JORDAN BUDD
Staff Writer
Aaron Schapiro, also known as A.W. Schapiro, started his musical project SAINT BLIND in Igoe Hall 311A by trying to be two people at once.
Shapiro emulated a method done by Johnny Marr and Morrissey of the band The Smiths.
SAINT BLIND’s origin was inspired by a documentary on The Smiths, in particular, a scene that shows how the band created their popular B-side “How Soon is Now.”
The story goes that Marr recorded the track with the other instrumentalists.
Schapiro said, “Then the very next day, Morrissey comes in and gets in the studio. He’s never heard this song before.”
Morrissey pulls out his book of poetry and flips to a random page. Schapiro said, the lead singer “just starts singing whatever notes come to his head as he’s listening to this track for the very first time.”
Bored in his Igoe Hall dorm room, Schapiro embarked on a musical experiment. He attempted to play both sides of the Smiths while creating his piece.
First, acting as Marr and the other instrumentalists, he made a track, which he described as having no lyrics, tonality or even chord progressions.
The fluid instrumental, which was later released as “Cherubim (and Seraphim),” combines steel drum-like synth and a funny sample of someone saying something about Indiana Jones. As the off-kilter beat kicks in, rubbery synth bass and haunting vocal harmonies bleed together.
After completing this instrumental, Schapiro found a poem he had written as an assignment in a creative writing class when he was in high school.
Without thinking of any specific melody or how it would affect the structure of the song, he opened up the track he made in GarageBand on his iPhone, hit record and sang the words.
Schapiro said, “And I liked it. I was really surprised by how much I liked it.”
Wanting to release the track, but not having an artist name to do it under, he decided to go by SAINT BLIND.
Schapiro said, “It was just me making something for fun… liking it way more than I thought I would, and then putting it out.”
Schapiro continued to have success with this creative process, completing the rest of his debut EP as SAINT BLIND, “IGOEHALL (pt. 1)” in a similar manner.
And so it became The Igoe Hall series, a four-part collection of EPs entirely made by Schapiro in his sophomore year dorm room. The 2021 releases were a gradual introduction of SAINT BLIND into the Fredonia music scene.
Among these tracks, Schapiro became known for embodying a wide variety of sounds. For SAINT BLIND, new wave, honky tonk, baroque pop, electronic, and neo-psych, among other styles, are all on the table.
Before Schapiro would create the genre-bending tunes of SAINT BLIND at Fredonia he was writing piano pieces in fifth grade in East Amherst.
When he was a kid, Schapiro was mostly listening to orchestral music. He said, “ I remember being really into
Tchaikovsky. Camille Saint-Saëns was a big one for me in middle school…Erik Satie was [also] a big one.”
By the time he was a junior in high school at Williamsville North, he was already writing for a full symphony orchestra. He premiered his first orchestral piece, played by a 150-piece group of musicians, that same year.
Schapiro described it as, “The most surreal thing that’s ever happened to me… That was the moment where I was like, ‘Oh sh*t, maybe I can like, do music.’”
The piece was called “A Night at the Circus.” Schapiro said the influences ranged from Danny Elfman to Modest Mussorgsky.
Before this orchestral performance in high school, Schapiro was creating music within the pop and rock sphere with Jacob King, another artist in the Fredonia music scene.
The two have known each other since second grade.
King said, “I remember being in gym class hanging out with this other kid named Aiden. Then Aaron came by and he just grabbed both of our heads and bonked them together… And then, it was one of those things where our parents organized the playdate. And I was like, ‘Wait really? Like that guy? He wants to hang out?’”
Far beyond the elementary school bonking, by late middle school, they were already releasing music together.
By high school, King and Schapiro formed the rock band, The Sans. Their 2017 release, “Clear Your Head,” sets the stage for what they’d go on to do in future projects.
King said their overlap of influence came from artists who embodied a psychedelic approach to songwriting, like The Beatles and The Doors.
When the two went off to Fredonia, they formed a four-piece band focused on King’s solo music called King & Co. The group played one show before dissolving. Later on, the two musicians would play together in Fredonia alumna Halle Cook’s indie-folk band, Hal & Pals, before she graduated in 2022.
Aside from The Igoe Hall Series, SAINT BLIND would go on to release a plethora of other singles as well during his time at Fredonia.
One single called “Devil May Care,” was a turning point for Schapiro, as it incorporated the orchestral music of his earlier work into his SAINT BLIND material.
For this to happen, Schapiro would work with Dylan Rohr, a sound recording and technology major who was a junior at the time.
Rohr said of Schapiro, “He wrote a crazy amount of parts for that song. There [were] three clarinet parts, all triple tracked… There [were] a bunch of cello tracks. I remember he wrote a trumpet part for it, and then the guy played pretty much all of the bass instruments himself. He played the acoustic guitar, the drums, the piano [and] obviously, he sang on it. I think he put both stand-up and electric bass on it.”
Rohr said Schapiro did it all with “an air of confidence and conviction that you don’t really see a whole lot.”
While playing live, the SAINT BLIND band has included both Rohr and King within a rotating door of other musicians.
Some of them have had shorter stints than others; Rohr was the drummer for just two weeks.
In his time, he learned how Schapiro’s high standard in the studio transferred over to the live band as well. Rohr described Schapiro as “methodical,” and “fixated on an idea.”
Schapiro said “Honestly, when I started SAINT BLIND, the idea of playing it live on a stage…it wasn’t even in the question.”
He mentions his inspiration from the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band,” a project that was more of a studio production than something that was meant to be played live.
Earlier in the band’s history, King played drums. He also was a fill-in on bass for one gig and played guitar for another.
Referring to the fun challenge of playing in Schapiro’s band, King said, “If you’re playing drums or playing electric guitar, it’s like, ‘Alright, how do I recreate this orchestral-electro song, like whatever the hell this is.’”
King said, “He had a song off of one of his earlier EPs that was my favorite. I was like, ‘Yo, we should play this song.’ And [Schapiro’s] like, ‘We will never be able to play that song.’”
King said, “It was difficult and on some level, I think he kind of had to accept that the band had to be its own thing…It is very theoretical music.”
Despite many recordings, releases and performances as SAINT BLIND in Fredonia, Schapiro did not have the most focused education experience here.
He started as a music education and music composition double major then changed to an English adolescence education major with a minor in music. After a short period of that, he switched to business management and marketing with a minor in accounting as well as his original minor in music. When things still weren’t working out, he decided to drop out for a bit to come back with a renewed plan.
Over the summer, he took a calculus class at Erie Community College to become a sound recording technology (SRT) major in the fall. He was an SRT major for three months before he dropped out for good.
Although both Schapiro and Rohr aren’t at Fredonia anymore, one not finishing his degree and the other having graduated in 2022, the collaboration between them is still intact.
Their latest effort together is one called The Bughouse Collective.
Since high school, Schapiro had wanted to form a group of like-minded musicians that have a common goal of creating and working with one another.
He was largely inspired by The Elephant Six Record Label, along with its accompanying documentary.
That loosely-defined musical collective emerged in the late ‘80s and peaked in the mid to late ‘90s. Elephant Six featured groups such as Neutral Milk Hotel, The Apples in Stereo and The Olivia Tremor Control, among countless others scattered throughout the US with hotspots in Athens, Georgia, and Denver.
While working on his own dream collective, Schapiro decided that to incentivize artists to be in the group he’d offer services to them.
He immediately thought of Rohr to help with the technical side.
Rohr latched onto it immediately, ready to offer his skills in production, mixing and mastering, photography and videography at exclusive rates to Bughouse members.
The SRT alumnus said, “Whether or not he asked me to help, I would have been supportive of the idea because it really does give the artists a network [for] anything you need, from album artwork, shows, publicity… I think it’s a good tool for any musician starting out.”
With the partnership between Schapiro’s Bughouse Record Label and Rohr’s Deadwood Studios, the beginning of The Bughouse Collective was formed.
Soon after, Schapiro typed up an eight-page letter with all the relevant information and started to track down potential recruits.
He said, “I sent it out to eight or nine different artists, and I was really surprised when like three or four of them were like, ‘Yeah, I want to do this.’”
The original roster includes Amphobia, Kiwi Grimm, Livingroove, Reese Daniels, Relentless Moisture and Schapiro’s own title, SAINT BLIND. Soon after, Asteroid Day, Oscar’s Cash, and Prairie Pavement were also added. Almost all of these acts include either Fredonia alumni or current students.
Looking for interdependence amongst the musicians, Schapiro encourages artists to aid each other in their projects and dissolve any boundaries amongst bands.
Aside from being the main admin of the Bughouse Collective, Schapiro is also the chief editor and publisher of The Bughouse Review.
Schapiro mentions ever since he had the idea of forming a collective, he wanted to run a companion publication alongside it.
Schapiro said, “That’s honestly pretty much the part of the Bughouse Collective that I’m most excited about.”
The main focus of The Bughouse Review is to showcase the non-musical art of the collective’s many members,
everything from poetry to short stories to album reviews.
It will help outsiders peer into their process and keep tabs on what the collective is up to.
Once Schapiro gets this up and running, he’d like to release it either monthly or quarterly throughout the year, depending on how much material he can gather.
Aside from the newly-founded Bughouse Collective, Schapiro is also currently working on the debut full-length album from SAINT BLIND titled “ROOKER & ROT”.
Schapiro said, “In Anthony Burgess’s book, ‘A Clockwork Orange,’ he invented a language that the main characters used as slang. The language is called ‘Nadsat.’ In Nadsat, ‘hand’ is ‘rooker’ and ‘mouth’ is ‘rot.’”
He mentioned how he’d like to hone back in on the “spooky synth sound” that made the IGOEHALL series so special.
Despite jumping between many different genres and sounds, a throughline between all of Schapiro’s music is his love for composition, music theory and giant chords.
Schapiro said, “There’s a lot of harmony on this upcoming album,” pointing out a nine-part one on a score he had written out. Schapiro has been studying music theory since he was three.
He said, “Everything that I have ever done is based in music theory… I [have always] been extremely left-brained about composing music.”
Shapiro said, “That’s probably the most distinctive thing that from day one to day 1000…makes SAINT BLIND music sound like what it sounds like.”
One of the projects that put these skills most to the test was SAINT BLIND’s “Losing Your Balance.”
On his Instagram, he said “I have never, in the history of SAINT BLIND, worked so hard, nor been more proud of a project. The grueling production process of this 10-minute track involved meticulously coordinating with and recording 13 different extremely talented musicians over the course of eight days.”
In this work, Schapiro was not only leading the composition, he also provided piano, string bass and all of the vocals. And this time there was no help from Rohr either, Schapiro did all of the production on his own.
“That is the project I’m most proud of so far. That was far and away the most effort I have ever put into any musical project in my life.”
The gargantuan undertaking results in an epic listen that is rich with strife, encouraging people to heavily focus on the things that make us unwell.
Schapiro said, “I think it paid off, I’m really quite happy with how it turned out.”
“Losing Your Balance,” along with the rest of the SAINT BLIND discography, are available on all streaming platforms.
Be on the lookout for news from The Bughouse Collective on their instagram as well as SAINT BLIND’s upcoming release “ROOKER AND ROT”.