Bill Flanagan on The Same Thing Project's New Album

The Same Thing Project is not exactly a band, but they have made an album filled with joyous, moving and rocking music.  That’s the main fact you need to know and in some ways saying more about it may only confuse things. So before we get into the background, let me say that this is music that will remind you of the elevation of REM one minute and the winking wisdom of John Prine the next.  It is folk-rock in the true sense of those two words; folk because it is music in the voices of everyday people, and rock because it swings like a bastard. Your first reaction will be something like, “This is a really cool sound.”  Your second reaction may be, “Who is writing these songs?” Turns out that the Same Thing Project is a collaboration between some of New England’s best rock musicians (the main mover is singer/songwriter Mark Cutler) and all sorts of folks from the community who have joined open songwriting sessions and who have stories to tell.  The collaborators include laborers, senior citizens, office workers, persons with special needs, all throwing their best ideas into songs that come of of a unique space between an encounter group and a hootenanny.  You might think the end result could suffer from Too Many Cooks, but thanks to the producing and editing skills of the songwriters in charge, what emerges is a collection of music from real life - as complex, uplifting, funny and touching as the world we live in.  The Same Thing Project comes from the place all great music comes from - the human heart.

— BILL FLANAGAN