Song Preservation Society: Keeping Singer-Songwriting Alive

Courtesy By Jake Rabeck

About fifty years ago, Bob Dylan sang his poetry over guitar chords with an honesty and simplicity that created the unmistakable singer-songwriter genre. In today’s music scene, too much emphasis has been placed on making music new and progressive while the simple beauty of lyrics and vocals is forgotten. That’s where the new acoustic trio, Song Preservation Society, comes in.

About fifty years ago, Bob Dylan sang his poetry over guitar chords with an honesty and simplicity that created the unmistakable singer-songwriter genre. In today’s music scene, too much emphasis has been placed on making music new and progressive while the simple beauty of lyrics and vocals is forgotten. That’s where the new acoustic trio, Song Preservation Society, comes in.

Band members Ethan Glazer, Trevor Bahnson, and Daniel Wright are best known for their emotive vocal harmonies, which are most often compared to Crosby Stills and Nash and The Beach Boys, and their expressive songwriting style which can be described as a cross between Simon and Garfunkel and Daniel Johnston. While the band can also be compared to contemporary folk bands such as the Mountain Goats and Fleet Foxes, their sound offers a genre in its own right.

As of late, the band has been busy preparing for their Southern California tour, scheduled for July 12-27, but was more than happy to talk about their music.

Glazer explained that after playing in a rock band, 7 Orange ABC, the members of Song Preservation Society realized that, “Not every song you write is good for a rock band. We started Song Preservation Society to preserve songs that we didn’t want to fall by the wayside…. We always like to have something important to say and we try to be as honest as we can in our lyrics.”

That honesty shines through in the music. Their songs sound like they were grown in the band’s organic garden in Berkeley, California. When you sink your teeth into one, you can taste all the tears and sweat that went into it, you can taste the soil of the land that grew it— it’s the purist thing in the world.

“We really care about this music and put ourselves into it. We hope it can have the same effect on other people that it has on us,” said Bahnson.

The band writes about what they know: their family, their friends, and the world they live in. Their lyrics are much like Elvis Costello’s in that they aren’t always lovey dovey— they can catch you in your superficiality and call you out on it. Like a Radiohead song, a Song Preservation Society song is a plea for sincerity in today’s busy and over-stimulating world.

“I’d say we go through cycles,” said Wright when asked who writes the music. “We write together sometimes too… we really accept everything that comes at us.”

Soft spoken and cynical Daniel Wright is from East Bay, California and once wrote and recorded an entire EP in one night. Ethan Glazer is a born entertainer and songwriter from Los Angeles, California who has loved the stage since childhood. Trevor Bahnson is from Santa Fe, New Mexico and is a die hard Neil Young fan who has just returned from an eight thousand mile cross country solo tour.

Wright and Glazer have known each other since their teen years and met Bahnson at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Bahnson had been living in Boston for three years and still hadn’t found any musicians he felt he could collaborate with. When his neighbor played him the first album of Wright’s band at the time, Daniel Wright’s World Collective, he was immediately enthused. Soon, 7 Orange ABC was created which included Bahnson, Wright, Glazer, and two other Berklee musicians, Haggai Milo and Mateo Lugo. The band moved together to Berkeley, CA where they lived and made music together for two years.

“I was just blown away by this new group of people that I’d found… everybody was doing stuff that I liked…it’s kind of like a little family,” said Bahnson.

One night in a small coffee shop, Wright, Glazer, and Bahnson preformed an acoustic set of 7 Orange ABC songs. It was immediately apparent to everyone there that they were on to something.  Once the three realized the potential of an acoustical project together, Song Preservation Society was born.

Since then, the band has toured northern and southern California, New York and played at the SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas. Their shows are more like a “big hang” than what you might typically expect from a musical performance. The band is fun to watch; audience members connect with the band on a personal level as well as on a musical one. You won’t find any superficiality at a Song Preservation Society performance or on their album.

“There are a lot of singer-songwriters on a smaller scale today,” said Bahnson, “but as far as pop music goes, it’s not quite as important as it used to be and hopefully we can change that a little bit.”

There’s also more to Song Preservation Society than simply good music, explains Glazer: “[When you write music], there’s a reason why you share it with everybody. There’s a reason why you’re trying to get as many people to hear it as you can – it’s communicating. Artists draw from personal experiences and share it with as many people as they can in hopes of creating some sort of connection, some sort of way that we can all relate to something, and feel it together, and experience it together— and that’s important.”

The next time you’re on a long drive, watching a sunset, or drinking a cold beer, pop in a Song Preservation Society CD or preview their music at www.songpreservationsociety.com and let them show you what songwriting is really all about, and more importantly, what it can do for your soul.

Contact the author by email at jakerabeck@hotmail.com.