It Meant Nothing
Album Lyrics and credits
She Meant Nothing to me
The Minotaur
What Will We Be
Midnight Moon
First Time
Waiting in The Sunlight
Artists
Process
It Meant Nothing began as a collaboration with my Dad, Jay Wentworth. He has been a poet and music lover for over 60 years but had never written song lyrics. He is one of the first people I bounce ideas off of because he is probably the most open minded, well read, and artistic person I know. When I started sharing music that I was making using analogue synths, drums and drum machines, Dad suggested that he try writing lyrics to some of my experiments. That process turned into a crash course on lyrics and songwriting for both of us. He tried writing to my compositions and I tried writing to his lyrics. Many early songs didn’t make the cut but after lots of trial and error, we made 5 songs together and with some encouragement, one more song for which I wrote both the lyrics and the music.
It turns out that I’m a closet romantic. All of the songs I gravitated towards are some type of love song; unrequited love, self love, first love etc. Although we are joining with the millions (billions?!) of other love songs in popular music, I think our songs have a unique point of view. I mean, how many love songs do you know written by one person born in 1939 and the other in 1981? The sonic world of the album is largely shaped by the Moog Matriarch, a semi-modular synth that has a seemingly infinite number of aural possibilities. It is built for exploration and due to Moog’s ingenious architecture, often the sounds turn into something far more compelling and complex than I could have imagined. The album is also hugely influenced by my love of popular music from The Beatles to Motown, Otis Redding to big 80’s bands, Bruce and Elton to D’Angelo, Bjork, Bon Iver and, yeah, Taylor Swift. As a student at a jazz conservatory, even when it wasn’t “cool” I’ve always listened to popular music as a guilty pleasure and now that I’m far removed from worrying about what is cool to listen to, I’ve had a blast creating our version of pop music.
It Meant Nothing is a 6 song EP featuring 4 superb singers: Melissa Reaves, Brian Chartrand, Rich Price and Greg Naughton. I played all of the drums, percussion and synths and brought in a bunch of other musicians who gave the album life with their artistry, Mike Bono, Dillon Condor and Tim Basom on guitars, Michael Bellar on Hammond and Piano, Rob Jost, Jeff Kerestes and Rion Wentworth on bass. The whole sound of the album was refined and balanced during mixing and mastering by Chris Boerner. The album art is by Caleb Nussear and album design is by Marielis Garcia.