Search - Allan Comeau :: Life Is in Session

For Allan Comeau the stuff of songs are the found objects of life s experience. A homeless man there one day and gone the next; a chance conversation with a producer about a play about a family s loss of their son in Iraq; attending his son s performance as Luke in the Wizard of Oz, hearing Dorothy s parting words, over and over again; sitting next to a mental health director talking about some things that everybody needs, and so on these are the types of things that fuel and then ignite a singular and compelling creative urge to write, sing and record what are now the songs in this debut, but long overdue music project. A practicing clinical psychologist and psychotherapist for the past thirty years, Comeau is an assistant clinical professor of psychology at the Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Between his practice and his teaching, for the past seven years he has also written a syndicated mental health column, Your Mind Matters, which he is presently editing into a book, presently titled, How to Change Your Mind. A guitarist since childhood, his singer-songwriter persona has only recently appeared. Comeau s songs are distillations of personal experience, growing up a young victim of the last US polio epidemic and coming from the same town that gave us colonial hero, Hannah Dustin, transcendental poet John Greenleaf Whittier, Archie Comics creator Bob Montana, and heavy metal guitarist and filmmaker, Rob Zombie. With that kind of cultural background, he says, anything is possible. Comeau speaks to the heart and mind with themes of compassion, social justice, reconciliation, and yet still at times, with a sense of outright silliness and abundant good fun. Everything changes; he says and has printed on his business card, when you see everything as an opportunity for some good. His music, his health writing and his clinical work all consistently reflect that theme. Although the project started out as a solo adventure, as the story and the songs unfolded, others joined Allan in his quest. Loni Specter, a long-time journeyman member of the LA music scene was there at the start as co-producer and co-writer of most of the songs on the CD. Former Frank Zappa bassman, guitar hero and friend, Arthur Barrow s studio became Session Central, as each of the songs were painstakingly laid out, recreated and recorded in his vintage, Lotek Studios in Venice, CA. Barrow s bass guitar moves from haunting to popping, as his steady riffs provide vital momentum and pacing for each of the songs. His use of the fretless bass on Best Man is uncanny. Barrow, who composes for silent films as a sideline, also plays keyboards and lead guitar in several of the songs. Session percussionists Joseph McDonald who flew in from New York for the session and LA-based Mel Lee provide not only the beat, but also speak out as voices conveying in rhythm the messages that are typically reserved only for words. Master keyboardist, Leonard Krubsack adds everything from the honky-tonk to the classical in his performances of You Can t Catch Me, and O Katrina, for example. Psychologist in his day job, Evan Shapiro plays a masterful set of lead fills on Comeau s covers of Chuck Berry s The Promised Land and Leonard Cohen s Hallelujah. Specter adds a signature lead solo to Sin to Be Saved and sings back-up on several songs, along with Rox Diamond frontman, Paul Daniels, Moira Marquis (who did the mastering at her own Mo s Garage ,) Patty Fiden, Johnny Szmyd (who will accompany Comeau in some of his live performances) and a then ten year old Julian Comeau. Psychiatrist and long-time friend, Allen Chroman added his banjo flavor to No Place Like Home, and several tracks saved for the next release. Comeau is presently working on his second CD, tentatively titled, Paradise: Lost and Found.