Seaworthy weathers a bumpy ride

The past year has been particularly rough for Josh McKay, frontman of Athens indie-rock exotics Macha. His troubles spanned everything from musical to technical to personal, and they all impacted the sound of McKay's new side project, Seaworthy, and Seaworthy's debut album, The Ride.

"I was going to have some fun and explore other stuff besides Macha, and it just became a funerary event in a certain way," McKay says of Seaworthy's genesis, which coincided with the end of a relationship. "Something definitely ended in my life in the last year, a certain kind of optimism went away. I was at the mercy of my emotions in a way that I've never been before. Luckily the record isn't too morose."

One of six different bands, most still uncreated, that McKay has imagined and collected music for, Seaworthy originally was to include Bulgarian musicians who McKay and fellow Athens resident Jeff Mangum (of Neutral Milk Hotel) recorded during a folk festival in Bulgaria last August. The festival happens every five years and McKay had journeyed there to have the players interpret his Seaworthy songs. The collaboration went off, but he returned stateside to discover that half of the DATs used in the recording were ruined.

"It's a completely realized meeting of these songs and these players that I met, it went very well except technically," says McKay. "I have 20 minutes that survived and I just have to go back and do the other 40 minutes again."

One thing did go right, however, in the creation of The Ride. McKay was able to record a track with Japanese vocalist Haco, a hero of his from the group After Dinner. It turned out she was a fan of his work as well, and asked him to remix some of her tracks for a re-issue. In return, she recorded vocals for Seaworthy's "The Day" at her home studio.

"That's the core of Seaworthy's whole agenda — a moving, traveling, cross-pollinating collaborative process," McKay says. "With Seaworthy done, I'm going to get onto a new Macha album for the turn of the year. I wanted it to involve a little traveling, recording out of the country, which is not looking at all feasible. It's a big change because there were definitely some Muslim plans involved."

Macha plays Fri., Nov. 30, at the Echo Lounge.??