A Man on a Mission

Michael Friedmann and his music

“I don’t know how to talk about this song – it’s abstract to me.” Singer-songwriter Michael Friedmann is puzzling over “Lizard Man”, a track on his debut CD, Stuck in Samsara (Feb., 2010). “I wrote the damn thing”, he chuckles, “but I’m not exactly sure what the guy is saying.” The song in question speaks of a marginalized individual, living in the shadows, on the eerie edge of society, watching but never committing:

I’m a man on a mission
Just you see if you can get away tonight
There’s no point in contrition
The lizard man slips out of sight

Hearing Michael Friedmann talk about the songs he has written over the last decade and a half, one gets the feeling that he’s as mystified as anyone by the stories, the characters and the sometimes painful feelings and loneliness they depict. He wrote, recorded and performs these songs, but he’s unsure of where they come from, or at times how to talk about them. Marginalization, alienation and disillusionment are common themes in Friedmann’s songwriting. With Stuck in Samsara, he puts it all on the line, laying bare the emotional bones of a sometimes painful life as a writer and working musician, and inviting listeners to accept his songs’ sometimes seedy cast of characters on whatever terms work for them. It’s a new and risky path for Friedmann, whose twenty-plus years in the music business have taken him from New England to Tucson, from blues to jazz, from pop to opera and folk, from the classroom to the stage and now to the recording studio.

With a decades-long passion for putting his thoughts on paper, he finds discipline, freedom and catharsis in the writing process. “Writing music requires a certain mental space, giving yourself permission to do it. If you feel like the next thing you write will be set in stone, you’ll never finish it.” So, to keep the creative juices flowing, he jots ideas – in all stages of refinement – in notebooks, on napkins and other odd scraps of paper, “…keeping it in books and file folders, all kinds of things”, he notes. “Sometimes things that are awful at first, you work with them, and it can become really good material.”

Good musical material is something Michael Friedmann knows a thing or two about. A guitarist since his early years, he has studied the masters, across musical and cultural boundaries others might find intimidating. To Friedmann, broken boundaries are a source of inspiration, even liberation. On Stuck in Samsara – primarily a “folk/pop” collection of songs – the pervasive jazz harmonies and jazz guitar soloing techniques reveal Friedmann’s years of performance and jazz studies at the University of Arizona School of Music, where he worked closely with renowned jazz performer/educator Jeff Haskell. Along the way, Michael shared the stage with a veritable “who’s who” of musical veterans – L.A. studio percussionist/vibraphonist Emil Richards, legendary jazz flutist Paul Horn, pop icon Linda Ronstadt and others, as well as just about anybody who’s anybody in the southern Arizona jazz scene. And years of focused listening to jazz guitarists like Pat Metheny, Joe Pass, Wes Montgomery and George Benson also inform and animate his expressive guitar lines. But Friedmann’s musical influences are broader than jazz alone. He credits his childhood exposure to the Beatles – along with a love of pop/rock/blues artists like Billy Joel, Stevie Ray Vaughn and the quirky ‘90’s rock band Dada – with playing a role in the music he now creates. And then, there’s J.S. Bach, who he mentions almost off-handedly, but knowledgeably, in conversation. “Bach is so captivating, how he’s always reminding you of something else, something more intricate, something darker that’s always within him.”

And how would Michael Friedmann describe his own sound, the feel and spirit captured on the songs of Stuck in Samsara? “I envision it as pop music like a jazz musician would play it.” An apt description indeed, and the music reflects this aim in myriad and surprising ways, combining folksy pop-oriented feels with more musically challenging elements that take the listener to at-times unfamiliar territory. But he was also aiming for a listener-friendliness, an unpretentiousness that spoke authentically about where he is as a musician. “I wanted the CD to sound like a guy and his guitar, how you’d hear it on a stage.” The recording does that, and it takes the music much further. Friedmann’s voice and guitar, plus occasional keyboards he also laid down, are deftly supported by Tucson percussionist Paul Marcek on drum set, playing primarily with brushes for an understated yet assertive effect. After assembling and editing the tracks in his home, Friedmann called on Tucson studio pro Mike Levy to mix and master the recording. Thomas Friedmann (Michael’s brother) created the album’s layout and design, incorporating edgy photography taken by Michael, and creating a package that lures the listener into the work as an artistic whole.

His years at UA have also exposed him to the study of Aikido, Tae kwon do, and Buddhism. From these, he’s learned about focus, discipline and the achievement of meditative states. “The Zen aspect of meditation through action”, he says, “that’s much more my path. Playing music can be a meditation. Or hitting a tennis ball, exercise, a conversation, the martial arts. Losing the self…no mind.” The CD’s title, Stuck in Samsara, in fact, makes direct reference to the concept of the Buddhist wheel of suffering, the never-ending cycle of birth, death and rebirth, a central tenet of the eastern philosophy. It’s an outlook that’s reflected – lyrically and sonically – in many of the recording’s tracks. Case in point: “Love is Suicide”:

Lovely guillotine,
Lovely hand grenade.
Fail me not today
Grisly outcome notwithstanding
‘Cause love is suicide

“In this song, I use metaphor a bit more bluntly than some listeners might be used to”, the songwriter cautions. “There’s a tendency for people to be literal about my writing, which always takes me by surprise.” In “Van Buren, 3 a.m.”, Friedmann paints a picture of another seemingly desperate loner, or as he puts it “a rather seedy character, who can’t seem to figure out anywhere better to be, even though the place he’s in has been creeping him out for hours”. He laughs at the character’s predicament: “You think he’d just go somewhere else!”. But, Michael Friedmann’s songs also convey a sense of hope – maybe even inspiration – as well.

The penultimate track, “Stuck in Samsara”, in spite of its fatalistic title, offers a prescription for guarded optimism that may just work for many in his audience:

The demons in your head
The monsters in your bed
They’re swirling down the drain, still pulsing through my veins
It’s time to let them go

Michael Friedmann’s debut release, Stuck in Samsara – with its plaintive vocals, haunting lyrics, surprising harmonic twists and jazz-saturated solos – presents the songwriter’s inner life in risky and revealing ways, and stares unflinchingly at some of life’s less savory moments – the bitterness of relationships, of disillusionment, of yearning and alienation. But he is, in the end, a man on a mission – and a reassuring, life-affirming one at that. “If I had to give it a word”, Michael Friedmann says with a tentative smile, “it would be equanimity. The thing just keeps spinning around.” *****