12 months of Inspiration

Bishop Allen is a Brooklyn, New York based indie band fronted by friends Christian Rudder and Justin Rice. After the release of their debut album “Charm School” in 2003, the band feared the sophomore slump. “We were having a really hard time adjusting to the mind-set of… we’re in a band,” Mr. Rudder said in a New York Times article. Their debut received relatively strong praise in the indie music community. But the rigors of a 16-month tour, playing small-town gigs sometimes for crowds fewer than a dozen people, wasn’t exactly inspiring their creativity or confidence. Then almost by accident the band sequestered themselves in an East Williamsburg rehearsal space for an experiment in musical inspiration.

Their experiment began in January 2006 shortly after Rice and Rudder started working on material for a second album. The two stumbled across a discarded piano and pushed it back to their Bay Ridge studio. Inspired by the sounds of the new instrument, they put their current work aside and started writing and recording all new songs. By the end of the month they had four songs written, recorded, and released as an EP called “January.” Inspired by the approach, the group committed to releasing a new four song EP every month for a year - that’s writing, recording, and releasing about one song a week.

The experiment did more than produce on EP a month of great music for an entire year — it inspired the band’s approach to making music. For example, each EP presented the opportunity to learn a new instrument, song structure, and lyrics. “A good way to write a song, for us, at least, is, we don’t know how to do something, let’s try to figure out how to do it,” Mr. Rice said, “how to play a certain instrument or use a certain rhythm.”

The group also found inspiration through collaboration with other artists — collaboration that in two instances led to new permanent members of Bishop Allen. Additionally, Rice used tangential tools for lyrical inspiration — essentially structuring song lyrics like a term-paper, researching topics from JFK’s assassination to existential essays by G.K. Chesterton.

The self-imposed one month deadlines also became liberating in a “skinned knees” type of way. “If something didn’t quite get out the way we wanted to in, say, March, we could say, “ ‘Well, we’ll just do something better in April,’ ” Mr. Rudder said.

The experiment was a success creatively and commercially. Creatively, the band inspired their approach to making music, learned how to play new instruments, and rebuilt their song writing approach. Commercially, the exposure helped them sign with a label, gave them exposure to movie directors, (and a role in the motion picture “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist”) as well as commercial produces, (and the inclusion of the single “Click, Click, Click, Click” as the soundtrack to a Sony commercial).

Bishop Allen’s was an ambitious project started out of creative frustration — how can you find inspiration in frustration, and challenge yourself daily?

*This week’s on-ramp was brought to you by Geof Hammond in our Richmond office.