It started with me just singing, which was a bad idea by anyone’s estimation, especially my own.  

I didn’t play any instruments, but I had years of songs in my head, songs I’d written while driving around my hometown (L.A.) and walking around just about everywhere else I’d been.  Songs I wrote to cheer myself up after a hard day of work or playwriting.

One chilly night in 2003, at a downtown variety show in the West Village, I sang a few of these songs for an audience of strangers. When I awoke the next morning to find that it hadn’t killed me, I decided to do it again.

I hear music in my head when I’m writing a song, and from the start, that’s how I sang: as if a band of smashingly talented, super-sensitive, snack-loving musicians were playing alongside me. And it warmed my heart when, after my first shows, people began coming up to me to say things like, “I could hear the band. I could hear the whole arrangement.”

That’s where the idea of the Orchestra came from: the mouths of strangers who said they could hear the band I’d been hearing in my head for years. I turned it into a joke, I’d say “Hi, I’m Ethan Lipton, and this is the Ethan Lipton Orchestra.”  And people would laugh because there was nobody there.  But I wasn’t exactly kidding.

Then something glorious happened: Living, breathing musicians started playing with my imaginary Orchestra.  There was Eben Levy and his guitar, and Mike Stumm on uke, and Lem Jay Ignacio, who came from L.A. to play keys on our first CD, recorded one raucous night at Ariana Smart’s Low bar in DUMBO and released on Home Office Records.  Others sat in—Dan Freeman, Dave Sutter, Kristin Mueller, Cynthia Hopkins, Fisherman, to name a few—and the Orchestra became a mutable organism, changing lineups from show to show.  And for the first time, I started writing songs with the knowledge that human beings other than myself would be playing them.  What a joyful treat that was.

Ian Riggs later joined us on bass and Vito Dieterle came aboard with his sax, and after putting out a second live album on Home Office Records (Baby, I Feel the Same Way), I talked it over with some of the fellas, and we figured there was only one thing left to do. We decided to start a band. 

 Mr. Softy is the first full-length studio recording by that band, which features Eben, Ian, Vito and myself.  I wrote the songs, we arranged the music a foursome, and producer Huck Bennert helped us make it into a record.  It’s a pretty intimate CD, in ways that neither or my live recordings could be, and I’m proud and grateful to say that the band playing on it is a whole lot better than the one in my head ever was.

Thanks for your support, and stick with us. We’re not done yet.

 Ethan