Phil Ajjarapu is an Austin, TX based singer-songwriter. He’s session musician and perennial sideman, and was finally prompted to make his solo album after a near fatal motorcycle accident in March of 2012. After a Kickstarter campaign, his album came out, we got around to reviewing it and liked it. If you’d like to get “Sing Along Until You Feel Better” you can go to Bandcamp or Amazon

How did “Sing Along Until You Feel Better” come together? Why did it take 2 years?
PA: So I’ve always been someone else’s sideman, and then I had this bad motorcycle accident. On March 26, 2012, I was thrown over my handlebars, off of one highway and onto the highway below. When I came to some days later in the hospital, I felt like I had to make my album before I died again. I mean, I don’t know what I believe, and I don’t have any answers. I don’t think I survived so that I could make an album or anything grandiose like that, but I was going to take advantage of the opportunity, but first I had to get out of the hospital, learn to walk again, that kind of thing.

I kept getting called for recording sessions while I was in the wheel chair, and then I was gigging in the wheel chair, and by the time the school year started, I was on a cane. That’s how I started my fourteenth year of teaching choir. I started recording demos at school after hours, and I had talked with Danny Reisch of Shearwater about producing, but he got busy with tour and stuff.

I talked with some friends and my friend Marko DeSantis of Sugarcult and Bad Astronaut put me in touch with Ken Stringfellow who was on my short list of dream producers. He was in Austin a week before SXSW ’13, and I took him out for a meal and went to his show that night, and then played pedal steel on his set during SXSW. After that, he let me know that he had a window when he’d already be in the states for the Big Star Third tour (he lives in Paris). That didn’t give me a lot of time, but with the help of my roommates, I had a successful Kickstarter campaign and booked him.

The studio that I had booked ended up double booking over me, and I ended up opening up Eastern Sun Studios with my friend Matt Simon (drummer from Voxtrot, Belaire, Tele Novella) and my album was the first album we did at the studio. The album was mostly tracked in July in Austin. We tracked some strings in September, and then Ken didn’t have an opportunity to mix because of his tour schedule until late December. In November I happened to write the title track and so we tracked that and a b-side in mid December, and then removed a track from the album to be the a-side for a forthcoming seven inch.

The mixes were completed in January and mastered by Mike Hagler (Billy Bragg and Wilco Mermaid Ave vol 1 and 2), I had some issues with an artist who had made some brilliant cover art disappearing on me, but by March of this year I had art courtesy of Cari Palazzolo (main creative force behind Belaire), and then I released it digitally on March 26, two years after the accident and approximately a year after first meeting Ken. So, I guess it didn’t really take 2 years, it was more like a year. Or it took 23 years since I played in my first band, depending on how you slice it. Or it took 2 years since I woke up and pulled my head out of my ass. Still, it’s been a good couple of years, the studio is doing well, I have an album I’m extremely proud of, and now I have to figure out what to do about it.

What other bands have you played in? How did you meet Ken Stringfellow?
PA: I have played in a lot of bands that don’t really matter. I also played bass in Liquid Soul which was a jazz/hip hop/acid jazz group from chicago. It was fun to play some Tower of Power style funk, the horn section was always incredibly strong (Mars Williams of The Waitresses and Psychedelic Furs is the band leader). As I stated before, I met Ken through Marko DeSantis, but anyone can get a hold of him for production through his website.

Tell me three musical heroes who inspired you.
PA: Music nerds love lists, and they agonize over them. O.k., this is tough… but for today, I’ll say Paul McCartney, Brendan Benson, and Jon Brion. God that was tough, I already have regrets.

What do you find works best for your creative process when bringing a song together?
PA: I’ve found that writing in the vehicle without an instrument results in stronger melodic writing. It’s easy to fit chords to a good melody, and I have a bad habit of putting in as many chords as I can cram in. Ken made fun of me all of the time for using too many chords (he adopted this old asian lady persona when he did it).

As far as style, I think a good melody implies a few styles that the song can be produced in. They’re like kids, they’re going to grow up and be whatever they’re going to be, but if they have a good melody, it’ll imply good harmony, and then you can use good taste to load every instrument with melodic hooks and try and have good voice leading that makes more counter melody. Writing in the vehicle without an instrument boils it down to the idea of a good essential melody and a universally appealing lyric. If it sounds dumb a capella, all of the production in the world won’t save it. If it sounds passable spoken, and has more weight sung with a melody, you’re probably sitting pretty.

Is there a follow up album in the works?
AP: Sure, I’m writing. I’m going to see how far I can get this one to go first though, I’m pretty in love with it.

Appreciate the interview, Phil.  Looking forward to the next album.