The Lost Shores

The Lost Shores, the musical brainchild of Richard Aufrichtig, was brought to my attention by a friend of mine sometime in the beginning of November.

So far, The Lost Shores have released a few EPs and an LP entitled Green Leaves, all available as digital downloads from the Official Site. The music itself posseses a sound capable of evoking a range of memories, bringing to mind images of summer reluctantly giving way to autumn.

The first time I set foot in Brooklyn was the same night that I went to see The Lost Shores perform at Pete’s Candy Store. We were running a little late, arriving shortly after the show began so we took seats at the back of the room. The venue itself was incredibly cozy. It felt like a decked out subway car in shape and the lighting was reminiscent of a theater space and it was more than perfect for the intimacy of the performance.

I was beyond impressed with Aufrichtig’s style. The atmosphere was interactive with short bouts of conversation between songs and his presence was both captivating and endearing. Before playing a new song, Richard held up title cards with the name of each song in stenciled letters on them. There was a warmth in the room that all but made up for the bleakness outdoors and I welcomed the contrast.

The audience was very friendly; there were lots of smiles and soft giggling when jokes were made. Aufrichtig is reluctant to play covers. However, in honor of his older sister’s birthday, he covered a Bob Dylan song and reaffirmed the radiating sense of inclusion unique to his performance and uncharacteristic of the generally cliquey indie/folksy scene that Brooklyn is known for.

When we started running out of space inside the room, Richard invited some of the people to sit on the floor. It reminded me of a group of friends sitting around a bonfire and for a while I was all warm and fuzzy inside.

After the show, we all sat behind the venue in a sort of garden area talking about Richard’s time as an NYU Tisch student and various other music related things. I was very excited to speak to the man behind the music and he was very sweet and quite funny. He interviewed me a bit about my own background and I found it amusingly ironic as I should have probably taken the time to ask questions myself, but my common sense caught up with me after I returned to Manhattan.

If you met him, you would probably get sidetracked as well. He has a smile that’s capable of melting any heart, whether it’s made of muscle tissue or stainless steel, like mine, which is certainly a plus for any up and coming artist.

The performance was truly beautiful and it was a delight to allow myself to be carried away by the sounds and whims of The Lost Shores. A few of my favorites are I’ll Surround You, Highways and Stars and Island. Following his performance, I emailed him a few questions about the project.

On your official site, you describe The Lost Shores as both a musical and theatrical project. What do you mean by that?

The reason I began referring to the Lost Shores as a theatrical project and not just a band stems from the fact that I’m interested in what the concert is as a theatrical form. Just like a play in a theater, a concert happening on a stage tells a story – there are components that the performers and designers are in control of, but also things they’re not. There are limitations and rules that one eventually discovers.

The question that arises when I take the songs I write and bring them into a concert venue is how to best bring them alive in that specific context. I tend to think of the music I record, or if not think then at least approach it, differently than I do the version that I create to be played in front of an audience in a Williamsburg Bar or a Lower East Side club.

If I was playing the set of songs you saw at the Bowery Ballroom instead of Pete’s Candy Store, then there would be different considerations in the construction of that performance. Playing for 500 people is a different sort of event than playing for 30. Of course, it is easy to get bogged down in technical and theoretical thinking when I get started along this line. The thing I try to remember is that ultimately the question of a person writing a song and trying to bring it into a concert venue is the same as a creative team trying to bring a play into a theater:

How do we let this live in this space? How can we foster and create a moment of human connection, consideration and joy?

I tend to believe that theater — by which I suppose I may actually just mean live performance — is the holiest art form in that it has the capacity to bring people together and make them feel alive. The current Lost Shores show that I am performing as one man with a guitar is just one form, one incarnation of what I hope this band (or project) can be.

I have literally hundreds of other songs that I have written over the past few years that I would like to record and bring into the live setting that I don’t yet have the capacity to mount or that I think would require more than one musician on stage. I look forward to hopefully getting to do that.



Where do you usually get your inspiration?

That’s hard to say. I definitely try not to limit myself in terms of what might inspire me, because you never know what’s going to light the spark. I don’t just look to music for inspiration – in fact I’m much more likely to find inspiration in a work of visual art or a book or a walk through the woods or a city.

I’ve been thinking about inspiration lately as whatever makes it possible for me to orient my life around being able to take the time to create.

What sorts of elements are you interested in introducing to your performances later on?

While there are a few ideas I have for moments in shows I want to do in the future, it’s hard to say exactly what sort of elements I’d like to use in those performances. Probably the next step would be to begin collaborating with other musicians in the live setting. While there are certain songs that I really enjoy playing by myself, I find that setup is only suited to specific kinds of songs.

In terms of elements that would be introduced into those larger shows — lights, stage-settings and sound would definitely become a larger part of the conversation. It can be hard in a lot of the small venues in New York because there’s often so little that the performer is actually in control of or can really be prepared for.

You get to the venue and most of the time you don’t even get to have a soundcheck. The larger and more professional the venue, the more elements, like costumes and video screens, start to come into play, but you can definitely take that sort of thing too far. While I have some thoughts about how I’d like to harness those elements as a part of a future show, I think it would probably be dangerous to get too wrapped up in any “ideas” I have about them.

The way they’ll be used will come out of a collaboration with whomever I’m working and playing with at the time — and the material we’re performing. Whatever we choose to do, the hope and intention behind using any of those elements would be to allow the song to remain the center of what’s going on in the room.

If you’re in the NYC area, The Lost Shores will be playing at Pete’s Candy Store on November 22nd and 29th at 9:00 p.m. and at Pianos on the Lower East Side on January 2, 2012 at 8:00 p.m.

Check out the TheLostShores.com and follow them on Twitter or Vimeo. - YAM Magazine

Cozy Billyburg haunt Pete's Candy Store presents Richard Aufrichtig's mellifluous, woozy Lost Shores project, playing a monthlong Sunday residency in November. The series is titled Autumnal Festival: A Circus Celebration! and features special folksy guests - Time Out New York

Fitting snuggly within a loosely defined set of epic-minded solo troubadours is the solo project of Richard Aufrichtig, The Lost Shores. Constructing narratives from very personal material, tracks like 'Blue Skies in the Afternoon' and my fave 'I'll Surround You' from his full-length 'Green Leaves,' attach lush but simple folk arrangements under his heartbreaking tenor. A reluctant protagonist, you know Richard's never going to get everything he wants, but you'll find yourself rooting for him anyway.

See him on Sundays when he plays at his residency at Pete's Candy Store this month. - Mike Levine (@Goldnug - The Deli Magazine