, I was on a Beat Rodeo album. I'm on a Bongos album. But I never, like, would have my picture taken with the band because I always had my own thing going. Right. And I never wanted to be that guy from Poco. And I'm just, I'm picking on Poco. No, I've come across that. Because I had so many changes through the years. and I never wanted to be that guy who was with Poco on the sixth album, and maybe he's back again on the ninth album. I never wanted to be that guy. I'm like, you know, you can hear me on the recordings. I play organ or, you know, I play on the SRAMs. I play on some SRAMs albums, but I'm not on, you know. Yeah, but it's good because also too, like, I mean, you know, as we know, as musicians, you're often asked to play on other people's projects and it's good to really kind of clarify because over the course of time, things get a little murky about who was on what album. So a lot of people don't care, but the fans do care. So they're like, well... Well, the bongos, there was a situation where, and I'll just mention this, it was so goofy. I was playing with the bongos and I was sort of like I was hired to be a keyboard, extra rhythm guitarist on acoustic guitar. Right. And I wound up at a particular time they were looking for a new deal. And as it happened, I co-wrote a song with their leader. And it was intended for my project. Okay? Because, you know, it was, you know, and what happened was, I did a demo of it with Mark Sidgwick, my buddy who's, you know, playing with me at the 503 Social Club doing their record release show for this, right? And who also played with me on the Stevensonville album. And we did a demo of this song. And I went to the leader of the bongos and I said, hey, how about this song that we wrote? You know, it's for my project, my House of Usher project. Well, he heard it and said, oh, what a great song. And I said, well, yeah. you know and then he wanted it for the bongos oh i got to okay and what happened was of course he had the record or they'd had a record deal with rca and they were looking for a new record deal and he of course had management i did not right and so this became the flagship song for the bongos trying to get a new record deal. How funny. And in the process, my name became synonymous with being the bongo who co-wrote the song that is being, you understand? And so suddenly, suddenly it became George Usher of, George Usher of the bongos. And this made the leader crazy. you know so that we had a falling out and da-di-da-di-da-di-da you know and like I never said I was a bongo you know but anyway I know and I get that I've you know way back when I was 18 I was playing with the Champs the group the Tequila and Danny Flores who was a sax player the original guy he's the guy that says Tequila we would do all these huge festivals and people would bring up Champs albums and ask me to sign the album. And I'm like, I wasn't even alive. I wasn't even thought of with this album we came out. I'm like, I'm not going to sign somebody. I'm not going to take credit for anything. So I've been dealing with that since I was a teenager. But, George, thanks so much for joining me. You have such a huge history. Again, people should look up your other albums and look up your background because it's really interesting. And I, you know, I have a nostalgic eye for that period in New York that's sort of 70s, 80s, 90s, because there's a lot going on still. There's still a lot going on, but in a different way. But I really admire the ambition of this project. You know, checking out the songs and the artwork, it's really a great package. And it's awesome that you have somebody supporting you, helping you put this out after all these years. I think it's really, it speaks to your ability to kind of hang in there and to keep going. And I really admire that. I'm kind of the same way. I'm 60. You know, I've been doing this. I'm a little older. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I've been doing it since I was 15, and I still love what I do. Sure, sure. And I always tell people, like, it's important as a musician or an artist to not forget why you started doing it in the first place. Well, you know, now, this is the first album I put out in a few years. And you know how all of my reviews begin. They all begin like this. Continuing to toil in obscurity. So all the reviews can now begin with that again. Well, you know. But you know what? The thing is, you never gave up. No, no, no. And I'm still editing. But that's the story, and it deserves attention. It deserves validity. Because a lot of people gave up a long time ago. You hung in there, and you're still putting up. I'm still doing it. Yeah, and you're still putting out quality stuff, so that's very exciting. Do you have a website, George? You know, I did, and then one day I got up and it disappeared. Yeah. So I don't have one. You do have social media pages, though, right? Yeah, but they're even half-assed now. Yeah. If you go to something called georgerusher.com, it'll send you to sort of a half-assed Facebook page. but I will answer you if you write me there. Okay. But it's not really like a, it's not really a comprehensive thing. You can find a couple of videos. You can go to YouTube and find some, some half-assed stuff, you know, you know what, when my, when my georgeshra.com went south, it was one of those things where like I had somebody looking after it. You know, I guess it costs like $10 a year or something. And somehow I missed that my $10 cutoff or something. and it just went south. Well, you have to do something. Well, Bandcamp's totally valid too, but you'll have to get something where people definitely can find you if they want to buy. I really should, but it's just so much work. Oh, I know. I know the deal. I know. That's my whole life is dealing with that stuff. But we'll get a contact for you and we'll put it on when we release the podcast and I'll get all that information from our friend Howard, the publicist. Oh, great. Who's a great guy. Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you so much, George, for joining me. Thank you. We'll send you links when this gets published. It'll be a little bit over a week from now. And then, yeah, hopefully we'll get you some attention for the album. So thanks so much, George. Sure, thank you, man. Have a good one. Thanks for joining us. And please consider subscribing to our podcast and follow us on our social media pages for guest announcements.