Known for its waterfront community, Port Washington inspired local musician Sal Cataldi to record his first solo album, ‘‘Sketches of Spam,” on the water.
Using a laptop studio with ProTools, Cataldi, who’s lived at Tom’s Point Marina in Manorhaven for 11 years, said he was able to record right on his housebarge.
“The music was definitely influenced by living on the barge, the sounds that you hear, the birds, the dock lines creaking at night, the calming feeling of literally living on top of the water, got into the vibe of the instrumentals and the acoustic songs,” Cataldi said. “I also recorded two-thirds of the album right here, so I could just fire up the recorder and create whenever inspiration struck me.”
Cataldi said he was drawn to music from an early age as a way to express himself.
Cataldi said he moved to the housebarge, located at 1 Sagamore Hill Drive in Port Washington, to remain close to his children after a divorce.
“It was important to me since my father died when I was young to stay near my two kids and ex, so we could raise them together,” he said. “It was also a dream as I had seen and been on houseboats in Amsterdam and Paris, and thought it was an incredibly fun and romantic way to live.”
Additional recording, engineering and mastering of ‘‘Sketches of Spam“ was done at Parcheesi Recording Studios by Grammy-Award winning engineer Bob Stander (Hubert Sumlin, Patti Rothenberg), who also plays electric bass on two tracks.
Cataldi has been on 10 albums with other bands including, Hari Karaoke, Collector, Frank’s Museum and the guitar orchestra of Rhy Chatham “Live at Lincoln Center.”
Cataldi said that when he was working with other bands, covering rock, jazz and electronic music, he was also doing solo recordings at home, where he played all the instruments.
“I started Spaghetti Eastern Music as a vehicle where I could be a full solo act, performing live, pretty edgy instrumentals with the backing tracks I had recorded, and acoustic vocal songs that were totally different than the instrumentals,” he said. “The album has a lot of what I absorbed playing all the varied genres of music, it’s something that would document what I do, as both an instrumental player and a singer songwriter.”
Cataldi said this 16-track, 69-minute debut album is a journey through contrasting moods, with instrumentals inspired by 70’s Miles, Krautrock, Ennio Morricone, Bhangra, Fripp and Eno and ECM’s icy guitar great Terje Rypdal giving way to bare-bones acoustic vocal tunes.
“There’s been a lot of good response, I’m pretty delighted,” Cataldi said referring to the feedback he’s received.
Prior to Spaghetti Eastern Music, Cataldi performed and recorded with a host of notables in a number of genres, including the critically acclaimed Knitting Factory faves the Hari Karaoke Trio of Doom (an industrial/ambient jazz dub extravaganza co-led with drummer D. Hitchcock featuring Eno/Brand X bassist Percy Jones), the avant-jazz/Afro-funk band Collector, Brooklyn’s comedy rockers Frank’s Museum, Lower East Side mainstays the Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players and in the guitar orchestra of pioneering No Wave minimalist Rhys Chatham, on his “A Crimson Grail – Live at Lincoln Center” (Nonesuch Records, 2011).
Cataldi said he’s currently working on a second record to have completed sometime this year.
Cataldi will preform on July 15 at the Dolphin Cafe in Port Washington. Other performance dates include June 17 at the Bushwick Public House located at 288 Myrtle Ave in Brooklyn, June 18 at Gussy’s located at 20-14 29th Street in New York, and July 8 at KGB Bar Red Room Lounge located at 85 East 4th Street in New York. All shows are scheduled at 8 p.m.
His album is available at www.cdbaby.com/spaghettieasternmusic as well as on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify and Rhapsody.
