Patrick Dalton croons over a stuttering soul beat, a warm wah bass beneath his voice. “Blues came and they knocked you to the floor, took your face away,” Dalton sings. “Tell me everything’s gonna be OK, tell me everything.” Ceschi sings over flutes and pastoralia: “But these days seem darker and these nights seem longer, like I’m waiting for the Nothing or a god or something stronger.” Daniprobably puts down the guitar and picks up synthesizers.
It’s just the beginning of Waiting on a Sunrise, Vol.1, a scintillating compilation by some of New Haven’s hardest-working musicians, making new sounds for a good cause.
In addition to Dalton, Ceschi, and Daniprobably, the compilation features Tony from Big Fang, Lys Guillorn, Brian Ember, Glambat, Evelyn Gray, Kaiser Wilhelm and Balmy Wind, and it’s the brainchild of Alex Burnet, of Laundry Day, who shortly after the Covid-19 pandemic shutdown started, released an EP of his own. One, in a sense, gave birth to the other.
“I thought it would be cool to do a compilation and was working on my own songs. That snowballed quickly into doing an EP,” Burnet said. But the idea of a compilation stayed with him. “I felt powerful,” he said, when he did his own EP, “and I hoped other artists would feel that way…. I just needed the financial reaper off my back for a week to do it.”
Burnet was furloughed from his job in the kitchen at Next Door on Humphrey Street on March 16. He got on unemployment to support himself. To do the compilation, he needed money to pay for production. So he applied for a grant through the Arts Council of Greater New Haven’s Artist Relief Fund. He explained that he was looking to give artists an outlet for their music. The proceeds from the album would go directly to the artists, and some of it back to the arts fund to support more projects. He also wanted it to be done in a professional way.
“I’d really like to do this, and help out,” Burnet recalled explaining in his proposal. “They blessed me with a grant,” he said. “I’m hopeful that people will donate to the artists and to the Arts Council. Their hands-on approach was beautiful. I applied. The next week I got an email. I sent them my paperwork, and 24 hours later the money was in my account. That was only four weeks ago.” (The fund is still in existence. Due to a high volume of applications, response time may be slower.)
Jimi Patterson Photo
Burnet (r.) and Sam Carlson of Sans Serif Recordings, from a Laundry Day video in 2017.
Burnet got to work with similar speed “I called Sans Serif and asked if I could commission them to master a volume of music.” He then asked designer Karli Hendrickson if she would be willing to design a cover. “She said ‘absolutely,’” Burnet said. “After I had them on board I just started calling Connecticut artists to see who would want to do it. I got really lucky in that everyone said yes.”
He got the question from artists early: “What’s the prompt?” Burnet turned the question around on them. “There’s plenty of things to be influenced by,” he said. “Come up with a song by April 24 and send it to me.” The trick was that the musicians all had to use whatever they had on hand with them when the shutdown began. Some of them had home studios and multiple instruments. Others did not. But “everybody self-recorded these. Everybody ended up producing their own song.”
“About halfway through the month, people called saying they were feeling all this new energy, and that’s what I wanted,” Burnet said. “Everybody was feeling this newfound confidence and inspiration.”
That was reflected in the results, as the musicians, goaded by the limitations imposed by the shutdown and the deadline, created a lot of music that was different from what they usually did.
“It was really fun to hear artists explore their sound, to hear people branch out,” Burnet said. “All I expected was good songs and they exceeded my expectations.”
What accounts for the experimentation and transformation? “I think it’s a combination of what happens in a deprivation chamber — like how everyone’s dreams have been crazy,” he said, because of a relative lack of external stimulus and new information. “There’s less external influence…. Weird world when Ceschi” — known for a genre-bending, hard-hitting style of indie hip hop — “has the most acoustic one.” But in another way, not so weird. “I think everybody sort of wants something chill right now,” Burnet said.
He also credits the limitations the shutdown imposed. “Pat Dalton’s has a wah bass,” he said. “How do you get bass if you don’t have a bass?… The resources change. So do the tools. There are people who don’t have studios to work with right now.” “Dani” — of Daniprobably — “said, ‘how am I recording this?’ and I said, ‘I hadn’t thought about that.’” But she found a way.
“The tools change,” Burnet said. “Isolation changes everything. Look at Australia.”
The album went up on Bandcamp on Friday, and Burnet reiterated the deal he had made with the artists on the compilation: 75 percent of the proceeds would go to them, and 25 percent would go directly back to the Arts Council. “Everybody said, ‘oh, you can donate mine too,’ and I said, ‘no, this is to help you,’” Burnet said.
In putting the compilation together, Burnet may have inadvertently started a record label, which he called Free as Birds. “It was a big afterthought for me, and then I realized, ‘I can’t just put this up on my Bandcamp page. Am I starting a digital-only label? I guess I am.”
Burnet has since taken that idea to heart. Even before Burnet was finished with the first compilation, he called up a new group of musicians. He has just about finished Volume 2, which will come out June 1, and is looking to do a Volume 3, which would come out July 1. “I’m keeping Volume 2 and 3 very close to my chest, because the surprise is half the fun.”
The change has made Burnet think about continuing to do similar projects after the shutdowns are lifted and the pandemic is over. “It’s been interesting. This is the longest I haven’t held a day job,” he said. He anticipates going back to that job, but “I’m hopeful that I could be creating a new self-employment niche for myself” as well, he said.
“I’m excited. I’m feeling healthy and grateful to be doing this right now,” Burnet said. “It’s a rush to help people. People are enjoying helping people and I love that.”