Last weekend, Jake Armerding was scheduled to perform songs from his new album, Cosmos in the Chaos, at Club Passim in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Tickets sold out before the show, but storm Nemo had other plans (chaos, namely).
Even though the concert was canceled, we didn’t let it stop us from getting to know Armerding a little better. Somewhere between Boston and Alexandria, Virginia, he took the time to chat with us via email.
Armerding’s music has largely been influenced by the bluegrass that his father, Taylor Armerding (co-founder of the band Northern Lights), regularly exposed him to growing up. Today, the Boston native calls his own music “organic,“ as he and fellow musicians including Bela Fleck, Josh Ritter, Toad the Wet Sprocket, and David Wilcox play with “no pitch correction…no nothing.”
Armerding’s latest album, Cosmos, will release this month. Armerding tells us that the album was built one song at a time, one month at a time. He explains that the new album “was different from any I had made before; my subscription base of fans was funding the record song by song, so I had a freedom in writing the material that I had never been blessed with before. I was able to explore techniques of writing and recording I’d never before had the means to.”
“Because of this, these songs were more adventurous and ambitious, and I feel they’re the best I’ve ever done.” Our only hope is to catch these songs live next time Armerding’s in town, blizzard or no blizzard.
