New release:
ALL IN A DAY'S WORK
Perfect back to work after pandemic track! The first verse sums it up:
"Get up from the resting position, driven by a spark of ambition. Prepare to receive the transmission, I assume the working position."

The song's propulsive groove was inspired by New York City's dynamic street scene, and the arrangement flows from a stripped down beat to an ecstatic choir sound – think Daft Punk meets Eilish's Bad Guy on the B-52's tour bus. The video ranges over a host of work-related scenes along with abstract images that play on the homonym day's/daze, as in, "all in a daze."

Now out on Spotify, YouTube and Apple Music, Soundcloud, etc.
full release

Previous release:
IN THE TREE BY YOUR HOUSE
This single from studio veteran Ethan Cord asks, "How do you show someone you're interested without becoming a pest?" Maybe become an "annoyingly interesting guy," as this song suggests. While we ponder that especially timely dilemma, the music settles into a rock-meets-reggae hybrid of 311 and Radiohead crossed with Two-Tone bands like UB40 and filtered through Vampire Weekend's sense of humor. Vocals have the understated feeling of a Jack Johnson, but with a jolt of Devo's mental instability.

Now out on Spotify, YouTube and Apple Music, among others.
full release

Artist brief:
ETHAN CORD
Ethan Cord is an all-purpose songwriter, musician and visual artist. His songs have been heard on radio and TV, in clubs and theatres, and published in New York and Nashville. With a long background in music and visual arts, Cord has worked as a songwriter, vocalist, sideman, bandleader, producer, engineer, graphic designer and video producer. His songs have been compared with writers as diverse as Lou Reed, Morissey and Johnny Cash. Cord's wide-ranging background leads him to emphasize sentiment over style, because an honest lyric or moving melody will resonate forever.

full bio

More briefs:
THE EMPEROR OF ICE CREAM
What started out as a composition assignment – setting a poem to music – blew up into the real deal: song, studio recording, video shoot and finished release. The poem, "The Emperor of Ice-Cream," by Wallace Stevens, was first published in 1922, so it's about time for a comeback. Stevens' lines have a loping feel ("Call the roller of big cigars…" ) that finds its musical expression in the voluptuous bump of the rhythm track.The overall effect is like a jazz jam by way of Tom Waits and Cab Calloway. Think the perfect soundtrack for an old Max Fleischer animation.

Footage for the video was shot at the annual Village Halloween Parade in New York City. If you stand in one place the flow of changing costumes and floats starts to feel like the organic shape-shifting of old Max Fleischer animations. The video was just designated an Official Selection at the Upstate NY Horror Film Festival!

Check it out on Spotify, YouTube and Apple Music, etc.
full release

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FULL RELEASES

IN THE TREE BY YOUR HOUSE
How do you show someone you're attracted to them without becoming a pest? Well, maybe you should become an "annoyingly interesting guy," like the protagonist of this song. While we ponder that age-old dilemma, the music settles into a rock-reggae bounce by way of some open string guitar riffs. The vocal track is easygoing but slightly unhinged. In the bridge the song breaks out some old-school funk and blossoms into a guitar solo before settling back into the groove.

"The inspiration for the song hit me while I was sleeping on the couch at my mom's condo in Florida," says songwriter Ethan Cord. That may be a contender for the least clarifying explanation of the year, but, hey, isn't that how art is supposed to work: 2 + 2 = Martian ice balloons?

More helpfully, Cord adds, "Originally, I thought the song would be a kind of super high BPM Green Day type head-banger, with clipped vocals shouted over down-picked guitars. But as we worked on it, it seemed to relax into more of a laid-back slyness. I listened a lot to Toots and the Maytals' Sweet And Dandy while working on the recording. Not for the groove so much as to try to capture something of the natural exuberance of band's performance."

Musically, In The Tree By Your House feels like a rock-meets-reggae hybrid of 311 and Radiohead crossed with Two-Tone bands like UB40 and filtered through Vampire Weekend's sense of humor. Vocals have an easy-going feeling reminiscent of Jack Johnson, but with a jolt of Devo's mental instability. A veteran of countless recording sessions as a producer, musician and vocalist, Cord laid down all the tracks in his studio in Brooklyn's BedStuy neighborhood. "We really worked on getting a unique guitar sound for the rhythm track," he said, "something with a reggae influence, but still in the indie/rock pocket."

Now out on Spotify, YouTube and Apple Music, etc.
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ALL IN A DAY'S WORK
The song’s propulsive groove was inspired by New York City's dynamic street scene. Everyone's in a hurry to get somewhere, wether it's a location or a state of being.

The vocal track has the feel of an inner dialog –– someone talking to themselves on their commute, like a matter-of-fact Nick Cave sound without the apocalyptic reverb. The arrangement ranges from sparse to complex, from a stripped down dance beat to an almost religious choir in the bridge. The overall effect is kind of Billie Eilish's Bad Guy meets Daft Punk on the B-52's tour bus – but the 4/4 drive on the bottom never lets up.

Some nice touches are the blasé sounding "ooh, ah" in the climb section, and the interplay between the soul/funk guitar and low organ stabs in the verse. Likewise, the anvil hits evoking Sam Cooke's Chain Gang are a reminder of when most people's work was actual physical labor rather than simply trying to stay awake in front of a computer screen.

The lyrics describe the effort to shake off distractions and get some inspiration flowing. The first verse sums it up:
Get up from the resting position, driven by a spark of ambition.
Prepare to receive the transmission, I assume the working position.

The song suggests that "every type of work has a rhythm," and that it's our mission to find that rhythm in whatever work we're doing. As we assume said working position, we pray that we'll find the kind of work "you only work for love."

The video ranges over a host of work-related scenes – commuting, physical labor, creative efforts. Turns out the subject of work "contains multitudes," as Walt Whitman might have put it. Some scenes depict people rushing around like ants, and it's often those mindless activities we reflexively associate with the word "work." But the word has many other facets – as when we're driven by a "spark of ambition" to create art or just to contemplate who we are as humans in the universe. Images from the Lascaux caves and the Hubble telescope blend with people performing tasks as diverse as milking a goat or fixing the space station. In the chous sections the video gets abstract, reflecting the play on words in the lyric – all in a day's (or daze) work.

Now out on Spotify, YouTube and Apple Music, Soundcloud, etc.
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THE EMPEROR OF ICE CREAM
While enrolled in a composition class with David Tsimpidis at Mannes College of Music, Ethan Cord was searching for material to set to music. Longtime favorite poet Wallace Stevens sprang to mind, and "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" was irresistable for its rhythm, humor and all around gaudiness. The poem was first published in 1922, so its upcoming centenary makes it ripe for revisiting.

"Setting a poem to music is a tricky business," says Cord. "You want to honor the spirit of the words and be true to their rhythm, but you have to let the music have its way, so to speak. It's like the problem of creating a movie from a book – different media, different rules. You just hope that you've enhanced people’s appreciation of the original, adding a fresh perspective." Stevens himself alluded to this process in his, “"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," where the blackbird takes on different meanings as the poet's point of view shifts.

Stevens' lines have a loping feel – "Call the roller of big cigars" – that finds its musical expression in the voluptuous bump of the rhythm track. The poem's images have an over-the-top brazenness that might be creepy if it wasn't so much fun, and the musicians on the session really went to town with that kind of wild energy. The over all effect is like a jazz jam session by way of Tom Waits and Captain Beefheart, with maybe a slight nod to Cab Calloway. There'’s a grittiness to the performances that propels the song out of the art school in and into the real world. Musical tracks were laid down in one take in a live session, then vocals and additional sounds were synched into the mix.

When it came time to create a video for the song, the annual Greenwich Village Halloween Parade was the perfect fit. You have to get there early for a front-row view, but the wait is totally worth it. Individuals and groups pass by in getups ranging from sci-fi aliens and depraved superheros to body parts on stilts and El Día de los Muertos costumes. If you stand in one place the flow of changing looks starts to feel like the organic shape-shifting of old Fleischer Studios animations. The video was just designated an Official Selection at the Upstate NY Horror Film Festival!

Check it out on Spotify, YouTube and Apple Music, etc.

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ETHAN CORD BIO
Ethan Cord is an all-purpose songwriter, musician and singer. He is also a visual artist who creates graphics and videos to accompany his recordings. Cord's songs have been heard on radio and TV, in clubs and theatres. He's had songs published in New York and Nashville. His song Home From The War was a finalist in the recent LA Music Video Awards, and two of his pieces were just selected for the Palm Beach International Music Awards.

With a long background in music and visual arts, Cord has worked as a songwriter, vocalist, sideman, bandleader, producer, engineer, graphic designer and video producer. This has given him a rich experience in musical and songwriting styles stretching from Johnny Mercer and Cole Porter up to Phoebe Bridgers and Esther Dean. Cord's songs tend to be unique, polished pieces that resonate across a wide range of genres and trends. This can make him hard to pin down style-wise, as his own productions are geared toward what sound will best serve a particular song.

After growing up in a small college town in upstate NY, Cord moved to Boston and then New York City with his band, The Immigrants. Signed to East Coast Productions, the band recorded at Blank Tapes Studios along with SalSoul stalwarts like Yogi Horton and Buster Jones, and across the hall from David Byrne of Talking Heads and Chris Stein of Blondie. The band often performed at the fabled CBGBs, sharing bills with acts like They Might Be Giants (before they became giants). While The Immigrants' recordings never made it much past Studio C, Ethan Cord continued to write and produce music, founding Bullet Recording Studios and recording material for artists like Lou Christie, Trudy Miller and Sherrie Lamar.

Along the way, Cord studied the Mridangam drum in South India, and, back in the US, took classes at Berklee College of Music in Boston, as well as at Mannes School of Music and The Actor’s Institute in New York. Time spent learning from Doc Pomus (Save The Last Dance For Me, Viva Las Vegas) introduced him to the Brill Building group of songwriters. Meanwhile, Cord’s visual arts career developed on its own track. He studied at the School of Visual Arts with Milton Glaser (of the famous "I ♥ NY" logo) and for many years his grafilicious inc. design studio was responsible for all the visuals for NYC's Lower East Side district.

Ethan Cord's music spans genres from Country to Broadway to Reggae, and his songs have been compared with writers as disparate as Lou Reed, Morissey and Johnny Cash. Cord's diverse background leads him to emphasize sentiment over style, because an honest lyric or memorable melody can resonate forever.

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