Purchase the CD "So Far, So Almost" at CDBaby.com or contact Ed from the Only Ed and The Almost Webthing

The following interview is reprinted in slightly altered form by permission of its author, Ed Lennox of Only Ed and The Almost. Ed is fully and totally responsible for its content. Let no one tell you otherwise. The music of Only Ed and The Almost is subtly comedic lofi with nods toward such artists as They Might Be Giants, Robyn Hitchcock, and The Croutons.

The Only Ed Interview (Part I)

We sat down with founding member Only Ed for a two-part discussion of all things Almost.

Ed: You have an unusual name. Why "Only Ed and The Almost"?

Only Ed: Well, when I first started writing and recording songs -- almost by accident, I might add -- I thought of many possibilities: The Unheard, Sid Still and The Procrastinators, The Gestures, Big Finger and The Digits...then I thought about who I am and what I do, and Only Ed and The Almost seemed appropriate.

Ed: I understand the "Only Ed" part -- you're a one-man band -- but why "The Almost"?

Only Ed: It describes the overall quality of my music.

Ed: What happens if you get better?

Only Ed: My plan is to never improve so I don't have to change my name.

Ed: You said that writing and recording songs happened almost by accident. How so?

Only Ed: Yeah, I had been writing little piano solos for a long time on an acoustic piano that always went out of tune and a mini electronic Casio, and it was impossible for me to get decent recordings with them, so that's as far as it ever went. Just little two- and three-minute piano miniatures with no lyrics. Until I found myself unemployed in 2002. I had been making a living as a graphic artist but I had never actually owned my own computer. So I thought it was about time I buy one and update my skills while I looked for a new job.

Ed: Then what happened?

Only Ed: It was February, and I live in South Florida, so I went to the beach. Repeatedly. And I drank scotch and smoked cigars and generally enjoyed the hell out of my time off. Then I finally got around to buying that computer and I discovered that it had something called a "sound card" in it. Then I activated my free six-month subscription to AOL and immediately checked out some porn sites...

Ed: You were prioritizing.

Only Ed: Yes. Do you have any idea how many porn sites there are on the internet?

Ed: Er...no, but -

Only Ed: There are, like, hundreds of them! There's this one place that is devoted exclusively to hot little people -

Ed: I believe they prefer to be called midgets.

Only Ed: What? Really?

Ed: We were discussing sound cards -

Only Ed: Oh yeah...I found a company on the net called Syntrillium and they sold audio recording and mixing software, and I thought: "This might be fun." So I bought their $49 single-track editor. It was called Cool Edit.

Ed: Then what?

Only Ed: I installed it.

Ed: Then what?

Only Ed: My friend Lisa Ann had just bought a brand new Mac that she was very proud of. She's a musician with a degree from Berklee and she has her own studio set-up. I came back from the beach one day to find a message on my answering machine. It was Lisa: "My computer is dead. Have to get it fixed." I thought that it was a really funny message and that it might make a good song. So I recorded the message onto a cassette tape, then figured out how to patch it through my sound card into Cool Edit and paste it over a little synth riff I created with my 17-year-old Casio MT-68 mini keyboard. I added the robotic voice from my answering machine to this primitive mix and called it "My Computer Is Dead." And the rest -

Ed: Is history!

Only Ed: Yes.

Ed: Then what?

Only Ed: Well, it was kinda fun to do that and I had a little cash and no real desire to go back to work any time soon, so I decided to try to write and record an actual song of my own. So I went back to the Syntrillium site and ordered the Cool Edit 2000 4-track mixer. Then -

Ed: You installed it.

Only Ed: Yes. Yes I did. Then I stared at it for a while, and I thought: Now what? I had no idea how to write a pop tune, let alone actually record multiple parts and lyrics and -- most disturbingly -- sing on it.

Ed: You don't consider yourself a singer?

Only Ed: Have you heard me sing?

Ed: I have heard it said that you have the perfect bad voice for the type of songs you write.

Only Ed: True. Wait...who said that?

Ed: I cannot disclose my sources.

Only Ed: Lisa!

Ed: Anyhow, you decided to write a song of your very own. How cute!

Only Ed: Uh huh. I wrote and recorded my first 4-track tune, an instrumental march in seven-time called "Robot Soldiers Phone Home," and that turned out not-bad, so my next tune was a political satire called "Trafican't Beat The Rap," in which I sang for the first time in a very exaggerated impersonation of someone else impersonating Neil Young. I borrowed heavily from his song "Ohio" for effect. You see, James Traficant was a corrupt and disgraced and eventually jailed U.S. Representative from Ohio who ... what were we talking about?

Ed: Your first pop tune, I believe?

Only Ed: Right. Anyhow, I figured it was about time I write my own original song, so I spent the next two months putting together my first real tune: "She Stole My Beer."

Ed: Two months? Were you reinventing the wheel at the same time?

Only Ed: I had no clue how to do it. As the project progressed I started to notice all the mistakes I had made earlier on, and of course I had no idea how to save tracks and organize them...so I recorded and went back and fixed things and recorded some more...and eventually I ended up with that song. I gradually figured out how to do it and my songs started to sound a little better, so I decided to post three of them on an internet site I found called MP3.com, where they sat for a year and accumulated a grand total of about 100 plays, half of which were mine as I checked back and streamed them to make sure the damn thing was working properly. Alas, it was.

Ed: Which three songs?

Only Ed: I think they were "When I'm Drunk," "She Stole My Beer" and "People With Jobs." But nothing came of that, and I eventually got a new job, and MP3.com went bust, so for several months I concentrated on my new job and didn't write much. Until -

Ed: CNET resurrected MP3.com and it became music.download.com?

Only Ed: Right. I figured, "What the hell?", so I uploaded "When I'm Drunk" and a song called "Him Again" in May of 2004. I got about 20 downloads the first week there and I was quite thrilled with that. Then the editors there inexplicably made "When I'm Drunk" the Featured Song for a day, and I got about 1800 downloads in the next three days and suddenly I wasn't so obscure.

Ed: It was probably an oversight on their part.

Only Ed: Thanks for killing my buzz, Ed.

Ed: Happy to oblige. Then what happened?

Only Ed: Well, a few days later someone named "jill no jack" posted a notice to me saying how she liked my songs, and she invited me to upload a few of them to a place called SongPlanet.com, where she was engaged as an "internet DJ." I checked out the joint and promptly forgot about it, but Jill was persistent so I eventually uploaded a couple songs and went to their Forum and introduced myself.

Ed: How did that work out?

Only Ed: Well, to my relief and amazement everyone there was quite civilized. It was a fairly small place at the time and very well monitored. They made me feel right at home from day one. I uploaded some more songs and started to get played on the internet stream there and I made some new friends and started writing a whole bunch of new songs...and here I am.

Ed: Well, this has been rather tedious and self-indulgent.

Only Ed: Hey, you invited me, remember?

Ed: You are me.

Only Ed: What's your point?

Ed: This concludes Part I of The Only Ed Interview. Part II will possibly concern itself with the following topics:

Only Ed's (alleged) musical training
What would Only Ed do if he had his own cult?
How does Only Ed go about writing his tunes anyway?
Does Only Ed and The Almost play live anywhere?
What exciting new projects are in the works?
Is Only Ed cute and does he encourage groupies to act in irresponsible ways?
How does Only Ed's philosophy influence his songwriting choices?
Does he really roast newborn babies for Christmas dinner or is that just an urban legend?