Album Notes

'UNDER', the fourth and NEW Kenny Schick/Basement3 CD, is the heart-felt sound track of an amazingly extraordinary, romantic and life changing adventure in Australia.

For Kenny, the last couple years of a long and diverse musical career have been all about bold reassessments of self, a redefinition of his sound, and the decision to take his very personal ‘studio project’, Basement 3, into the ‘live’ realm. Inspired by the soulful, naked approach of acoustic musicians such as Gillian Welch, Iron and Wine, and Nick Drake, Kenny made the brave move to take a decade long method of dense, complex orchestration and turn it upon it’s head. The result of this seemingly contradictory musical approach, this ‘stripping down’, yields a product that is very accessible to a wide range of audiences and reveals Kenny’s skill as a front man. In keeping with his journey of extreme changes and opposites, his quirky irreverent sense of humor is the perfect ying to the yang of his often dark, introspective music.

With the freedom and mobility a solo act affords, and the desire to explore his mind and this new musical direction more deeply, Kenny started to ponder the possibilities of travel. Having had more interest in his artsy music abroad, he entertained the idea of a musical adventure in Europe, but an Australian friend redirected his focus to the southern part of the planet.

Having lived his whole life in the San Francisco bay area, Kenny needed a little shove to take this big dive – and it was New Year’s Day 2006 that Kenny met an Australian girl named Sabine on myspace.com. After a 7 month online romance, Kenny quit all his bands, his part time job, left family and friends, and set out on a year long adventure down under.

The new Kenny Schick/Basement3 CD, ‘UNDER’, was born on the opposite side of the world. Mostly written and recorded on a laptop in a small apartment in St. Kilda, Victoria, ‘UNDER’ is an all-acoustic venture. It is naked, exposed, and raw—it both documents and reflects the ‘journey’ and fulfills the evolution of Kenny’s musical direction.

Many of the songs on ‘UNDER’, like ‘Calling You’, ‘Ghost’, and ‘Go’ are very much a product of this journey. The lyric, “Dry as a bone, a ghost alone, an echo in the phone, fire cinder and stone” from ‘Ghost’, is an example of a recurring theme that interweaves imagery of the land, the people, and feelings of nakedness with ‘mental’ and ‘spiritual’ insights that were born of this journey. This is a CD for ‘travelers’—for those on a journey in search of an extraordinary life.