Store Hours by Dan Lehner

“Store Hours” is named for a sense of unfamiliarity. A once reliable, easily Google-able concept becomes vague and subject to individual circumstance. Is the store open as long as they usually are? Is it still operating at all? Is it just delivery? Can you go inside? It’s the idea that something is existing and not existing at the same time.

We, as people, have different store hours too. Are we still around? Did we leave town? Are we working? Are we unemployed? Are we creating things? Are we taking a break for now? For a lot of us, especially artists, we tied a lot of our personal identities around things we were doing: gigging, writing, recording, rehearsing, promoting, etc. Then suddenly...we had to stop. None of us became different people, but suddenly untethered from the existence of “doing”, we feel different. We feel there and not there.

I made this project on a 90-day free trial of Logic Pro X. It has nothing to do with my career. It’s not related to any of my working projects. It has very little trombone on it. Once the trial ends, my future in making electronic music will be uncertain. Like a sand mandala, the project may exist in this space and this space only, an idea that occurred, manifested and is then dismantled.

“Store Hours” is an attempt to embrace the uncertainty we feel as in a society suddenly closed off. It’s declaring existence in a world that no longer tracks existence the usual way – that we’re still in the world, even if we’re not open for business.

Dan Lehner is a trombonist and composer in Brooklyn. He leads the trio True East and released his solo electronic record "Store Hours" in August 2020.