Here we have the honor of truly premiering a fantastic singer-songwriter. Generally our spotlights delve into relatively established (and New Orleans-based) acts, but here I was lucky enough to catch up with someone with enough talent and potential to let us break tradition. This is also the first act of Art/Official’s, as of this posting “official” New York branch. So welcome, new readers.

Columbus Priority Mail performing at the “National Underground” in New York City; taken from the Facebook of a man named “Lord Lorax.” 

If you don’t grow up in a hip metropolitan area and immerse yourself in its available lifestyle of beautiful, crazy women, drugs and all the remora and detritus that comes with—can you still make relevant music?

Would Abel Tesfaye (aka The Weeknd) and Frank Ocean still be as hip and sexy as they are, as cool as they are, if they were, let’s say, an Asian-American from Ames, Iowa? No, of course they wouldn’t. But would they still be able to make great music—music filled not only with passion and sung by ultra-skilled vocal chords, but the poetic, existential insights that makes them “artists” and not just “singers?”

Andrew Choi, the man behind Columbus Priority Mail and non-hypothetical Asain-American from Ames, Iowa, makes me think the answer is yes. You see, mental illness, strippers and cocaine might be more superficially interesting, but the ordinary can be just as “artistic.”  In high school he (ultra stereotypically) was a world champion concert violinist—he dropped that when he went off to college in Ohio and ended up with a Ph.D. in Philosophy. So ordinary wasn’t the right word, but you know what I mean.

Columbus Priority Mail – Beautiful Liar (Demo)

 

Now he’s singing songs at Open Mic nights around New York, with nothing but an iPod for his homemade, minimal backing tracks—he just figured out how to use samples, and ended up with a beat that would make Flying Lotus smile and a voice that could get him on reality TV.

The Weeknd and Frank Ocean use their experiences to croon creative references to mental illness, drugs, frivolous spending habits and violent love those inadvertently make us all wish we lived that idyllic, sexy, life—and by doing so touch your soul. But the man behind Columbus Priority Mail isn’t crazy or besieged by demons, drug habits and girls (yet), so how does he even have a chance of rising to their caliber?

In Dante’s Inferno, the First Circle of Hell is where God sends all the unbaptized and virtuous pagans. It’s the home of people like Socrates and Virgil. They sit in a nice field, thinking of all the cool shit going on above and torture going on below they’ll never get to see—not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but vaguely sad—sort of like Ames, Iowa and Ohio, the places from where Choi draws his inspiration.

So if the Weeknd and Frank Ocean represent a heaven of the best drugs, beats and girls, Columbus Priority Mail is the the first layer of hell—where the smart people without problems chill.

That’s a bit of an overstatement, of course, and probably just represents where I want Columbus Priority Mail to be. But I wouldn’t be saying it if I didn’t think he had the potential to get there.

I sat down with him in a sketchy park in the Lower East Side to ask him some questions and I learned his interesting story–in short, here is a guy who did everything he was “supposed” to do. Did it well, really well. And now he’s writing songs because, fuck it, he just wants to.

 

A/O: So why “Columbus Priority Mail”?

I actually have no idea. I was finishing up my Ph.D. in Philosophy and sending out applications for professorships and saw a priority mail slip and it just, I don’t know, I hadn’t quite realized at that moment how much I loved Columbus. It’s a great city. They have a great, underrated music scene there as well.

Ph.D. in Philosophy and now Singer/Songwriter. Why?

The economy. Academia is very difficult at this point. I could find jobs, but only ones in the middle of nowhere. I’d get one TT offer, and then I would be forced to take it.  So I started thinking about my music and my voice more seriously, and I started doing Jazz Standards.

Wait, what’s a Jazz standard?

A set of uh, unclearly defined set of songs—like Sophisticated Lady is from the Duke Ellington camp.

Why Jazz standards?

I’ve only been singing for 2 and half years—and it ties in with the career in Philosophy I left behind.

How?

 Well, I was at a conference, where people publically present papers, and I was so nervous presenting mine. It didn’t go very well—but I was singing in the car on the way back and thought, if I can belt out these Standards in front of people maybe it can help me fix my issues with public speaking.  So I ended up doing Jazz Standard’s at Karaoke bars, and the irony is I became a good, even great, singer.  I still get nervous speaking in public though.

Ha.  How does Columbus Priority Mail come from Jazz Karaoke?

Many, many years ago in High School I used to be a concert violinist and even won some international competitions. I loved it because it was all about using your power of interpretation to mold these abstract movements and sounds into something your own.  I stopped playing in college and I guess I forgot about of that. But when I started doing these Jazz Standards for fun and to help my speaking skills, all the love of that art came back.

I’m gonna ignore the fact that you are both a former Philosophy Professor and a former internationally-known teen-violinist, because I’m still hung up on Jazz Standard Karaoke.

Ha. I was trying to get a Jazz piano trio going, but I couldn’t find the right people. The Jazz industry is dying. There were piano trios to be found, but the Jazz industry is so bad right now and they place a big premium on a having a type of look for the few singers they do include. So I just did my Jazz singing at Karaoke bars.

“Type of look?”

Jazz instrumentalists don’t like singers—but when they do tolerate them, it’s only the attractive females. So I never found my trio, but I did download FruityLoops (now FL Studio) and laid out my own tracks there—just simple chords to replace the piano trios that didn’t want me—and started going to open mics. And from Jazz Standards I started thinking about writing music. So then came Columbus Priority Mail. I think have 77 songs written now.

Aside from your songwriting and your singing, what direction do you want the production to go?

Ok, so a lot of the “electronic” nature of my production is just because of the resources at my disposable.  I couldn’t find a band. But even though this “electronic” thing was just a by-product, I’m getting into sampling, like in Beautiful Liar, the sample is really prominant.

That’s a great song on all fronts, by the way, both in your capacity as a Singer-Songwriter and a producer.

Yeah, so now I’m getting pulled between two camps. The first one is that a lot of these New York promoters, are ok with me going up there just with my mp3 player and singing; and the other group of people, well, want me to get a band together.

 Ignoring the debate between seriously learning electronic production and staying solo or organizing a band, where do you see your music headed in terms of tempo, mood and overall genre?

I honestly don’t know what to say about that. The part I like the most right now is writing the songs. I get new ideas all the time—I’m just still locked in my songwriting phase. Is it ok to say Pop?—Amy Winehouse stuff.

 

You can find more demos at his Bandcamp and Facebook, here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Columbus-Priority-Mail/116117738417047?sk=app_178091127385

But be advised this is a young seed and these tracks are demos at best.

Article and Interview by Jeffrey Silberman