Brian D’Addario is used to transporting his listeners back to the ’60s with the music of The Lemon Twigs; now he’s done the same for original hippie bard Stephen Kalinich. “I’d send him poems and he was so supportive of me,” Kalinich says of their collaboration on D’Addario’s forthcoming solo album Till The Morning. “It was like with Dennis [Wilson], I had that feeling with him. He’s so open. It’s such a magic connection… beyond just human. Brian has this way to get into a lyric and make it come to life.”
Brian D’Addario is used to transporting his listeners back to the ’60s with the music of The Lemon Twigs; now he’s done the same for original hippie bard Stephen Kalinich. “I’d send him poems and he was so supportive of me,” Kalinich says of their collaboration on D’Addario’s forthcoming solo album Till The Morning. “It was like with Dennis [Wilson], I had that feeling with him. He’s so open. It’s such a magic connection… beyond just human. Brian has this way to get into a lyric and make it come to life.”
Kalinich is now 83, but he’s still very much recognisable as the idealistic hippie dreamer who turned up to the The Beach Boys’ office in 1966 with hair to his waist and a paper bag full of poems. The lyrics he wrote for songs such as “Little Bird”, “Be Still” and “All I Want To Do” spoke of life being “meant for joy”, of learning a carefree mindset from nature, and of the all-healing salve of love. Subsequent work with the likes of Dennis Wilson, PF Sloan and Brian May has kept these idyllic themes alive for over five decades.
“The songs that he wrote with The Beach Boys, musically and lyrically, they always stood out to me,” says D’Addario. “They’re all about finding something sweet within and manifesting it. He has a peace with the up-and-down nature of life that he hasn’t lost at all.”
D’Addario has been a fan of Kalinich’s work since childhood. He and his brother/bandmate Michael recorded “Little Bird” when they were around ten years old, and connected with Kalinich on social media before they’d landed a record deal. “I recognised his name and told him how much I loved his work,” D’Addario says. “I can’t even remember the first time he sent his poems to us. Maybe he talked about it right away. He was so open to collaboration, and I was always gung-ho to do it.”
The opportunity finally arose as D’Addario was putting together his first solo album from a backlog of tracks too numerous and personalised to fit on a Lemon Twigs record. “Anything remotely country is not something that Michael’s that interested in,” D’Addario explains, although Till The Morning also takes in ’60s beat rock, dreamy ’70s folk, chamber pop and ragtime. The album’s two gentlest acoustic songs – “Song Of Everyone” and “What You Are Is Beautiful” – were composed almost instinctively around poems sent over by Kalinich, whose words touch on humanity’s fundamental wonders and unrecognised inner worth.
“I’m trying to include that we’re all connected at some level in this universe,” says Kalinich. “I do some love songs, but at this age I’m more inclined to want to spread joy in the world – and I think [Brian’s] music does that.”
D’Addario considers Kalinich’s poetry of positivity to be an extension of his personality. “Those kinds of feelings and words flow out of him when you’re talking to him. His love of art and expression is a very spiritual thing. It felt very honest and true.”
But as with the best words-and-music collaborations, Kalinich reckons he couldn’t have written those songs without D’Addario’s encouragement. “You could say that lyrics come from the grace of the universe and they manifest themselves through you as an individual channel, like all the tributaries that make up a river that flows into the ocean. That’s what Brian brought out in me.”
Till The Morning is out now on Headstack Records
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