DCIC at Warehouse Next Door

Last night, DC Improvisers Collective played on a bill with Hugh McElroy (former member of the legendary Black Eyes, and currently working with Hand-Fed Babies) and the guitar duo of Don Fleming and Chris Grier.

We played as a trio again, since Dan (our bass player) couldn't make it. Happily, the trio format is really working nicely. With the bass missing, there's lots of sonic space open, so I brought my laptop processing rig and allowed myself the luxury of gadgets. When we're a quartet, I've found it works much better to leave the gadgets at home since there's no need (or space) for looping and processing.

We played this show with very little planning, we really left things open to make up everything on the fly. After hearing the two guitar assault of Don and Chris, I wanted to open with some noisy guitar playing, so we agreed to start with a short noisy guitar solo (which I did with a slide in my right hand - attacking the strings above the pickups and occasionally over the neck), then Ben and Mike entered with some droning textures and I switched gears to more ambient textured sounds. Then things just progressed organically from there.

Mike started on bass clarinet, which is a fairly quiet instrument and I had a hard time playing softly enough to match (the joys of borrowing the Azarra's delicious sounding tube amp), but when Mike switched to his tenor sax that wasn't an issue.

We were all quite satisfied with the performance. I felt like there was really good ensemble listening and interaction. We all had ample opportunities to initiate new ideas, and I think we all did a nice job of responding to one another. It may be a week or two before I get the recording posted online, but I'll podcast something when it's available...