“Scott [Budzar] and I just knew each other from seeing each other around town,” says Watt via phone in a conference call with Budzar. City of Invention just released a new full-length album, Echoes & Anchors, and it performs on Thursday, Aug. 14, at the Rialto in Akron; on Friday, Sept. 5, at Water Street Tavern in Kent; on Saturday, Sept. 13 at Waterloo Arts Fest; and on Saturday, Sept. 27 at the Jenks Building in Cuyahoga Falls.
“I remember seeing City of Invention play in 2014,” continues Watt. “They were really good. I said, ‘If you ever want someone to join the band, lemme know.’ Several months passed, and I remember crossing paths with Scott at a Ryan Adams concert, and then a Jane’s Addiction show and then Band of Horses. Shortly after one of those shows, Scott messaged me on Facebook and asked me to sit in.”
Watt had mentioned that he played keyboards, but Budzar didn’t realize he played guitar as well. He was particularly pleased to learn Watt relished playing lead guitar.
“I like to write songs and play rhythm guitar and focus on that alone,” Budzar says. “When Mark came to the first band practice, he brought his guitar and keyboard and everything. I was happy that Mark likes to play lead guitar. That is not something I like to do. It just took off from there.”
Budzar says Watt played a key role in ensuring that the band’s debut album, 2021’s The Feeling Never Ends, saw the light of day.
“I don’t feel like the songs would have found their place on a release without Mark,” he says. “Mark has always been and still is the driving force for these songs to manifest themselves. It’s a huge deal. In my life, a bucket list thing was that I wanted to make one album. We’ve finished two, so it’s been awesome.”
The band applied the knowledge it gained from recording its debut album to Echoes & Anchors.
“From my perspective, going into the studio for the first album taught me a lot about
preparing and songwriting and length of songs and having a laid-out plan,” says Budzar.
“There was a lot of maturity. I attribute that to Mark [Watt], [bassist] Kevin [Walter] and Pete [Heroux, drummer], all of whom have great strengths. The analogy I liked to use is that I bring the skeleton and they put the meat on the bones.”
Watt and Budzar agree that the band’s camaraderie has grown over the years.
“All four of us have been playing for long enough that we recognize how special it is to have real chemistry,” says Watt. “That has been a treat with this batch of songs. All four of us got to really contribute and allow them to develop into something we love to listen to.”
The group went to Dave Sacchini’s Son of Moondog Recording Studios in Kent to cut the album. Vintage gear helped them bring out the ‘70s-leaning (think Neil Young and Crazy Horse) side of their sound.
“It’s fun to integrate that vintage equipment,” says Watt. “I played through a Hammond B-3 organ with a Leslie speaker on the album, which was a treat.”
Budzar says Sacchini has a way of making musicians feel comfortable even as he finetunes their sound.
“He’s very patient and when you’re getting frustrated or playing the same part for the
10,000th time,” says Budzar. “That doesn’t faze him. He’s great at coaching you through stuff and saying, ‘That was good, but I think you can get better.’ He says it in such a way that it really convinces you to keep at it and stay the course. You get frustrated, but then you’re back to the joy of recording.”
Budzar draws heavily from his personal experiences and applies his poetic sensibilities to real life. An untimely death, for example, inspired the ballad “Delia,” one of the album’s highlights.
“It’s a very sad song,” Budzar says when asked about the track. “The very first lead guitarist in our band had a baby who died. When she was born, they knew they had a short time with her and named her Delia May Wilson. Back then, I was a minister and did the funeral, and it was the smallest casket in the world. I stood graveside with them. There were just four of us at the ceremony.”
Budzar says the title of the album reflects the themes that run through the tunes.
“There are pain points behind life, and some of the things that help anchor us through these trials are friendships and relationships,” he says. “I tried to turn the awful experience around by singing her name, so that she would never be forgotten.”
“You Still Got the Wind” references the city of Chicago, where one of Budzar’s children was living when the pandemic hit in 2020.
“I wanted them to come home,” he explains. “My wife and I have six kids. We were trying to gather all of our eggs back into the nest. They wanted to stay in Chicago and tough it out. The song is about that year of being separated. They were living in Chicago and then moved toward Nashville, and that comes into the song too. They still had the wind in Chicago, and I still had the rain in Northeast Ohio.”
Some songs are so personal to Budzar, he says that sometimes he can’t finish them
without crying, especially the song “Life is Full of Wonder” that closes the new album.
But overall, he and Watt agree that the tunes translate well to the stage.
“I could write a book about each of the songs,” says Budzar. “They all carry a lot of weight. When you look out and you’re playing two to three hours of original material and a handful of people have stayed the whole time, I don’t know what more you could ask for. When people know the lyrics, it’s a whole other level of gratitude. We really strive to inspire people at our shows.”
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This article appears in Cleveland SCENE 7/30/25.
