MUSIC

1994-1998

1998-2001

Life at Dearborn Hall. Edinboro, PA. Surrounded by a lot of talented musicians and artistic types. Great friends and community. Something is growing. I am writing more songs and I am finding a voice. I dabble in recording with various folks around Erie County, PA. I perform in the band “Jonas” which then unfortuonetly gets renamed to “Crulowe” for a brief moment (the name was a combination of a bunch of our initials….I think, who knows, it’s terrible).

MUSIC FROM 1998-2001 TO COME

2002-2009:

The band known as Zomo comes out of the end of the band Jonas/Crulowe. While the band existed in various states through the years, the main players in the Zomo story were myself, Dustin Miller, Zach Watt, Adam Watt, and Aaron Davis. Other who played in the band and played amazing roles were: Rob Felsburg, Kevin Hawk, Alissa Dube, and Alan Dean.

The band actually begins when myself and Zach Watt connect with Dustin Miller through a mutual friend. An introduction is made, and we quickly begin playing music together in early 2002. The band plays all around Edinboro and Erie, Pennsylvania. We try to make a strong point of focusing on originals in the setlist, which we always seem to divide up into two unique sets followed by an encore. We begin recording our first album, titled WAITING FOR THE GREEN. These sessions are in Girard, PA and are engineered and recorded by Zach’s brother, Adam Watt. Adam is a vital piece of the Zomo story. For most of the time, Adam was our sound guy, engineer, and the only person to tape our shows. He also had the ability to jump onto the bass guitar when needed, and when you understand the Zomo story you’ll see that a bass player was needed from time to time. I’m thankful for what he did for all of us young musicians and for all that he taught me when it comes to music.


2002: WAITING FOR THE GREEN

The idea for this album was simple: let’s make a debut album that’s just as good as all of those wonderful debut albums we loved so much (the first Boston and Weezer album spring to mind). I got seven songs on the album and Zach got the other seven songs. Most of the songs that were slated to be on this album had their drums recorded. A lot of guitars were recorded as well. Vocals and bass? Not so much. Everyone was juggling college and life in general at the same time as these recordings happen, and for some reason or another things just didn’t ever get finished. Will this album ever be properly finished? Who knows. The album that you see below is nowhere near what was envisioned. What you get below is a little bit of what got done in the studio, a little bit of live stuff, a few demos, and this and that. The other side of Zomo which you don’t see with this release is Zach Watt. He was my musical brother through most of Zomo and all of college, and his guitar work and more importantly his songs are not fully represented here. There is no Zomo “Waiting For The Green” era without Zach, but since it is good to have something rather than nothing here is a version of WAITING FOR THE GREEN.

LISTENING TO? “Farmhouse” by Phish, “13” by Blur, “Pinkerton” by Weezer.

2004: FOR THE MUSES

At some point in 2003 Zach Watt left Zomo, and myself and Dustin played for a bit of time as a two piece and then a four piece with Aaron Davis (Lost Earth Lock, greyscape) and Kevin Hawk on guitar. The lineup was in flux a bit and everything that was up until that point got shifted a bit into this next era of Zomo. The “For The Muses” era really began to come together in the Summer of 2003 when I quickly became good friends with Aaron Davis. I am really glad that I met Aaron. He taught me so much about all different types of music and art that is out there in the world. At this point I was really confident in the songs that I had written, and because of Aaron’s encouragement I think a lot of my ideas about music and art came together in this era. Zo

Zomo officially became a three piece at some point in mid 2003 with myself on guitar, Dustin on drums, and Aaron on bass. Everyone was bringing musical ideas to the table and the band felt really good. We rehearsed a lot in Aaron’s cottage on Edinboro Lake at 116 Washington St in Edinboro, PA. What a lovely place that was. Image below!

We played as many shows as we could get. We went outside of Pennsylvania for the first time to play shows. We made a plan to make a record and put it out. We found a studio in Sharon, PA named MUDHUT STUDIOS and booked a few days there with their engineer Bill Dodd. It was such a wonderful time. We recorded ten songs in a few days and left with the masters in our hands. After putting everything together, we had made FOR THE MUSES, the second Zomo album. It really sounds nothing like the first Zomo album (a trend that will continue with the next album) but it manages to have its own identity. Despite that thing about wanting to go back and redo and add some stuff that happens to every musician who finishes an album, I am really happy with everything about this album. It sounds exactly like how myself, Dustin, and Aaron sounded as Zomo at that point in time. It feels very real and it’s good to be real.

LISTENING TO? “Bloodflowers” by The Cure, “Loveless” by My Bloody Valentine

2004-2024

Started as a side/solo project to Zomo, Abigail Foster’s Photosynthesis Machine started life and actually existed from 2004 until 2009 until the moniker “Belsapadore”. Pronounced “bell-zap-adore”, let’s chalk it up to yet another bad name in a history of bad band names that I’ve had a hand in creating. I made the move to the clunky but ultimately fine Abigail Foster’s Photosynthesis Machine in 2010, right when I kind of stopped making music until around 2015. That year, the move to Titusville, PA and specifically to a life where my family and I were living in an old church that came to be known as Fidelia Hall, kicked me back into creative gear. I continued on with this project during my time in New Zealand and then into our eventual move back to Maine. The project went on “sort of a kind of a pause” in 2024 so that I could focus on other things in my life.

2004: THE SUN AND THE MOON

Me and a cassette 4 track and some synths and some keyboards and a lot of quiet and a cat named Oblio. I wanted to make something that was completely different from what I had been making with Zomo, and something that wasn’t necessarily easy to listen to or fun to listen to. I also wanted to try to learn different recording techniquies and ideas. A lot of this is rough, but there’s a charm to it and I can 100% promise you that every note and every sound on this is very real and honest.

LISTENING TO? Brian Eno “Ambient” albums and Music For Airports, David Bowie Low, DJ Shadow Entroducing, Death Cab for Cutie Transatlanticism.

2005: A MORE COLORFUL OR EASIER SOMEWHERE ELSE

A moment of big change in my life as I first meet and connect with Haley, return to college, and it all starts by making music with a great friend of mine, Aaron Dobler. This collection really began in Pittsburgh, PA as I ready about the Brothers Grimm and their fairy tale collections at the Northland Public Library. I started writing the songs and recording them in Edinboro, PA with Aaron Dobler in between visits to see Haley in Meadville, PA. It was such a glorious time of friendship and love, and I think this recording reflects that. Sure, some of the songs are dark, but hey the Brothers Grimm fairy tales were that way as well. I wanted the record to sound soft and welcoming and homemade like the Beach Boys Friends and I think it kind of sounds that way.

LISTENING TO? The Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, Weezer Make Believe, Electric Light Orchestra, the Xanadu soundtrack, Neil Young Trans

2007: EVERYONE C’MON GET HAPPY

Not much happened musically in 2006. Haley and I got married and it was a really, really happy year. Working with my friend Dave Washousky (who worked under the monker Gypsy Dave) on his album Liberty was really fun and eye opening, so I set out recording my own set of very straight forward, no thrills record that came and went very quickly. This was the first album that I recorded digitally on my own, and the only sound that I could get was the one that you heard. I think my quest for simplicity and my not knowing any of the technology worked out well. Most of these songs had been kicking around for a few years and this is really just a collection of pop songs.

LISTENING TO? The Crystals, The Ronettes, Gypsy Dave & The Stumpjumpers, Traveling Wilburys

2008: MONSTERS

I really don’t know what’s happening here. I was finishing up my final year of grad school, and Haley was finishing up her final year at Allegheny College. We were looking at places to move to once we graduated and if those places had jobs. Kids were just around the corner. But what I do know is that I had a music room in our house on Rose Lane in Meadville, and in that music room I had a drum machine, some synths, an organ, and a distorted bass. The songs are weird and varied, but this is what that period sound like.

LISTENING TO: Prince, Human League

2015: HI THERE

If you’re going to become a parent, you should really have that be your focus and your main goal in life. Finn came in 2009 and Aero came in 2011. Haley was the main parent during those years, but I still gave it my all when I wasn’t working as a librarian to pay the bills. 2015 was the year that we moved to Titusville, PA and specifically into living in a 150+ year old former church that we came to call Fidelia Hall. That time was just magical. The sound of that place really inspired me, and these songs came out. Some existed before hand, but for the most part once I could hear that big booming sound I was hooked. I took the “these are just simple songs presented in a simple way” approach that I took on Everyone C’mon Get Happy. I just like making pop songs. This album is mixed and mastered kind of loudly, and sadly I do not have access to the master tracks anymore. It is what it is. But it is a thing that exists that documents a time, a set of songs, and how an old church can sound with some pop songs in it.

LISTENING TO? Weird Al, Daft Punk, T. Rex

2016: PROZAC IS THE DAM AND I AM THE DYNAMITE

Holy crap! I made an album in 2015! I hadn’t done that in a long time and I really enjoyed it so I made this one VERY quickly after that one. I also stopped taking prozac at this time. I had been on it since late 2009-ish. I just didn’t feel alive on prozac and I wanted to live, warts and all. This album was made during that and it’s weird and odd and neat and very real and I like that about it. I really like the song “Bees in the Borage”.

LISTENING TO? Disco music from mostly 1980-1988(ish), and some from before. If it was popular in the clubs in NYC in the 80’s, chances are that I wanted to listen to it. This music listening phase will last another 3 years.

2017: SMALL TOWN

I was really struggling with living life in a small town again, and I think this was greatly exaccerbated by constantly having to renovate a house and an old church that was being turned into part house part community center. I think we took on a lot. I made this music to deal with it. The first half is a lot of working through what was going on in my head. The second half is an escape to somewhere else, a ‘little paradise’ that I imagined to be Aotearoa. This would come true in a few years. But for now this was a dream.

LISTENING TO? Disco music from mostly 1980-1988(ish), and some from before. If it was popular in the clubs in NYC in the 80’s, chances are that I wanted to listen to it. This music phase still has two years.

2019: FIDELIA HALL and SHE’S THE BOSS EP

Oh gosh, I love this one. It is a very real and honest expression of love. A lot of these songs started in 2018 and I really focused on making this one special over those two years. It is our life in Titusville, PA and Fidelia Hall from 2015-2019 in an album. Every song on this one means something very special to me. I really feel that I fully reconnected with my love of writing and recording music on this one. The She’s The Boss EP were the songs that did not make the Fidelia Hall album. I like those songs a lot, and I really, really like the song ‘She’s The Boss’. My friend Dan Stockwell did the banjo and disco banter on that song. I love it.

LISTENING TO? Disco music from mostly 1980-1988(ish), and some from before. If it was popular in the clubs in NYC in the 80’s, chances are that I wanted to listen to it. This is probably the year this music phase wraps up.

2020: QUARKS 1-2-3

We’ll say that QUARKS 1-2-3 came out in 2020, but honestly the three volumes that make up this set came out yearly between 2019-2021. But 2020 is a nice midpoint, and Quarks was very much on my mind that year as Quarks 2 was the only thing that I put out that year. I see the Quarks series as a way to collect all of the songs and sound ideas that really don’t fit elsewhere and apply the ‘1980’s cable tv endlessly pushing the buttons on the remote 50 channels but is there really anything on?’ idea and this is what came out. I love laughing and I am generally a really positive person, so this collection allowed me to be sillier and funnier. I think it helped me grow and really embrace who I really am. I love these weirdo collections.

LISTENING TO? You know, lots of this stuff was around the time of the disco era as well, but Quarks 3 was Cornershop England Is A Garden, Joni Mitchell, Big Star, Phoenix Ti Amo, The Beach Boys.

2021: I WANT TO DISSOLVE INTO THE EARTH and IN PIECES (EP2026)

Completely made during my entire time in Aotearoa New Zealand, I really put a lot of heart and effort into these songs. I spent many hours walking from my house to the train station to another destination listening to early mixes of these songs. I wanted to make sure that they were authentic and that their sonic quality went to another level. I wanted to make something really cool. I did a lot of the work on this record in the Tūhara HIVE Makerspace Recording Studio at Waitohi Community Hub and also at my house at 39 Tarikaka Street in Ngaio, Wellington NZ. It was a lot of fun to make these songs as special as they could be. I tried to overlap a lot of melodies and sounds and ideas. I put a lot effort into ending most songs with a bang. I think this is the first album where I really felt like myself 100%. It’s not that the others were not honest…they were…this one just really lined up with who I was at the time. To end: what really solidified this album was a trip between Jan 20-24, 2021 at a very remote campground outside of Wainuiomata NZ with loads of other homeschooling families. We had nothing to do but hang out and do what we wanted and I played a lot of music and it was a lovely time. Carson Williams did the artwork, and I love love love the work that he did. It is so beautiful and weird and I am thankful for him sharing his talents. And one more: gosh I love Zach Watt’s guitars on ‘Dandelion’. It’s one of my favorite songs that I have ever written, and your parts make it shine so much thank you Zach.

IN PIECES (EP2026) is a condensed version of the original IN PIECES that I put out in 2021. It is an instrumental noise album, and upon many further lessons I found it really unlistenable and too much. It was fun to make, but no one needs to sit through that. This is the best of that original album. ‘10092019-39’ is pretty cool. Thank you for listening.

LISTENING TO? The entire Joni Mitchel discography on repeat, Cornershop England Is A Garden, Fiona Apple Fetch The Boltcutters

2022: PUBLIC LIBRARIES and THE GARDEN

We got back to America in late 2021 after 2 years and 3 months in Aotearoa NZ, moving back to Maine. We were happy to be back. I was bound and determined to conquer most of the unreleased and unfinished songs that I had put aside through the years and finally record some of the older songs that didn’t get attention. A lot of that that did happen, but then at the same time a lot of new recording happened and there was just a lot of stuff going on. At the time in 2022 I put this out under the title ‘Everything All At Once’ not as a nod to the film but just because here it was for you to listen to: everything all at once. I should have been a better editor. It really didn’t work. I always had two concepts in mind though the whole thing, and had I not been an anxious mess in late 2022 I would’ve made a better decision.

PUBLIC LIBRARIES feels like me crashing out on working in libraries and just needing to write songs about it. It feels wild and cathartic. It also helped me see the path to go in terms of moving ahead artistically. I’m glad that I documented that moment in my life. THE GARDEN is kind of like a sequel to A More Colorful or Easier Somewhere Else. Both of those albums really feel connected to the Earth and nature. THE GARDEN is really connected to my home and our gardens. Like PUBLIC LIBRARIES this one features a mix of new things with a lot of old things. I really love the song ‘Hummingbirds’ and I love Helen Balfour’s singing on that song. I remember writing that song and recording it the same day as hummingbirds zipped around the birdfeeder on my deck. I recorded the whole thing outside and sent the track off for Helen to add backing vocals to. It really works!

LISTENING TO? Bananarama Cruel Summer, Phoenix Ti Amo, Mini Mansions Bad Things That Make You Feel Good, The Pointer Sisters I’m So Excited, Starship We Built This City, Gorillaz, some old 78’s on my Edison.

2024: AFPM 2004-2024 COLLECTION

I finally got to the point in my life where I could take everything that I left behind and just smoosh it all together into something that means nothing and collects everything. Here is everything else that I did through the years. It is not necessarily “everything”…I listened through to it all once before I put this together and there’s just some stuff that’ll stay locked away and this will be it for the old stuff for now. This collection is heavy on songs from 2019-2022, but I think at that point I was really just getting caught up with songs that I had written in the previous years.

2026: HOLY CRAP

There is something that will show up here later.