The Making Of 'The Great Below' Album Cover

Well, the time has finally arrived. The full length album by my reformed band 'The Great Below' is done and out in the world! As you may (or may not) recall, after a 14 year hiatus, I got back together with 2 of my childhood friends Peter McGeary and Jay Catropa back in November of 2014 and 3 weeks later, we laid down 12 tracks for what would be our long overdue debut record. It's taken the next 6 or so months to complete all the additional engineering, recording and mixing on it, but we're so, so thrilled with it and proud of the final result!

One of the most challenging aspects for completing the album was figuring out the cover. After all, how do you pick one visual image to represent all these lyrics from 12 songs, clocking in at 52 minutes worth of music? And do it justice?! A few blogs back, I was brainstorming and trying to break down what makes a good album cover. For the most part, my favorite records of all time have pretty terrible covers. So I guess it doesn't really matter too much? But then it thankfully all came together. With a little help from some friends, of course.

Several months back, I reached out to my very talented photographer friend Ama and asked if she had any stock images of sunsets or anything in that realm. When she asked why, I explained I was trying to figure out an image to sum up our album. I ended up sending along a few rough mixes of a couple of the tracks and asked her to listen to them a few times and let me know if they evoked any imagery at all. A huge chunk of time went by and I'd honestly thought she'd completely forgotten about it, when then she randomly texted me saying, "what about a puzzle?" Hmm.... A puzzle. Something about that really clicked with me. But what would the puzzle be of?

Wait... I've got it. What if we got a close up photograph of a couple holding hands. And then we turned that into a puzzle, since after all, figuring out the complexities of what happens when 2 people get together always feels like an enigma anyways. And what if there were pieces missing, signifying the puzzle (or relationship) felt incomplete OR was still in progress, waiting to be figured out? OK, that definitely fit the general lyrical content of this album. But can you even make a picture into a puzzle?! Sure enough, a quick Google search later and we uncovered that Walmart does in fact do this with any high res image for like... $15 bucks. Boom. Now time to shoot the picture within the picture.

As often happens, life got in the way, and Ama was off prepping for her debut feature film, SWEETHEARTS. So I reached out to another amazingly talented photographer, my former roommate Jake Lloyd! I pitched him the concept and he loved it. We picked one afternoon and both myself and my buddy Jessica Luhrssen became the official "hand" models. Now, the question was where the hell do we shoot this thing? While technically, shooting a close up of hands sounds fairly simple, we needed a good backdrop. So we spent an entire morning and afternoon trekking through various parts of Burbank. Alleyways, hiking trails, Brand Park (because it had a tea garden and that excited me) and Stough Park. (Which ended up being where the actual cover image is from.) The next day, I had tons of photos to choose from. And while a lot of them were good and a lot of the back drops intriguing, there was only really one image that for some reason stuck out to me. And that's the one we ended up using for the cover puzzle. Just for fun, here's 2 rejected pics to prove that we truly did try everything and also to give you an idea of where it could've gone.

So the next step was to take our selected photo and convert it into a puzzle board. Thankfully in today's day and age, all of this could easily be accomplished on Walmart's website. Downside is it would take a week, which was fine because I had an editing assignment to get to and a full day on a movie coming up (as an actor!) that required I memorize lines, so I figured I'd forget about the cover until the puzzle actually arrived. And one week later, a package was waiting for me at my door. Before even opening it I knew what it was and I excitedly texted Jake to let him know it was here! This was mid-afternoon, he said "Great!" And suggested I come by the next day around lunch time. I opened the box and as I should've guessed... I had to freakin' assemble the damned whole thing! I don't know why I thought it would come already completed, but I then poured out 252 pieces onto my kitchen table and started to freak out. I can't even remember the last time I attempted a puzzle!

OK, start with the edges, that's what they always say. I then realized that the image I picked happened to have large spots of pure black, pure white, pure green, etc. I nervously started to piece together a few scattered pieces but was convinced this was going to take forever to figure out. Then my current roommate Dave Foy walked in and asked "whatcha doing, man?" He saw me struggle for an hour with very little momentum and offered to take over for a bit. And so this is how it went on for about... the next 12 hours or so? I'd take a crack at it for an hour, then Dave would come over and look at it with fresh eyes and fill in some more of it. Then me, him again, so on and so forth. I will admit, the coolest part was no matter how incomplete the puzzle remained, every bit of progress looked awesome. We started when the package arrived and finished the next day literally a half hour before I was due at Jake's place. Then I realized "wait a minute. How the hell am I going to get this thing over there without it falling apart again?!" It was 11 x 17, so I couldn't just place it between 2 books. Dave looked over by the garbage and noticed a box for a vinyl record I had yet to throw out. Bless him, he saved me for those 2 days and hence earned a "special thanks" in our album credits. Here's photographic evidence of that 12 hour gap:

Now the final part. Actually shooting what would become our album cover. Ya know what I love? Collaborating with really creative and talented people. Like I said, Jake's an amazing photographer (also, great musician and filmmaker in his own right). But it was fun figuring out different ways we could light and shoot the puzzle. Being in the era of digital cameras, you can literally take a hundred photos if you wanted to. So we experimented with tons of ideas. Taking a few pieces away, taking large chunks. I hand wrote "The Great Below" underneath missing pieces and also on separate paper just in case we needed to superimpose it in later to our liking. Hell, I even got in a very uncomfortable position belly first, just so we got a version where my hand was in frame putting in a puzzle piece. We tried everything! And it was a blast. In other words, I just like making art with friends.

After feeling comfortable that we "got" it, we wrapped for the afternoon and I eagerly awaited seeing the results. It wasn't long as the very next day, Jake sent me a bunch of options. The first few cover options were exactly how I asked them to be. Various versions with chunks of the puzzle missing, the handwritten lettering underneath. And while I liked them, they didn't exactly work for me. I couldn't figure out why. In theory, this is exactly what I had envisioned the cover to be. Why wasn't it knocking my socks off?

At that point I was giving it the Instagram test. What I mean by that is, does it look cool when you draft a photo in Instagram, because they give you a perfect square which is what a cover would be. And if not, why? I was texting back and forth with my drummer Jay and we were discussing our options. What would get him excited? After sharing the above mock-ups, I remembered... wait... did we shoot any shots of the puzzle complete? The original image is so great, I think part of me was mourning the fact that we didn't get to see the whole thing. Quick email over to Jake, and YES. We did shoot the complete puzzle. So I had a version of that sent over, with The Great Below written by hand at the bottom. This looked right! This looked like it was it. But, the whole point of the original idea was to have the pieces missing. What does a completed puzzle signify? "You know what would be great? What if one single piece was missing?" And boom. THAT WAS IT. A few minutes later, we had our final cover and the second I saw it, I was in love.

Quite a process! But again, a fun and rewarding one. And at the end of the day, I'm so thankful that I had so many great friends around me that truly cared about what me, Pete and Jay did and wanted to help us cross the finish line properly. I'm so, so proud of this record. As I've mentioned in previous blog posts before, I never thought I'd return to music in any fashion again. I was fairly convinced that that part of my life was completely over. So it amazes me that this album even exists and it's a true testament to how great Jay and Pete are. To me, my songs feel like a bunch of decent OK demos until those 2 get their hands on them and make them something truly special.

That said, our initial release plan is in place. You will be able to find the self titled 'The Great Below' album on iTunes, Amazon, Pandora, and every other digital outlet you can think of, but for now, it's up exclusively on our Band Camp page. We have total control of it. Any money that goes to the Band Camp goes straight to the artist, so by buying it there, you're supporting us directly!

And here's the thing.

Money doesn't matter to us. We just want you all to hear it! That's why we capped the price at $4.99. Rather then buy me a beer the next time I see you, just buy my record for 5 bucks instead. And if you don't have $5 bucks, because I sure as hell don't right now, you can stream it for FREE on Band Camp. Again, just want it to be heard. And if you like what you hear? Please help us spread it. Pure sincerity, heart and soul are all over this thing from all 3 of us.

Lastly, if you do support us by buying it, like I said, the money part doesn't matter, but I plan on using any profits we make to fund another trip back to New York later this year, because... well, we'd like to make album number 2. Here's hoping we can make that happen too. If this project proved anything to me?

...

It's that anything is possible!