The stork is dropping her off on Aug. 15. How could we say no?
She might have some special needs... she's very shy. Was a stray, and is being rescued from a high-kill shelter in South Carolina or something. They were seeking a home with an adult well-adjusted dog and no kids. Sound like us.
Several years ago, I released this album as a very, very limited edition CD-R. I only made 20 of them, and most of those are still in my house. Since I bungled the original release, I'm delighted to offer it up now, far & wide, thanks to the interweb. Listen / download / buy it here (pay-what-you-like, $0 ok).
I used to play in a guitar / drums duo with Brian Fending. He moved to Buffalo. Now we don't get to play much.
Thanks to several things outside my control lining up just right, I was offered three days of free studio time at a cool little recording studio in Minneapolis. I'd never been to Minneapolis, and this seemed like a great reason to visit. In retrospect, the cost of airfare, hotel, and rental car came out to more than we would've spent for the same (or slightly more) studio time here at home, but it was fun to go out there anyway. Minneapolis is cool, and in the summer it's really nice.
We had no idea what music we might play, so we just set up and dove right in. Most of the record is improvised. I had a fortunate technology problem: my laptop got zapped by a virus when I joined the hotel wireless network on our first night. It wouldn't boot up or anything after that... so I did most of the session without fancy gizmos or looping. The studio had a beautiful Vox AC15 guitar amp that I think I might still be in love with. Yeah, a little bit in love with a guitar amp. Embarrassing but true. I did some overdubs and played the looped parts manually. That was much better. The first two tracks have “laptop guitar,” the rest are post-virus-crash-meltdown. (I'm still using that damn laptop and it's never really been the same.)
Some highlights:
The last ad down is mine. McGreet / Mccob! Genius I tell you! The extraneous close-parentheses is an homage to some ads that ran over the last few months featuring ridiculous punctuation nightmares.
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.
I'm Done.
I'm Done trying to:
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.
Happily, I continued to exist throughout May and June. I did some stuff, too. Such as:
Gigs:
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:
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...
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.
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.
I recently started taking guitar lessons (again). That means I'm practicing every day now, including thirty minutes of playing scales daily.
Last night I had a strange dream about playing scales. The key of F had recently passed away. Apparently, musical keys were like people who were among us and then departed. I was setting up for a DCIC show just after F's passing and we wanted to play something as a memorial. The dream quickly turned into an anxiety dream where I was desperately trying to decide what scales I could play that would somehow evoke F, even though F was gone so I couldn't play anything in F. I never did come up with a good solution.
Cameron and I spent a week in Costa Rica, which was awesome. We were at a resort in a little out-of-the-way beach town called Montezuma. We lounged in hammocks hung between palm trees looking at the ocean. Monkeys played in the trees. It was ideal.
Work-wise, I had occasion to learn the basics of SQL because I got an interesting job from the Future of Music Coalition. The project was a preliminary study of the state of jazz radio in the US. We put together a database of playlist data and crunched some numbers. The findings will be released soon.
I started taking guitar lessons. It's been a long time since I had any formal instruction, and it's about time! Now I'm playing scales for 30 minutes every day. Fun. Too bad I didn't take care of this a long time ago.
I've been playing in an instrumental rock band for a little over a year. Progress has been steady, but slow. Now we have a name and a gig! The debut performance of Reversal (I'm not crazy about the name, but let's not get into that) is coming up on April 2nd at Solly's Tavern on U Street. Mark your calendar now. We will rock.
DCIC has been active. We had a fun show in Silver Spring a few weeks ago, at Kefa Cafe. Very small venue, but a nice turnout - and we were well received which was nice. I feel like we are often met with indifference, but that night there was an audience of interested listeners, which felt great. We're performing again soon - Monday, March 23 at Galaxy Hut in Arlington. We're opening for Altamira from Philadelphia.
The Low End String Quartet was awarded a "small projects" grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, for the purpose of developing a program that we can take to elementary schools. Now I just have to raise the rest of the money we need to do that project...
The Maryland State Arts Council "Individual Arts Awards" have been awarded, and I didn't get one. Again. Rejected for eight years straight. Awesome.
From NPR's "On the Media" this week: a remarkably frankly written look back at the Bush administration through the lens of their relationship with the press.
I wrote and recorded this little gem yesterday afternoon.
While working on it, I found the coolest website EVER: The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. If you're not convinced that this resource is, in fact, the bomb, then perhaps you should read more about it.
I tried a new (to me) web service to make this little gadget. There's a "share" button built in, so in addition to playing the music right here in your browser, you can easily embed this player in your website, facebook, myspace, blog, etc, etc, etc. Why you might do that, well, that's up to you.
Here's a link to some pi related humor.
Last night on "All Things Considered," there was a feature about the DC experimental music scene.
There's a few snippets of music by DCIC - but they're not identified as such. We do have one track streaming on their website, though... I went in for a nice interview with Neda Ullaby while she was working on the story - not much of that made it into the finished product, but I do show up briefly.
It's funny that the further away I get from the experimental scene, the better it seems to do. I extricated myself from organizing Sonic Circuits and Jeff Surak has grown the festival into something much larger and more awesome. My own music is getting less and less experimental, and my (former?) peers are getting some nice press. Wacky how this works.
DCIC is performing this coming Thursday night at Velvet Lounge. We'll be joined by a special guest, Ted Zook.
Also on the bill, The Anthony Pirog Sextet, and Zevious - a jazz trio from New York. Have a listen to Zevious, you just might wanna check this out...
RSVP:
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Upcoming.org
We took some pictures of odd old cookbooks during our visit with Cameron's parents last week:
Here's my version of a song by Jolie Holland. I made this little arrangement of it over the last few weeks.
