Search - Greg Newman :: The Cuts You Said Were Good

Fleeing housing projects, bill collectors, and bad decisions in the Midwest with his parents and siblings, Greg Newman ultimately ended up in San Diego as a teenager. His struggling family needed a roommate to help cover the rent, so his household included a local musician who found Greg a used guitar at a local swap meet. Having no interest in music at the time, Greg removed the three bottom strings of the guitar and realized that it made a great prop for shoplifting from a local liquor store. Candy bars, beef jerky, and adult magazines were easily stuffed into the sound hole under the nose of the oblivious college-aged clerk, and his love of music was instantly fueled. Over time, Greg realized that he enjoyed the guitar more when it had all six strings, and that he had a real talent for crafting songs out of thin air on this guitar, as well as on the piano of the roommate. After graduating from high school, Greg moved out on his own and found a job as a dishwasher for a catering company. He also enrolled in college as a music major to learn music theory with an emphasis on guitar and piano composition. During his college years, Greg learned that music was better as an avocation than as a career. He enjoyed it, but he did not like the lifestyle that he would be subjected to if he pursued this interest on a full-time basis, such as relying on other musicians to form a band, touring endlessly, and living meagerly. Instead, Greg mastered the intricacies of catering, which enabled him to start his own company 11 years ago. While Greg developed his new company, he also improved his musicianship and perfected his songwriting by developing dozens of original songs. Greg had little patience or time for fellow musicians, and instead utilized the autonomous approach to his songwriting. During the eventual recording process, Greg turned his autonomy into a dictatorship as he played several instruments himself, but paid session players, a producer, and an engineer to complete his sound. His new release, The Cuts You Said Were Good, is the result of this pursuit. Released in June 2009, The Cuts You Said Were Good is the culmination of music crafted in available moments discovered in a hectic life. For every song included on the album, Greg wrote more than five, threw away at least four, and edited the twelve surviving cuts over twenty times each. While writing the music on The Cuts You Said Were Good, Greg experimented primarily on guitar and piano with various structures, keys, and tempos to prevent falling into predictable songwriting patterns. The collection ranges from the restrained power-pop of Face First to the sparse yet evocative Someone Taking to the aggressively overpowering Skinniest People to the slowly escalating theatrics of So Easy Now. When constructing his vocal melodies, Greg found inspiration equally in masters like Leonard Cohen and Pete Townshend, along with contemporaries like Thom Yorke, Morrissey, and Brandon Flowers. His natural vibrato makes his voice distinctive, although this characteristic has caused some listeners to compare his vocal timbre to such dissimilar voices as Ian Anderson, Peter Garrett, and Scott Weiland. Greg also worked meticulously on his lyrics, sometimes spending days to discover the most fitting word. Although the topics of poverty, apathy, failure, oppression, abandonment, and addiction might be a bit distasteful and heavy to some, these lyrics address real-life troubles without moralizing. For example, in Such An Ugly Girl, Greg encourages his subject to continue doing exactly what he has been doing. Although his songs tackle solemn topics, there is a lot of humor and sarcasm laced throughout The Cuts You Said Were Good.