New album Preserve Your Memories: A Simon & Garfunkel Journey available on streaming services starting March 25th.
Preserve Your Memories Parts 1-4 is released as a single sound experience and as individual albums.
Preserve Your Memories Parts 1-4
Preserve Your Memories: A Recording Journey
In the late 1970s, my family spent a year traveling America from our East Coast home to the Pacific Northwest and back by car. I didn’t realize at the time what a gift my parents had given us with these long trips. We’d set off on these journeys to look for America, and to affordably travel to various places out West for my father’s work. Vast horizons were visible from our Chevy station wagon. Plains, corn fields, immense mountains, dusty little towns, motorcycle gangs, lakes, the frozen Mississippi River all zoomed by the window. During these days on the road, I’d wait impatiently for my turn to pick a cassette tape from the suitcase-like box in the front seat. We’d all sit and watch the world wiz by listening.
Held captive in that Chevy, I developed an intimate awareness of the soundscapes inside records by the Beatles (and their off-shoot solo careers), the Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry, Peter Paul & Mary, Janis Joplin, Judy Collins, Chubby Checker, Elvis, Buddy Holly and many others from the 50s and 60s. One album that jumped out was Joan Baez’s Any Day Now album of Bob Dylan songs. I thought it curious that one singer would record a double album of songs by another singer. What also grabbed my attention every time was Simon & Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits, the lyrics of which, sung in angelic harmony, seemed to match the experience of our travels. References to the New Jersey turnpike, Pittsburgh, being homeward bound, the drizzle of the rain on the car window, the loneliness and boredom, all captured in the vast lyrical milieu of Paul Simon’s songs. They imprinted upon the mind of 9-year-old me, a poetry that I would not have heard without these trips.
Biography
Michael Jacob Rinzel is a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He began his musical journey in the 1980s in the DMV area around Washington D.C. with self-produced cassette releases with bands Est X and Mushrooms. In the 1990s he was co-founder and co-writer and lead guitarist for New York City group Poolsville. His first solo project was the 2021 release Miguel and the Ocean Swell. During the 2020 pandemic, MJR wrote and recorded the album Strange Times under the pseudonym Est X, featuring guest vocals by his long time collaborator and brother Mark Rinzel. In 2021, MJR produced and mixed five digital albums of archived material from Poolsville 1990s archive. He also contributed instrumentation and an original song for a reunion album by the renamed D.C. band Just Mushrooms.
With the 2025 release of his solo effort Preserve Your Memories: A Simon & Garfunkel Journey, MJR stretches out far in a totally different direction. Having never worked in the tribute circuit, he recorded, arranged and performed 32 songs in tribute to the 60’s folk duo between 2024-2025. Attempting to create a sound experience or concept record in the form of a tribute project, MJRsound-collaged effects into themed music blocks, or parts, each named for a different theme: Bus, Snow, Spice and Plane. Different mixes were made for the mini-album parts and for the longer “Journey” album of 32 songs. MJR’s long time collaborators included his friend and Poolsville and Mushrooms bandmate Joey Fortuna and brother Mark Rinzel had guest vocals. Other guest appearances includes Mushrooms bassist Andy Widman on “America.” MJR’s wife Liz Arnold and daughter Lola also contributed. All other instruments and vocals were preformed by MJR.