Local singer and songwriter Robyn Cage came to a crossroads while planning a new full-length album a few months ago.
“When I started to examine which songs were going to make the cut, I found the songs I had collected fit into two different worlds,” she said. “So, it just seemed like the natural thing to do to release the album in two parts.”
So, Cage decided to release two extended-play records. The first, “A Million Years of Stone,” was released Aug. 23, and the second, “Lovers and Monsters,” is scheduled for an Oct. 28 release.
“Those songs on ‘A Million Years of Stone’ are a little more produced,” she said. “There are some electronic elements in there, and they are thematically based on freedom, rebirth, life, death and epic themes like that.”
The other set of songs that will appear on “Lovers and Monsters” is acoustically based, according to Cage, who tours regionally with her own band, and nationally with The Airplane Family, featuring alumni of Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, Hot Tuna, and The Grateful Dead, singing the Grace Slick repertoire.
“They are mostly dark, romantic, piano-based and acoustic waltzes,” she said. “I’m such a sucker for songs in three-four time.”
Last week, Cage gave a sneak peek of “Lovers and Monsters” by releasing a couple of singles, “Somebody Told Me” and “Bones.”
While “Bones” is an original, “Somebody Told Me” is an English translation of Carla Bruni’s “Quelqu’un m’a dit,” Cage said.
“‘Somebody Told Me’ has haunted me since the first time I heard it,” Cage said. “It’s a song about unrequited love, and I wanted to make an English version of it.”
“Lovers and Monsters” also features a cover of Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon,” and another single, “Goodnight Demons,” that was released Friday.
“It’s a song about insomnia, and it’s a lullaby to those demons in my head,” Cage said.
Cage, whose cover of Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” went viral on Facebook and has garnered nearly 2 million views, decided to offer the EPs at a “pay what you can” price.
“If you only have one dollar in your budget for music, that’s great, but I have also found that a lot of people are in a position to be more generous and want to give more.”
Adding to the creative process, all the cover art of the EPs and singles were done through an A.I. art generator, Cage said.
“That was something I had never done before,” she said. “And I thought it would be a cool way to express the visual side of the music.”
All of the songs on “A Million Years of Stone” were produced by Caleb Loveless, who produced Cage’s 2018 album, “Slow the Devil.”
“I’ve been working with him forever,” she said. “He’s great with creating dreamy, atmospheric tracks by combining organic and electronic instrumentation. The songs he does are very textural and cinematic.”
The songs on “Lovers and Monsters,” with the exception of “Bones,” were produced by Cage’s bandmates — drummer and percussionist Zac Bryant and vocalist/bassist Callie Crofts.
“‘Bones’ was produced by Caleb, but I didn’t know where it would fit in his more electronic songs,” Cage said. “Then I realized that I have these other songs that fit with it very nicely. There is very little piano on ‘Million Years of Stone,’ so I fleshed out the piano and made it front and center for ‘Lovers and Monsters.’ I wanted something more stripped down, raw and emotional.”
That shift aligns with Cage’s goal of moving toward live instrumentation.
“That’s one of the things that I’ve been missing,” she said. “There is no substitute for having a real person playing a real instrument. I want to hear more humanity in music, and that includes some of the flaws and imperfections. I do love all of the sparkling production in songs, but I am moving toward a more organic sound.”
Cage began thinking about the musical shift while playing a series of live, acoustic, socially distanced performances for Egyptian Theatre Pharaoh Club members with theater manager Randy Barton during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Thank God for those shows,” she said. “I was the only musician that I know who got to perform that summer, and doing those shows reminded me of the power of playing live with just a piano.”
Once the series ended, Cage spent the following autumn with no gigs but started her regular performance schedule at Prime Steak House and Piano Bar that winter.
“It made me more grateful than I’ve ever been to have regular performing jobs,” she said. (Visit robyncage.com/shows.html for a Cage’s live-performance schedule.)
The pandemic also gave Cage time to create a dream project — a musical called “Black Friday.”
“It’s a black comedy, a satirical post-apocalyptic tale of murder, romance, revenge, conspiracy and beauty pageants,” she said. “My background is musical theater, so this is a return to my roots.”
Cage initially ended up writing 22 songs and a script.
“I’m in draft five of the script, and some of the songs have been rewritten,” she said. “It’s like ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ mashed up with ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show.’”
Two songs from the musical will be released in early November, and will be included on deluxe versions of Cage’s EPs.
“The first song is called ‘Pure,’ and I’ll release it in early November,” she said. “There’s a second song called ‘Retail Therapy’ that I’ll release closer to the Black Friday weekend after Thanksgiving.”