Two new solo pieces posted.

Some new guitar music. Let's call it a "Virtual 7" single." Two wacked out ecstatic improv tracks.



If that embedded player thing doesn't work for you, it's on my bandcamp.com page.

Stick a fork in me

I'm Done.

I'm Done trying to:

• be somebody
• make things happen
• build an audience
• cultivate a fan-base
• raise money
• get publicity
• get noticed
• be cool

Turns out I've wasted the better part of two years (or more?) trying to get my music & "business" to coexist. For better or worse, I opted for a nonprofit arts organization business model. I think I did many things "right," plenty of things wrong, or incompletely. In any event, results have been disappointing.

I've written a mighty pile of grant proposals, mailed out over two hundred promo cd's to press people and sent a gazillion "follow up emails." That took a lot of time. What I have to show for it is a large collection of rejection letters and a tremendous indifference with which my work has been received in the world.

Reviewing these results / metrics, I think it would've been better to simply spend that time practicing and writing music. So now, I'm done.

I'm happy to continue making music, but I'm done trying to "do something" with it. Music is useless. Instrumental music is largely meaningless. No sense trying to commodify it or build myself into a "brand" or any such nonsense. I'm done. I don't need to make my artistic practice into a business. That was foolish. If you catch me trying to do it again, please smack me.

I'm going to keep writing and playing and practicing. Hopefully my friends will work with me from time to time. If you want to hear what we're up to, come on out to the house and we'll play it for you. You're totally invited and I'd love to hang out for a while. Or don't come. Either way, I'll be here. And the music will get better and better.

A Rant RE: Fringe Festival Echo Chamber

This year's Capital Fringe Festival has begun. I know this because I am deluged with promotional materials: emails, postcards, facebook event invitations, and on and on. Feels like every artist I know (in any discipline) is working 24/7 to promote their damn Fringe show. I even received a postcard mailed inside an envelope. I think an envelope containing nothing but a postcard is actually an elegant metaphor for everything that bothers me about Fringe - especially as a business model for artists to self-produce their work. I would elaborate on this but I don't think it's worth the time to explain it.

As a performing artist myself, and one who spends considerable effort on self-promotion, I admit that this is some serious pot-kettle-blackness. I can relate to the folks working hard to promote their shows, but damn this onslaught of self promoted amateur and/or semi-pro stuff is leaving me in a near constant state of nausea that will hopefully subside when the festival is over.

Each new invitation, email blast, and postcard just makes me want to stay the f--- home. Besides, as an artist, I have precious little disposable income. So unless you're offering me a comp, don't bother inviting me to your damn show. I ain't gonna buy a ticket.

May - June summary

Happily, I continued to exist throughout May and June. I did some stuff, too. Such as:

Gigs:

• 5/16 DCIC at Hyattsville Arts Festival:
  We played a long & informal set in a little atrium space behind the artdc.org gallery in "downtown" Hyattsville (my little home town). We invited some guests to sit in: Ted Zook and guitarist Ed Ricart joined us for the afternoon. I felt a good rapport with Ed right away. I hope we get to do some more playing together. He's gigging a lot around town, including a trio with Scott Verrastro on drums and Anthony Pirog (my guitar teacher). I'd pick Anthony any day over me, so I can understand that, but with Anthony moving to NYC maybe I'll get a chance to do some work with Ed. We'll see...
  
• 6/13 Low End String Quartet at Comet w/ Tone:
  This was a fun night, but the show ran really late. Jodi was out of town so we were joined by Gordon Withers on cello. He's terrific (and look for his new album on the way soon; he was recording that week with J. Robbins up in Baltimore). We also found ourselves a new bass player: the inimitable Vattel Cherry. I made sure to make Vattel take a nice long solo during our set. He burned the place down. Tone has never sounded better. Those guys were awesome.
  
• 6/26 Reversal at Artomatic:
  A fun Friday night free show. We debuted two new songs and played everything pretty much as intended. That's the best I can shoot for... the music is hard.
  
• 6/30 Combustion at Source Festival:
  This one came up really last-minute. "Combustion" is a 20 minute inter-disciplinary collaboration between a musician, a playwright / actress (Allyson Currin), and a visual artist (Kate McGraw). They've been working together on it in a structured workshop setting for 8 months. The musician had a medical problem and had to miss the performances. So the day before opening night I jumped in and we had one rehearsal. First show was last night. We do it two more times: Thursday at 8pm, Sunday at 2pm, at Source Theater. [tickets]
  

Projects / work:

• LESQ "Blunt Objects" media push
  I sent out a big batch of cd's to various journalists and media outlets. Starting the machinery to try and get some reviews written. We'll see how that goes. Also thinking about doing a CD release event in DC this fall (October-ish). Any ideas where we should try to play?
  
• Grant awarded: Prince George's Arts Council (PGAC): for LESQ to work with an arts-education consultant to develop an in-school concert program for elementary schools. We also got one from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities so we've got enough dough to get the ball rolling, but still only about half of the project budget.
  
• I wrote a whole mess of grant proposals:
• Cafritz Foundation: for the LESQ educational program (see above)
  
• Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation "jazz.NEXT:" to hire Ben to help 10 jazz musicians utilize web 2.0 technologies effectively
  
• PGAC: individual artist proposal: to commission me to write more music for LESQ
  
• PGAC: organizational proposal: presenting an LESQ concert at Joe's in Mt. Rainier, and a daytime kids show for their after-school program.
  
• ACF: some bad news: the local chapter will have no operating budget after September 30, so that part-time job (that has been shrinking gradually over the last few years) is going to vanish.Probably good for me, if I can find some other freelance work I should be able to make more money in less time.
  

I left the house to hear some shows that I wasn't playing in, and they were good:

• 5/30 Isis at Black Cat w/ Pelican and Tombs
• 6/16 John Vanderslice at Black Cat
• 6/20 Soft Power at Comet

Other:

• Cameron and I are off from our regular yoga schedule. There was a time when we made it to the Bikram studio three times per week. Not so much these days. And I have the belly to prove it.
  
• I did not attend my 20 year high school reunion. I'm old. It cost $100 per person, so that seemed crazy to spend $200 (I gotta bring Cameron to show off, right?) to hang out at some country club in Bethesda with people that I'm not all that interested in... To quote one of my actual high school friends, it seemed like it was going to be "a waspy nightmare" so I opted out. I suppose "waspy nightmare" is totally appropriate for my high school. Hmm, college too, actually. But I went to my 10 year college reunion (some number of years ago) and that was kinda fun.

Gigs, meet lap.

Over the last few days, a few nice gigs fell into my lap. Nice when that happens! The Low End String Quartet was offered a show at Comet Ping Pong next month. We're on the bill with Tone and The Mantis. Free show. It's gonna be, how do the kids say it, off the hook?

DCIC got two shows on the calendar out of nowhere. This Saturday, we're doing something at the new ArtDC gallery in Hyattsville, part of the city's Arts Festival, and in August we're playing a Sunday night show with Zevious (a jazz / prog / metal trio from Phildelphia).

Reversal has a show lined up at Artomatic... so this summer I get to perform with all three bands. Nice. Only two downsides so far:

1. Low End Quartet gig is same night as Joe Lally at Black Cat, so I won't get to hear him while he's in town (and won't get to hear my replacement in his band). I am not bitter, really. Really.
   
   
2. Low End Quartet needs to find a bass player. Fast.

If you know any great bass players in the DC area who might be a good fit for the quartet, give me a shout.

The Dog People

Cameron and I had an idea for a radio story, in the style of "This American Life." We're thinking of trying to pitch it to them. What do you think? Any other ideas for where we might look to produce such a thing?

Cameron and Jon are thirty-something. They don't have kids and do not plan on having any. They volunteered as a foster home for a local Australian Shepherd Rescue, meaning they took in Australian Shepherd puppies that had wound up at local shelters, temporarily, until the dogs could be placed in permanent homes.

This opened a window into a subculture of breed-specific dog enthusiasts. Looking through said window creates some anxiety for Cameron. Is she like these people? Is she not? Is she on her way to becoming one? Or maybe this isn't really about the dog-people at all. Is this the manifestation of some deeper anxiety about her life and the decisions she's made that have led her here and will define the rest of her life? We need to find out more...

Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io

In case the embedded player doesn't show up in your reader of choice, here's a link to the mp3 file.

April. Done.

April opened and closed with Reversal gigs. (We've got one more show on the calendar, June 26 at Artomatic.)

Some highlights from in between:
Cameron was in San Diego for a conference, so we used that for an excuse to take a long weekend in LA and visit some old friends.

We did some gardening. Check back mid-summer. Hopefully we'll have so much zucchini and so many tomatoes we'll be desperate to give 'em away.

LESQ cd's are in. The official release won't happen until September. That way I have time to get press copies sent out, and get the disc into iTunes, eMusic and other digital retailers, etc, etc. Trav donated some great photos for the package, and Alec donated the layout. Finished product looks really awesome. Sounds ok, too.

March is over already?

That was quick. This past month I kept busy with some music projects, and probably blew off a little too much day-job work, but hopefully that will come back when I need to pick up some more. We'll see.

About a week ago, DCIC had a fun show at Galaxy Hut with Altamira. I hadn't played there in a very long time. I think the place has changed owners multiple times since my last show there. Seems like they're doin' it right... it's still a fun place to hang out and hear music. Altamira was fantastic. Those guys have mad skills.

I spent this past weekend at Dance Place, performing with Daniel Burkholder's dance company, The PlayGround. It was a split bill with Jane Jerardi. The split bill concept worked really well, there was a nice turnout for both Saturday and Sunday night. Ginger Wagg was back in town to perform in Jane's half of the show - that's always good news. She did this really really simple, short solo piece that was quite effective, in my opinion. I've been working on this piece with Daniel's company for something like three years now. It's been evolving very slowly. I think this latest version is a bit longer than it should be, but other than that, I think this may have been the best version so far.

Spending the weekend at Dance Place was only mildly disorienting. We did Daniel's piece there (with Ginger, before she moved away) two years ago. I've barely been in touch with Jane in the last three years. On Saturday night, I talked to Lucas Zarwell for a few minutes in the lobby. I don't know how long it's been since I've talked to him. He's got a kid and got promoted at work and is all grown up and stuff. Not that he wasn't grown up before, but anyway, there was something weird about the whole thing. What year is it now? Ok, 2009. April of 2009. Got it.

I did my taxes, and it turns out that 2008 was a pretty good year for me, money-wise (relatively). I did lots more day-job than I had the two previous years, so it wasn't hard to beat my annual income from 06 or 07. Funny how it worked out, though... since I was totally broke after touring last spring with Joe Lally. So even though the year started out slow, it worked out well in the end. Mostly due to the fact that Cameron got me a nice consulting gig with her employer. Working as a sub-contractor for a government contractor is the secret to financial success apparently.

Now the important stuff: what are you doing tomorrow night? Well you oughtta be going to Solly's Tavern on U street for the big debut of my instrumental rock band, Reversal. We will math-rock you. Show starts at 8pm. We're on second, probably at 9pm. Get there early, our set is, um, short. But awesome.