Rob Nelson Makes Music Not In Vain

The piano has the feel of something that belongs in church. with its rolling notes and easy swing. Yolanda Coggins’s voice floats over those notes, resting comfortably in that big American musical space that nourishes R&B, jazz, and gospel. But the words — “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers — / That perches in the soul — / And sings the tune without the words — And never stops — at all —” — don’t come from any particular musical tradition, but rather from the pen of famous New England poet Emily Dickinson.

New Haven-area musician Rob Nelson has been setting Dickinson’s poems to music and releasing recordings of that music for months now. In the thick of the Covid-19 outbreak, he’s finding that the ​“guerrilla tactics” he’s been using to make an album’s worth of material are letting him keep going.

“I’m alive, so everything else is bonus,” Nelson said. ​“I’m only half-kidding; my version of keeping up spirits is that kind of dark humor.” Nelson teaches literature and composition at Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport, and like most schools, he said, ​“we’ve moved online. I’m finding good things to do, and hanging out with my family a lot more, so that’s cool.”

Meanwhile, Nelson — who, among other musical endeavors, performs in Pigeon English (see video above) and Elegant Primates — is looking at the prospect of finishing an ongoing project of setting Emily Dickinson poems to music. ​“There are three vocalists who haven’t done their parts yet, and we’ll all just going to wait now. It’s a lesson in humility,” Nelson said.

Nelson conceived of the project years ago while reading Dickinson’s poem ​“Safe in Their Alabaster Chambers.” Dickinson’s poems had regular meter and rhyme, to the point that — as Nelson was aware — there had been a joke circulating for years that many of them (along with the hymn ​“Amazing Grace”) could be sung to the theme song to Gilligan’s Island.

But still, he thought, ​“that should be a song.” Nelson felt a certain connection to Dickinson. ​“My wife grew up in Amherst,” he said, the town in Massachusetts where Emily Dickinson lived. ​“We got married right next to Emily’s house.” And, of course, there was a wealth of material to choose from; Dickinson is by now a canonical poet for a reason.

Nelson wrote music for the poem, but ​“it didn’t feel right having a man’s voice sing it,” he said. Then ​“I was cutting the lawn, because I’m so cosmopolitan,” and thought to himself, ​“This is Connecticut, and it’s full of great women singers. I know people and I know Emily’s poetry pretty well — ideally I could match a certain person’s vocal approach to a certain poem.” That also opened up the chance for Nelson to write across genres of music to match each singer’s style.

He thought of Ann Castellano, of Ann Castellano and the Smoke. ​“She’s kind of a hard rocker, and I went to go see her at a hootenanny in New London,” Nelson said. ​“We decided that night at the bar, ​‘we’re going to do this thing,’ and two weeks later it was online.’”

For Castellano, Nelson combined two Dickinson poems to create ​“Forever Is Composed of Nows.” He played guitar, organ, bass, and percussion, and contributed background vocals. But Castellano was front and center. ​“A lot of her songs are in D, so obviously the song I’m going to write is going to be right there,” Nelson said. And ​“I know Ann loves birds, which is every other Emily Dickinson poem.”

He also thought of musician Lys Guillorn, a singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist who he knew was a ​“big poetry buff,” Nelson said. He recalled texting her: ​“Are you interested and available?” Her text back: ​“Hell, yeah.” They recorded it together, and later, ​“the first song we did together” in front of an audience, ​“she sang it solo at the Bijou” — the Bijou Theater in Bridgeport — ​“with me accompanying her.” Nelson was over the moon.

Nelson recorded each of them somewhat on the fly, like ​“guerrilla tactics,” Nelson said. First he recorded the backup tracks. Then he arranged with each singer a time and place that were convenient to meet, and he recorded them quickly using just a 15-year-old laptop and a microphone. ​“It started that way because of crazy scheduling limits that everyone has anyway,” Nelson said. He teaches five courses and has two young kids. “‘It’s going to be madness to try to do this,’” he recalled thinking, ​“which was a big impetus right there — oooh, madness!”

“The first track I did was with Elizabeth Ashkins,” Nelson said. Ashkins is a singer currently performing with the Bridgeport-based Semaphora, among other projects. ​“Liz came to my classroom during lunch break” while Nelson was teaching a summer class at Yale. ​“I felt like a teenager. If we got kicked out, I would have put that in the liner notes.”

Yolanda Coggins — who performs with Ed Fast and Congo Bop in Hartford, where ​“they do Latin jazz arrangements that are killer,” Nelson said — also recorded her vocal in Nelson’s office. Another singer, Loralee Geil, first went to Nelson’s office to sing the song Nelson had written with her in mind. Nelson thought she did a great job. Geil thought she could do better. Nelson sent her the track. ​“She did it at home, and it did sound better than the take she did at my office,” Nelson said.

“Everybody who has collaborated has just been, bang, out of the park,” Nelson added.

Nelson kept writing songs, heading toward a full album. ​“Okay, 10 is a good number,” he recalled thinking. ​“Wait, 12 is a good number.” He was making final arrangements for the final few songs when the Covid-19 outbreak began.

“I have friends in Italy, and as soon as it got scary, I just felt really vain. All these deadlines that seemed important, seemed less important,” Nelson said. ​“I think it’s really been clear in the way everyone in the music scene is responding — everyone’s been digging in their heels to creativity, to community, a sense of uplift and expression. At the same time, there’s a big perspective reminder. Does it really matter when your album comes out when 800 people died yesterday?”

But that doesn’t mean that Nelson will stop making music, or that any of his collaborators want him to. Deploying further guerrilla tactics, Nelson is making arrangements for people to finish a couple more songs from wherever they are, using the technology they have at hand.

Meanwhile, Nelson said, ​“there was one I did a couple days ago, which was sung by my daughters.” Chloe, who is 11, and Simone, who is 8, do Irish songs together in public, including in Irish clubs and at an open mic at Best Video. But ​“I hadn’t recorded my daughters singing,” Nelson said, ​“and what impressed me is that it was pretty much in one take.”

That song, ​“I Shall Not Live in Vain,” has the opening line ​“If I can stop one heart from breaking / I shall not live in vain.”

“That’s suited to the times,” Nelson said.