100 Cheap Suggestions

After San Francisco power pop trio Henry Miller Sextet had finished a seven-year run, which included three full-length albums and three EP’s, bass player Chris Lanier had collected a few songs. Some of these songs were brand new and others needed to be dusted off a bit. As he sat down to try and record strictly by himself he kept hearing the influences of friends and former band mates in bits and pieces of every song. So, he called them up and asked them donate a track or two…..easy right? Yes! Instead of doing the traditional process of coaching the people playing to capture what he heard in his head he decided to not coach at all. He gave them only a click and an acoustic guitar track and asked them to put down what THEY heard. The only rule that he followed was to give each player one session and what ever came out of it was what he was going to use. So what started out as a “solo” project pretty much ended up the opposite. He gave up complete control and invested all his trust in his friends and the sounds that came out of that experiment are 100 Cheap Suggestions. Interestingly enough, he named the project before asking for any musical suggestions. The next step is to bring the songs to life…….stay tuned.