This is the challenge: record an album in 28 days, just because you can.That’s 10 songs or 35 minutes of original material recorded during the month of February. Go ahead… put it to tape.

It’s a little like National Novel Writing Month, (NaNoWriMo.org) where writers challenge each other to write 1,700 words a day for 30 days, or the great folks over at February Album Writing Month (fawm.org), who encourage artists to write 14 new songs in February.

Maybe they don’t have “Grapes of Wrath” or “Abbey Road” at the end of the month, or maybe they do—but that’s not the point. The point they get busy and stop waiting around for the muse to appear. They get the gears moving. You can’t write 1,700 words a day or 14 songs in a month and not get better.

But we thought, let’s have more than just the writing. Let’s hear it. Let’s have a disc in our hands, full of new music.

Better yet, let’s have a stack of discs. What would happen if every musician and band on the Seacoast recorded a new album next month? 

These online communities get into the thick of things and put themselves in a position to get inspired. They stumble across ideas they would have never come up with otherwise, and maybe only because they were trying to meet a day’s quota of (song)writing. They show up and get something done, and they invest in themselves and each other. So why can’t we do this right here, in our town? We can.

This year in our little corner of the world, February is Record Production Month: R.P.M. Let’s do something amazing.

Inevitably many of you are thinking “But, I can’t do that! I don’t have any songs/recording gear/money/blah blah blah...” This doesn’t have to be the album, it’s just an album. And if you do your best, using what you have to make it, you just might surprise yourself. If you have a four-track, become a four-track badass. A mini disc, a Pro Tools rig, a Walkman, an ’80s tape recorder? Use it. Use the limitations of time and gear as an opportunity to explore things you might not otherwise. If you can afford studio time, then you’re psyched, but let’s be completely free of any lingering  idea that “good” records can only be made in a studio. If that were true, then all the old scratchy blues records or Alan Lomax field recordings that have changed our culture—the world’s culture—wouldn’t still resonate with us today. Springsteen’s haunting classic “Nebraska” was a demo he did at home on a crappy machine. What label would put out those recordings now? There are a million examples of this kind of stuff, but the fact will always stand: well-written, honest music is compelling and undeniable, no matter what it was recorded on.

The rules? By “musician” we mean anyone. By “the Seacoast music scene” we mean all the surrounding towns, neighboring Maine and Massachusetts residents, and all those who play or hang out in the area, too.  One scene, one month, one album each.

When you’re done, submit your CD—artwork optional—to The Wire office in Portsmouth by noon on Wednesday, March 1. All material must be previously unreleased, and we encourage you to write the material during February, too. No one is required to make their music available to the public for listening, but that is half the fun! Just know we won’t hold you to it. There will be no contest, and nothing will be judged. There are no RPM police to make sure you follow the rules (just be nice). Sign up at www.rpmchallenge.com, and watch this space for details on a kick-off informational meeting at the end of January.

Write some instrumentals, split up the songwriting duties amongst band members, form an RPM side-project, write songs on the piano or clarinet instead of your primary instrument, make that metal album you’ve always wanted to, or buy a ukulele! Just try your best to make the best album you can. Be unafraid. What if at the end of February there are 10 new local acts to see because of RPM? What if you’ve recorded the best song of your life? What if by March the rest of the world is asking “Everyone in the Seacoast made an album in February?! Everyone? All of them? What the hell is going on over there?!” That would be sweet.

So can you do it? Of course you can.

Roll tape.

Jon Nolan is contributing music editor for The Wire. You can learn more about his RPM project and others at www.rpmchallenge.com.