Going to Cape May

a CapeMay.com review by
Bob Dean III

 

  In spite of its tourist appeal and countless family activities, Cape May offers solitude not easily found amidst the urgency of east coast towns and cities. 

  Each of us loves something (or everything!) about our little historic landmark; but as our burning feet hop back and forth to drop another quarter in the meter, it’s easy to forget some of the town’s most potent subtleties.  It can also be easy to overlook the sublime presence of the least subtle thing in town, the interminable life force that forever overlaps the sand and exhales its salty breath on those who visit.

   Jeff Touzeau, a singer/songwriter and author based in Westchester, NY has not forgotten.  In his first solo album, he reminds us why we’ve come to Cape May in the first place.  He reminds us why homes were built to stand with such boastfulness.  He reminds us why salt-water taffy and Eggs Benedict taste that much better a hundred miles from home.  He reminds us to look - and to feel - the ocean.

   The album Going to Cape May begins in a very comfortable place.  It opens with a title track that is essentially the grown man’s answer to the feeling we’ve all had as children sitting in the back seat, head out the window yelling “We’re here!”  That feeling never goes away, it only becomes spoken in softer, more articulate tones.

  A given piece of music consists equally of the work itself and what we as listeners bring to it.  Here, it’s certain that most of us will relate to Touzeau's specific details "…as the road comes to an end, I see the flashing lights again."

   Although the album was recorded at his home studio in New York and done over a brief period of time,  in reality the recording session began in Jeff’s mind on the Cape May beaches as early as his boyhood.  He explains, “The imagination is freer in Cape May and what you feel and think there…you take it with you for years”

   So whether absorbing beauty in the hushed, natural sounds of Cape May Point or the man made equivalent via Pink Floyd or The Beach Boys, Jeff began collecting his artistic material long ago.  With Going to Cape May, he’s added haunting acoustic accompaniment and given his Cape May-bred introspection a home.

   Jeff initially attempted to record the album in the Cape May Lighthouse.  However, due to issues with acoustics, the tracks were rendered unusable in a physical sense.   The lighthouse gave him what he needed just the same.  From it, the album’s tone was set and he later recaptured the unique ambience of the old beacon in his own studio.

   Once the album gets us beyond the flashing lights and bridges, it makes a fine-spun transition and takes us to a place where the lights have been dimmed just a touch.  The guitars and vocals take our hand whether we are aware or not.  Ghosts start to take form and show themselves as the album progresses.  They are the lingering spirits of childhood memories, the eerie contrast of our aging process against the ocean’s timeless indifference.

   "Down on the Ocean’s Ground" is a chillingly specific testament to the might of its subject.  Jeff writes of the oft-forgotten South Cape May, which was swallowed and now rests eternally fragmented on the ocean’s floor.  It’s a song that had its genesis in an isolated experience of walking along the beach after a nor’easter years ago.  Bits of Victorian life, long gone, briefly resurfaced in the sand.  The memory never faded in Jeff Touzeau's mind and its recollection helps bring the album to a spectral close.

   The particular trip to Cape May this CD offers might not be the one we take every weekend or even every summer.  It’s not the getaway where we stumble out of Cabanas or collect enough Arcade tickets to buy a key-chain.  It’s the trip to Cape May we took as kids and lies buried in our minds' deep recesses.  It’s more like the December weekend where the sounds of nature have no competition.

The CD Going to Cape May is available in stores in Cape May
 and on line through Jeff Touzeau's website: GoingToCapeMay.com