Trying to Catch Amnesia is several things at once. It is, first of all, a thematic work about war and coming home and how those two things don’t always go perfectly. It is my first EP of five songs. It is a full-length musical play with eight of my songs.
It is, as well, a vehicle to spark conversations about the challenges facing returning veterans, their families, and their communities. The story is fiction, not autobiographical. But as I was writing the songs and the book for the play, I found pieces of my life and my story infiltrating the lines.
For the EP, I worked with an absolutely amazing producer from Denver, Tony Rosario. Tony recruited Emily Erkman (bgv) and Phoebe Hunt (fiddle) to round out the team and then played all the other instruments—although he did let me play some acoustic guitar. We made the recordings just as the COVID pandemic was rising with Tony and Emily in Denver, Phoebe in Nashville, and me on an old farm in the Catskills.
We held a staged reading of the play with Dare Arts in North Carolina in November 2022, and a workshop of the play with Heartwood Theater in Maine in February 2023. We had a table read with some professional actors in Connecticut in July, 2023. Trying to Catch Amnesia was a semi-finalist in Syracuse University’s New Works New Voices initiative for 2023. I am honestly not sure what my next steps are on this play.
You can listen to the songs for free (or buy a copy of the EP) at RonCappsMusic.com or on my Bandcamp page. It’s on the major streaming services, too.
EP Reviews
“Ron Capps has put together a beautiful collection of songs that do some miraculously heavy lifting as they float into my ears. Each song is a keyhole into rooms that we may want to keep the door shut and lights off. Each song reminds me that those things that we can't talk about have power over us.”
—Susan Gibson
“Rarely can an artist commit so fully to the moment and the circumstances of their writing. That level of realness and purity is such a rare and commendable quality and it shines throughout.
—Rebecca Cullen
“Ron Capps has put together a stunning debut album. He is a songwriter for our times—and all times.”
—Jeff Stein
“Ron Capps weaves powerful, often dark tales in his songs. And he delivers them with honesty and depth in a stunning tenor voice that reminds me of Harry Chapin and John Denver, but is clearly his own."
—David Starr
"Heartbreaking songs, beautifully played and sung by a gifted songwriter."
—Thom Moore
Image: (a vidcap) October 2019. Playing at the TR Ranch in Hallettsville, TX. I’m playing Carry Me, the lead song on the Trying to Catch Amnesia EP, a day after I wrote it there.