"...music that is meaningful, real and authentic."
~ Knock Out

"...as a songwriter, and particularly as a lyricist, he's on to something..."
~ Fairbanks Square

 

Singer-songwriter Caleb Aronson was born and raised in Alaska. When he wasn't wandering the hills and mountains, he was fishing... and causing trouble.

Aronson taught himself guitar and, with his love of poetry, began writing songs at the age of 14. Since then, Aronson has played venues from Folk Festivals, clubs, coffeehouses, and stern-wheel riverboats in Alaska, to the subways and the legendary Club Passim in Boston, MA. He’s won songwriting awards including an award for his song "Northbound" in a lyric contest hosted by American Songwriter Magazine, and an Individual Artist Grant Award from the Rasmuson Foundation of Alaska.

 

In April of 2007, Aronson traveled to New Brunswick, Canada to record with some fellow musicians in an unheated garage loft on an old 70s reel to reel machine. Though the week he was there was productive, Aronson took only the skeletons of a few songs back to the States with him.

He eventually fleshed them out and, along with one he recorded on his own, put them on a new record called From The Next Town.

One of the songs on From The Next Town, "Reversing Falls", was written the fall before Aronson recorded it. He was in Saint John, New Brunswick playing a few shows when he crossed the Saint John River one day and saw what are called the Reversing Falls - the illusion of the Saint John River “falling” upstream due to the Bay of Fundy’s rising tide, or high tide. The illusion is really just common river rapids. But Aronson found a metaphor in the "Falls" for all his ramblings from Alaska to Boston to New Brunswick. He wrote the song that night.

From The Next Town is what Aronson calls an “EP-LP hybrid.” "It’s too short to be an LP and too long to be an EP". It has 7 songs – 3 from Aronson’s 2006 debut release, Livengood (see below), and 4 new ones. Colored with haunting electric guitars, light dobro and clever lyrics, From The Next Town is another record demonstrating Aronson's rich lyrical and musical creativity.

 

In 2005, Caleb Aronson wrote and recorded his debut record, Livengood. Named after an old gold mining town 90 miles north of Aronson’s hometown, Livengood (pronounced Lie' ven’ good) is a collection of original songs, of which most are based on Alaska history.

Aronson felt his first record should be about origins. And since Alaska is where he calls home, he felt most of his songs should be Alaska-based as well.

Self-released in March 2006, Livengood is a 2-disc, 29 song record fully composed, recorded, mixed, and mastered by Aronson. Insistant on making his debut record reflect an Alaskan “do it yourself” integrity, Aronson recorded the entire record on portable digital recorders in a vacant cabin in the woods, a basement, a garage, and in a friend’s kitchen among other places.

In an April '06 interview with the Anchorage Daily News, Caleb summed up the process of producing the 29 song Livengood by saying:

"A lot of people have come up and told me how ambitious, crazy and stupid that is," Aronson said last week. And what does Aronson think now that he’s completed the year-long crafting of his double-CD “Livengood"?

“Definitely ambitious and crazy," he replied.

Like Alaska itself, Livengood is full of extremes - from its ambitious, indifferent and even aloof characters, to its unforgiving, yet resourceful landscapes. Even the album itself reflects this duality of extremes:

"The first CD [of Livengood] is acoustic, with a soft, folky feel; most of the tracks are mellow as could be, even when they also contain overtones of fear, delight or resignation. The second is all electric, more energetic and wild and elaborate."

~ Anchorage Daily News

Both discs of Livengood feature Aronson playing many of the instruments, and display his gift of crafting vivid lyrics into multiple genres. Most songs on Livengood are rooted in Alaskan history, yet some songs are rooted elsewhere.