Photo: Frankie Cavone
Glass Pony has been one of the Capital Region acts to made the best of their time during the pandemic to come out on top utilizing their energy to put together their second album Nowhere Daydream. The album pushed the group’s creative abilities helping them grow a diverse collection of music.
This year, the group comprised of Eddie Hotaling, Chanda Dewey, Jeff Picarazzi and Greg Pittz have wasted no time and are already back in the studio prepping the release of their next album. Glass Pony also has a big show coming up with Laura Leigh Band at Parish Public House this Friday, February 10th, marking the band’s first time back since the first half of 2022. Read our full interview with band members Greg Pittz and Eddie Hotaling below:
It looks like you guys ended 2022 on a creative note by doing some recording at White Lake Music! Is there anything you guys would like to share about that?
Greg Pittz: Yeah dude, it was so awesome! It’s funny, when we went in there to do our 3 days that we won from the Nippertown 2021 March Music Madness back at the end of August, we discovered that the engineer is Brett Portzer, who produced some of the biggest Albany metal albums ever – he even did an EP/demo for my own high school band Angeldeath! I love experiencing those big full-circle moments. Those are the kinds of things I live for and think are so cool.
Anyway, getting back to Glass Pony, Brett is so awesome, and we love working with him. He’s amazingly intuitive, and it’s so funny – we’ll be discussing something about a take, whether we want to fix something or adjust something or whatever, and as soon as we finally get our thoughts together, we’ll ask “Hey Brett, can you….” and he’ll go “Yeah you mean this?” And he’ll play exactly what we were going to ask him to try. It’s wild. He just has this amazing intuitive sense of distilling what we’re all discussing and trying to achieve, and is always a step ahead of us that way. He listens to our discussions, so that as soon as we’re finally ready to ask, he’s got whatever it is ready to go. He’s a wizard. It’s so much fun, I can’t say enough awesome things about him and the whole crew from White Lake Music and Post. It feels like a 2nd home now. Will from El Modernist works there too! So it’s like going to work with all your friends. It’s the greatest feeling.
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But to summarize, we tracked a couple songs in August/Sept, and went back in just before Christmas for 3 days and knocked out the basics for 6 more. We’ve since begun finishing vocals and harmonies, and we have keyboards and some last guitar overdub work to do next. This collection of songs will become the 3rd Glass Pony album, and some of you may have already been given a sneak preview of one of them! It’s funny, I thought Nowhere Daydream would be impossible to replicate as far as quality of the material, but I feel very proud of this batch of tunes we’ve put together. The songs are awesome, the sound is awesome, and we’re very excited to get this out to you all. It’s going to crush!
What have been some of the biggest things you’ve learned during these initial years as an act?
GP: There is no quick way to the top. This business is hard work, and there’s a lot of competition. But it’s also incredibly fun, and you have to enjoy the moments of unexpected joy when they show up. You meet a lot of fantastic people, and the biggest thing for me personally is that it shows how truly powerful music is as a force for bringing people together. There’s so many folks who’ve become cherished parts of my life that we wouldn’t see or know if not for the band.
We really admire your choice to cover “Blackberry Brandy” at some of your live shows, it is so cool to see you guys tip a nod to what has come before and honoring the SeaPods at the same time.
GP: Yeah man, thank you! When we were starting out, Tom Pirozzi suggested that we do that song. It’s so much fun to play and has lent itself to some of our best jams. It’s a very reliable vehicle for us, and it affords us a great way to explore the rest of our catalog by serving as a segue vehicle into other songs. There’s a version of us playing it at The Monopole on YouTube that I’m particularly fond of, and if you can find the version from Swifty’s in 2019 with Matt Richards on keyboards, that’s one of my all-time favorite segments of music we’ve done. Big shout out to Mark Rukwid for holding his phone up for 28 minutes of “Blackberry” -> “Hypnos”. What a legend!
It great to see you guys making trips up to Vermont and outside the Capital Region to play shows. What do you enjoy about playing to a new crowd, or even seeing someone singing along to your songs outside of the market?
GP: For me, it’s the sense of adventure and meeting new people. I love going to new places, and it gives me a little taste of my childhood dream to be a touring, professional musician. We all have full-time jobs and whatnot, so we aren’t really able to go out on the road for crazy amounts of time, but we’ve gotten some regular stops under our belt such as The Monopole in Plattsburgh and the Black Oak Tavern in Oneonta. It’s always great when we go to the Monopole and Ralphie is there screaming for “Daydream”. There’s something magical about being in a new place for only a short while, where the experience is happening and you’re either there to be part of it, or you aren’t.
With some time having now passed since your latest record “Nowhere Daydream”, what are some of the band’s favorite songs collectively?
GP: Oh man, that’s tough. That’s really tough. I’m particularly fond of how “Nowhere Day” came out on the record, as well as “Lunar Flare” and “St. Atocaster”. We don’t get to play the slower, spacey songs much on stage but they really shine on the record, thanks in large part to Matt Richards’ contributions again. As far as the stage, they’re all fun in their own way. Something Good is always fun to play, the ending is always a big pile of crazy energy that ends the show properly and provides a good springboard for whatever insanity Eddie has up his sleeve for us if he starts meowing. I also feel particularly proud of how “Daydream” came out on the record. It’s beautiful and melodic, and Matt’s keyboard work really helps elevate everything. Overall, though, I really love this collection of songs because I feel like they successfully merge all of our influences into a cool, weird thing – indie jam grooves with big post-rock atmospherics and classic rock energy.
Who are some up and coming acts you guys are hyped on?
Eddie Hotaling: Definitely check out The E-Block and Grape Juice. They’re two young bands in the area making some really cool music!
GP: I always love seeing what the Hilltop guys are up to. They’re not new, but they’re great friends of ours and I always love when there’s new stuff from them to check out.
How many Phish shows has the band been to together, all totaled up? My guess is 600
EH: Never enough, haha but I’m stuck at 50 right now.
GP: Jeff probably gets us about halfway there by himself! I think I’m with Eddie, right around 50 or so. It’s an expensive venture now, and being on the road with Glass Pony has meant that our own personal concern attendance has shrunk dramatically the last few years. But that’s the trade-off of being in a band, and I finally saw my first Phish show in almost 4 years this summer at Hartford. It was hot!
Were there any songs that you feel pushed your boundaries and challenged your creativity?
GP: The first thing that comes to mind is Mortimer, which has become a crowd favorite. Jeff has a heavy jazz background, but none of us do, and I’m thankful he steered us into that world a bit because it’s just not something the rest of us have in our background and skill-set or knowledge base. It reminds me of Bill Kreutzmann from the Dead talking about playing a ballad, though. He said they are the hardest songs to play, because you have to completely let go. So, I would say also songs like “Nowhere Day” and “St. Atocaster” because being delicate and soft while still being powerful is a tough thing, and it’s hard to land a slow, tender song in a club sometimes because you have that club energy of wanting to play fast and make people dance. But when they do land, it’s fantastic. That’s an ever-evolving skill as a musician, reading the room and taking appropriate risks with the setlist.
What do the fans have to look forward to from Glass Pony in 2023?
EH: Keep an eye out for the new studio album, we’re hoping to have it done around late spring/early summer. Besides that, we’ve got new originals and covers that we’ll be adding into the rotation for our live shows. We’ve also been working on a video series called “Behind The Song” where we dive into details about a certain song with interesting stories about things like the inspiration behind it, how we produced the studio version, noteable live versions and other things like that. It’s been fun and we have a lot more of those coming as well as other types of high quality streaming content.
Is there anything that you would like to plug?
GP: Our next show is Friday, February 10th with the Laura Leigh Band at Parish Public House in Albany, and we can’t wait. It’s going to be fantastic! Beyond that, we have a new series of live albums we’re dropping on Bandcamp at pay-what-you-want pricing. Studio time and playing music is an expensive endeavor, and any support from our fans is tremendously helpful in offsetting the costs to bring these recordings and songs to life for you. So, make sure you check out our Bandcamp and subscribe to our Youtube page to see the Behind the Song series Eddie mentioned Big thanks to Zak Radick for the live album artwork, too. Every time we play a Wilco cover, it’s for him. Nowhere Daydream is still available on all of your streaming platforms, visit our website to be directed to your preferred destination!
