“Something From Nothing” is the newly released recording by bassist, guitarist, and singer-songwriter, Phil McAuliffe — a Hamilton-resident who is also a nationally known photographer.
Featuring 14 rock-infused songs, the CD not only celebrates the composer/musician’s love of music but also celebrates New Jersey music making.
A member of the regionally known “Trenton Makes” band, McAuliffe has created a recording that spotlights his own talents as well as those of the following who’s who of regional musicians who frequently perform together: guitarist Ernie White, drummer Mark Sacco, singer Lisa Bouchelle, bassists/vocalist Jeff Guenther, harmonicist Guy DeRosa, saxophonist Joe Grillow, and mandolinist Paul Prestopino.
“It’s just a reminder we don’t do these things alone,” McAuliffe says about his fellow musicians in his liner notes.
Crisply recorded at Ernie White’s LeBlanc Studio and Studio 2233, both in Hamilton, the CD’s songs were penned mainly by McAuliffe and include titles ranging from contemporary and popular culture (“We’re Not in Kansas Anymore,” “The Last Rock Star,” and “Once You’ve Walked on the Moon”) to something more primal (“The Wolves” and “Waiting for the Gray Dog”).
For an underlying theme or catalyst, the singer-songwriter notes “the last five years have been a rough patch. The pandemic, loss of loved ones, health issues. To try to create a piece of art from nothing at times felt like an uphill climb to say the least” — a spirit reflected in the singer’s often yearning voice.
Born in Trenton and raised in Allentown, McAuliffe was raised by an architect and visual artist father and an artist mother.
About his future in music, McAuliffe says in a past U.S. 1 interview, “I wasn’t very good at first, but they both supported me.”
As that interview notes, around the same time the music bug bit him, so did the photography bug. Initially, his interest was in photographing musicians and getting to hang out with national touring acts backstage.
“I started photography as a hobby as a teenager and began going to concerts. I began doing some freelance work for the Mercer Messenger. The editor’s name was Wayne Davis. He used to get me press passes for concerts. I’d go down to the Spectrum in Philly. Some of the times I was more interested in getting backstage,” he says.
In the late 1970s and early ’80s he did a lot of work as a roadie, sound man, and light man for various Trenton-area bands, including those of veteran Hamilton guitar teacher and studio owner, Ernie White.
His interest in photography took off while he was attending Mercer County Community College.
“I was in my 20s when I was photographing a lot of these bands and getting to meet them. It was very inspirational. It was everyone from Lynyrd Skynyrd to the Allman Brothers to Genesis. I got to see Led Zeppelin on one of their tours, so that inspired me. I picked up the guitar mainly to write songs.”
He says he also played bass and got into some garage bands.
McAuliffe, whose wife, Cathy, works in the insurance business, lives in the Mercerville section of Hamilton. He cites everyone from Tom Petty to Bruce Springsteen to Heart to newcomer country artist Chris Stapleton as his songwriting influences, but more recently he has discovered the beauty of traditional American folk songs.
He says his first big break as a struggling musician came with a trio called Rox from the Princeton area. “Andy Haley and Brian Jeffries used to play with Montana Mining Company. I was lucky enough to get in a band with these guys, and I learned so much.” The band’s venues included John & Peter’s in New Hope and the Tin Lizzie Garage in Kingston.
He moved to Clearwater, Florida, for a time with Rox and then got involved with a Miami-area band called Lix, which had a big following on Miami’s vibrant club scene back in the mid-1980s.
“While I was in Florida I started doing freelance photo work for local paper north of Fort Lauderdale, and they were about to start flying the space shuttle again [after the Challenger disaster in 1986], and I had driven up the coast to see that launch. I managed to get a press pass to see the next launch.”
There, he met photographer Scott Andrews, who worked with Nikon at the Space Center, “and we ended up doing a lot of remote photography,” he says.
“That whole experience got me seriously into photography. There were so many professional photographers around. You could go to the bookstore and find their books and there they were, working next to you at Kennedy Space Center. I got into photojournalism and kept doing that, and that ended up being my career outside of music.”
Once he came back to the area he found a job at the Princeton Packet and worked there for two decades, finally as photo editor, while continuing to go back to the space center in Florida for additional freelance work. His big break with photography came in 2005 when he hooked up with an agency, Polaris Images, in New York.
While his musical career may appear to have entered dormancy while he was working at the Packet, he says he has never stopped writing his own songs.
Looking back on what is now more than four decades in music and photography, McAuliffe says there is a connection between the two art forms. As a photographer, he has won awards for photos from 9/11, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Superstorm Sandy, and Kosovo refugees in 1999.
“For me the connection with music and photography is I’ve written a lot of songs based on experiences I’ve had as a photographer. I’ve seen a lot of things first-hand that most people maybe only would see on TV. I’ve been there, so there are a lot of songs I’ve written that touch on or were influenced by these events.”
Something From Nothing. Prices upward from $13.98. Available at the Princeton Record Exchange in Princeton, Record Collector in Bordentown, Randy Now’s Man Cave in Hightstown or online at recordstoreday.com.
