Brian Chaffee has something he wants to share, something he’s kept bottled up inside that he needs to let out: his music. But not just music he’s written and performed, music he’s lived and breathed.

Like other artists before him, Chaffee experienced the itch that comes when you find yourself yearning to cut straight to the heart and express yourself through music without constraints. And like other artists before him, Chaffee decided that the only way to do this would be to branch out on his own. Now, after having answered that calling, Chaffee has two new albums under his belt and, along with his live backing group The Players, is riding a new high and expressing himself the way he’s always wanted with his two albums, For Lovers and Crooners, and the newly released Afterglow.

Chaffee’s new material has been a long time coming. While performing in his previous two bands, Krakow and The Franks, Chaffee began writing songs that he wasn’t able to bring to his bandmates because the songs didn’t fit the bands’ styles.

“We were all thinking different things, as I was writing a lot more outside of the style we had created,” Chaffee said about the end of his time in The Franks, a group he described as a rock outfit with reggae and funk leanings. Chaffee’s new music, by contrast, is more in the vein of alternative rock with some folk qualities. “I decided to start my own recordings to at least document these songs,” he continued. “It was a strange Brian Wilson or George Harrison kind of thing. I just needed to get this stuff out of my head, and my current situation was not going to provide that relief.”

Those recordings turned into more than a dozen demos that Chaffee had taped at home. Following the breakup of The Franks – which Chaffee insisted was not due to any bad blood or drama – Chaffee got to work, hooked up with engineer/producer Adam Rourke at Red Room Recording Studios in Waltham and cut the tracks that became For Lovers and Crooners and Afterglow.

Instead of releasing all the songs onto the same album, Chaffee decided to split them up. “I started to look at the songs and realized half were all about the hooks, love, (and) the other half was darker, richer, new life, but lots of death as well,” Chaffee explained. “I decided that releasing them separately made a lot of sense.”

But Chaffee didn’t record and release his two new offerings by himself overnight. He had help from his friends and local musicians. Along with having members from The Players perform on some of the tracks, Chaffee enlisted many other talents, including bassist and vocalist Sarah Clark and drummer Adam Sausville. Clark and Chaffee began playing together in high school, went their separate ways and then reconnected at the Audio Wasabi open mic night Chaffee hosts at The Gardner Ale House.

“Playing on the new album was a blast,” Clark said of Afterglow. “Brian wanted to add a couple of my originals, and it was really great to be included and accomplish that.” The originals in question are “Sweet Tooth” and “More Than I.” Clark and Chaffee wrote the track “On My Own” together.

Sausville and Chaffee also have a history of performing together, which led to Sausville’s contribution. “I have always been a fan of Brian’s,” said Sausville, who plays on the track “Bullet like a Photograph” on Afterglow. “I’m lucky enough to perform with him, which still inspires me 15-plus years (later).”

But no matter how many talented musician and writers Chaffee enlisted on his new projects, when all is said and done, it is his heart that is on that album sleeve. Some of the songs are very personal, enough so that Chaffee avoids going into specifics as to exactly what they are about. But he did have this to say about what Afterglow means to him: “For me, all we have is the afterglow someone leaves us and the one we leave. That’s what this album is for me.”

Be sure to catch Brian Chaffee and The Players performing live across New England in support of Afterglow and keep an eye out for new material, as Chaffee and company continue to work in the studio.

For more information, visit brianchaffeemusic.com or facebook.com/brianchaffeemusic

By Jason Savio