Staking Her Claim

Cynthia G. Mason is no quitter.

by Brian Howard

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Published: Dec 6, 2006

rock/pop

For Cynthia G. Mason, it was a matter of if, not when.

After a string of cassette-only releases, the singer-songwriter with the rhythmically droning guitar figures, haunting voice and bewitchingly abstract lyrics, released her first CD in 2000. The eponymous seven-song collection on her Spiderwoman label earned her local plaudits and national acclaim. She started playing with a backing band made up of then-members of skronk-rock outfit Need New Body. The follow-up was being planned. The West Philly native and Penn grad had, it seemed, arrived.

And then the waiting started.

"Then I went to law school," smiles Mason over a plate of French toast at Little Pete's diner, around the corner from the apartment she's lived in for the last nine years. "I guess there were several attempts [to record a follow-up], and a bunch of really wonderful Philly musicians along the way who wanted to help out. Everyone was supportive and great, but for some reason another year would go by, and I'd kind of make another attempt with another few people, never finishing the original idea. There are some unfinished demos out there."

For Mason, one roadblock was that writing and playing music is often a solitary endeavor, so scheduling with bandmates who had other projects proved difficult. "I would find myself playing solo, and then playing with other people, and then playing solo again," she says, "and I couldn't figure out what kind of record I wanted to make."

But the big holdup was the simple fact that putting oneself through law school, and the esquire title that comes with it, is a bit all-consuming. Now a graduate of Temple Law, Mason works as an attorney for Philadelphia Legal Assistance, serving victims of domestic abuse.

During the long six years since her last record, a couple of showcases for labels that bore no fruit soured Mason on the business a bit, and "I felt like it was time to take a step back and focus on what I liked about music again."

So she started playing as a duo with Larry D. Brown, one of the guys in her old backing band, and started having fun again. "He knew I still wanted to finish a full-length album, and he also knew that I wasn't really interested in going into a studio again," she recalls. "One day he lugged over his old four-track and his favorite Radio Shack microphone and said, 'Make a record. Work on it whenever you feel like it, and have fun.'"

And that's when Quitter's Claim (High Two), Mason's first released recording in six years, began to take shape.

"My apartment gets amazing light in the morning. That's such a nice time to be there," says Mason. "When I began recording the album, I set up the four-track on my little round kitchen table in front of the window, put all the mics in the mic stands and plugged all the cables in and then just left everything like that for a few months. In the morning, before work, I would make some tea and record songs. I had a flexible schedule at the time, so I was going in to work late. I had the whole morning to hang out and work on the songs. I get up pretty early these days, so I don't get the same light, but it's still nice to make music before going in to work."

For Mason, it was something of a return to basics, to the days when she'd record and release her cassettes through Spiderwoman. She finished the album this summer and decided put it out herself. "I had it mastered, got the artwork done, and it was about to be pressed," recalls Mason. A serendipitous encounter with Dan Piotrowski of Philly's High Two Records — home of Adam Arcuragi, Dave Burrell and Sonic Liberation Front — changed that. "I told him I was about to release a new record. He said he was interested in putting it out. It was really a stroke of good luck." She gave him the e-mail contact of the place about to press the CD and Quitter's Claim was added to the roster of one of Philly's up-and-coming labels.

"This is cheesy, but things kind of work out when you stop trying," says Mason of her previous attempts to land a label.

It was a lucky stroke for High Two, as Mason's first released songs since the turn of the century — save for her stunning cover of Richard Buckner's "Surprise, AZ" on last year's Believer magazine compilation — delivers on the promise of that eponymous CD and ups the ante. Mason unfurls her trademark meditative rhythmic picking — "I consider myself a rhythm guitarist, even though I'm finger picking," she explains — on a collection of 10 songs that ruminate, not surprisingly, on the frustration of trying to get things accomplished. Opening track "Like a Lifer Out for Good" and its sentiments of quiet desperation and tacit acceptance leave the listener wondering if the album will continue to track two, while "Fits and Starts" ("I keep threatening to disconnect") could be read as an encapsulation of the last six years, and "Quit While You're Misled" is, admittedly, as bald-faced as Mason gets about her musical hiatus. It's not all about consternation, though. "The Way the Morning Came" is a touching if sad study on love and loss ("Every minute was a track star, with no skill for running late") and "Nerve," with its chorus "we're more giddy than daring," chronicles the nervous and nerve-wracking first flirtations of a romance.

Mason concedes that her songs all originate from her own experiences, and that she attempts to blur the details both to protect the guilty and in hopes that listeners can imbue them with their own meaning.

Despite the long layoff, Mason is both relieved that she's finished Quitter's Claim by her self-imposed deadline — "I'd decided December 2006 seemed like a good time to finish the record" — and that it turned out, thanks in large part to help from Brown, who plays on the album, the way she wanted. Ultimately, she was hoping to put out a record she could re-create live.

Because yes, despite the day job, Mason knows that making the record is only part of the equation.

"I have a generous vacation package," says Mason of the prospects of taking some time next year to tour. Then she grins: "It hasn't come up yet."

(bhoward@citypaper.net)

Fri., Dec. 8, 7:30 p.m., $5, with Joshua Marcus, Amy Pickard and Larry D. Brown, Philadelphia Ethical Society, 1906 S. Rittenhouse Square, www.cynthiagmason.com.

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