MHS English Teacher Releases 4th CD
Medford High School English teacher Max Heinegg recently released his fourth CD. The CD is available on SoundCloud and YouTube and will be in iTunes soon, according to Heinegg. Heinegg, in his twelfth year at MHS, also taught at the former Brooks-Hobbs and Andrews Middle School.
What are your musical influences and inspirations?
My influences for songwriting are what I listened to in middle school and high school – the old stuff that’s so embedded in me that it doesn’t matter how cheesy I find it now. Middle school was Queen, Journey, J. Geils Band, and Van Halen. High school was the Smiths, Billy Joel, James Taylor, Cat Stevens, U2, REM, Dinosaur Jr. and at the end of high school, that was around when rock and roll came in the form of grunge – I got into the first Smashing Pumpkins record (Gish) and Soundgarden.
Although hundreds of bands followed, especially when I became a college DJ, the early influences, from Morrissey’s words, to Billy Corgan’s guitar playing, to Chris Cornell’s singing have definitely lingered – although they have been tempered by the music of the last 20 years – which was heavily Chris Whitley, Neil Young, Nick Drake, PJ Harvey, Jeff Buckley, Peter Gabriel, Yo La Tengo, My Bloody Valentine, Sinead O’Connor, and the Boston bands that I saw when I was doing the club thing: Miss Pigeon, The Sheila Divine, Reverse, Bang Camaro (which I was lucky enough to be in for awhile), The Good North, and Mappari.
Inspiration is a function of process and my process is to continue to play guitar and write. Sylvia Plath was said to make whatever she made, and be as happy (figuratively) if she made a piano or a table. I’m that way with songs. I just write them, and the better ones end up on records, but the smaller ones, or the incomplete or oddball ones are just as fun to work on.
I think it’s a mistake to look for inspiration other than finding pleasure in form, and enjoying the process or the activity. Much of what we want to say can be captured by just listening to ourselves. I think you write music and lyrics without too much thought, and then go back with a critical mind for editing and making sure there is thematic clarity.
Describe the music on this latest release.
The music and the overall concept of Sand Painting is the Buddhist ceremony of the sand painting, which from an outsider’s perspective, speaks to me as a comment on the worth of making art despite our transient stay on the planet.
The lyrics address the idea of making that individual meaning in the stark face of the stars and the purpose of showing up and sweating when there are plenty of reasons to hide inside with a bottle or a remote control.
The music ranges from alternative rock to alt-folk; it covers a lot of ground and has strings and a saxophone on top of the traditional two guitars, bass, drums, and vocals. I favor a lot of guitar effects and alternate tunings, I like loud drums and distortion.
The record has some of the best musicians in Boston on it, and I’d say they are a large reason for the record sounding the way it does. Alejandro Necochea plays guitar on the CD and he’s in the Boston rock band Township, who won the WBCN Rumble. Dana Colley on saxophone was in the great Boston band Morphine, the bassist Mike Quinn plays in Reverse, an incredible Boston rock band, and the strings on the record are by Ian Kennedy, Reverse’s frontman.
How many songs/albums have you released on iTunes?
This is the fourth solo CD on ITunes; my old Boston rock band The High Ceilings also has one on there, so this is the fifth. In terms of songs, I believe there are 63.
What are you future musical plans/projects?
The next projects are a CD of all public domain poetry (for this year) and then probably a quick, dulcet acoustic CD, with a return to another studio rock and roll record after that. That’s the three year plan.
– Information compiled by Allison Goldsberry. Photo courtesy Jen Bolitho photography.