LET'S WELCOME LEY CHARMER TO THE RELATED RECORDS FAMILY!

LEY CHARMER is the moniker for Max Kaufman's recording project. Max is a longtime friend and collaborator to many of the artists on the Related Records roster and many other great artists over his 20+ year career as a backing musician (currently touring as the drummer for TWISTED TEENS, has played guitar, bass and keys for YAIRMS and many other artists), tour manager, tour bus driver, theater production manager, recording engineer... just a real "jack of all trades" as they say. Not to mention one of the most (if not THE MOST) responsible and loving musicians I have ever had the pleasure of working with. I just really genuinely love this guy and I am so excited to be releasing something that is his own original work.

photo of me sharing the magic that comes from this new Ley Charmer cassette.

Here are some words Max wrote about the cassette for this newsletter:
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"A few years ago I realized that I didn’t want my own voice to be the vessel for the songs I was writing. I can sing, and I like to sing, but stepping back to let someone else’s powerful voice do the heavy lifting to bring my songs to life was a great realization. It was only shortly after having this realization that I met Esther (definitely not an accident). Her voice is so full of life and beauty, and it allowed me to step back and just write songs, without having to feel the pressure of singing what I was writing. I reverse engineered this EP, and made it from the top down. By that I mean that we recorded Esther’s vocals first, and I then built the rest of the instrumental track around her recorded vocals. This way I felt like I could try lots of different grooves, ideas, tonal color palettes, and really discover the truest versions of these songs, and let them figure out what they wanted to be. There is no band to play these songs live, and maybe there never will be. I recorded Esther singing another handful of songs though, so maybe there will be more Ley Charmer recordings in the future, we’ll see."

The EP comes out Saturday May 16th - Max is playing a show that night in Durham, NC opening for KELLY MORAN (under the name MAKKA WEST) as part of BOOM CLUBS "Blacktronika" series of shows for the month of May.
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More info on these flyers.

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25% OFF COUPON FOR BEING PATIENT

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I am going to be out of town for the rest of the month of May and will be unable to fulfill any mail order until I get back to Related Records head quarters. So, here is a discount code for those of you that are wanting to order something from the shop and don't mind waiting 3-4 weeks for it to be shipped. Just use the coupon code "ItsCoolICanWait" when you are checking out. (I haven't sent a coupon code since May 2024 by the way.)