Husbands - Golden Year (2015)

Golden Year is an album that Danny and I again cobbled together in our home/apartment studios from late 2014 until summer 2015.

Some time in 2014, I got the idea that after getting my MA in English at Georgetown in D.C., I wanted to find a way for my wife and I to move back to Oklahoma City. Though Danny and I had been recording music remotely by sharing Ableton sessions on Dropbox, I got excited about the idea of us being able to record our music together, and more importantly, to play our songs live. Previously, our music hadn’t really been performable: Achin’, for all its sample-weirdness, probably wouldn’t hold up too well in a live setting.

We set out with Golden Year to write tight pop songs that we could feasibly play with a four- or five-piece band, and we named the album after the idea of a single ‘golden year’ that I’d live in Oklahoma City to work on music as much as possible before moving on to the PhD program. It was a tremendously exciting idea; unfortunately, it didn’t pan out. On a positive note, though, Danny and I wrote, recorded, mixed, and mastered more material than we’ve ever done in faster amount of time than ever before. Also, by limiting our sound to something that we could reproduce live, I think we set up for ourselves some ‘rules of the game’ which made the writing process challenging and exciting for the both of us.