Nearly 200 years after 19th century poet and newspaper publisher William Cullen Bryant looked out at Roslyn Harbor from his Cedarmere estate and became inspired to write his famous poetry, Long Island-based alternative rock band NGHBRS moved into Bryant’s former home to write and record their debut album.
“I started reading his poetry and it was all affected by the way he maintained the grounds and interacted with nature,” said Ian Kenny, the band’s lead singer and keyboardist. “His poetry was all about how our bodies all come back to the earth and nature, and every window has a view overlooking the garden or the harbor. Just to get out and be in a new environment inspired us and inspired the outcome of the music.”
The album, called “Twenty One Rooms” and available July 16 on Paper + Plastick Records, is the follow-up to the band’s 2010 E.P. “Hellomind,” which earned NGHBRS praise in the New York Times as well as from industry publications like Alternative Press magazine and AbsolutePunk.com as one of 2013’s “bands to watch.”
Like “Hellomind,” “Twenty-One Rooms” was produced by Bryan Russell and Dan Gluszak, drummer for the mid-2000s Long Island pop-punk outfit Envy On The Coast.
While “Hellomind” was recorded out of Gluszak’s Hicksville studio, the duo had different plans for NGHBRS this time around.
The two suggested the band record “Twenty One Rooms” live, without separately tracking each individual instrument for mixing later, as is common practice today, and get out of the studio entirely and find a place to record that could bring out the most in their artistic abilities.
“I’ve made records in Denmark, in [Las] Vegas and on Long Island. It’s always more inspiring to make a record wherever you feel inspired instead of being forced to make a record where the equipment lives,” Russell said. “That way I can say to a band, ‘I’ve got the gear, let’s find a place where we’re inspired and let’s do it there, wherever it is.’”
Kenny said the band looked into recording at Woodstock and in the Hamptons, but a family friend led them to Cedarmere, where they obtained a noise permit and signed a liability waiver for damages and then spent five days setting up Russell’s recording equipment.
“We kind of stumbled across Cedarmere because Nassau County had taken it over and they wanted to keep kids off the property. But after we found out the history of the house, that really affected how the record turned out,” said Kenny, 23.
Bryant made his fortune as a partial owner of the New York Evening Post – the precursor to the New York Post – after starting at the newspaper as a writer and working his way into the editor-in-chief role by the late 1820s. In 1843, Bryant purchased 40 acres of property in what is now known as Roslyn Harbor, which had expanded to approximately 200 acres by the time he died in 1878.
In 1994, the Nassau County Parks Department opened the site’s main house as the Cedarmere Museum, in commemoration of the bicentennial of Bryant’s birth. But since its close in 2008, the grounds had been neglected and often vandalized, and the activist group Friends of Cedarmere have pushed for the property’s restoration.
The band moved into Cedarmere at the beginning of October and stayed through the end of November, writing and recording for two months without television or Internet access. Kenny said the house served as a sanctuary for family members who lost power during Superstorm Sandy and stopped by to shower and keep warm. The Bryant estate did not incur any damage or flooding as a result of the storm, and Kenny said the house only lost power after the so-called “Frankenstorm” blizzard that occurred around Halloween.
“Cedarmere held strong throughout that whole thing, so we were super lucky,” Kenny said.
The band kept to the side of the house that had once served as Cedarmere’s museum, out of which the “Twenty One Rooms” name originated, Kenny said.
On that side of the house, in a large “great hall” room, the band set up its drum kit. The band slept in one of the larger guest rooms in the house and powered their equipment from the estate’s electrical source in the basement, setting up a control room on the second floor.
The band set up guitar and bass amplifiers in adjacent rooms to bring out the chemistry between drummer Jordan Schneider, guitarist Tommy Fleischmann and bassist Eric Vivelo that Russell said was crucial in capturing the album’s live feel.
“You want people to be able to look at each other but you have to make sure things don’t bleed over as you’re making the record,” Russell said. “But we didn’t have too many major struggles to overcome and used creative problem-solving to get around any obstacles we ran into.”
Kenny took his position two floors up in a room once used as a kitchen area, overlooking the harbor, where the band set up a vocal booth and keyboard.
“That was good because we were able to record everything live but also be able to seclude everything to get the tones we wanted and be versatile with our sound,” Kenny said.
The resulting sound, Russell said, is one that is darker and more mature and identifiable than was heard on “Hellomind,” the sound of a band “capable of the roles they play and how they can figure that out.”
“We didn’t want to polish it too much, we didn’t want to overprotect it, and things that were off a lot of the time we wanted to bring forward,” Russell said. “It used to be the kind of thing that you could only make a record as good as you could play, but now a band can perfect anything they want to do. We wanted the imperfection to shine through to prove that this is a live performance, and it highlights how good the playing is because the imperfections prove that it’s real.”
The album’s darkness came from the other side of the house, which Kenny said was in the process of renovation and “very creepy to say the least, so we stuck to the positive side of the house where the energy was more positive.”
Throughout the recording process, the band met with people stopping by the grounds or in the village, including members of the Friends of Cedarmere who planted a tree and held a poetry reading for the Nov. 3 anniversary of Bryant’s birthday.
Others warned the band about the house’s sinister, supernatural history.
“We had some kids who came to the window and asked us to come out, then said, ‘You’re living there? So-and-so killed himself there.’ We did some research and there were a few online forums that said that, too,” Kenny said. “There were definitely a few creaks and a few noises that went unclaimed, but nothing super-supernatural. But you definitely didn’t want to be on the other side of the house by yourself.”
Despite a darker sound than is showcased on “Hellomind,” Kenny said he thinks the album’s subject matter, which he described as being about the “overwhelmingly positive triumph over adversity and looking at things from a new perspective,” came as a result of Bryant’s poetry and the death of his friend Jay Rizzuto in January 2012.
“I scrapped a lot of the lyrics I had written and just let the house take control,” Kenny said. Reading Bryant’s poetry about death and nature really changed my mindset. It opened my eyes to life after death and the path in which we take.”
The band will celebrate the album’s release with a show on July 19 at Amityville’s Revolution Bar and Music Hall, and Kenny said the band’s experience at Cedarmere was so positive, he can’t picture the band recording in a studio setting again.
“We weren’t limited by any means during this process,” Kenny said. “We did a lot of different things and got what we wanted for each part, but the unifying part was the house, and it really paid off and made everything really cohesive.”
