Inauguration Day

• Wake Up Everybody by Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes

More Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes music on iLike

We went over to Jen and Trav's house, fixed up an awesome vegan brunch, and settled in to watch the festivities.

I made Obamawaffles, which, it turns out, are exactly like regular waffles except that they are made on the day of the inauguration of President Obama. I love seeing that. President Obama. Do it again. President Obama. Mmmm that's good. The other phrase I enjoyed greatly was "former president Bush." Love the "former" that's in there now. FORMER president Bush. Uh huh. That's the stuff.

I thought the poem missed the mark a bit, but I think its nearly impossible to meet expectations on such an occasion. "On the Pulse of Morning" set the bar pretty damn high for inaugural poetry. On the other hand, I thought Dr. Lowery hit a home run.

My spirits were also lifted watching Bush get on the helicopter and fly out of town. That was great.

Also enjoyed seeing Cheney, a.k.a. Mr. Potter, wheeled off to McLean where he can continue being, I don't know what, rich and powerful? He not only closed that old savings and loan... this time they wrecked all the banks. Like, in the whole world.

After the ceremony, we went home and I took the dog for a walk. I met up with our neighbors along the way, Penelope's humans (I can't remember their names, but I'm pretty sure they only know me as Wickett's person). They were also very excited and smiled uncontrollably enjoying, "the first dog walk with a black president!"

At home, we watched the parade on c-span (so we could watch without all the blathering). I think my tolerance for marching band music is pretty much exhausted, but who cares? It was somehow incredibly satisfying just to see the Obama's on the viewing stand. And to continue seeing them. That's the new president! And his family! There they are. Still there. Pinch me. Still there. This band is from Iowa. Still there. Pinch me again. This marching band is from Kansas. Look, he's still there. He's the president.

No, thank you

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.

Pi to 100 Places

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.

NPR

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.

Zevious, DCIC, Anthony Pirog Sextet - Thursday

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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Old cookbooks

We took some pictures of odd old cookbooks during our visit with Cameron's parents last week:

You PaintedYourself In

Here's my version of a song by Jolie Holland. I made this little arrangement of it over the last few weeks.

Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io

Happy Holidays

From Jon, Cameron and Wickett

Another Year-End List

Everyone's publishing them nowadays so why not put my two cents in?

My list of best albums of 2008
(in no particular order):

• Juana Molina - Una Dia
• The Breeders - Mountain Battles
• Jolie Holland - The Living and the Dead
• Lucinda Williams - Little Honey
• Paul Westerberg - 49:00
• Russian Circles - Station
• Silver Mt. Zion - 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons
• Cat Power - Jukebox
• Evangelista - Hello, Voyager

New to me, and noteworthy, in 2008:

• Vic Chesnutt - North Star Deserter

What I've actually been listening to the most:
(Most played artists over the last 12 months, from my Last.fm data)

1. Jolie Holland
2. M. Ward
3. Lyle Lovett
4. Lucinda Williams
5. The Breeders
6. Talking Heads
7. Elvis Costello
8. Glenn Gould
9. Kristin Hersh
10. The Blind Boys of Alabama
11. Vic Chesnutt
12. Gillian Welch
13. Juliana Hatfield
14. Joe Lally
15. Little Feat
16. Brian Eno and David Byrne
17. Cat Power
18. David Byrne
19. Fugazi
20. Death Cab for Cutie

November happened.

The Low End String Quartet had an unexpected set-back. Our major funder for our 2009 season, which was going to be a joint effort with Washington Musica Viva, sent us a letter informing us that, "due to the current financial crisis, our funding is no longer available." We got our first un-grant. Wacky. I thought about reorganizing Improv Arts as a bank holding company and popping downtown to try and get some of that bailout money, but I don't think that would work...

I'm late getting my year-end solicitation letter together. I think it's a strange time to be sending out a mass mailing asking for money. Seems like most nonprofits are feeling the same way. Nearly every letter I've received at home so far starts with some kind of acknowledgment of the economy (then follows a predictable formula, laying out why their services are so wonderful and why they are worthy of my support and why I am wonderful for supporting them). Strange that I still get so many letters. I've been kinda broke for the last few years and didn't do much giving myself. That doesn't stop them from asking.

It feels stranger and stranger to me lately that the arts (or some portion of the arts sector) operates in the nonprofit world. This results in a conflation of the ideas of "the arts" and "charity." I'm not sure yet how to tease apart the tangled strains of this knot that are weirding me out lately, but I think this conflation thing is a problem. Arts groups really are a square peg in a round hole when it comes to charitable giving.

With things looking bad on the fundraising front for the foreseeable future, I'm thinking of re-orienting my business plan. So far my big idea is quite blurry: make awesome music. Figure out the money later. How to implement this poses some challenges... I need to work with other people and probably won't be able to raise the money to hire them. We'll see how things unfold. I'm thinking about taking guitar lessons again. Not sure who I should study with. Any ideas?

We had a nice thanksgiving. Cameron baked an awesome carrot cake. We spent "black Friday" lounging at home. No shopping. I spent a few hours learning to play a song by Jolie Holland, "You Painted Yourself In." It's really very simple, but it's taking me a long time to get it right. She does some fancy right hand picking that is giving me some trouble.

A few weeks ago, I performed with Daniel's dance company at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage. That's always a nice gig. There's a built-in audience, good stage crew, and nice sound system. I also had a chance to catch up with a college classmate, Garth, who works at the Kennedy Center. I hadn't spoken with him in a few years, so that was cool. He's a remarkable guy and he's working on some exciting stuff. Interestingly, he's moving full-on into administration and management, away from writing and performing - and he seems really passionate about what he's doing. (What we didn't talk about was my plan to write a million dollar Christmas song and I need him to sing the demo... but I've gotta write the song first)

I started writing a song during November. I have some bits recorded, but it's still in a messy stage. I think I got lazy, and instead of composing out more of it, I just dropped in a free-improv noisy guitar "interlude." I justified that to myself but I'll spare you the excuses... we'll see what of this winds up in the trash and what might continue being tweaked and/or developed. Have a listen and let me know what you think:

Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io

One of my accounting-related projects that took lots of time during November should be wrapping up soon, so I'm hoping to get some more practice time - although I just took on another freelance job, this one is a data collection project having to do with jazz radio. It doesn't pay as well as the project that's ending, but it should be waaay more interesting.

I'm on twitter now. And so is Wickett.

New Low End Quartet recordings

In September, the Low End String Quartet had a recording session at Inner Ear with TJ Lipple. I just got the mastered versions back from TJ. You can hear 'em on the myspace, and there's three free downloads on our website. Woo hoo!

• http://www.myspace.com/lesq
• http://lesq.alkem.org/music.html

October wrap-up

October was a busy one... started the month with a few shows with Step Afrika, as part of the Ellington Jazz Festival. We reinvented "Nxt/Step" to incorporate The WES Group, a jazz quartet led by saxophonist Will E. Smith. They were great, and scheduling problems notwithstanding, the project was fun. We did three shows in the big theater at Atlas Performing Arts Center. One daytime show for kids, and two evenings. Turnout for the first evening show was light, it was the same night as the VP debate.

Cameron and I took a quick trip with my folks to Florida to visit my grandmother. We got to spend an hour or so on the beach, which was nice. I haven't been in the ocean since I don't know when. I saw a picture of my great-great-grandfather. I think I'm going to get a copy on the computer someday... but I'm not holding my breath on account of the older people using the internets and everything... When I do get it, I'll be sure to share. He was a grocer in Brooklyn, and it's a great picture of him in his shop.

On a Saturday afternoon, we rode our bikes the entire length of the Sligo Creek Trail (plus the mile or so from our house to the trail). Turns out it's slightly uphill the whole way up to Wheaton... but at least that made the return trip easy (and fast).

This past weekend we carved our pumpkins. The next day, I found out about yeswecarve.com. Oh well. I still like ours, it's simple. Nothing wrong with simple.

I did an informal show with the PlayGround at Joe's Movement Emporium last Thursday. Looks like they've raised some money to build out the theater there. I have mixed feelings. Joe's is a great community resource - but I'm not sure about the potential for quality performances. Oh well. The Meyer Foundation people love to put their names on buildings, so now they'll have a little community based theater space. This show was not our best, but audience was small and supportive. We're doing Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center on November 17th.

This morning I went down to NPR for an interview with Neda Ullaby. She's doing a story about the "DC experimental music scene." Marc Masters' piece that ran in the last issue of Signal to Noise magazine made a good impression, I guess? I got a quick studio tour after the interview, and being an NPR junkie myself, I thought it was really cool. I saw cubicles with the names of familiar reporters on them, and I saw where the Morning Edition and All Things Considered people work. I think I caught a glimpse of Corey Flintoff? He's my favorite. The little production studio where we did the interview had three Neumann U87's. Nice. When I find out when the piece is going to air, I'll post something...

Other news from October was the big grant proposal blitz. There were loads of deadlines around Oct. 15 and Nov. 1 so I spent all my "artist" time this month writing proposals.

• One for-hire on behalf of Washington Musica Viva sent to the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County (they love to reject my projects, hopefully this one will fly)
• One for the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities' "Small Projects Program;" on behalf of Low End String Quartet (LESQ), to hire an educational consultant and develop an in-school interactive concert program.
• One for the Sparkplug Foundation, for the same LESQ project.
• and finally one for the Maryland State Arts Council, also for LESQ - but this one is for our upcoming collaborative concert series with Washington Musica Viva. The rules for what the state arts council will and will not fund seem very strange to me. I couldn't ask them for money towards the in-school program, which I'm hoping will be like crack to arts donors

Hmm, that doesn't seem like so many in retrospect. Too bad it took so much time to do the work.

November is shaping up to be heavy on the bookkeeping. I've got a sweet project from Cameron's employer, but I've got to get it done by the end of November so I'm selling more of my time for dayjob stuff than I'd prefer. I figure I should take the work while I can get it... and I want to stash some money for our Costa Rica trip coming up in February. There's something to look forward to!

Fall is here

Fall is here, huh? We spent last weekend enjoying the nice weather. We went apple picking with Jen and Trav and Jen's dad, who was in town for a visit. Now we have lots of apples so it's time to learn how to bake pie.



We also took our bikes out for a nice long ride on Sunday. There are miles and miles of nice trails from our neighborhood up to College Park and vicinity.

Some good news (and also sad news): Oreo is adopted. Her new name is "Scout" and she's shown here with her new sibling, Darcy. She lives at Andrews Air Force Base now. It's so sad to give her up, but nice to know that she's got a great permanent home. We did an enormous amount of vacuuming this past weekend and now the house looks like the humans outnumber the dogs again.



I'm hard at work (actually not so much... I'm procrastinating right now) re-arranging the music for "Nxt/Step" - the piece I wrote for Step Afrika. We're doing a new version with a jazz quartet as part of the upcoming Ellington Jazz Festival. Shows are Oct. 2 and 3 at the Atlas Performing Arts Center.

Sour Grapes

For several years now I've subscribed to a magazine called Signal To Noise, a publication that bills itself as, “the quarterly journal of improvised, experimental, and unusual music.” They do a fine job covering this terrain, and as far as I know it's a labor of love run by lovely people and filled with the work of lovely people who surely aren't motivated by money. This is all to say, it's a great magazine, and whatever I have to say about it is not meant as a criticism. This essay, like most everything I do, is all about me.

When each issue arrives, I eagerly flip through it. Quickly, I start to get bitter and defensive. I undergo a Kafka-esque transformation and soon resemble a certain fox. It gets harder to flip the pages with furry paws and no thumb, but I'm stubborn and I stick it out until the very last page. Muttering and grumbling over each glossy photo, and every superlative-laden blurb about every unshaven hipster doofus that they gush over for one reason or another. Sour grapes.

At long last, this cycle has been broken! The fall issue arrived in my mailbox this week, and in it there are two lovely features about me. No sour grapes necessary. There's even a glossy photo of me. Me me me. Finally.

Seriously, though... Marc Masters wrote a nice feature story about the DC “experimental scene,” and I'm included as well as many of the other people who, honestly, have a lot more to do with the scene than I do. But I'll happily take some credit. I am a sucker for acknowledgment.

There's also a short review of the DCIC cd included as well... and it's a pretty good review, I think:

DCIC is a guitar/electronics-reeds-drums trio with links to underground rock – guitarist Jonathan Matis recently toured with Fugazi bassist Joe Lally, drummer Ben Azzara was in Delta '72 – as well as jazz – they have performed with Greg Osby. They play in a hybrid language, slipping in the occasional rock chord as easily as they slide through textural explorations. Mike Sebastian's horns, and especially his exotically pitched saxello, are what makes their music stand out. He's as adept at tying knots in his own lines like Roscoe Mitchell as he is at reeling out an imploring, klezmer-tinged lament. At close to an hour, their debut overstays its welcome a bit, but there's enough happening here that I'd be happy to check them out if they came to my town.

-- Bill Meyer

LESQ recording session almost complete

I've been in the studio for the last two and a half days with the Low End String Quartet. We're recording at Inner Ear with TJ Lipple. I like TJ, but it sure is expensive to hang out with him.

Our tracking day went more smoothly than I expected. We got through everything with a little time to spare. The air conditioning wasn't working, so things got a little swampy. The string players had some interesting troubles with that. It turns out that bass rosin gets extra sticky; and one of Jodi's tuning pegs got stuck at one point. My bandmates were really great about it. We got through the day with nary a complaint about the heat, and everyone really worked hard.

Mixing is going well too... although it can be a tedious process. In a few weeks, hopefully, we'll get the mastering done and then I'll have some hot stuff to share.

Love the art vs. Love the artist

I am embarrassed to admit that it is only recently that I've learned to make the distinction between these two concepts (as they apply to myself and my own work). In retrospect it is kind of hilarious that I was operating previously with these things conflated.

Happily, I have come to realize that what I really want to accomplish musically has something to do with having people like the work, but has nothing to do with needing people to like me. Ah, what relief. Of course, I do still need people to like me, but that's an entirely separate matter. Understanding that this is an entirely separate matter is a wonderful thing!

At the same time, I am more and more clear about the fact that all people will not like the work. In fact, most people will probably not like it (or at least not care about it). However, there are some people who will actually like it and be enthusiastic about it. This is nice.

Having learned these simple things makes it much easier to swallow a lousy review (like the one that was published on Monday in the Post), because my self esteem isn't all tied up in whether or not people liked the music. People responded quite positively to the show - and I think that has a lot to do with the potential for the group and what we're trying to accomplish, even though I've got some work do to as far as getting the music where it needs to be. Carl told me today that he thought about 75% of the music didn't really work, but the other 25% was really exciting. For our first time out with this project, I'll take that. Ok, so we didn't knock one out of the park our first try, but we'll get there...

Ouch. A bad review.

The Low End String Quartet's concert on Saturday went quite well. I was really happy with how things went. We had a great audience, the "early show" experiment at Velvet Lounge worked out, and we made it through our set without any major troubles. Considering all of the technical things that could go wrong (especially with my poor old laptop running the show), I'm pretty psyched about how it went.

Of course there are technical / execution things that can be improved. This was our first time performing most of the music, and we can use some more rehearsal. I need to find a better system for dealing with Andrea's violin pickup - the sound we're getting now isn't so hot.

The Post sent a classical music critic, and she really didn't like it. Oh well. I had hoped we'd get a good review that we could attach with grant proposals and add to our press kit and whatnot, but this one ain't it. Oh well. Fortunately the other group members escaped unscathed. She only harshed on me - and particularly my compositions. I can understand that viewed through the lens of post-classical minimalism (Reich, Glass, John Adams, Terry Riley, etc) my work would come off as a bad imitation.

Anyway, we've got work to do. We have two rehearsal days this week before we head into the recording studio on Monday night. So that's two work days this week where I get to have super fun and call it work.

Express Night Out | Arts

Express Night Out | Arts & Events | Rock the Conservatory: The Low End String Quartet

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The greatest work day ever

I wanted to write this up two weeks ago, and then got behind... but I think it's going to repeat tomorrow, so I'm happy to revisit.

I've been complaining a great deal lately about my dayjob(s) and stress related to money, etc. That all took a backseat a few weeks ago when I had a daytime rehearsal for the Low End Quartet.

I started this project about a year and a half ago. I threw together a few pieces, found interested players who were willing to do a couple of rehearsals and one show for free, got us a spot opening for a friend of mine, and we did a little proof-of-concept. It worked quite well. The music was well received, we made some rehearsal recordings, and I was quite insipired to write more music for the group. Instead of writing said music immediately, I wrote grant proposals. And then some more proposals. Then I got really lucky and some of those were funded.

So here we are, I've got this thing going as a paid gig. I was able to take a few months at the start of the year to focus on composing, and I've got the budget to pay the performers (including myself) for a handful of rehearsals and a show or two. Plus we're going to spend three days in the recording studio in September. Exciting stuff...

Of course real life didn't unfold according to plan and some of the details in my proposals have been changed. I had to hire a new bass player, I didn't finish writing the pieces I needed in the time alotted, etc., etc... but we've got a show coming up this weekend, and the recording session is two weeks away. And here's the best part -- our rehearsal days are paid for. It's literally my job to rehearse with the group. Not as much as I'd like, but we're devoting a couple of days to it - six hour blocks of time, which is quite unheard of in my experience with other bands.

So a few weeks ago, I set up the basement for us and sure enough we spent the better part of the day playing new music in my basement. We didn't cover as much material as I'd hoped, but I'm always putting too many things on my to-do list for any given day. This was no exception. We took a short break for lunch, and played some more. A photographer for the Express came by because they're running a feature about our upcoming show. We got to get acquainted a bit more with one another during lunch, and we got to get acquainted a bit more simply by playing together. (The cat's out of the bag, as far as my skills as a performer... the other members of the group are pros and I'm not quite up to speed when it comes to playing chamber music ;-)

At the end of the day, I was awfully content. I put my coffee down at 9am and forgot to drink it, I was so absorbed in what we were doing all day. When I found it again after the rehearsal was over and everyone had left, I realized that I'd just had the best work day ever. We'd worked hard, but it was seriously fun the whole time. Maddening at some points, given that my music is repetitive and we have to count bars carefully, but fun!

I can't wait for rehearsal tomorrow.. and the show on Saturday should be a blast. Check out the Express on Thursday (I think that's when the feature will run), and I think the Post is covering the show so a review should be in Monday's paper...

Tomorrow - we open for Richard Lloyd

don't take my word for it, the Washington Post's "Going Out Gurus" picked our show as a hot one... tomorrow night at Velvet Lounge.