Mercer Museums Records “Years”

Mercer Museums (soundcloud.com/mercermuseums) are back at Forge to record their new original song Years. The folk-rock band is comprised of Matt Gingras (lead vocals & head diva), Paul Detweiler (vocals, guitar & arranger), Joey Carl (guitar, bass & vocals), and Tom Christiansen (Banjo & keys).

Before the band formed, the members originally came to Forge 6 years ago to record a cover song for The JAG Fund’s (www.jagfund.org) annual “Tube Float” down the Delaware River. The JAG Fund is a non-profit organization that raises money to support brain tumor research. From the members’ first experience at Forge, they knew they had to come back for more tunes, which is what ignited them to form the band.

The Museums have now recorded 6 covers and 4 originals with Lead Engineer Ron DiSilvestro. Bridges (Fated to Stay), Years, Ashland, and Black Muddy, to name a few.

Matt states Ron’s really good because he lets you do your thing, guides you along, and then he’ll make suggestions where he thinks you might wanna do this, that or the other thing. Those suggestions are usually spot on and he has no ego about it. Forge Recording, I literally love it – This is one of my favorite times of year. Every time I step in here, it’s 5 hours of fun and of creating something.

Joey explains For guys like me that love playing music but don’t really get the opportunity to record, this is a fantasy camp. We look forward to it every year.

Tom says I enjoy coming here, the facilities are well-beyond, basically, there’s nothing we could need that’s not here. They have everything we would need or pretty much anything anybody needs to make a quality product. Ron’s expertise with recording, engineering, and mixing makes us sound way better than we probably should sound. We enjoy coming here for the laid back type of atmosphere and no type of pressure or ego type of stuff going on.

Paul shares It’s nice to be able to take a couple days out of the year and be able to express yourself a little bit. After college my band toured a lot and now I have a real job, I have kids and you know priorities change. But when we get to come here, it’s like you can kind of put everything else aside and just enjoy creating stuff, which puts you back in touch with who you are as a person. It is a nice perspective shift from the day-to-day.