As well as finalizing The Small Change Diaries second album “Lullabies for Cynics” due for release November 3rd, as Nick Cody, I’m starting to put in place a number of side projects. These will unfold in 2018 and 2019 with a focus on expanding sonic horizons. Some of these will be with “SCD fractions” and I’m keen to use “the King Crimson model” where alongside the full band there are smaller band units that work up material. The reason for this is to maintain creative momentum and also to explore other musical dimensions.
My plan is to release a series of EPs that showcase different musical explorations and these will be quite diverse and probably a bit of a surprise to some people.
The Small Change Diaries is a long term project and “The Small Change Diaries universe” is not just about the music, it incorporates other mediums like movie shorts. In 2017 ts obvious to me that there is a danger of artists becoming pigeonholed into very niche mediums and of course in the ukulele world this is not uncommon. SCD is not in my view a stereotypical ukulele band a point noted by both Phil Doleman and Ben Rouse in reviewing the “Adam Blames Eve” album. Martin Simpson also commented “You don’t sound like anyone else” which I take as the highest comment. SCD is not “The Nick Cody band” but rather four distinct musicians that create the whole.
The move to greater sonic exploration also includes incorporating new instruments and artists. This adds a very different sonic dimension to the mix, both literally and metaphorically. One of these instruments is a Gibson A50 wide body mandolin from 1937 which I recently acquired. This was previously owned by Martin Carthy and is very different to anything else I have played to date. My good friend Doug O’Brien commented “But you don’t like mandolins!” This is not strictly true, a more accurate version is that to date I have never warmed to them despite many attempts. The Gibson changed this view and I already have the basis for a track around this wonderful instrument.
I have never considered myself to be “a ukulele player” rather someone who plays (and loves) the ukulele, alongside many other instruments including mandola, walking bass dulcimer, electric and acoustic guitar, national reso uke and dobro. I don’t claim to be a virtuoso on any of these, they simply support my musical intentions as a songwriter. The OUS project will continue, but I’m going to change aspects of that in 2017/2018 so it remains creatively interesting and more diverse. In recent times I have become more aware of ensuring the best use of time and energy and this has given me great pause for considering which projects and who I want to be most associated with in the musical realm. I think such reviews are healthy and I’m excited about the new changes ahead.
Expanding sonic horizons makes playing and recording far more interesting to me personally. The exploration is for the love of music and inevitably some will like what results and some definitely won’t. All such sonic explorations will involved creating more original music and certainly a lot (but not all) of it will be lyric based. I plan to start recording over the next few months, but the EPs won’t appear until 2018. I’ll be trialing some of the new solo material in Japan this July to gauge audience response.
