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Glier says he bought this resonator guitar, in part because he believed "it had a song in it." He is primarily self-taught as a musician, and he has also learned how to record his albums in the basement studio he's built over the last several years. "You find things you might not find otherwise," he says of the DIY approach.

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At his Iron Horse show last month. Though piano is his main instrument, Glier says he often composes new songs on the guitar.

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JERREY ROBERTS

Seth Glier, right, hangs out with his brother, Jamie, who is autistic, at their home in Shelburne April 26.

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Seth Glier, in his studio in the basement of his Shelburne home, has been a performer since 14. A skilled pianist, he's focused much of his attention recently on songwriting.

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At home Glier spends time with his greatest "nonmusical musical influence," brother Jamie, at left. He says learning to relate to Jamie, who is autistic and nonverbal, has been a key to his development as a musician and as a person. "I learned to communicate with words better once I realized how to communicate to someone without them," he says.

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Glier and his guitarist, Ryan Hommel, toured widely last year to support the CD "The Trouble With People." The tour in turn was underwritten by fan donations, after Glier sent an email to his mailing list asking for help; seeking $500, he got $3,500. "Fans were so generous," he says. "I write ‘The Trouble With People,' and it turns out people are pretty darn nice."

Like many up-and-coming musicians, Seth Glier handles most of the legwork for his career on his own. He books gigs, makes travel arrangements, records music in a home studio and maintains a website.

And he's been doing it since the tender age of 14 - back when transportation to shows was dad driving the family car.

At 21, dressed as he was last month in a sport coat, jeans and sneakers, his shaggy brown hair tucked behind his ears, he still has a boyish look. But once he sat down at the grand piano at the Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton and began to sing, it was clear that Glier is a seasoned performer. He's already shared stages with John Mayer, Martin Sexton, Ellis Paul and Livingston Taylor, among other established artists.

"It's great to be back here in the Valley," Glier said, a few songs into his set. "My dad's here tonight, along with some other familiar faces - and half of them are my father's multiple personalities," he added, as laughter rippled through the crowd. "They're some of the nicest people you'll ever meet."

A highly accomplished pianist who writes his own songs, Glier has an impressive range as a singer, moving from a mid-range tenor to occasional falsetto. His music has a bright pop sensibility with a touch of soul that's also influenced by the sounds of the folk artists and singer/songwriters he grew up listening to: Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Randy Newman. And in his own compositions, Glier says, he often explores universal themes that say something not just about himself but about the world at large.

"This is a song for anybody who ever woke up and finally was over the one thing they thought they couldn't live without," he said as he introduced "I Don't Need You." "We've all been there at some point, right?"

Songwriting, says Glier, has been a form of self-discovery for him. "I never sit down to write, knowing what I'm going to be writing about. I'm writing to figure out what I want to say - it's a way of learning something about myself."

And with his still-limited life experience, he says, he likes writing songs from someone else's perspective, as a way to understand human nature, something he's already learned quite a bit about from his own brother.

Jamie Glier, 25, is autistic and nonverbal. Coming to terms with Jamie's condition, and learning how to connect with him, was a pivotal experience for the teenage Glier, a point he regularly talks about at his shows.

As he puts it, "Jamie is my biggest nonmusical musical influence ... He's the person who really taught me how to relate to others, how to communicate - and in the end, that's what songwriting is all about."

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A couple of weeks after his Iron Horse show, Glier was at his family's home in Shelburne, just back from several days of touring that had taken him to Pennsylvania, New York and around New England. Sporting a few days of stubble, he was sitting in his home studio in the basement, checking tracks he's been recording for a new album due out early next year.

Though he's been performing for a long time - including stretches when he juggled gigs with high school classes and homework - his career has picked up quite a bit in the past year. For starters, MPress Records, a New York-based independent label, signed him to a three-album deal and rereleased a CD, "The Trouble With People," that Glier and his guitarist, Ryan Hommel, had previously recorded in Glier's basement. The album was remixed and, with some promotion from the label, found its way onto the iTunes Top 100 chart last fall. Glier and Hommel also spent many days on the road.

"It got kind of crazy - about 250 shows," says Glier. "We made money for the first time." The shows took him nationwide and overseas to an annual artists' festival in Scotland.

Glier's got plenty of energy and enthusiasm for this kind of travel. "I love being on the road," he says. "I'm kind of a social butterfly - I love meeting people. I'm passionate about that, and I'm always really humbled by fan reaction." He notes that some people have sent him personal items, like paintings, to thank him for his music. "To know that someone's really been touched by my songs means a lot to me."

Aside from his affability, what stands out about Glier is his poise. He comes across, simply, as very mature. That's not surprising, given the experience he's already had performing and booking his own gigs.

But that's only part of it. Glier says he developed a certain level of independence early in life, in part because of Jamie's autism. Growing up, he says, he went through a phase when he felt he wasn't getting enough attention from his parents, Skip and Joanne, because of the time they needed to devote to his older brother - and then, later, to his baby sister, Halley, now 13. He remembers trying to impress his parents at age 10 by singing Ricky Martin songs.

"I learned to make dinner for myself when I was about 8," he says. It wasn't anything fancy, he adds, but just the fact that he was doing it gave him confidence that he believes helped him take on other challenges, like singing the national anthem at his Little League games.

With Jamie, he wasn't sure what to think. "I went through a period where I wanted a typical older brother, someone I could play basketball with, do those kinds of things ... there was probably some part of me that was angry that he couldn't do that." As he got older, Glier says, he realized that "I didn't know how to relate to him."

But when Glier was 16, his father suggested that he just do some basic things with his brother. And so he did. He started waking Jamie on a daily basis, getting him showered and dressed, feeding him breakfast, just spending time with him - sitting quietly, listening to music or helping him walk outside. Along the way, he says, they formed a bond, one based less on words than on body language, touch and listening.

"To me, it was the closest thing I had to prayer," says Glier. "It was like I connected with him in a deeper way." Spending quiet time with his brother, he believes, sharpened his songwriting skills by making him concentrate on exactly what he's trying to say, editing out extraneous lyrics.

At his home that recent day, Glier went back to a part of the house that his father, a part-time carpenter, built so that Jamie could have his own space. It has a bathroom, bedroom and small kitchen area; support staff stay with him lunch through dinner and also take him to various day programs. Glier sat down on a couch next to his brother, who was hunched over, and introduced Jamie to me and photographer Jerrey Roberts. Pulling Jamie to a sitting position, Glier held his hands and demonstrated how he uses them to ask yes-or-no questions.

"Are you thirsty? You need something to drink? Yes or no?" he said, holding out one hand for his brother to slap "yes" and the other "no." Jamie indicated he didn't need anything to drink, instead grabbing Glier's hands and engaging in a bit of pushing and wrestling, a smile on his face. Glier ran his hands through his brother's hair at one point and said, "I think you need a haircut.

"That's the real beauty of coming back here after I've been touring," said Glier. "Being back home really grounds me - it reminds me of why I got into music, which ultimately is about connecting with people."

Does Jamie enjoy listening to Seth's music?

Glier laughed. "He's probably really sick of it by now!"

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Glier has been consumed by music since age 12, when he took up the drums and trumpet at Mohawk Trail Regional High School in Buckland. He really wanted to play guitar, he says, but couldn't find anyone at school to teach him. He was also drawn to the piano and got in trouble when he kept cutting his biology class to play one in the school auditorium.

He eventually got an electric keyboard and, with a little help from music theory books, taught himself the basics. And then, moved by the tragedy of 9/11, he began writing songs.

He made quick progress on the piano in particular, playing the Iron Horse when he was just 16 and joining established Valley artists like blues singer Susan Angeletti on stage at venues such as the Charlemont Inn. It was there, when he was 15, that he and Hommel first met. "We both were really enamored with each other's music," says Hommel, 22, who has built a strong local reputation for his guitar chops; he's also the lead guitarist of a local funk band. "I've played with Seth pretty much all of his gigs since then."

That included their memorable first show in 2003, at the Garden House at Look Park in Florence, at an auction organized by a regional quilters' group (Glier's mother, Joanne, is a quilter). The two teenagers, who had been positioned near the fireplace by event organizers, sweated madly through their set and discovered afterward that their cables had melted to the floor.

But the gigs got better. Angeletti, who began giving voice lessons to Glier, says she was "blown away" by the power and range of his vocals. She encouraged him to expand his singing and piano playing from singer/songwriter fare to include blues and rock 'n' roll. "I like to think we gave him a genuine blues and soul, juke-joint, rock 'n' roll education," she says. "I remember one night he killed a Ray Charles song - it was awesome ... I like it when people move me, and he does."

Glier also took up the guitar, and when he switched to the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter Public School in South Hadley for his last few years of high school, he studied piano and vocals with veteran musician Mitch Chakour of Amherst, at that time the school's music director. Chakour, who still does an occasional "tune-up" session with Glier, says Glier was already blessed with excellent pitch and tone. Chakour taught him some exercises to strengthen his voice and make it more durable.

"Seth is a tremendous talent," says Chakour. "His music is very insightful, he's got a lot of passion, and he's really self-directed."

Glier also sought tips from jazz/blues luminary Charles Neville of Huntington, whom he met at a gig. "I told him I was a huge fan of his music," Glier says, "and he called me up and said 'C'mon over.' So I went to his house in Huntington and he gave me all these great tapes of piano music from New Orleans, people like Professor Longhair and James Booker, and I took them home and learned the licks."

That illustrates another thing about Glier: He's not hesitant to call on people in the music business to seek advice, find an opportunity to play, or just talk shop. "I'll talk to people about anything," he says with a laugh. "I figure you annoy them enough, finally they'll ask you what your story is, and I'd much rather people know my name and be annoyed than not know me at all."

He adds, though, that he's made some real friendships along the way by staying in touch with some of those people he might have irritated at first. "My philosophy is also 'It's nice to be important, but it's important to be nice. ' "

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At his Iron Horse gig, Glier talked a bit about his musical background, including what proved to be a seminal experience - though not in a conventional way. After PVPA, Glier enrolled at Berklee College of Music in Boston in the fall of 2007 to study composing and singing. He got some good advice on songwriting, he says, but overall he decided he'd be better off pursuing music on his own. He left the college after one year.

"It felt like an overpriced painting-by-numbers project," Glier told the audience. "I thought I could learn more by just doing it."

Yet his time at Berklee was important to his development. It was during that period that he really came down with the writing bug and composed most of the songs that eventually surfaced on "The Trouble With People." He recalls spending day after day holed up in his apartment, mostly eating take-out food, as he developed the music and lyrics for the title song. "I was getting a bit obsessive about it," he says with a wry smile.

Hommel, who was also attending college in Boston, went to visit his friend during that stretch and remembers that Glier "was kind of bugging out a little bit." That's in part because Glier and his girlfriend broke up just about then: In fact, says Glier, she called him to end their relationship right around the time he was writing the last line of "The Trouble With People," a lyric that goes "The trouble with people is they never last long."

"That's what I mean by saying when you're unaware of what you're writing about, you're usually writing the truth," says Glier.

He was also doing some piano playing in recording sessions for other musicians, including veteran folkie John Gorka. In place of money, he'd often ask to be paid with recording equipment the studio no longer wanted. That helped him put together his own setup back home in Shelburne. He learned to work the controls by watching others doing it, reading manuals and simply experimenting.

"It was still that kind of independence thing," he says. "I figured no one else is going to do it for me, so I'll just learn it ... I really like not knowing what I'm doing. I look at it like it's a clean sheet of paper, and it's your job to screw it up. You find things that you might not find otherwise."

"The Trouble With People," which Glier co-produced with Hommel, has earned numerous positive reviews, as have his live shows: The Herald newspaper of Edinburgh, Scotland, wrote that Glier offers "an appealing eager soulfulness ... songs of escape, romantic idealism and life on the road." The album is a little quieter and more contemplative than his live shows, with some songs chronicling the breakup with his former girlfriend; some tracks are built around folk guitar riffs rather than piano, and others feature string arrangements.

Rachael Sage, a pianist and songwriter who started MPress Records and signed Glier to the label, says she's impressed with his musical ambition. "Seth ... isn't satisfied to just create one type of music. He pushes himself to create and compose in new ways constantly, and I saw that in him the moment I saw him perform live because his dynamics, even within just one song, are very sophisticated."

For his part, Glier says he's thrilled that MPress lets him record his songs at home. He and Hommel say the next album promises to be more up-tempo, though the emphasis will remain on songwriting. "That's pretty much where I'm at right now," says Glier. When it comes to describing his musical persona, he's even coined a variation on singer/songwriter: He calls himself a writer/song-singer.

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When he spoke about his brother at the Iron Horse show, Glier also talked about other aspects of life at home, such as the perk of getting his laundry done. He chatted about other members of the Glier clan, like his 99-year-old grandmother, who lives with the family. His joke about his father's "multiple personalities" was both heartfelt and somewhat revealing. He calls his father "brilliant and artistic, obsessive-compulsive and insane, idiosyncratic" and likens him to the iconoclastic doctor of the TV series "House."

Skip Glier does have an eclectic background. He's a former photographer for Vogue magazine who now works as a stockbroker and also does carpentry; he rebuilt most of the family's Shelburne house. But at times in the past, Glier felt his father wasn't taking enough interest in his music. "He wasn't as excited as I was," says Glier. "When I signed a record contract, I was really excited, and he was like, 'That's great,' but he wasn't bowled over ... at times I was frustrated about that."

Glier ends "The Trouble With People" with a song called "I Just Want to Make My Daddy Proud" in which he sings from the perspective of former President George W. Bush. But sometime after he'd written it, Glier says, he realized the song was also about his relationship with his own father - and he eventually understood his father was proud of him in his own way. "He cared about what kind of person I was when I came home ... he didn't care if I sold out the Iron Horse or toured overseas, he wanted me to be authentic and to do what was important to me.

"I have a lot of respect for the way my dad built a life and a home for his family, and the way he's taken care of his mother," Glier adds. "He's great at understanding people and at finding the humor in life. He really taught me not to take everything seriously, and that's definitely helped me."

From his mother, a former advocate for people with disabilities who nows works for the Franklin County Housing and Redevelopment Authority, he's picked up what he calls a "giving-back bug." He and Hommel, for instance, make it a point to play for patients in hospitals and for schoolchildren when they tour. Last year they also did a 12-show tour in which they teamed with an organization that collects used winter coats for needy children; they had fans donate clothing at their concerts. "That kind of thing is a way for me to try to reflect my mom's values," he says.

Glier is looking forward to a summer of steady touring, which will include visits to folk festivals, both as a performer and as a teacher in songwriting workshops. In between, he and Hommel will continue to work on the new album, and he says he'll find time for other interests - fishing, reading, cooking for his family and "just spending some time alone."

"I like coming home to be with my family," he says. "And I appreciate the Valley more now that I've traveled away from it. It's a great area to find out who you are and really push those limits, see how far you can go."

Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.