The Unfinished Story’s story so far

After having spent over 20 years in various cubicles in New England offices and watching all his friends get married and start families, G.P. decided to finally start out on a journey of his own. His was a musical one.

G.P. had been playing guitar for over twenty years but had rarely had the confidence to play publicly. He first taught himself guitar in college from an old Mel Bay guitar chords booklet and learning tablature for covers off of the now defunct website OLGA (online guitar archive). And while his roommates at Lehigh University often (reluctantly) put up with it, his neighbors weren’t as kind often calling and yelling to complain about the noise.

With his rudimentary guitar knowledge he began to write his own songs. All by ear, playing chord structures that he felt sounded right. But he never did anything with them. Never recorded them, never played them out in public. He was busy with his business career, travelling often for work and had too many other hobbies and sports leagues filling up his free time. But he kept playing on and off through the years. Yet the songs were incomplete as it would be 8 years of guitar playing before he would even begin to sing and play at the same time.

Finally in 2014 G.P. had more free time, as his friends’ lives had become more preoccupied. So he practiced them more and more and decided on a whim to record them at a local studio Suffield Music late at night after the music lesson business was closed for the day. Even though the songs were a little rough and raw, the heart and soul of the lyrics and music struck a chord with family and friends when he gave them a chance to listen.

He needed to come up with a name to put the music out under. Following along the lines of one of his favorite one person “bands“ Dashboard Confessional, G.P. decided upon The Unfinished Story. The reason was twofold. One, he had many “half completed” songs. This could be because he learned guitar first and singing second. Or partly because he has written many phrases/poems/lyrics without figuring out the matching music. But these half written songs have become his unfinished stories.

G.P. views a full song as having completed a thought or being a complete story. Whether that thought is completed lyrically or with the music doesn’t matter much to him. Whether there is a repetitive hook or chorus doesn’t matter as much either, which critics of the music have often complained about.

A the second part of the name of the “band”, is that he is a big believer in that as long as you are alive and breathing, your life itself is an unfinished story. And with that the name of what to release the music under became clear. With some positive feedback from family and friends he started to play the songs publicly for the first time. Some of the songs were almost 20 years old before seeing the light of day.

Playing open mics around his home state of Connecticut starting in 2017, primarily at the Infinity Hall in Norfolk, gave him the confidence to start booking some hour long shows. With more playing came the creation of new songs.

The first album was rough acoustic emo based music but it featured the first song “Distrust This Trust” that made it onto local radio on Leah Rantz’s Local’s Only show on Lazer 99.3 in Springfield, MA. It was a song that had featured additional electronic violin and cello, so this encouraged expanding the sound of The Unfinished Story to include more instrumentation. Spending more time in the studio at Telefunken Studios on the sophomore effort, the new songs included adding drums from his friend Paul Ofria, and also recording some bass, and even glockenspiel parts. Adding some soaring fiddle parts from Kurt Baumer, formerly of the band Lonestar, added a great final touch to rounding out the music.

The final result was a 6 song EP called The Distance Between You and Me released in late 2018. While still based off the simplified sounds intrinsic to the writing style, the additional instruments have added to the overall sound and has attracted a little wider audience. Local radio stations from Lazer 99.3 in western Mass, WMRQ Radio 104.1 in Hartford, and EQX in Vermont have all picked up on various songs from the album.

The new album has also allowed The Unfinished Story to play more venues and a variety of shows in Connecticut, Western Massachusetts and the Boston area in the past year. Usually accompanied by friend Austin James of the rock band the Heavy Calm on violin, The Unfinished Story has been playing select shows in a few areas around New England. With more goals still yet to achieve, and new ones being set each year, it's safe to say the musical journey is still unfinished.

Though he was featured in recently released Lifoti's October/November 2019 issue 10, you can check it from below link's for your country: