QUARTERBACKS - QUARTERBOY

DEAN ENGLE RECORDED "QUARTERBOY" APRIL 2013 TO FEBRUARY 2014 ON A TASCAM MF-P01 ADDITIONAL ENGINEERING BY CHRIS DALY AT SALVATION RECORDING CO. DAVID GRIMALDI PLAYED GUITAR ON "RAIN DELAY" ROSE MELBERG WROTE THE SONG "WORDS AND SMILES" COVER PHOTO BY ANDREW LYMAN INSERT PHOTO BY ALLYSSA YOHANA

Dean on Quarterboy:

“Quarterboy” was recorded from April 2013 to February 2014 on a Tascam MF-P01 four track cassette recorder in my studio apartment on the backside of 9 North Chestnut in New Paltz, NY. Most of the tracks were initially recorded for one-off compilations and a subscription “cassette club” project organized by my friend Dave Benton. The songs were written slowly and sporadically over a five-year period. My life was very local. I was in graduate school at SUNY New Paltz studying literacy. I worked as a substitute teacher at my old high school in Poughkeepsie and at a record store directly across the street from my house. My apartment did not have internet and I spent most evenings listening to tapes, calling friends on the phone, or playing the same handful of open chords on an unamplified Squier Tele. When I managed to record a song I would take my laptop across the street, sit on the stairs outside of the record store, e-mail the song to a few friends, snap the laptop closed, and head back to my cave. The songs dramatically romanticize my boring routine. Most of my life had not yet happened and the coming years would offer many humbling counterexamples to my lyrics’ neat statements. But at the time it felt like I had my small world figured out, and occasionally pausing Rose Melberg’s records to tell my tape machine about it seemed like a normal hobby. Even though I teach middle school now and play guitar maybe once a month, this album still sort of follows me. The past few Octobers, a student inevitably finds a video of me singing and I spend the next 48 hours confirming that I was definitely not famous and definitely used to wear a leaf on my head every day. This year, long after the student consciousness had moved on to other concerns, a sixth grader mentioned she had finally seen a video of me playing. I asked what she thought and she paused, considering. “You were the same but different,” she said. “It was you but softer.”

Buy the cassette here, or the digital on Bandcamp.

Digital release April 13, 2018