Henning Ohlenbusch
Past bands include Humbert, The Aloha Steamtrain, The Greenbergs, and The Gay Potatoes.
Henning has been a touring player with Winterpills, Spouse, Chris Collingwood, Polaris, and Mark Mulcahy.
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Henning - I Want to Memorize Everything - CD
For years I've wanted to make a spare acoustic record. I've tried a number of times but because I am so enamored with the process of adding-more-stuff, I've always failed. Even back when I used to record everything with a cassette 4-track, I always had to bounce bounce bounce (that means add more tracks). My musical brain formed while listening intently to psychedelic, prog, new-wave, jangle rock, and singer-songwriter folk. It's very difficult to limit myself in the studio. But I managed to keep it all under 8 tracks with most songs having fewer.
I Want to Memorize Everything is nine songs long. It lasts about a half hour, just like the old Simon and Garfunkel albums that I memorized decades ago. It's my most vulnerable album. Because the instrumentation is limited, there is no place for my voice or my lyrics to hide. They're right out there for you to pick apart.
I think of it as a late autumn album, but I don’t know exactly why. A lot of music sounds like late autumn to me. Maybe it’s because I’ve always lived in New England where October bursts into colors and then November dulls everything into a grey and brown smudge, with pointy tree branches against cloudy skies. And that’s when we move inwards. Everybody starts drinking tea and writing novels about pilgrims, and listening to music that sounds like cracking pond-ice and crockpots.
I don’t want to go into detail explaining what each song is about. The interpretations are yours. I’m just so happy that you’re listening. Thank you, Henning.
Henning - Another Sleepless Nap - CD
2016 was a busy year for musician Henning. He’d just come off of touring with the band Polaris and it was time to release some new material. The band he plays lead guitar in, The Fawns, put out a record. His band, Gentle Hen, put out a new record of his songs. His alter ego, Turkey Andersen, released an EP of new family friendly songs. He produced and recorded a new album by Ray Mason. He released a single written about and for comedian Emo Philips. And finally, he released a new collection of songs under his own name.
Another Sleepless Nap is his latest in a long line of thoughtful, well-crafted, moving albums. Henning wrote, sang, played all the instruments, recorded, and produced the record. He even did the cover photography.
The nine songs on this record illustrate Henning’s ever maturing songwriting. The lead-off track “Untied States” is like a modern day take on the classic tune America by Simon and Garfunkel. It’s expression of isolation and disenfranchisement in lines like “We let the crazy people steal the conversation pit, there’s money to be made from a nation that’s been split” are countered with feelings of community and hope, “But we’re all in this together facing forward in our chairs, thinking only of mortality while hanging in the air.” It couldn’t have come at a more fitting time and is a soothing balm for this political climate. It was just voted #34 on WRSI’s songs of 2016!This album also provides a home for the much beloved single “Maybe I’m Not Meant to Do Anything Remarkable After All”, which was treated to a year-long multi-video project by local filmmaker Jason Mazzotta.
The other 7 songs on the record roller-coaster between stark piano ballads, poppy synthesizer pieces, and personal acoustic guitar driven numbers. There is no filler here.
Track Listing:
- Untied States - 04:02
- Unaffected - 03:16
- Service Industry Stars - 02:28
- Supposed to Be Close to Me - 03:48
- You'll Take This Too - 03:08
- I Will Always Root for You - 03:33
- Maybe I'm Not Meant to Do Anything Remarkable After All - 04:25
- Stop Taking My Friends - 02:38
- I Don't Know If I've Got What It Takes Anymore - 03:12
Henning Ohlenbusch - Henning Goes To The Movies - CD
Like everything in life, movies are experience differently by each viewer. On this record, I tried to express in music how these nine films impacted me personally/ at the outset, I established one rule. I was not allowed to revisit a film until I composed and recorded the song that it inspired me to write. In this way, I hope that each piece genuinely conveys the ways in which each movie has stuck with me throughout the years. I hope you enjoy the album.
Henning Ohlenbusch - Looks Like I'm Tall - CD
"For about four or five years now, I've been playing Henning's songs for people and saying they were my own. Please don't tell him that. Brief, romantic, and simple in a why-didn't-I-think-of-that way, his stories and melodies touch people without resorting to attitude or pretense. If his name weren't so hard to pronounce, he'd be Yngwie Malmsteen by now." -- Chris Collingwood (Fountains of Wayne)
You wouldn’t necessarily call a friend to come over to hang out with you as you sort, fold, and put away the laundry. Similarly, it’s difficult to read a magazine while you do the dishes. So you slap an album on the CD player. But you’re not looking for “Moondance,” which you know by heart, nor is this the time to put on the new Belle & Sebastian album to decode for the first time - what you need is an old friend who will speak to you as he sings, engaging your mind and heart at the same time. Every time one listens to Henning’s "Looks Like I’m Tall," it reveals another shade, it grows a new leaf, it sheds a tear through a sung sigh.
Although gifted with a talented, expressive backing band in School for the Dead, Henning set aside this collection of songs to form a solo album in every sense. Over 2005, in his home studio, Henning by his tall lonesome penned lyrics, composed tunes, arranged and then played all instrumentation, devised and crooned harmonies, moved the amps, pressed all the buttons, and took out the trash.
From the sprightly opener “But We Did,” a feast of gurgly synths surfing across a tasty banquet of hooks to the closer, “It’s Now,” which is marked by a sadly lilting recorder line in the intro and a pluvial cascade of plucked strings announcing the pensively sweet chorus, Henning broadens his palette with a set of reflective songs set to contemplative moods presented by his solitary muse.
Herein you’ll also find “Held His Gaze,” which is the most fully realized distillation of Paul Simon’s considerable influence upon Henning’s writing, but after one or two listens, the tune eases into your consciousness as one of Henning’s own best. The title track and “This Nightly Progression” both express Henning’s mixed feelings about his place in the independent music world.Lyrics are married to latchkey melodies, then lovingly swaddled in majestic prisms of instrumentation and harmonies. Looks like I’m tall, smells like teen spirit, feel like makin’ love, sounds like we have a winner. And we do. Taste the victory.
Track Listing:
- But We Did - 03:02
- Short - 01:06
- Looks Like I'm Tall - 04:31
- Held His Gaze - 03:28
- A Machine To Break Your Heart - 03:36
- Carnival - 02:43
- The Center Of Time - 04:00
- 20,000 Dollars - 04:29
- Nightly Progression - 04:34
- Stereo Glow - 02:19
- It's Now -04:38
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