By Jessica Bal

Zachary Cale is busy. But don’t expect him to make a big deal out of that. The 32-year-old songwriter/singer/guitarist/record label manager has hair that tends to hide his face and seems hesitant to describe anything he does with flourishes or embellishment.

The humble but hardworking musician has produced three solo folk rock albums, another record with the band Illuminations, made numerous appearances playing guitar and bass with other groups, and written around 50 songs that remain unrecorded. That’s all on top of managing his own record label with friends. “Everybody’s got something they’re obsessed with,” Zach said with a shrug. No kidding.

Zach has lived in New York for 10 years, and things seem to be coming full circle. “When I first moved here, I didn’t know anyone – I was just writing songs by myself,” he explained. That was before he connected with a plethora of bands and collaborators, but Zach is trying to cut back on commitments and return to his personal craft. “I’m back to just playing my own stuff.”

His newest record still benefits from his New York network. Members from his old band Illuminations appear on “Noise of Welcome” (May 2011), as well as friends from the record label. Zach, who never anticipated playing the sort of quiet, dark acoustic sound fans have come to expect from him, amplified the backdrop to his aching lyrics for this record. “It has a fuller, bigger sound,” he said. “I wanted to show what I was capable of.” It’s a marked move away than the extreme melancholy and bare bones arrangement of “Walking Papers” (2009). Each track strums along easily into the next, some more jangly (see “Day for Night”), others weightier and weary (“Hello Oblivion”). In most places, Zach manages a delicate juxtaposition between his brambly, coarse voice (often compared to Bob Dylan or Kristian Matsson) and sweeter, uplifting accompaniment (as in “Blake’s Way” and “We Had Our Day in the Sun”). Zach never shies away from regret or disappointment: “I’ve been down in the mire/I’ve been down on my luck,” he croons. But there’s a yearning to accept the past throughout this album that infuses it with new complexity.

Originally from Louisiana, Zach spent 6 years of his adolescence in Indonesia, and then attended college in Washington state before heading to Brooklyn. “I don’t really feel like I’m from anywhere anymore.” Self-taught, Zach picked up guitar around the age of 12, and had a music teacher in Indonesia for a week before he decided to keep at it alone. In high school, loud punk was his genre of choice, and writing punk songs opened up a window into constructing other styles. “For me it’s all about songs,” said Zach. “It doesn’t matter what kind of genre it is. Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer are kind of the same in my mind.” In typical nonchalant fashion, Zach doesn’t claim to have some sort of glorified gift for songwriting, but attributes his abundant list of songs to man-hours. “If you play guitar every day, you get good at it,” he said. “If you try to write songs every day, you’re going to get good at that.”

While he’s not songwriting, Zach spends spare seconds handling his label All Hands Electric, which is co-run by Alfra Martini (who performs under the name Prudence Teacup) and Ryan Johnson (a drummer and sculptor). He remembers feeling fortunate to come under the care of a small underground label in Brooklyn when starting out, and cites it as the inspiration for All Hands Electric. “We were inspired by old punk labels from the 80s…with that youthful kind of energy,” he said. “The attitude then was ‘we aren’t going to get signed to anything, so let’s just put out our own records’.” So they did. Since the label’s inception in 2008, All Hands Electric has produced 14 albums, and has more in the works for this year. “Noise of Welcome” is among those 14, and the cover features a picture of Zach (along with Martini and Johnson) in the backyard of his house – a subtle symbol of their homegrown, collective work. “We’re really about the physical media,” Zach explained, noting the importance of putting out records in addition to digital media. “If it’s not something you can hold in your hand, I feel like it doesn’t really exist.”

If he wasn’t busy enough, Zach just finished up a two-week tour in the U.S. and heads to Europe in September for a month-long string of performances (“Noise of Welcome” was also released in Germany via Adagio 830). Being in the dog-eat-dog environment of New York may be partially responsible for his work ethic, but Zach admits it’s inspiring all the same. “It’s hard to live here and even harder to live and do what you love,” Zach said. “You’ve got to be thinking about it every day and doing it every day. I feel like it just kicks my ass – in a good way.”

Listen to Zach’s music at http://www.myspace.com/zacharycale and keep up with All Hands Electric at http://allhandselectric.com.

Photo courtesy of Zachary Cale.