Acoustic Northeast
Discover the musicians, music and venues behind America's vibrant Northeast singer-songwriter scene. Interviews and live performances every episode!
Acoustic Northeast
Episode 6 – Erik Rabasca
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Recording artist Erik Rabasca is a smooth-as-silk singer-songwriter from Connecticut who has honed his craft over many years as a touring performer. His songs fuse a range of styles, from folk, indie and jazz to reggae, soul and country. So it's no surprise his Band, Light Warriors, was invited to open for Jon Batiste. Erik is a familiar voice at venues and festivals across the Northeast.
Tempo: 120.0
SPEAKER_01Welcome everybody to another edition of Acoustic Northeast. This is a show where we talk about singers, songwriters, and the acoustic music scene in the Northeast United States. We interview musicians who also play live for you and us in studio.
SPEAKER_00Right here in the studio. I am co-host, George Malice, along with other co-host, Dave Goldenberg. And we need you to know that we are sponsored today by HearItThere.com, which is where you should go anytime you need information about live music and performance if you're in the tri-state area. It's a great resource. Also, WBXO Internet Radio streaming live from beautiful Hopewell Junction, uh, New York, where they stream not only classic rock, but a certain podcast that George and I are both very familiar with. And Hudson Harding Folk Radio Promoters, because who needs promotion more than folk artists?
SPEAKER_01So you can listen to us, obviously, where you're listening right now, uh, wherever you get your podcasts, and you can also check us out on YouTube. We have a website, acousticnortheast.com, and of course, you can listen to us on WBXO.com. And today Today, George, who do we have in the studio? Tell me, because I I wasn't there. You were absent and you didn't even have a note. So we have singer-songwriter Eric Robasca, who's great, who's a Connecticut guy, and um that's who we got. So listen to the show. Check us out now. I'm gonna listen because I I wasn't there. Okay, so listen to the show, will you? Hi, everybody. I'm coming to you from the studios of WBXO Radio in Hopewell Junction, New York. The engineer for this show is Hugh Curtin, and this is Northeast Acoustic. Our guest tonight is Eric Robasca, and I'm your host, George Malice. And Eric, get us right into a song here. I think you're gonna play intro everybody up with Wise Up. You are correct. Thank you, George.
SPEAKER_04Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here at WBXO. Wise Up Indeed.
SPEAKER_03Wise up, wise up, wise up with the wise ones. See down, fall around them as a warning to ones. Fools wanna talk when they see you falter, never realizing They're the ones who fail. Fail to see the suffering, made by their own desires, failing to comprehend, they've lost control within So wise up, wise up, wise up with the wise ones. See them fall around them as a warning to unstead Rise up, wise up, wise up with the wise ones who live fully in this time, seeing all in themselves Fools they can't see their own twisted logic, their vanity swim shallow, it's lost and drift at sea. When fools try to lie with confidence and anger, deciding these emotions, how they learn to be tougher generations in a prison of drama, never escaping cycles, righteous decree. So wise up, wise up, wise up with the wise ones. See that fall around them as a warning to ones tell Wise up, wise up, wise up with the wise ones, we'll live fully in next time. See it all in themselves. Downfall comes so quickly, when ruined by grief, dismissive indignation while we're watching others bleed. Downfall swells so loaded, like an overflowing river, breaking weak foundations, strangling good deeds Fools don't wanna see reality around them Fools ignore all sides on their path to be free So wise up, wise up, wise up with the wise ones Sit down, fall around them as a woman to understand Rise up, wise up, wise up with the wise ones, we live fully in this time, seeing all in the sick wise up, wise up, wise up with the wise ones, we live fully in this time, seeing all okay everybody, wise up.
SPEAKER_01That was Eric Rabaska. Here we are. So, Eric, first of all, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. Our pleasure. Uh happy to have you. Let's start off from the beginning. Give everybody a little background on yourself. Um where you're from.
SPEAKER_04Sure.
SPEAKER_01How far back do you want me to go? Well, I mean, you know, not till your date of birth or anything like that, but but we could go, we could go back, you know, um where you were raised. Sure. And um and then we'll get into you know what what brought you into your your music.
SPEAKER_04Sounds great. Uh so preteen years, I grew up on Long Island, and then I my family moved to Ridgefield, Connecticut when I was a teenager in the 80s. And I was a soccer player from age five, I think. Uh I made the travel teams, I made, you know, the all-star teams, I made all that good fun stuff.
SPEAKER_01I'm glad you got the all-star thing in there. That was very important that everybody knew that.
SPEAKER_04I was captain of uh I was captain of my senior soccer team in high school. Yeah. Yeah, the all-star stuff. I don't know. I mean, I I loved the game at the time until I didn't. And then uh I didn't, I wasn't having fun with it when I got to college. And uh that's when I really dove deep into music. I went to Brandeis University up in the Boston area. Sure. And uh moved home to Connecticut and lived in the city for nearly 30 years, working in corporate America. And my wife and I have been in Stamford, Connecticut now probably since I'd say 2015.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Cool. So did you do when you were up at Brandeis? Because I mean, you know, Boston area has a huge um music history. It's not a college town, to quote Spinal Tap. Is that where you kind of got into music up in Boston?
SPEAKER_04You know, coffee houses and stuff like that, or did you No, believe it or not, I got into music at a very early age. Uh I you know, back in the late 70s, early 80s, when you had those single cassette Sony uh players, uh I I the first records I bought was Ozzie Osborne's Diary of a Madman and Iron Maiden's Number of the Beast. And my parents thought I was like a devil worshipper or something, but uh because you can only listen to the two cassettes that you owned at the age of 11 or 12, I listened to those two repeatedly and then started analyzing all the details of the music, you know, how the bass works with the drums, what rhythm is, understanding melody without knowing what the terms were at that age.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Uh, but I got so deep into those records, and it's because of that I started listening to everything that way. So whatever was on the radio that my parents were listening to. Uh, when I got to college, I studied, I found jazz. I didn't study jazz. I wish I did, but I found uh jazz. Of course, the first two records there were Miles Davis Kind of Blue, which everybody should own and probably does. And the one that knocked me for a loop and just made me understand that there's a whole other dimension of music was Um Love Supreme by John Coltrane. Uh and I'll throw in uh All my brothers Eat a Peach for high school years, along with all the heavy metal that I listened to back in the in the in that day. But college is where I really started to explore jazz and improvisational music, which took me to New York City. Uh, and I was out every night. You know, you can see anything. I saw John Zorn at 10 o'clock on a Tuesday night this past week uh playing with the new Masada quartet. And there's something about improvisational music that just made me feel alive uh in a way that I'm sure Deadheads feel, or you know, when the Allman Brothers are doing the mountain jam, it's uh it's the the sense that you're belong to something outside of yourself, but also belong with everybody in that.
SPEAKER_01Very cool. Um, so what I'm picking up is I mean, you're you're obviously into many different genres of music. Yeah. And like you said, you could you got into like picking apart bass lines and all that kind of stuff. So that leads me to ask you about so the work that you've done and recorded, I think I believe you're self-produced, am I correct? Yes. So I would say, and you can please correct me if I'm wrong, that you drew from all of your let's let's call it education of listening to different genres that you work that into your production.
SPEAKER_04Yes, absolutely. I'm still trying to figure it out. Uh sometimes you get a little closer to the sound in your head, and sometimes not. I think uh the record I'm working on right now, I'm for the first time taking the time to really get it right. So it's it's gonna be as close to a country swing, you know, folk vibe. Okay. Um but the but I think also the the unifying thing for all of music is uh community or regardless of genres, like that sense of community and that sense of striving to be uh connected to something outside of yourself.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we'll touch back on that later. Um let's touch base on the different genres that you've put out to date a little bit. Let's talk a little bit about the Light Warrior project that you did for sure.
SPEAKER_04Light Warriors uh i is on my highest frequency records label, and that project was an aspirational uh project that I've you know, I've loved big bands. Uh in the 90s I saw a group called Groove Collective. They were an acid jazz band, and uh they brought in a little bit of hip-hop and jazz into um into basically just groove music. Uh there were a lot of underground bands I saw in the city that inspired the Light Warriors project that blended a bunch of genres, a funk, soul, a little bit of rock, a little bit of psychedelic, a little bit of free improvisation, and but being able to come back to a tight, deep groove, uh, I guess that's as close to a funk project as I got. But um the the messages and the songs were really observational, you know, uh and and in the in the hope uh of uh aspiring to that unity that I think everybody really truly wants in life.
SPEAKER_01What do you what do you find yourself drawn to right now when you're when you're listening to music? Is there anything in particular that's uh that's tickling your fancy that's out there right now?
SPEAKER_04Uh Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse band has been really interesting to me. He's he writes these long eight-minute songs. He's got a touch of Dylan, he's got a touch of John Prime, uh, but he is uniquely his own artist and I a little bit of indie, I guess, maybe early back. But he's he's of the day, and I'm I'm completely into him. I mean the eight-minute songs don't feel like eight-minute songs.
SPEAKER_01Really?
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Wow. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04New threats of the soul, I think, is the is the newest record.
SPEAKER_01Okay. But your newest record that you're working on, you said it's more countryish, country swing type of thing?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think you know, like the songwise up, it's gonna be more in that vein, but probably with uh a touch of Tom Waits as well.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Yeah, I'm a big Tom Waits fan. So you've you've had this progression in your in your music, um, and like you said, different genres. Um what what do you think led you to come to the latest project? Was it just something different that you wanted to do?
SPEAKER_04Or yeah, I mean my wife and I do a lot of road trips, so we we pop on Willie's Roadhouse. Oh, yeah, and Serious XM, yeah. Pretty much for the last five or so years, that's pretty much all we listened to. So it started to seep into my soul. And uh I think as Light Warriors went on down, and I have a few other projects as well on highest frequency records that are collaborations, um the timing of those projects getting, you know, not as busy, uh, just coincided with this country music that I've been enjoying, and you know, the real roots of it, the the early stuff is what I love about the roadhouse.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, I agree. I agree. Um, you know, I I love country music. I'm not in enamored with like the top 40 country music that's out there because it's just a matter of throwing stuff out against the wall and see what's gonna stick. You got five, six, seven writers on a song or something. It's just you know, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Uh I'm not with it either. Yeah. You know, music, I think any top 40 music of any genre is just about like fun and good times. Uh I'm not hearing and and maybe I'm just missing it because I'm not listening to it. Um, but I like message music, I like music that goes a little deeper. Uh I love poetry. You know, where's the poetry of of music today? Um and there are people, you know. There are. Yeah, but they're just underground and the industry doesn't want to promote that the way the way it used to.
SPEAKER_01That's the way the industry is now. Yeah. You know, it's a shame. Uh there's so many people. I mean, the music industry we know has changed drastically. The opportunity for basically anybody to record a song or an album is out there because you can do it at home or whatever. And there's it's saturated now. You know, so it's tough. It's I think it's harder in in some ways it's easier to be heard today, but in some ways it's harder to be heard today, also, just because there's so many people out there. Yeah. But you're you're part of a a great community in Connecticut. Yes. And it's along the, I'm gonna say the I-95 corridor, pretty much. Yeah. Um and probably 91 through Hartford. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Talk a little bit about that and how you got involved with that and and the things that are going on there. I know you guys just did this Connecticut Collective.
SPEAKER_04Connecticut Hope Collective, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Over in um Bridgeport.
SPEAKER_04So I'll start there. Uh the Connecticut Hope Collective came together because um uh Frank Cartelli and really Hugh Birdsall up in the New London area do something called Pass the Guitar, and Frank Cartelli has hosted them. Our mutual friend, uh Jackie Roche, and I I can't remember if it was Jackie or Alisa Zuckerberg from hereather.com that put me in touch with Frank initially a few years ago. He invited me to one of these Pass of the Guitar events uh where it's 20-something songwriters, one guitar. You literally pass one guitar, everybody does one song, and it's for usually a benefit, a local benefit that is either for the homeless or a food bank or or some kind of um you know charitable uh effort. Uh so the Hope Collective, uh I've gotten to know a bunch of those folks over the years, and and they're like you said, George, all along the 95 corridor and uh up into Hartford. Uh and I started a series called the Troubadour series this year. There are other folks who are putting on a lot of really great shows for original songwriting music in that area. It's a very busy area. Uh Expressions out of Hartford with Michael Sanford Day. Uh our Frank Vielli uh does Through Bigger Beast Records with Caleb Farnum. They do a ton of shows each year. So there's a lot of community and a lot of uh concentric circles that are working towards that same goal of community, quality, original music, and and uh when we can charitable efforts. So the Connecticut Hope Collective is a handful of us uh that uh did something at Park City Music Hall last month or two months ago now. I can't believe time flies, uh, for the benefit of Park City Presents, which does music uh and tech education for Bridgeport Youth in Connecticut. So we're gonna do another one in November on the 13th for World Kindness Day for the benefit of the New London Homeless Hospitality Center, and that's gonna be, I think, at 7 p.m. at the social up in New London, Connecticut.
SPEAKER_05Cool.
SPEAKER_04Uh and there's seven or eight of us, it's really like a variety show because there's so many great songwriters. We have, I think, eight songwriters, and we've learned each other's songs. I play electric and acoustic, Brian Larney plays piano. We've got uh Jim Stavers on bass, Bobo Lavorna on on uh I'm sorry, Jim Stavers on drums, Bobo Lavorna on bass, uh Tom. Uh God, I can't remember Tom's last name. Sorry, Tom. Uh he plays a stand-up bass. And Frank Cortelli, American Elm, Chris Busquet, Liz Giorn, uh Intergroove with Denise Jones, and you know, and it's just a real communal group of folks, and we have for uh that many people, it is the easiest project I've ever put together. Uh and let's see, I think I'm missing a detail here. Yeah, we put out a single. We actually have a single called Just Get To It, which uh Frank Cartelli and I wrote at his kitchen table. We do kitchen table sessions, and then um we we got everybody together and bang this thing out in three hours and played it at the uh the past the guitar. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the past the guitar is a great event. It was I've been to a few of them, hosted one with Frank.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It was good stuff. But uh let's why why don't we get to another song here?
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_01Um it's your choice, whatever you want to play. Intro it. Um you know, whether you want to play something old or something new or uh yeah, I'll play something old.
SPEAKER_04Um it's it's interesting, you know, how songs come through to you. This is one of them. So earlier when we were talking about searching for something outside yourself, sometimes that something finds you if your radar is up. And this was one of those tunes that came fully formed lyrics, music, in I would say uh probably like 30 something minutes, the whole thing. And and so when it comes to that quickly, I I don't really question it. I just let it be. I don't overanalyze the lyrics. I'm still figuring it out. It's this one's like a giant onion that you know that there's I keep it I keep understanding uh some of the meanings of some of the words. So it's a little opaque, but it's called the Devil's Angels. Here we go, Eric Raboska.
SPEAKER_03Devil's Angels hover, lift off to victory, smother, lengthy competition signals, old ways, dying and brittle, power conceived by a master, poaching on it faster and faster. Reverence turns cold in an instant, shackles, strangling resistance. Protecting people who, by rules, they're creating from this accident time proliferating. Survival of joy is the mission from mountains to ocean in between them. Evolving from next generations, learning faster than those who create them. Glory of past we wish to capture. Meaning we seek through existence. Challenge continually frequent. So all goes to hell and a heaven, all cries from laughter and wailing, all suffers misinterpretation. And all the angels, devils be hopefully.
SPEAKER_01So you said that came to you and like totally complete in about a half hour.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I just got out of the way. It was a feeling of something bigger than me is happening. Get your ego out of the way and just listen. And I didn't write it. I I don't think I wrote that tune. It just came through me.
SPEAKER_01Give me, give me like where were you at the time?
SPEAKER_04Uh it was, I would say, let's see, that one is probably around 2014. And I was done with corporate America at that time. I just, you know, I met a lot of great people in corporate America, and I really benefited um from the experiences there. But for me personally and spiritually, it just wasn't a place that was serving what I needed to do anymore. So I um was trying to figure out a way to get out of and uh out of that and get to music, which is what I'm supposed to be doing, I think. Yeah. Uh so that's the kind of state of mind. And uh I think I was in Vermont and just kind of strumming the guitar ten or eleven o'clock at night, and the whole thing just came through.
SPEAKER_01Wow. That's that's wild. Um yeah, you know, and it that doesn't happen often enough. No, no.
SPEAKER_04There's so much noise out there.
SPEAKER_01Well, yeah, there is, but let's I mean this this brings me to your to your writing process. And I mean, you know, other than when you're you get presented with gifts like that that that are just coming down from above, so to speak, when when you're not able to just, you know, generate a song in that manner, what what do you go through? What's your you know, is there a process that you or um how do you go about your writing? I mean, normally. So many ways.
SPEAKER_04Uh sometimes it's a lyric. I have like every songwriter out there, uh, probably about a hundred and plus uh unfinished tunes and voice memos that you just jot a little riff or an idea or a rhythm down. Um the ones that stick with me, I end up working on. Uh so I have all this all these, you know, little phone recordings for when I don't have ideas.
SPEAKER_05When you're stuck.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, but I haven't been stuck recently. Uh and I think it's just because I'm in I'm in a certain kind of flow doing a single style or a blend of uh complimentary styles, you know, with the country, swing, folk, uh Americana, all that kind of works together, I think. And um some tunes work not that way. Uh some of the Light Warriors songs in particular, there was one called The Truth Exists Inside the Moment that I worked on for years before it came together. Uh I had the main rhythm, I had the the lyrical hook, but I didn't know I didn't have a bridge and I didn't really have a chorus, and just things started to come together uh after going back to it and continuing to go back to it. So sometimes it's years and sometimes it's 30 minutes and everything in between. It could be the lyric, it could be a melody that I sing to myself and get on the voice memo. Uh it could be a lyric I wrote a year ago and just scrolling through and pick something up, and oh, that's got a certain cadence to it. So let me just see where that goes. Maybe I'm taking one line of a whole song that I wrote and rewriting a song. So it's it's chaotic.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I wish I I wish I could say, you know, you plug the guitar in and out comes the song, but it it doesn't work that way.
SPEAKER_01I want to talk a little bit about you you talked about the influences now of of country music, and you you mentioned listening Don Sirius XM to uh Willie's Roadhouse and that kind of stuff. Have you obviously now this has been an inspiration to you? Is there were you not how am I trying to say this? You were you not into that type of music previously, and it's just something that that you kind of how did you get drawn to that? You just like flipping around on XM one day, yeah. And you're like, okay, here's Willie's Roadhouse, and you hear something that kind of knocked your socks off and thought I want it, I want to do something like this.
SPEAKER_04Absolutely. Uh you know, when I was a teenager, it was all about metal and classic rock. When I was in college, it was all about jazz. In my 20s, it was all about experimental music. I mean, you know, the sunrise of the world, there's a million of them in downtown New York City. So I didn't think I went to see a rock show maybe more than a handful of times throughout all the 90s when I was uh alone and living in music. Uh alone and living in New York City. And uh 2000s was indies, and some of the indie music started to I started to hear that country influence and some of that indie music uh that that gets played on I would say XMU. Um and Moira, my wife, and I uh she loves all that folk, old folk music, you know, Joni Mitchell, we love Bob Dylan. Uh there's a lot, you know, I think I think it was the Bob Dylan record Nashville Skyline that really grabbed me as I was going through his catalog, and then his more recent records of love and theft in modern times that obviously have that all of those influences in it. And I'm just just hey, God, this is I love the mu that just grabbed me. So when we're going for our road trips, flipping around the station, oh Willie's Roadhouse, let's listen to this for a little while. We end up listening six hours later, you know, on the on the way back from wherever we were.
SPEAKER_01Do you think it's changed any of your subject matter? Because I mean you think about country music, and you know, people are like, you know, okay, there's there's gonna be a dog that dies, and uh there's gotta be a pickup truck, you know, and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah. No, no, I don't I don't hear any of that in yours. I don't write about that stuff. No, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_04No, lyrically, no. I would say musically more than anything. Um I do love, you know, Fist the song like Fist City, you know, uh, where there's a sense of humor. So I haven't quite gotten to the sense of humor side of of really good country. Uh Willie, uh Willie's obviously a pillar, Johnny Cash, Chris Crystal, you know, the all the the highway men, all of those guys are um I think lyrically great. You know, they they address issues, uh, but they also uh sing everything. I mean they all sing everything, which is the fun part. And I think for what I do uh for to make money, you know, the bar and restaurant gigs and some of those other types of gigs, par uh private parties where people want to hear stuff they know. I'll uh I would uh lyrically I'm starting to understand the simple uh it's not simple because it's not smart, if that makes sense. It's just a simple expression that uh has mass appeal. Um and I don't write simply, unfortunately. No, you don't. I can't I can't figure out how to do that yet. And I think country music has started to influence in the way I think about a theme, and I'm starting to get a little bit closer to that. Let's switch gears a little bit.
SPEAKER_01Let's talk about your actual playing now. Um so you obviously you play guitar, you play bass. Yeah. What's your musical background?
SPEAKER_04In terms of education?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Uh self-taught. All self-taught. Yeah, all self-taught. I used to uh pick up those uh guitar magazines back in the day where they had the tablature. So I learned to learn how to play songs through tab. And when I got proficient enough, I just bought chord books and tried to figure out how chords work together. Uh I should probably should have studied theory at some point. I think the closest I got to that in the 90s I saw a band. Um, I went by myself. This is a good this is a fun story. I I went by myself to go see a group called Screaming Headless Torsos. And they were a jazz funk thrash rock band, a bunch of Berkeley cats. Uh some of them played in the downtown jazz scenes as well, but they had this like great band with an amazing singer. Uh, and I read about them in the Village Voice, and I walked down to uh by myself from work one day uh on like a Tuesday night. They were playing this place called aka on Houston Street, and it's a long, thin uh you know, uh venue. So I got there just before they went on, and uh big the the singer's just this big giant man, and uh he comes out, he goes, For 20 long years I had a secret.
SPEAKER_03I could not read music, but now, thanks to hooked on funk, and then and then they go into the song.
SPEAKER_04Uh the song's called Free Man. Everybody should go listen to it. Free Man by Screaming Headless Torsos. But this band ripped my face off the whole night, and I was so blown away. So I I ended up seeking out the guitar player. I would see everything that he did. Uh, he had a uh Middle East bop hop group called uh Keefe, K-I-F. Uh he had his own solo projects outside of that, and then uh him and the bass player played with uh Hasidic New Wave, which has ties to the John Zorn scene in in downtown New York City. So yeah, great, amazing Berkeley cat musicians schooled. So I studied with with Fusinski for about six months, the modes, and um I just didn't have the study. Um I was never a great student. So I took what I learned from him uh and applied that to learning how to solo. I uh I learned a little bit about inversions, I couldn't teach it to anybody, but it's all kind of seeped in over the last 20-something years.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, look, um done a good job. Well, thank you, George. Yeah, you know, yeah.
SPEAKER_04I think I think rhythmically I'm the little uh, you know, a lot of songwriters do full chords, you know, strumming like and what I think about uh with my songwriting is all right, how am I building around uh how am I building a dynamic into it? Maybe I'm not playing that full chord, so maybe I'm just doing some double stops like and then when the chorus comes, you get to that, you know? Uh so I I do that a lot and I do a lot of rhythmic picking, I guess, is what you call it in my playing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04So it's fun though. I had yeah, it's and it comes naturally.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, I wanted to I wanted to go to some of the other areas that you've written and um anything you want to touch base on, like um Human Tribes Collective. Oh yeah. Talk about that a bit.
SPEAKER_04Human Tribes Collective, oh man. Uh this is one again, one of those projects. So uh I played the Devil's Angels earlier where the song came through me. This whole album came through me over three days.
SPEAKER_05Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_04Uh I I had I I don't know what it was. I had some basic rhythms uh that I had edited uh down to you know eight bars or something. Uh I guess this is as close to hip hop style of production as I would get, but it's all world music. And I I didn't want to use guitars, bass, or drums. I just wanted to have percussion and I had uh a strength instrument from Morocco. I did uh Moira and I did a trip to Morocco. Uh I picked up one of the I don't even it's it's a uniquely made instrument that I can't find the name of anywhere online. Uh and uh it opens the it opens the album with like a ding dun dun dun ding dun dun dun dun ding kind of thing. It puts you in not in the United States. Um and everything on that record is like first or second take. And I just kind of put it all I put it all together in a way that I th it I took maybe a week to mix, and then I put it out in 2020. All this happened right before the pandemic, too. So whatever was in the air right before the pandemic literally and figuratively kind of channeled through me. And it's I I would say not traditional songwriting to what we were talking about uh earlier about you know today's songwriters, um, younger songwriters, very non-traditional music. Uh, I got a great review on it that said it's it was groundbreaking, and I I thought, wow. I mean, I you don't look for reviews or for validation. I knew what I knew it had a it's it has its own energy and and vibration. And uh I was really proud of it and put it out there and yeah, Human Tribes Collective. The album is called Codes of Creation.
SPEAKER_01So that that brings me to where where people can listen to your music.
SPEAKER_04I think Bandcamp is the best spot. Okay. Go to highest frequency records.bandcamp.com. Uh I am increasingly not for uh a certain popular platform for a variety of reasons. You can say it. Uh Spotify, yeah. They don't it's not about how they pay musicians, it's it's what they uh what the CEO represents and who he is as a person, and it's not for the people. So I'd rather maybe listen to title. Uh I think Google's MO, which owns YouTube, I think Google's MO is still Don't Be Evil. So, you know, I listen to YouTube music a lot, and I listen to title because that's artists, right? Uh heavy heavily artist involved. Uh but Bandcamp is, you know, the most. And actually, I'm a founding member of Subvert, which has yet to launch, but Subvert is gonna be a uh Bandcamp-styled community run and organized record label. Uh I don't know how they like a co-op basically.
SPEAKER_01That's cool.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, there's I think they have a thousand artists and labels signed up. So my record label highest frequency records. Uh I signed up for it and we'll see where it goes. Hopefully it'll be something that that catches on down the road.
SPEAKER_01Okay, cool. Well, you know, it's time for another song. So um your choice. My choice, huh? Yeah, your choice.
SPEAKER_04I guess uh you want to hear one of these um I did a uh so you want to hear another Light Warrior song?
SPEAKER_01It's up to you.
SPEAKER_04If you want to give people a little, you know little variety, a little variety what they might hear. Yeah, I'll do that and then to close out, I'll do one of the newer ones again.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_04So what are you gonna play? Uh so this song is called One.
SPEAKER_05Yep.
SPEAKER_04And it came uh the the con the concept is very simple oneness. It's mostly a one-chord song, it's a singable song, and usually people who haven't heard it start singing it with me at at shows. I get them to this is my sing along song. Uh and in again, uh this was a uh 2020 project, 2019 going into 2020. Light Warriors was working on a record, and when the pandemic hit, uh, we wanted to have uh something out. Right. So I had a collaboration of um, I think there was like eight versions of this tune that we released as an album called Book of One. So it's eight versions of this song, and everybody had their own spin on the concept of oneness. Uh so I'll do a mashup of uh Lila June Johnston's verse with my own verses, and uh yeah, one. There it is.
SPEAKER_03Inhale, let your breath flow like water. Drinking the nourishment, so balance don't falter. Walk in creation, as all gods on your altar, like rocks of Gibraltar, we stand strong yet softer. Foster upgrade, you program your DNA, light in your airways from the learned ways. We see you hiding by sword players. We decode the haze. When lost in the maze, we help you climb towards one. Lolume and unity, one divine light shining individually, one collectively transforming community, one peace in the human family. Let's done here the willing of the ancients, fill your memory, amid impurity over hatred, embody impatience over billions of years. When living like vagrants, our spirits in a rears. What the government's pedalin', they're in your face, in your ears, miss God meddling. Don't be settling, love's continually spreading to all corners of the earth. Foundations are settling one volume of unity, one divine light shining individually, one collectively transforming community, one piece in the human family. Hey one One One One Peace in the Human Family, yeah. Paradox of oneness, one integrated system. But diversity is what keeps the system living. You and I know peace until we celebrate the differences. No hierarchy in God's kingdom, neither no supremacist. All people, all equals, so basic, so simple. One day the world will wake and we will all surrender. Give up the guns for the power of love. No one never giving up until we reach the rising sun and move is one. Reparations for the past hurt one. Decolonization of the whole world, one, healing up the generations, walkers one, one love, many nations move is one, volume in unity, one divine light shining individually, one collectively transforming community, one peace in the human family. One piece in the human family.
SPEAKER_01Beautiful. Thank you. I never play it the same way twice. I never play my songs the same way twice. Yeah. It's yeah, the energy of the room, the space, right? Yeah, or I just make mistakes and I just have to cover up for them.
SPEAKER_04Well, don't we all? Yeah. I think um I I started to read the book and then I didn't finish it, but uh David Burns' book, How Music Works, yeah, really goes into uh what is right for the space and and the audience andor the moment, you know. You don't want to be if if you're uh playing a private party, you don't want to be a rock star, you're there to be background music, you know. Unless they unless you draw yeah, and you have to just slowly draw them into like a sing-along with popular choices.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, you have to yeah, I mean you have to know your audience.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And it's um and but that takes time. You know, that's not just something that you know, as a performer, you walk in and all of a sudden, boom, you know what's going on. It's that's experience. Yeah. And you've been doing this how long? Since the nineties on and off.
SPEAKER_04Uh I toured in a reggae group in the early 2000s for a couple of years. That's where I really got it's big stage experience. We played. Festivals and uh opened for reggae legends and that was amazing. Um but I wasn't the lead. What were you doing with that? I was I was the guitar player and the backup singer. Okay. Uh I sang one, I think, one or two tunes. But um you know, that was a great experience for me. And then I had to go work for you know a number of years, so I was back to small coffee houses and doing gigs when I could and um you know paying the bills.
SPEAKER_01Do you have a preference to a style that you write?
SPEAKER_04It's a good question. I think I have to what whatever it is, it's something that I have to be really into in the moment. And um what attracted me to I think more improvisational and experimental music was that you didn't have to you don't have to do any of that. It's it's the moment that's serving what the music is. So I do have a uh improvisational ambient duo uh that I do with a bass player, stand-up bass player named Bobo Lavorna. And we do I don't know, I don't even know how to describe the music, but it's it's all improvise on the spot. We don't talk about what we're gonna do beforehand, we don't uh pick the keys. Sometimes we'll pick a key uh before a song on stage in the moment.
SPEAKER_01That can help.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it can help. But you know, a lot of times we don't, and things just happen, and it's kind of amazing. And there were there were some bands that I saw in the downtown New York City jazz scene. Uh one group in particular that comes to mind is Other Dimensions of Music. So I think that what's interesting about that versus songwriting is that there's a feeling that I get when I know something is good, and I get that feeling more from improvised music, having worked through the whatever the moment is, but also taking that, I guess, spirit of improvised music and applying that to my own songwriting is something that I'm I think I'm getting a little bit better at recognizing when it's really happening, you know. Like you know when a song is coming through you. You you write songs, so you know George, like like when it's really good and it makes you feel like your your body hums.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. It's it's it's magical. Um you know, but when you talk to people who are songwriters and it's like you're you're lost in this process, and there's not anything that I can think of that is you know greater than than being able to create and knowing as you're creating it that you're creating something that's that's special. Yeah. You know. And then it's just getting that to translate to an audience. Right. You know. So so you're writing, you know, instrumental stuff, actually well, maybe uh doing improvisational, you're just not writing, but you're just going with the flow. And I don't I would be scared out of my mind to try to do that.
SPEAKER_04It is frightening. It's it's absolutely frightening, which is it's a high wire act. You are you are on that high wire between tall buildings and you could fall flat on your face really quickly. Oh yeah. Uh and especially because for ambient improv, we do I do a lot of looping. So I'll loop a long piece, but I've got to, even though it's free and improvise, I still have to keep some kind of semblance of uh time for the initial loop. Right. Sometimes I get it and sometimes I don't. And when I don't, we're kind of a sl we're we're a slave to that, that the timing of that loop. And then over time, you know, you I keep adding layers and it it it becomes something different. But you know, it's the ability to not be freaked out by that and pivot in the moment.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Uh and there are masterful musicians who do this all the time. I'm not that. Um, but I I like it because it forces me to aspire, aspire to that.
SPEAKER_01You're stretching, you know. You really are. Um Yeah, I'll never do that. That's just not gonna happen.
SPEAKER_04So no free improv, jazz free. Like I'll I'll do a spinal tap quote. You know, it's you know what it's time for, George. It's it's time for jazz odyssey.
SPEAKER_01Oh man. Uh let me see, what else have we got to talk about here? Um okay, let's talk a little bit about a little more about giving back to the community because um you and I were kind of like we have the same ideas as far as you know, we want to go out there, we want to write, we want to perform, but we also want to give back. And and you do um you do take care of these other singer-songwriters with these series that you put on. Let's just talk a little bit more about that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so uh in two locations right now, um Hot Rod Spotlight Lounge up in Middletown on the second Saturday of every month.
SPEAKER_01Connecticut.
SPEAKER_04In Connecticut, uh Middletown, Connecticut, not New York, yeah. And then um Hamden at Haven Beer Company on the last Tuesday of every month. I curate and host something called the Troubadour series and invite whoever's available uh from the scene and I get introduced to people. Uh the people are giving me suggestions now. I'm booked into next year already, and it's uh what the songwriters who participate in it tell me is that it it's a really great coming together. And sometimes we have great audiences and uh sometimes not, but uh we're all there for each other, and I make sure that uh everybody has to get paid uh in unless they say no. But but I but I really want that to be something for them. It's it's low-risk stuff, you know. Everybody plays for 30 to 40 minutes. There's four of us usually on a bill, sometimes five, sometimes six, and we have a lot of fun, and it's um it's a great way to stay connected to folks because everybody's so busy that it's hard to see people. And so selfishly, one of the reasons I started it was so that I can see people and I I gig three or four times a week. So it's it's really hard to uh, you know, on the nights off get motivated to go out and do anything because you're I'm not getting any younger.
SPEAKER_01Well, none none none of us are. So, you know, based upon that people are gonna be hearing this interview over a couple of different sites and stuff and when it's gonna go out. Um but so we're not gonna talk about necessarily places that you're playing, but I will bring one up because it's in November and and um you're gonna be playing with Dave Goldenberg and you're gonna be doing a house show at my place.
SPEAKER_04Yes, I'm very excited about that.
SPEAKER_01And it's gonna be it's gonna be cool because the two of you are very different. Dave Goldenberg is a is a comedic satirical writer, and you write in all your different styles, and you guys are gonna song swap and do whatever. But if people are interested and you live in the area of New York, Connecticut, Jersey, and you want to come out and see a cool house show, the best way to do that is to get in touch with me and and I'll give you my email. It's Gmallice M-A-L-L-A-S at Comcast.net, and you can reserve your spot. That's November 9th, House Show in Brewster, New York at uh 2 p.m. So if anybody's interested, you've liked what you heard about Eric so far, and um you know, it'll be a lot of fun. Yeah, there will not be free jazz, just so everybody knows. It won't be free jazz. It won't be free jazz, and it's not a free show. People have to donate.
SPEAKER_04Excellent. Can I also plug uh the Connecticut Hope Collective?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Uh the Connecticut Hope Collective is playing at the social for the benefit of the New London Connecticut Hospitality Center, uh, homeless hospitality center. And it's a free show with a suggested donation of$15, and we'll be passing the hat as well, trying to raise a bunch of money for all all their services.
SPEAKER_01That's cool. Yeah, it's it's great to give back, you know, and that's one of the reasons why I like to do house concerts because so many venues have closed since COVID, and uh the house shows are a great way for people to come and mingle and get to really know the the songwriters intimately.
SPEAKER_04I haven't done many of them and I'd like to do more of them. So if you're out there and you like what you hear my my you can reach me at uh Eric Rebasca on Instagram at E-R-I-K R A B A S C A and just send me a DM.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, and if you wanna if anybody's out there listening, you want to book Eric, now you know how to get a hold of him.
SPEAKER_04Thank you for allowing me to do the plug.
SPEAKER_01Well that's what we're supposed to do, you know. Um you know, we're out there so that we get our music heard and you know, we give people an idea of who we are. So why don't you give us another tune?
SPEAKER_04Sure, sure. Uh I think you've heard this one before, but this is as close as as I get to John Prime. This one's called Fooling Yourself.
SPEAKER_03I was bludging with stones, all the hideous news, crowded by the coverage of unpopular fools. I'm shaking a death, put on hold for some villies. In the depths of my dreams was a heavy fright. Crawling through my bed on a ponderous night, finding stolen limbo, clinging to a need to survive. Surviving it's crazy to stop Smell the roses, don't waste time. Yeah, perfect poses, whatever you're in, you'll know it when it's real you're in the different When you're only foolin' yourself You can think that you're really different But you're only fooling yourself Such a clever trick when you can't see the prison that's draining your blood So you can't catch a vision See deep inside before there can be a real change But change your mind and a change of heart Change can't happen without a true star Step over that line when you hear the sound of a gun And then you run like mad Don't go out to believe Without ever questioning the impact you leave And we're tryna get away from the monsters at our best if you think that you're really different You're only foolin' yourself If you think that you're really different But you're only foolin' yourself To get it started young Keeping up with the Joneses With the white picking fence and all its psychosis An attack of the heart just might leave some wisdom behind Children always want attention on to the things So we hover over them while we're tipping our dreams Avoidin' ourselves with distraction before we crash Crash from the hill ice, gnawing at our brains, we can double mean nicks for only seconds of pain It's never really worth all the pain we put ourselves through Andre you're really different You only foolin' yourself If you think that you're really different you're only fooling yourself It's so much harder to process when a lapse on the line When you're shutting down the sorrow of the painlifting style On unsteady shelf, it's chapters of past years It's time to go wanna get away from here, get away from being fodder of unrealized needs Maybe there's some peace to find past the next lending chain If you wanna make it stop, you gotta make it crumble. Some day in one's life, we gotta stop all our rumbling Cause every life story always ends the same And if you think that you're really different You're only foolin' yourself If you think that you're really different You're only fooling yourself You're only fooling yourself.
SPEAKER_01Eric Rebosca, everybody. That's a great song. Thank you, man. And it's so damn catchy.
SPEAKER_04It's it's fun to do. When I do it live, I really draw out the uh I I keep repeating the chorus at the end. We did this with the Connecticut Hope Collective and Frank Cartelli and Muddy Rivers from The Bargain join me on harmonies, and we just kept doing it over and over again. Everybody was singing and clapping along and having a good time with it.
SPEAKER_01It's good it's great to have a song like that that people can can sing along to. Yeah, yeah. It's dynamite. Well, I want to thank you for coming up. Thank you for having me. And um you know, this was a pleasure. I mean, I've known you for quite a while, and you know, I just love your love your stuff and uh appreciate it. But you gotta take us out with with one more song. Oh my. Can you what it what what do you got? You got another side? I got something. Yeah. Let's repeat just your your social media stuff again, your Instagram.
SPEAKER_04Sure. Uh at E-R-I-K-R-A-B-A-S-C-A. Eric Rabaska, all one word, all lowercase letter on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, fat uh Facebook. I was gonna say I don't know. Fat was it was I gonna say fat book? I don't know where that came from. It doesn't matter. Yeah, Eric Rabaska, I'm easy to find. Uh Eric with a K, not a C.
SPEAKER_01Eric with a right, Eric with a K. And I'll I guess I'll close it. Yeah, we I'm tricky like that. You are tricky like that. Absolutely. And again, you know, we're coming to you from the studios of WBXO in Hopewell Junction, New York. Again, our engineer, Hugh Curtin, doing a great job making you sound great. So again, uh, you know, thanks for coming up and take us out with a tune.
SPEAKER_04Okay, thanks, George, and thank you, Hugh. Thank you, WBXO. It's a real pleasure to be here. I'm gonna close out with a song called Try a Little Kindness.
SPEAKER_03When everything you know has been shaken up and torn down, and you feel like you're drowning when the world seems like it's falling deeper in disgrace. You feel your heart slowly hardening.
SPEAKER_02You gotta try, you gotta try, try, try, try, try a little canic.
SPEAKER_03Just try a little caniness When the horror of all this pain and old everywhere gets you down, eclipsing all beauty and sunrise when hatred and mistrust seems as if it's all around us. You can smile to your heart until you feel it soften.
SPEAKER_02Gotta try, you gotta try, try, try, try, try little can it just try a little cannabis Cause kindness never do it no wrong It's the only thing that we're capable of from the moment that we're born When you stand up top, even though you wanna lay down and cry in sorrow Yet still you walk towards that light and you reach Hatred and mistrust is all around us smile to your heart until you feel it soften You gotta try, you gotta try, try, try, try, try a little cannibals Yeah, just try a little kindness Will you gotta try you gotta try you gotta try you gotta try you gotta try you gotta try trying You gotta try you gotta try Tri Little
