Our guest for this week's Off The Record is Noah Hewett-Ball, leader of the Louisville group Cabin which just released a new CD called Among the Rectangles and Changeable Parts. According to the band's Myspace website Noah was:
A musical late bloomer, Hewett-Ball taught himself to play piano in the practice rooms at Murray State, where he attended college. "They were open 24 hours a day but I noticed that the talent didn't practice past midnight," he says. "That was when I could sneak my jam box in and learn Yann Tiersen by ear." The guitarist, pianist and singer returned to his native Louisville, Ken. with a degree and the desire to start a band so he hooked up with a cousin and two high school friends and wrote, recorded, and released an album, 2005’s "Govern the Good Life." Shortly thereafter Hewett-Ball’s band mates began to fall away one by one and were replaced by Welder (violin, viola, keys, vocals), Chale (drums) and Lease (bass). That lineup recorded the "I Was Here" EP in 2007 and began to stretch their touring legs. Cabin began to get traction but decided in mid-2008 to take a break from playing out. "We had spent the last two years back peddling with each new member while touring and hadn't really become a band of our own," Hewett-Ball says. "We decided to put touring on hold until there was a new record to support." "Among the Rectangles And Changeable Parts" features ten songs tracked by Chale, a former recording engineering student at Indiana University’s prestigious School of Music, in the band’s rehearsal studio. Cabin’s new material treads thin lines; they are romantic but not saccharine, knowing but not cynical, lyric but not pretentious.