Charlie Glenn has quite the Saturday planned. The Oct. 12 date isn’t just the multi-instrumentalist’s birthday-eve, it’s the night he’ll turn 40. And it’s not just his album release show, it’s the celebration of his debut solo album that follows extensive session, sideman and bandleader work that established him as one of Richmond’s most brilliant rock ’n’ roll torchbearers.
Palm Palm. The Head and the Heart. Illiterate Light. The Trillions. Thao. J. Roddy Walston. Even a partial list of acts he’s led, accompanied or produced, reads like a Central Virginia musician’s dream resume. So maybe it’s unsurprising that it took a minute — seven years, to be more accurate — to find the me-time necessary to complete, compile and stage a set of songs under his own name. “It’s a release in more than one way for me,” Glenn says with a laugh. “[The songs] were lying around, and maybe they were going to go to this project or that project, and then I was like, ‘No, they’re mine. I played everything minus the drums. It’s a me record.’”
Those who have been following Glenn’s musical journey should delight in the 12 tracks that comprise “Get Reflected,” as the polymath’s signature strengths are on full display: crunchy guitar played with rare fluency, punchy hooks that recall rock’s rough-hewn 20th century heyday, and chordal tension that keeps just the right amount of menace percolating. As a solo album, it’s an awe-inspiring display of proficiency. A lot of the music was written almost freeform, he says, “or stream of consciousness — musically and the lyrics.”
Yet the circumstances around the recording, as well as the themes Glenn had in mind, were anything but easy. “Get Reflected” was made amid housing uncertainty, a broken-off relationship and the sudden breakdown of the considerable momentum Palm Palm had built, which included opening for the Killers and the impending release of a 2023 debut LP.
“Well, let’s turn an unfortunate thing, and to try to make a positive out of it,” Glenn remembers thinking. “I mean, I’ve got time.”
Style Weekly spent some time chatting with Glenn about how “Get Reflected” was born, how it feels to make his solo debut and what he’d like to see more of across today’s rock ’n’ roll landscape.
Style Weekly: What was your mindset while writing the songs on the new album?
Charlie Glenn: A lot of them were born in a classic crucible of a breakup situation. But there are some songs about bands breaking up, and that’s fodder for me. I don’t think of myself as a naturally depressed fellow, but I think maybe it’s because I squeeze out my emotional sponge into music. There are dark, weirder themes that I pursued, but I am Newton’s third law: I go the opposite direction. I get happier as a result of exercising emotions.
It’s funny — J. Roddy prods me a little bit about, “Where is all this sadness coming [from]? Where do you have a second Elliott Smith heart in your body?” And I don’t know how to answer that a lot of times. I find myself leaning toward emotional purging. I like chords and progressions and melodies that aren’t common, or at least [that] I don’t think I’ve heard… I’ll drizzle what I think to be pop songwriting vocal melodies over top and see if that’ll hide my desire to make such angular music.
Where did the recording take place?
Anytime I could get a moment to get in a studio, I would go and try to work on something. On top of that, I had a breakup in 2017, and I was essentially homeless, in a way. I’d asked J. Roddy, “Hey, can I basically live in your studio that you built and leave some mic lines plugged in and a drum kit?” And he said, “Sure.” He was going to go on the road, and I just sat there in March and April of 2017… The rest was done over at Montrose studio when Adrian Olsen was still there. Adrian pretty much touched all these tracks as far as mixing [goes], and he played drums, too, on half of the record. He’s a good drummer — little secret.
I was thinking at the time that I was going to demo music out for the Trillions, then I brought the Trillions back to the studio, to Montrose, to try to record finer, higher quality versions of them [but] I found myself attracted to the moment of creation. More and more over the past decade, I find that my favorite records are captured at the moment of creation… A lot of my favorite artists, historically, were writing in the studio. Especially back in the ’60s and ’70s, when there was no time to go back and do it again. It had to happen fast. A lot of this is that.
If there’s ever a time to fall in love with a demo, it’s when you’re expressing something at the same time you’re working through it.
Some of that emotional weight transferred onto tape. I think of “That Was That” or even “Quarantine.” I was staying in the studio, and I literally slept there on a cold March night and put a space heater right at my face, and boiled every liquid out of my skull, and then got a horrible cold and bronchitis — this is while I’m recording — but I still went and sang. I had this crazy gravel in my voice, and I was like, “Well, this is just a placeholder…” I tried to do the vocals over later and went, “No, that’s too clean and too nice, and the emotion and the struggle is all there in that original take.” I couldn’t beat it.
That sense of being on the “Sidelines,” as one of the songs is titled — has that been a pervasive feeling lately?
I’ve lent myself to so many projects or full-fledged bands that were fully operational that didn’t need my creative assistance. Like Avers — I wasn’t singing in the group as a lead vocalist, [though] I certainly had musical input. I was writing parts and things like that. And the Head and the Heart — that was purely just playing exactly what the other keyboardist has already written. So there is that element, and watching other artists go from playing the Broadberry to playing the Hampton Coliseum — watching and not being upset, just [having] that view from the sidelines a little bit, having never really secured success that [allows me to] rest on my laurels for a minute. The benefit of that, though, you know, is that I’ve always had to kind of be on my A-game. I never felt like I could rest on my laurels. I always [felt] like I was playing as best as I could — or improving.
But hilariously, that song too — it was the Trillions trying to re-record my demos… We were all playing foosball at Montrose studio, and I started to write those lyrics in my head about basically sitting and watching them play foosball on the sidelines… So I ran back to the studio. That’s one vocal take. I didn’t have a second one or third one. Just “Pull up that thing we did earlier,” and I just riffed that… It’s like one of the most under-thought pieces of music I’ve ever done. I should do more of that… I want to hear more rawness. A lot of music these days we have the luxury of being able to put under a microscope and refine everything until it comes out as some very well-oiled German luxury car — very nice, but is it raw and nasty? Does it kind of slap you around a little bit? I think my favorite music kind of slapped me around a little bit [laughs].
What made this the right moment for this music to come out? Your 40th birthday happening on the night of the release show is certainly well timed.
Yeah, at midnight on the 13th. That’ll be a nice moment for me, selfishly. That’ll be a whole nice night for me … That group of songs, I had put them into a pile in the past couple years, like, “That would be a thing. I want to make sure that the Trillions are cool with it.” But really, I needed the time to do it — to get it mastered and make decisions and get art and all that stuff together, which takes time and money. And honestly, the Palm Palm thing, with us being rendered very drummer-less without the rest of our consent, all of a sudden we had all this time… There’s a world where I could have put it out and, and Palm Palm could have kept going, but if we look back, we were about to put out a record and go on the road, and it was probably going to get very busy…
A lot of it is just gumption, to even just say, “Hey, I want to put this out. Hey, friends, do you want to play on it? We’re going to schedule rehearsals…” But I was presented with time, and maybe the right time and that same emotional sponge. “Let’s squeeze it out and turn it into something positive.”
Charlie Glenn will perform at the Camel on Saturday, Oct. 12. Deau Eyes will perform a solo opening set. Doors open at 8 p.m. and music starts at 9 p.m. Tickets are $12 ($15 at the door) and can be purchased via thecamel.org.
