FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM NOVEMBER 21, 2019 • BUZZ • THE QUEENS COURIER 69
Local musicians discuss how LIC inspired their new album
BY ANGELICA ACEVEDO
“Wide Open Sky,” a new collaborative
album by Long Island City-based musicians
J. Walter Hawkes and Pat Irwin released their Long Island City-inspired album, “Wide Open Sky” on Nov. 15.
Photo courtesy of Clandestine
Pat Irwin and J. Walter Hawkes,
takes listeners into a refl ective, yet
grounded world of jazzy guitar and trombone
instrumentals laced with hints of
electronic sounds.
Irwin and Hawkes were inspired by
Long Island City, the neighborhood
that they’ve called home for quite some
time now, when creating the 10-track
record. Irwin moved to LIC in the late ‘80s
while Hawkes arrived in the early ‘00s.
“We know our neighbors. We care about
our neighbors,” said Hawkes, who plays
the trombone. “It wasn’t until I moved to
Long Island City and have been here for a
minute that I ever felt like I was a part of a
real community, and I lived in a few other
places in New York and the country.”
Over the last few years, though, they’ve
witnessed fi rsthand just how rapidly the
neighborhood has changed.
“Th e name of the record, ‘Wide Open
Sky,’ is a direct acknowledgement of what
the sky used to look like in Long Island
City,” Hawkes said.
“It was like a secret,” Irwin, who plays
the trombone, said about what Long
Island City used to be. “New York changes,
cities change — we just didn’t know it
was going to change the way it has.”
Both Irwin and Hawkes mentioned the
increasing rent rates, lack of aff ordable
housing, and tall skyscrapers along the
waterfront — or, as Irwin puts it, the addition
of “a separate economy” — as examples
of developments they didn’t foresee
coming to LIC.
“We’ve had lots of friends that had to
leave the neighborhood because they got
priced out,” Hawkes said. “I’ve been in
a very cool building with a great landlord
since 2007 with other musicians …
Now my future is very much in question
here because my landlord is selling
the building.”
Th ey acknowledge the benefi ts that
come with new developments, such as
libraries and more effi cient public transit.
Irwin even remembered a time when he
couldn’t even buy groceries.
“You don’t really wanna sound like,
‘back in the olden days,’” he said. “But creative
people have put a lot of work into
this place. And when we’re being pushed
out, it takes a certain chunk out of the
quality.”
Irwin and Hawkes have already released
several music videos for the album, but
their video for the album’s opening track,
“In Another Time,” feels particularly nostalgic
and intimate.
Th e video showcases LIC’s many facets
as the duo play their instruments during
one cloudy evening.
While Irwin acknowledged that “Wide
Open Sky” has nostalgic undertones, he
feels that ultimately, it has a way of “looking
back and looking forward.”
Irwin has had a long and diverse career
in music. He toured with the B-52s for
almost two decades and started several
New York City-based no-wave bands,
such as Th e Raybeats and 8 Eyed Spy.
Hawkes has won four Emmys and
worked with Billboard’s top jazz artist of
the ‘00s, Norah Jones, and the renowned
Elvis Costello.
But other than their love of music and
impressive resumes, Irwin and Hawkes
have another thing in common: they’ve
both scored popular cartoon series.
Irwin worked on Nickelodeon’s widely
popular “SpongeBob SquarePants” and
“Rocko’s Modern Life,” while Hawkes has
Photo by Lesley Martin, courtesy of Clandestine
credits on “Blues Clues” and PBS’ “Peg
+ Cat.”
“We’ve done stuff , individually, that’s
had a pretty long reach,” Irwin said. “You
can’t really run into many people who
don’t know ‘Blues Clues’ or ‘SpongeBob’
… but I think we’re both pretty lucky to
know that we’ve done that and now we
can come together and do something
starting from a smaller, local place.”
Th e two met back in 2005 and almost
instantly knew they wanted to work
together.
Aft er working on “Wide Open Sky” for
about eight years on-and-off due to their
confl icting schedules, Irwin and Hawkes
can now say they have.
“I think at some point we counted how
many tunes we had,” Hawkes said. “Some
tunes were small, just trombone and
guitar, and some of them were larger, and
I think I was half-thinking it was two different
records — but then we looked at it
and we thought, ‘No, that’s a record!’”
On Sunday, Iriwn and Hawkes celebrated
the release of the album with a listening
party at LIC’s Ten10 Studios.
“Th is is about us,” Irwin said. “I don’t
think either of us knew what we were
gonna get when we started making the
record, and I don’t think we imposed it on
one another, it just happened.”
Regardless of whether you live in LIC
and are aff ected by the changes that it’s
going through, Irwin and Hawkes just
want people to enjoy the album.
“I just wanted to make something beautiful,”
Iriwn said.
You can stream “Wide Open Sky” on all
streaming services, including on Spotify.
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