Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship on assignment for The Montpelier Bridge
MONTPELIER — In one week, Liberty Street Kids, a group of 12 teenagers, sat down in Callum Robechek’s childhood home on Liberty Street in Montpelier to create an album of original songs called “Getting Older.”
The album is more than a collection of 11 songs — it’s a time capsule of friendship, change and the sound of a place that will always feel like home.
“The project was about allowing people to enter somewhere that was really close to home for me, which I think mirrored what was happening emotionally as well,” Robechek said.
Having grown up in central Vermont, the songs represent what the state means to Liberty Street Kids now that they’ve diverged as young adults.
At the age of five, Robechek began piano lessons in classical composition. He would write music for the Vermont Philharmonic and Vermont Symphony Orchestra during his junior and senior year with the Music-Composition Mentoring Program. Music-COMP is a non-profit that partners with schools and private teachers to teach students in grades 3-12 how to compose original music, pairing them with a professional composer as their mentor.
In high school, Robechek found his voice in folk music and guitar during his time in a band called The Radiance. The core group of people in this band were later in Liberty Street Kids.
Although Diya Kulkarni, writer of the song “My World” on the album, has known Robechek since second grade, it wasn’t until sophomore year of high school that they started collaborating in The Radiance and two years later, in Liberty Street Kids.
“It allowed me to make music with a band who I hadn’t really seen in a musical setting in about two years, Kulkarni said. “It gave me my musical spark back.”
For Kulkarni, this album is a reminder that wherever Liberty Street Kids go, there will always be a part of home with them.
“Despite growing up in such a tight-knit community, we all have different interests and personalities,” Kulkarni said, “It’s been really cool to see what Vermont means to everyone else.”
The mix of perspectives is a theme explored throughout the album and something Robechek paid attention to within the structure of the album.
“Another thing that translates here is that it is about leaving home, but there’s the perspective of someone putting their hometown behind them and of someone watching someone else leave,” Robechek said.
Producing an album in one week and completing two to three songs a day was no easy feat for the band.
“It was a pretty chaotic process,” Robechek said. “But it was so go with the flow.”
“The environment in which this album was recorded also added something that felt kind of sacred to every recording,” he added.
Everyone working on the project knew Robechek’s childhood home well. The Radiance used to rehearse in his living room, and it was a space where he would often jam with his friends.
Beneath the album’s vocals, there is the faint noise of people talking and rain. This sound brings Robechek’s home into the songs, taking inspiration from the indie folk band Big Thief and particularly their lead singer, Adrianne Lenker.
“Something they do in their music is fundamentally place reality over polish,” Robechek said.
Nearly all of the album’s songs were recorded in one take with no editing.
“I didn’t want this to sound like a record that was done in a studio. I wanted it to sound as much like a phone recording in the middle of the room,” Robechek said.
“I have received so many kind words from parents and from family friends who I haven’t heard from in ages and other peers from Montpelier — dozens and dozens of comments about the album feeling meaningful to them,” Robechek said.