Fresh off a Music New Brunswick Week showcase last weekend, pop singer-songwriter Jared Lutes is getting set to release his newest record, When We Grow Younger with a show at the Casino New Brunswick pub Friday night.
The follow-up to 2010’s Waiting On You, Lutes’ latest record was more than a year in the making and is comprised of what he feels is some of the best material he has written over the past decade.
Perhaps best of all, Lutes didn’t intentionally set out to make a new record. He and his band mate and multi-instrumentalist Jon Arsenault originally set about to record a couple of tracks together. One thing led to another, the creative juices started flowing and before he knew it, Lutes had a complete album tracked.
“Looking back, I didn’t have any plans more than a year ago when we started recording,” he says. “Jon was setting up a home studio at the time and thought I would end up recording one or two songs. I didn’t go into recording with any kind of expectations. The whole project ended up unraveling rather organically.
“It was a really pleasant surprise because there was no pressure to get anything done. I didn’t have anyone breathing down my neck to get the record done. We weren’t feeling rushed or compelled to complete it and as the recording process progressed, we ended up bringing more and more people on board to play on the record.”
Lutes says that he and Arsenault have musically gravitated towards one another since Arsenault played drums on an on-again and off-again basis with Lutes’ prior band In Tandem. Since reconnecting a couple of years ago, Arsenault has served Lutes as bassist, drummer and keyboardist.
“He’s so talented, it’s annoying,” Lutes quips.
While his show Friday night will be backed by a full band including his wife Marie-Josee Poitras, Lutes can often be seen playing virtually anywhere that he can pull up a chair and his guitar. These non-conventional music venues including the Starbucks café located inside of Chapters have proved to be fertile ground for Lutes winning new fans.
“I’ve been playing music for the last 15 years. For the last few years, I have been doing it on a full-time basis and, until recently, had been taking almost any gig that I was offered for the sake of experience, practice and exposure.
“I’ve played many bars and while I will continue to do so, I have found that I am perhaps more apt to attract new fans in those non-traditional venues,” Lutes says. “Recently I played a short set at the Jitter Bean Café (on Mountain Road) which resulted in me selling a bunch of CDs and receiving invites to play other shows. From a career standpoint, those shows are turning out to be among the most important I can play. Those shows aren’t about the money, they are about the love I have of being able to pull up a chair and play music for people.”
Article published in the October 19, 2012 edition of the Times & Transcript