When Walter Sickert and his musical partner Edrie first signed up for the RPM Challenge during its inaugural year in 2006, they viewed it as an interesting opportunity to experiment with some new home recording techniques.

“At the time it seemed like people were really focusing on studio work to get songs out there, but things were changing and home recording was so much better,” Sickert said in a recent e-mail. The band seized the opportunity, and they've never looked back. “We’ve used several different recording methods since then and all of them have allowed us to directly reach people with our music.”

The band that resulted from that project, Walter Sickert and the Army of Broken Toys, is now participating in its fifth consecutive RPM Challenge. They’ve produced double-disc CDs every February except one, creating outlandish, mind-dazzling album art that last year included a working clock.

But the Broken Toys have also developed an impressive career outside RPM. Now based in Allston, Mass., Sickert and Edrie have toured the nation and world. Their dark, experimental, goth-folk sound has garnered press, and they’ve been featured on NPR’s “All Songs Considered” and other radio programs.

“This band was born out of RPM,” Edrie said. “It’s how we started working together as a band and look how far we’ve come.”
The Army of Broken Toys is not the only band RPM has spawned over the years. The Challenge, which began at The Wire in Portsmouth, encourages musicians to write and record an album of at least 10 songs or 30 minutes of original music in February. The process has generated new bands and helped refine existing ones. RPM has spurred numerous artists to record their first CD, while also challenging veteran musicians to approach their music in a whole new way.

As the 2010 RPM Challenge gets underway, 2,000 artists from around the world have signed up to take part again. Many are participating for the third, fourth or fifth time, voluntarily subjecting themselves to the rigorous time constraints for the sole purpose of making a new CD. It is not a competition, and there are no prizes.

But there are ample rewards. Just ask The Sidewalk Boys, a band that started as an RPM project the year of its inception. They’ve participated repeatedly and have been performing regularly around the Seacoast ever since. They were nominated as “Best in Folk” for the 2009 Seacoast Spotlight Awards and have been featured guests on both Kate McNally’s NHPR Folk Show and Jack Beard’s WUNH Folk Show.

Local folk musicians Tom Richter and Brian “The Chunkman” Goetz had been playing music separately for several decades but for RPM they created a style they refer to as “grunge folk.” At the second RPM listening party in 2007 they met mandolin and guitar player Steinway Dave Lemieux, who now rounds out the trio. The band has a gig at the Kittery Art Association on Friday, Feb. 5, at 7:30 p.m.

“The Sidewalk Boys took the challenge as a project and then evolved into a full-fledged band,” said Goetz, of Kingston, in an e-mail. “A true RPM Challenge success story.”  

Local saxophonist Thom Keith has participated every year as both a solo artist and a member of other projects, including Portsmouth-based jazz group Equal Time. He’s performed on at least 15 RPM albums.

“It’s made me just pull the trigger, but also made me open my ears to different textures and approaches within music,” Keith said. “The biggest change is that it has forced me to write.”

Local musician Phil Kliger is another prolific RPM enthusiast. When he first signed up in 2006, he had never before embarked on a solo recording project.

“(RPM) marked the beginning of my foray into solo music,” Kliger said. “I had always threatened myself with making a solo disc, aside from the bands I have been in, and the RPM Challenge kicked my ass to get it done.”

Kliger has now completed at least one album for every Challenge and has contributed to about 10 total discs, whether as PHIL-IN-THE-BLANK or with The Mango Wranglers or some other one-time project.

“It has totally helped me streamline my songwriting. Having a deadline helps immensely,” he said. “Working by myself, the RPM constraints have improved my ability to just get it done, and in 2008 and 2009 I found that I was looking at other band mates and collaborators to assist me in the creating and finishing process.”

Newmarket-based folk musician Ernest Whaley is at work on his second RPM project, having previously participated in 2007. The Challenge has offered him a crash course in recording that has carried over to his career outside RPM. He is in the process of recording his first full-length studio album.

“I still have more ideas than songs that get finished, but the discipline needed to finish the Challenge is helping me with my first studio album,” Whaley said. “It forces me to be focused and task oriented.”

Whaley jokes that the most rewarding aspect of taking part in the Challenge is listening to a finished recording and thinking, “Damn, I almost sound like I know what I’m doing.”

For Kliger, the rewards stretch beyond the completion of a new CD. He enjoys attending the RPM listening parties in Portsmouth every March and meeting fellow participants from around the region.

“It’s such a gas to see the peeps I have been following on the blogs and such and to have people I have never met say, ‘Dude, you’re PHIL-IN-THE-BLANK! I love you!’” he said.

Sickert and Edrie, too, have attended every listening party in Portsmouth and mingled with other musicians. But they’ve also met fellow RPMers from distant regions of the world.

“Two years ago someone came to one of our shows in Amsterdam because they had participated in RPM and remembered us from that,” Edrie said. “RPM is worldwide.”

She said RPM has helped train her to express herself artistically. While Sickert writes music compulsively every day, she joins in the process each February, abandoning her artistic inhibitions. 

“It makes me focus not on perfection, but rather on getting across a feeling or emotion as directly as possible. I really try to paint a picture with sound,” Edrie said.

The Broken Toys have dealt admirably with the RPM time constraints, even recording during national tours. “Last year we recorded in several hotel room bathrooms while we were on tour—it was the only way we would get done in time,” Edrie said.

Sickert and Edrie are hunkering down for another RPM Challenge on the heels of completing a new studio album, which they hope to release this summer. One of the songs they originally recorded for the 2009 RPM Challenge made it onto their latest disc. That song, called “Off with Her Head,” was recorded live last February with audience participation and is now their most commonly requested tune.

Walter Sickert and the Army of Broken Toys are also at work on a theater piece to be produced in the fall, along with a couple of videos to support the new album. But they won’t let any of that prevent them from completing an RPM disc this year.

“Basically, we don’t plan to sleep in 2010,” Edrie said.

It’s not too late to sign up for the 2010 RPM Challenge! For more information, visit www.rpmchallenge.com.