Tiers/And Other Stories

Product Description Tiers is a pop opera, the story of Richard meeting a girl in Bethesda, Maryland, then leaving her after a brief courtship to go do battle with the music industry in Los Angeles. It took three years for the reason to rhyme, as Richard puts it, but he finally figured out that the girl he left behind was the love of his life. This musical travelogue takes us from Maryland to California to New York City where Richard reunites with his future wife, Nancy. And Other Stories is just that - tales of life in NYC. Many of the tracks are what he calls 'lifestyle songs', lyrically dealing with strongly held beliefs on love, life and loss. Along with the usual suspects (Beatles, Dylan, Who, Byrds, Kinks), Richard has always been a huge fan of Broadway musicals, especially the older classics like West Side Story, My Fair Lady and Oklahoma. He also admires the music of Aaron Copland as well as other classical composers. All these influences shaped Richard's musical landscape and you can really hear this diversity on these two new releases. Richard X. Heyman's ambitious new release Tiers/And Other Stories affirms what his longtime admirers have known for years: the veteran singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and DIY recording pioneer is a world-class artist whose effortless mastery of popular music idioms is matched by his uncanny knack for infusing classic styles with timeless emotional truths. Those abilities have won Heyman a fiercely loyal grass-roots fan base and reams of critical acclaim over the past two and a half decades. The two-CD Tiers/And Other Stories marks a creative watershed for Heyman, consolidating threads of his prior work while venturing into fresh new musical and conceptual territory. The project finds him diverging from the jangly, guitar-driven style for which he's best known, in favor of a more eclectic approach that encompasses baroque symphonic textures, languid country balladry, gospel-inflected R&B and haunting atmospherics. Review Speaking of power pop, I've been a fan of this DIY recording artist for decades now, but even I am blown away by Heyman's consistent musical excellence, not to mention the musical ambition of this melodic double dose of his latest work. At a time when it takes balls to put out a single album, he puts out two at the same time - one of those albums, Tiers, is autobiographical and document