Archive: Around Town

The Myers Park band stand was rocking Saturday evening when Luke Kutler and his band held a release party for their new CD.  'Luke Kutler's Acoustic Covers' features 13 songs, 12 written by other artists and one original song by Kutler himself.  The party attracted about 40 fans who came out to hear the band play live.

"This was my attempt to test out some new studio equipment for an album my band is making," Kutler says.  "We recorded cover songs.  However the last song on the CD is called 'Breathing Now.'  It's original and that's going to be on the new CD when it comes out."


Kutler's band features Tom Arleo on drums, Nina Lindberg on bass, and Kathryn Hornibrook on guitar.  Kutler plays has played keyboard for years, and taught himself guitar this year.  While Kutler and Arleo have played in the band 'Meltdown' for two years, the new band was formed last winter.  Since then they have posted some of the songs on Kutler's Facebook page , as well as a podcast and a video of the Snow Patrol song 'Chasing Cars' that features Kutler and Hornibrook.


The band has a crisp pop rock sound with a strong beat.  Kutler in particular delivers strong vocals.  The musicians seem comfortable with each other, as if they had been playing together longer than they actually have.  They mix up instruments and sometimes styles to produce a nice variation in the band's sound.

Kutler records the songs in a home recording studio.  The CD started as a series of tests of his studio equipment in anticipation of recording an all-original album that will be titled 'Dreaming Out Loud.'  After recording some of the tracks, he decided to make the tests into an album as well.  He acts as his own sound engineer on most of the tracks, with Lindberg assisting with the engineering on "Chasing Cars,' and 'Breathing Now' was engineered by David Ford.

Most of the songs for the new CD are already written, and Kutler and Arleo have started working on arrangements for some of them.  Kutler says there is no firm deadline, but he hopes to finish the new album by next Spring.


These albums are not Kutler's first foray into recording.  He and Arleo released an album called 'Eating 5 Batteries' which was available on iTunes for some time.  While he says the album didn't do well, it got some local interest with a parody based on the Backstreet Boys' 'I Want It That Way' that he called 'Test Day.'  It was a lament about how he couldn't pass a test in John Kotmel's Lansing High School math class.  In that he followed in Weird Al Yankovic's footsteps -- Yankovic's version of the same song was about Ebay.

Kutler had pre-release orders for 'Luke Kutler's Acoustic Covers' via his Facebook page that he is now filling, and says that most of his sales are local.  For the foreseeable future he says he wants to perform more live shows this year, and he plans to release 'Breathing Now' as a single on iTunes. 

"I've always liked performing," he says.  "I've been performing since I was barely able to talk.  The love of music got me into that.  It's really fun and enjoyable.  That's my passion.  It's what I like to do."

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