By His Own Cunning

Banks are, for the most part, sterile places. Their walls are adorned with corporate artwork, and the employees quietly work at their desks while a barely audible “lite” radio station plays in the background. These are not places one would say are conducive for musical inspiration. Bridgeport singer/songwriter Darian Cunning, who is well known for his work with Cosmic Jibaros and The Durkins, as well as for being the man behind the boards at the Acoustic Cafe in Bridgeport, found an exception, and it’s on the second floor of the now defunct Black Rock Bank and Trust in Fairfield.

At this particular bank deposits and withdrawals have been replaced by drums and guitars, and, quite frankly, anything else one can fit into the rentable room Cunning says, at 200 square feet, is “ridiculously small.” Small, yes, but for Cunning, very effective, as he recorded half of his just released solo album, The Lost and Found Channel, there. The opportunity to rent the place was one he practically fell into.

“Tim Walsh from The Stepkids was in that spot for a good while, (but) he got an apartment at the Read’s Artspace building. He was going to vacate this spot, so he handed it over to me.” The rules were pretty clear. “I could play from six o’clock at night till about about six o’clock in the morning, and I did.”

Utilizing the space to its fullest potential, Cunning found the hallway to have great acoustics, so he had one mic inside the room and another outside of it. He also “did a lot of the drums out there.”

The space above the old bank was actually the second step in the recording process for Cunning, who explains four of the songs on the album were done earlier out in Los Angeles. “I got that done and I really wanted to make another record, but didn’t have the money to, so I kinda passed those out as a demo and waited.” Opportunity knocked in the form of the bank, and it knocked again a little while later. “A friend of mine had just started working at Carriage House (Music) in Stamford a little while ago, so he got me a good deal on some studio time, so I went in there and did six tunes.”

At the end of all of the recording Cunning had a lot of music he had laid down in a handful of different places. Putting it all together for one album was partly the inspiration for the album’s title, The Lost and Found Channel. “It was kind of like going through a lost and found box when I realized I had enough tracks to put out this record now. I was looking at my computer and rummaging through everything.”

The result is an album that Cunning says will be “familiar for a lot of people that already know me,” but also “the introduction to everyone who doesn’t know me yet.” He adds that he hopes “this is the record I’m gonna tour the country with.”

Cunning currently has dates throughout Fairfield County lined up over the next three months, so perhaps it’s Fairfield County today, tomorrow the world. One thing’s for sure, with The Lost and Found Channel, Cunning has an album he knows he can bank on.

Story originally ran in the FairfieldWeekly.