East River Pipe

East River Pipe functions as the creative alias for singer/songwriter F.M. Cornog, who launched his solitary efforts at capturing downcast pop by working with a Tascam 388 mini-studio inside his Astoria, NY apartment. Suffolk, VA, marks his birthplace, while Summit, NJ, provided the setting for his upbringing; a troubled early life gave way to successive roles at a carpet warehouse, a greenhouse, and a light bulb factory. Persistent struggles with alcoholism together with a severe emotional collapse stripped him of employment and rendered him without housing. At his lowest point, sleeping inside a Hoboken train station, he encountered Barbara Powers, who would become his partner and would later supply both recording gear and the Hell Gate imprint for his music.

Cornog attached the name East River Pipe to the project after envisioning a link between his recordings and untreated waste released into the nearby waterway; he first distributed homemade cassettes that included 1990’s Point of Memory and 1991’s I Used to Be Kid Colgate. Once Powers and he secured funds to manufacture a limited run of the single Helmet On, the track earned Single of the Week recognition from Melody Maker, prompting the British independent Sarah Records to sign him and to assemble earlier material into the 1994 collection Shining Hours in a Can.

A move to the U.S. indie Merge brought the 1995 release of the widely praised Poor Fricky, three tracks from which Lambchop later interpreted on its album Thriller. The follow-up Mel appeared in 1996, and The Gasoline Age followed in 1999. Cornog’s relocation back to New Jersey preceded the 2003 Merge album Garbageheads on Endless Stun by four years. Another three-year interval preceded the arrival of What Are You On? in 2006, again on Merge. The seventh official East River Pipe album, We Live in Rented Rooms, surfaced in 2011.