F R E E L A B

WEGO: First 2012 Enlighten Show

2012-01-17T22:59:00.000-08:00

Set 1 (32 megs)
Set 2 (30 megs)

Here are the recordings from our first Enlighten Cafe show of 2012! The orchestra for the evening was Woody Frank (guitar and voice), Ian McKagan (guitar and voice), Jesse Silvertrees (djembe and voice), Emma Staake (barista and voice), Evan Strauss (bass and voice), and Me Woods (uke, trumpet, glockenspiel, and voice).

Moments of more traditional grooviness materialize throughout, but overall this was one of our most free-wheeling improv-o-thons yet! After two full sets of sounds and words, I don't think we hit more than 3 or 4 lyrical standards. Instead, lyrical themes tended to build spontaneously from the circumstances of the moment. One of the only proper standards to make an appearance (Ween's "Mister, Would You Please Help My Pony?") wasn't even on anybody's sheet until it happened … though I think I'll probably transcribe it for the next one! Conspicuously absent was Dennis. So we sang about him instead. There was also a 20 minute trio-jam at the top of the evening (Jesse, Evan, and me, before Woody and Ian showed up). It was probably okay, but I really felt like I was floundering on the uke ... and possibly trumpet as well ... too embarrassed to go back and look. So, in the versions I've uploaded here, it's as though the guitars were there from the very beginning. (I also delivered our first version of "Enter Sandman" during this excised set of movements ... a light jazzy rendition.)

Personally, in spite of continuing to struggle to find the right combinations of instruments to sprinkle into the mix, I had a really good time. This might not be our most accessible pair of recordings to date, but for those of you who were fans of our early work in the late 60's and find yourself complaining that we've become too "safe" in the new millenium, maybe give this a listen. Can't wait for Feb 3rd at Molly Maguire's!

WEGO: December 8th Enlighten Show!

2011-12-09T23:02:00.000-08:00

Set 1 (52 megs)
Set 2 (59 megs)

Here are the recordings from WEGO's December 8th show at the Enlighten Cafe! The orchestra for the evening was Woody Frank (guitar and voice), Dennis Jolin (percussion), Ian McKagen (guitar and voice), Evan Strauss (bass and voice), and Me Woods (glockenspiel, trumpet, keys, assorted-percussion, and voice). We also finally ran a mic on a super-long daisy-chained cable all the way back to Emma behind the bar … hence the origin of much stellar vocal texture.

This wasn't a particularly strong night for me individually, but for the band and the sound as a whole I think it ranks up there with our very best shows. With Evan already masterfully filling the bass role after only two shows, I'm free to explore other niches. I guess it only makes sense that I would struggle a little in finding the right combination of instruments to work into the mix, but meanwhile the overall balance, cohesion, and energy of the sound just seem to keep deepening month after month! Even as the grooves become more relaxed and spacious, the funkitudinous momentum flows ever stronger. Feels like things are looking up and up for WEGO in the new year.

WEGO: November Enlighten Show!

2011-11-12T15:08:00.000-08:00

Set 1 (49 megs)
Set 2 (52 megs)

Here are the recordings from our November 10th show at the Enlighten Cafe. The orchestra for the evening consisted of Woody Frank (guitar and voice), Jenny Freeling (djembe), Sarah Gardener (sp? … first time out on banjo!), Dennis Jolin (uke and percussion), Ian McKagan (guitar and voice), Jesse Silvertrees (keys and voice), and Me Woods (bassbox and voice). Wow, that's a good-sized orchestra! Did I forget anybody? Oh yeah, Emma joined us again briefly during the second set too.

We transitioned pretty seamlessly from a chaotic last-minute setup straight into one of our best first sets ever. Woody was directly next to the board for this one, and seemed to be adjusting the mix throughout the evening, with indescribably beneficial results! Even with the extra-jumbo lineup, the mix felt balanced and well-supported throughout, and the playing responded in kind. Jesse and Woody had called out for some new lyrics, and so the three of us had each brought in a couple of new sheets to spring on the group. While I still value the possibilities that collective familiarity with a particular 'lyrical standard' can bring, the influx of fresh structures really seemed to launch us into a happy and synergistic place. With all of the recent shows, it seems we were ready for them, in a number of ways!

I also noticed two subtle changes that seemed to open things up: One was the increase in complicated and jazzy changes (lots of major 7ths and 9's), which just felt so rich with the easy momentum of the big group. And the other difference was signaling more of the changes to cycle at about half the rate that we usually cycle them (each chord held for two or more measures, instead of a quick 4-count).

This was a fairly inspired evening for me personally, on both bass and vocals (see "Whip It" or the first-set-closing "We Will Rock You", for example). I felt like we were all a bit spent after Set 1's climax -- certainly I was! -- and so the second set may have tapered off a little in cohesion, if not energy. …though I haven't had a chance to listen through yet. But all in all, this was right up there with our very best shows and another good omen of things to come!

WEGO: Nov 5th at Molly Maguire's

2011-11-07T11:58:00.000-08:00

WEGO set (50 megs)

Here are the recordings from our Nov 5th opening slot for David Montgomery and Lark vs Owl at Molly Maguire's. The stripped-down orchestra for the evening included Jenny Freeling (djembe), Dennis Jolin (ukelele and assorted percussion), Jesse Silvertrees (keys and vocals), and Me Woods (bassbox and vocals).

This was my first time playing at Molly Maguire's -- though I think I may have seen a semi-acoustic show in the back room there towards the end of the '90s, back when it probably had a different name. I'd loooooove to play this place again! There was a huge, diverse, energetic, seemingly-walk-in crowd -- the sort of energy I haven't seen since the old Dubliner Pub at the bottom of Fremont hill. The stage is a bit tiny for our usual lineup (and even for the the 4-piece we had in effect on this particular evening), but we could get creative, right? Even the pesky intermittency of the PA turned out to be the result of my own defective 1/4 inch cord.

So yeah, this was a fun evening! We were certainly missing Woody and Ian from the core line-up (looking forward to this Thursday at the Enlighten!), but even the early parts, which felt almost painfully tentative at the time, have a solid mix and a nice rubbery bounce to them.

WEGO: October 27th Enlighten Show!

2011-10-29T23:21:00.000-07:00

Andrew's Opening Set (35 megs)
WEGO Set (88 megs)

Here are the recordings from our October 27th makeup show at the Enlighten Cafe! The six-piece orchestra for the evening included TQ Berg (guitar), Woody Frank (guitar and voice), Dennis Jolin (strings and percussion), Jesse Silvertrees (djembe and voice), Evan Strauss (acoustic 5-string bass), and Me Woods (guitar, percussion, and voice). Our barista for the evening, Emma, also joined us briefly with another absolutely stellar scat-vocal performance. Trust me, you'll know it when you hear it!

We were very excited to have both Evan joining us for the first time ever and TQ back after over a year's absence. Of course with two nearly-brand-new players, it took a few minutes to warm up, but I felt right at home after less than 10 minutes or so, and things just kept getting hotter all night. It was one of those shows where it felt like each movement was more free, energetic, and inspired than the last, driving straight through to our 10PM curfew. (Sorry for the large file! During our whole hour-and-20-ish-minute set, I think we only stopped playing once (I've edited a couple of those minutes out of the recording here to retain interest) and never actually left the stage.)

My half-hour opening set of guitar and voice included two firsts: a brand new tune called "I Don't Mind" (for now) and a cover of Alice in Chains' "Would".

WEGO: Last Drops of September at the Blue Moon Tavern

2011-10-03T17:52:00.000-07:00

WEGO's set (39 megs)

Here are the recordings from our late September show at the Blue Moon Tavern. The orchestra for the evening was a quintet of Woody Frank (guitar and voice), Dennis Jolin (electro-uke), Ian McKagan (guitar and voice), Jesse Silvertrees (djembe and voice), and Me Woods (bassbox and voice).

If you've ever seen a show at the Blue Moon, I can say this went about like your average Blue Moon show, complete with technical difficulties, a distorted trebley mix and a crowd of lovable drunken freaks that makes it all worth it. (... clearly this isn't us in the photo, but I love that this is the photo that the Blue Moon has at the top of its own web-page!)

WEGO: September Shipwreck!

2011-09-26T23:50:00.000-07:00

Ian's Set (minus the first song) (42 megs)
Set 1a (27 megs)
Set 1b (20 megs)
Set 2 (23 megs)

Here's as much as we managed to record of our September 23rd show at the Shipwreck Tavern in West Seattle. The orchestra for the evening was our usual core quartet of Woody Frank (guitar and voice), Ian McKagan (guitar and voice), Jesse Silvertrees (djembe and voice), and Me Woods (bassbox and voice). Ian played a relaxed and moody set of guitar-and-voice to open the evening.

Longevity of my recharge-ables had dropped to an all new low, and so a couple of significant portions of the show were not recorded: a chunk in the middle of the first set -- before I got up to change the batteries -- and the second half of the second set -- when the backup batteries died too. (Missing the first song of Ian's set was my bad.) The new batteries I've ordered should be here in time for this Thursday's show at the Blue Moon -- where we'll play for so little time that it shouldn't be an issue ;)).

It was a warm wonderful evening, and this show was very poorly attended … connected facts … who knows…? But thanks to the fantastic hospitality of Chips and Chris, and the generosity of the gullible few who did turn up, we had a good time anyway.

There was also some slightly unbalanced enthusiasm from a guy who first arrived during the set-break and tried to get a few of us to donate to the peewee baseball team he claimed to be coaching (a 20-something "bro" who didn't seem to fit the part), and ended the evening shouting "you guys hate art!!" at the bar-tender after he jumped up on stage to freestyle and had his mic cut off. He came back a few minutes later and tried to smooth everything over … an interesting guy for sure!

WEGO: September Enlighten Show

2011-09-09T23:00:00.000-07:00

Set 1 (53 megs)
Set 2 (29 megs)

Here are the recordings from our September show at the Enlighten Cafe. The quartet for the evening was Woody Frank (guitar and voice), Ian McKagen (guitar and voice), Jesse Silvertrees (keys and voice), and Me Woods (bassbox and voice).

Audience turnout was exceptionally sparse (the temperature had been in the mid-80's all week, and perhaps people were outside enjoying the last of Summer), but for those who came it was a strong and slightly-unusual show. With Jenny and Dennis missing and with Jesse rocking the keys (instead of djembe), it was a harmonically-rich sound that suffered surprisingly little from lack of groove. …not that we won't be psyched to have our missing regulars back, mind you!

#$%&^*, the batteries died on the recorder again!! (Note to self: need a new set of NI-MH 2700ma AA rechargables.) However, I swear the recorder held on until roughly 1 second after the last note of Ian's country/jazz-hall "Crazy Train", which was arguably the top standard of the evening. So all is forgiven, little recorder. After that, we congratulated ourselves for at least a couple of minutes and then played a little less than 15 minutes more -- the bit that's missing from the recording here.

Emma (the new barista) joined us on vocals for the first bit of the second set. We always enjoy this sort of thing, but I was quickly surprised by her voice-control and sophisticated harmonic palette. Check out the extended scat-solo at the end of "Disco Inferno". Sounds like she's going to be the regular Thursday barista for a while, so we're planning to run a super-long mic to the bar, so she can join in at will.

Finally, this was my first show with the electric pickup on the bassbox. As a single-coil jazz-bass pickup, it's naturally a little noisy, but nothing that doesn't get quickly buried when the other players join in. And you can really hear the improved low-end warmth, especially during the second set. Hell, I made it through both sets with no blisters! I'll be glad to have the increased headroom going into our two bar-shows at the end of the month.

Coastal Guitar-and-Voice Improv

2011-08-31T22:12:00.000-07:00

Moclips Moth Attack 1 (8 megs)
Moclips Moth Attack 2 (4 megs)

Here are a couple of improvised guitar-and-voice clips from the first night of our recent family-trip to the Washington coast. We arrived at the house-on-the-beach that Tina's family had rented by mid-evening. And by about 9pm or so, we were settled in enough that I was able to escape to the sea-side porch for a few minutes of screwing around on the guitar. You can hear the steady surf in the background, but even with a ridiculously overpowered porch-floodlight aimed straight at the beach, a thick mist completely hid all but the first several yards of grassy dunes from view. However, above my head and stretching a hundred feet out behind the house, this crazy light created a giant conical glow in the fog, within which hundreds of moths flitted about in the night air. Eventually the swarm attracted at least 1 acrobatic species of small bird (swifts…?) who proceeded to unleash a circus of dramatic lurching sweeps through the cone, attempting to pick the insects out of mid-air.

You may notice that this isn't my most inspired lyrical improv, but there are some fun musics here … and the waves and ambient air are just a hair more interesting than uniform white-noise.

WEGO: August Enlighten Show

2011-08-13T23:51:00.000-07:00

Set 1 (41 megs)
Set 2 (53 megs)

Here are the August recordings from WEGO's regular 2nd-Thursday gig at the Enlighten Cafe! The Orchestra for the evening included Woody Frank (guitar and voice), Ian McKagan (guitar and voice), Jesse Silvertrees (djembe, melodica, and voice) and Me Woods (bassbox and voice). We were also thrilled to have Patrick Lenon (assorted percussion) sitting in with us for the first set.

Even though I was still just about alone at 10-till-eight, by 8:15 the place was packed, and the hastily assembled group kicked right into an extra strong first-set. (I did clip out a short break early in the first set where we stopped to adjust the mix a bit … it turned out I had powered-down the left speaker at the end of sound-check and had forgotten to turn it back on again.)

The second set was perhaps a bit less consistent but still featured plenty of high-peaks of cohesion. And I have a suspicion that even the bits where the band may have felt a bit lost had their own peculiar musicality from the other side of the white-boards. In my view, the strongest aspect of our sound this particular evening was clearly the vocal harmonization. WOW, did the dense brassy harmonies all just seem to gel beyond the expected possibilities of improv at times!

(Obligatory bass-box tone-discussion paragraph:) This was my first mic'd show with the round-wound steel strings on the bass-box, and it was a heeee-yuuuuuge improvement. The tone was maybe still a little under-defined, but for once I had volume to spare! By the end of the night, I almost wished I hadn't ordered an electric pickup for it, but I think the pickup will probably give me even more of what I'm looking for. So I'll try to make a removable installation for that sometime before our September show.

Finally, apologies for the low-bitrate sound of the second set! … somehow in changing the batteries, the input levels got bumped down to the point where I'm needing to both compress and boost around 20db just to get it to roughly match the first set … sadness … though certainly better than losing it entirely.

(Special thanks to Marisa for the photos!)

WEGO: Planet Home

2011-08-10T09:25:00.000-07:00

Planet Home Recording (53 megs)

Here is the recording of our all-acoustic trio set from Sustainable NE Seattle's August 6th "Planet Home" event! The micro-orchestra for the day included Woody Frank (guitar and voice), Jesse Silvertrees (djembe and voice) and Me Woods (bass-box and voice).

The weather was just about perfect, shifting from pleasantly overcast to sunny and sweat-inducingly-warm sometime during our set. We played from roughly 1:00-2:00pm on a partially screened little patch of gravel facing a small cluster of tables ringed by strawbale benches. And we had a great crowd at first, as visitors grabbed lunch from the taco stand or free tea from the local tea guy and sat down to watch for a bit. The set starts surprisingly strong for a trio doing what we're trying to do! We maybe fizzled out a little bit sometime after the halfway mark as it got hotter and many of the listeners headed out to the next round of workshops os just to say hi to the goats. (Though multiple people told me it sounded great from other parts of the property as they were milling around.)

Not sure how often I'll do this, but since it's easy for this one, here's a rough breakdown of what we played: Every Little Thing (Is Gonna Be Alright) --> Light My Fire (w' Disco Inferno) --> Crazy Train --> percussion breakdown --> Sustainable Dave --> Beyonce --> Eye of the Tiger --> Feel Like Makin' Love, Pour Some Sugar (1st verse only) --> Rehab.

Chez Amandes (Beezer and 5-Track Come to Town)!

2011-08-02T23:29:00.000-07:00

Clip 1 (50 megs)
Clip 2 (79 megs)
Clip 3 (25 megs)

Here's as much as I was able to record of a beautiful all-afternoon jam at Gerry Amandes's's's studio on Sunday, July 31st. The event was timed to take advantage of the simultaneous local materialization of 5-track (LA) and John Beezer (NY, NY), but also drew heavily from a jumbo pool of local Seattle improvisers, including Ian, Woody, and me (all from WEGO). With my atrocious name-recall and the likelihood of forgetting or incriminating somebody, I won't even try to list all of the participants, but it was great to reconnect with those that I hadn't seen in years(!) and to meet a few new and bright faces. (If you were there and don't mind identifying yourself, please sign in in the comments down there at the bottom.)

Special huge thanks to Gerry for offering his studio for this!! It had been several years since I'd been there and I thought perhaps I'd overblown the perfection of the space in my interim memory, but WOW, if anything it was even warmer and more fully appointed than before. I won't get into specifics, but the whole space feels lovingly constructed for freakish sound-support and flexibility of configuration. With an average of 7-10 players at a time, frequently shifting stations, we were never isolated nor crowded. And the whole space just feeeels fantastic.

Music started bubbling up some-time around 3:30-ish(?) and it was still cooking along when Tina and Lucy picked me up at around 7:00pm. So this huge download may only be a fraction of the whole event…? However, this recording does capture just about everything that happened while I was there. The hard-drive on my little recorder ran out of space just as I was packing up to leave. And the breaks between tracks here were simply paranoid attempts to bracket off and preserve recordings. In each case, I started it up again immediately, so not much is lost (… hopefully the breaks make for less of a monolithic download as well).

As with most large-group improv, there's not a whole lot of chordal movement here (with a few dramatic exceptions!). A sizeable percentage of it was variations on some flavor of modal minor. But the players were all adept enough to extend and imply changes with various dimensions of tension and release.

With how much material there is here, I'm tempted to cull out and present only a few 10-minute clips of the highest peaks of synergy. (… and I may still do that) But I suspect that most of the audience for these recordings will be the players that were there and the people that they send to this page, so for now I'm just posting the whole crazy soup in order to give everyone the best chance of finding the morsels that they remember most fondly.

WEGO: July 27th Rehearsal

2011-07-29T23:17:00.000-07:00

Clip 1 (7 megs)
Clip 2 (2 megs)
Clip 3 (8 megs)
Clip 4 (27 megs)
Clip 5 (21 megs)

Here are the recordings from WEGO's July 27th 4-piece rehearsal for our upcoming all-acoustic performance at Sustainable NE Seattle's annual summer event on August 6th. In attendance was a quartet of Woody Frank (guitar and voice), Ian McKagan (guitar and voice), Jesse Silvertrees (keys, djembe, and voice), and Me Woods (bassbox and voice).

The vibe throughout was … well, let's just call it pleasantly disorganized. ;)) But the high-points were quite high indeed!

I don't think I fully appreciated the first third or so of this session, since a decent portion of my focus was on assessing the performance of the bass-box in its new steel-string (round-wound) configuration -- as well as the overall sound for the upcoming show. And things really *do* pick up noticeably as we go (I've even cut out a few signaling train-wrecks and such from early in the evening). But listening back, the first movements are great too in their own tentative way.

Here's a quick guide to what went down:

clip 1: Rehab, by Amy Winehouse (first time played)
clip 2: Rainbow Connection (just a shred of this is left here after removing various doldrums and signaling-trainwrecks)
clip 3: Droppin' the Deuce (don't ask me why I didn't cut this one out … it should be obvious! … actually, in all seriousness, this is probably the movement that loosened us up for what followed)
Between clips 3 and 4 I tuned up to standard 4-string bass tuning in an attempt to increase the volume. (I took out the bridge-bracing at the end of the evening, revealing an even louder bass-rich tone, but none of that is recorded. I don't think…)
Clip 4: Summertime, Sexy Back (probably my ballsiest, most-soulful delivery of this one yet), Eggplant (a tune by Woody … first time played and chock-full of swanky jazz vocal-harmonies!)
Clip 5: Ocean Waves, and something I'll just call "Free Dingy" for now (something that Jesse wrote by compiling the sleep-talking of his girlfriend).

While we probably won't go as far as to "drop a deuce", some of the sound and harmony from the later movements here have me thinking that next week's set should be a lot of fun. (Send me your suggestions for 'Lyrical Standards' suited to a day of sustainability workshops!)

WEGO: July 14th Enlighten Show!

2011-07-19T23:18:00.000-07:00

Woody's Set (32 megs)
WEGO Set (82 megs)

Here are the recordings from WEGO's July show (and Woody's opening set) at the Enlighten Cafe! The full six-piece lineup was in effect for this one, including Woody Frank (acoustic steel-string, tamborine, and voice), Jenny Freeling (djembe), Dennis Jolin (uke, percussion, voice), Ian McKagen (electric guitar and voice), Jesse Silvertrees (djembe, dumbek, voice, etc…), and Me Woods (electric bass, leg percussion, and voice).

Woody played another fantastic and diverse set to kick things off, including a couple of favorites, a couple of surprising covers and at least a couple of other tunes that I'd never heard before. I think he has an acoustic album coming out soon! If it has half of the breadth, power, and ease of his live work, this should be one to pick up. (Unfortunately, I mistakenly thought I had already started the recording before his set, but it turned out it was just in standby mode until I double-checked near the beginning of his second tune … so there's a bit missing here.)

After that we launched a solid 70-minutes-or-so of WEGO. I slept on my homeward bus while listening to this set get started the other night, and my first impressions were that it was an unusually relaxed and dreamy show. Tentative beats built shifting vistas as Ian's rhythmic and spiraling guitar melodies wound their way into the morphing voices of my half-conscious mind.

It was my second show with the electric 5-string that I had borrowed from work, and for some reason a bunch of us decided to stand up to play. This combo seemed extra conducive to a certain danceable funk, but also seemed to revive my difficulties with playing bass and singing (not to mention limiting my ability to rock the foot-percussion as consistently). Part of it might be that the bass was actually loud enough that it seemed important that I maintain a consistent loop to my lines … which maybe encourages me to fit the words in around the bass, as opposed to the other way around.

Listening back, I'm enjoying the percussion variety throughout the sonic field and the grooves and changes are rich as ever. But I'm also noticing that there just wasn't much vocal cohesion on this one … perhaps it was the standing…? For whatever reason, we very rarely built up any kind of harmonization or even our usual cascading 'rounds'. So, not a bad show by any stretch, but perhaps a little light on one of the major elements that makes us unique.

But man was it good to play with this group again! Five weeks is too long. I'm glad to see some increased frequency on the horizon.

Solstice-Proximal Guitar-and-Voice Improv

2011-06-21T23:00:00.000-07:00

Giraffe (4 megs)
Battery Plan (4 megs)
Sweeping Up (3 megs)

Here's some late-night guitar-and-voice improv from this past Sunday night. I was only out in the shed for about 15 minutes, so the musical events here happened in pretty quick succession. But I've broken them up along the loose boundaries between themes. (…because I like to force people to download multiple files for no real reason) Should I go into the origins of the lyrics? … I think it might be more fun if I don't at this point.

But will that stop me…? mmmmaybe

for now…

The top photo up there is the last bit of sunlight bleeding over the horizon from our west-facing backyard at 10:10-ish PM. At the left is our 5-year-old cob wall, and at the right is the newly renovated version of what I used to call the "rat shack". Although the extree-gnarly vibe of yore was a lot of fun to play music in, the newer and less-porous vibe is better in just about every other way. And it still sounds pretty okay in there!

more clues:

later in the summer, I'll probably try some recording in the workshop space that's walled off behind the wall holding up those ladders over there ... it still has more of the original un-painted, hyper-distressed wood vibe (though now encased in some less permeable siding) ... so far, I've just been setting up on the gravel in front of the wheelbarrow, facing into the other leg of the storage-"L" on the left back there.

WEGO: June Enlighten Show! (and Andrew's solo opener)

2011-06-15T23:20:00.000-07:00

Andrew's Set (33 megs)
WEGO Set (82 megs)

Here are the recordings of my opening solo-guitar-and-voice set and the full WEGO set from our June show at the Enlighten Cafe!

Both Jesse and Jenny were out illin' for this one, so it was a jaunty quartet of Woody Frank (guitar, tambourine, and voice), Dennis Jolin (guitar, uke, timbales, assorted percussion, and voice), Ian McKagen (guitar and voice), and Me Woods (electric bass, foot-percussion, and voice) -- plus the peripheral addition of Jennifer Ng on assorted percussion (but more on that later). Without our usual dual-djembe groove-attack, this one was a little lighter on the tribal momentum. And generally, if this is your first time here in a while or if you've followed my link to this page to try to determine if we might be a good fit for your venue, then please jump down to any of the two previous WEGO posts for a better representation of the current flavor. But for those familiar with the 6+ piece group, I think there are still plenty of enjoyable moments here!

But hopping over to the flip-side for a moment, the opener was probably my best solo set yet! Part of it is me just getting fed up with songs that have just been limping along in this format and finally kicking them out of the rotation, but it also feels like I'm sitting in a much less self-conscious place with "solo guitar-and-voice". In fact, I'm actually breathing and enjoying it now! So perhaps there will even be some new material for next time…? (The clip here is the complete unedited set, except for removing some speculation as to exactly who "Texas" was written about...)

But back to the WEGO set! This was my first WEGO show with the electric bass, and while I would really miss certain aspects of the bass-box, I really do think that the characteristics of the electric are better suited to providing a fat and versatile foundation for our sound. Wow, there really is a bass-hole where the recorder was! … but even so, in this one you can hear the sweet, farty support of the electric most of the time. (With how round Ian's electric tone was, there are places where we get a little tangled up when he's playing low on the neck, but I think you can still hear what I'm talking about.) And after a bit of testing at home, it seems that the intermittent signal-dropouts were just a faulty cord, so it should be rock-solid for the next one.

Typically awesome stuff from Woody and Ian here, but special thanks to Dennis for stepping up and bringing his own palette to the percussion (and even singing from time to time!)!

But yes, Five's friend and percussionist Jennifer Ng happened to be visiting from Singapore for this one, and if I had read my emails a bit more carefully it seems we could've had her up on stage with a complete percussion rig! Doh!! But even as it was, we managed to lure her into bringing a few miscellaneous pieces to her seat and adding her tastefully-crafted percollating high-end wash from the middle of the house. It was a great first connection, and I'm hoping we'll have another visit from her very soon!

One other random tidbit: I had built a strange frankensteined acoustic pedal-powered percussion thingy (photo above), with a splash-shaker sound on one of the pedals and my largest (and fairly broken) woodblock-frog mounted to the other side for more of a "thock". I didn't play it more than 3 or 4 times over the course of the evening (26:00-ish, for instance) but it seemed to provide a nice accent and push some interesting syncopation into the bass whenever I did.

Alright GEEEEEEEEZ enough of my thoughts! What are your impressions?

WEGO: Two Books Enter, One Book Leaves!

2011-06-08T13:47:00.000-07:00

Set 1 (42 megs)
Set 2 (62 megs)

Here are the recordings from WEGO's June 2nd performance at the Richard Hugo House for their annual event, "Two Books Enter, One Book Leaves". What a cool space this was to play in! A modest but fully-equipped stage in front of an open sun-bathed room of tables was sized perfectly for the 6 of us to squeeze in a gentle arc and do our thing while the event took place in front of us.

Given the early weekday start time of 5:30 and other assorted adventures and obstacles, the music built rather gradually from just Dennis and me to the gradual arrivals of Jenny, Ian, Woody, and finally Jesse. I may include the steady climb as a bonus clip here soon, but for now the first-set clip picks up with the arrival of Woody and the commencement of full-blown WEGO-style shenanigans. Since the intent was mostly to serve as background entertainment, we planned for a low-volume mostly-acoustic format. A few times during crescendos, I'm sure Woody would've appreciated the dynamic flexibility of having his guitar plugged into the PA, but the open-air vocals actually work pretty well here! I'm a little nervous that we'd tend to turn up past shouting-range at some gigs, but the rootsy -- and occasionally choral -- feel of harmonies sung straight-to-the-room make me want to try this at the Enlighten Cafe some time.

Wow, I'm really liking what we did for this one! The sound is energetic but responsive throughout. There's a tone of whole-hearted celebration that nevertheless apparently left space for small groups of people who had never heard us before to comfortably settle themselves at tables near the stage and peripherally enjoy the vibes. Would people dance at this volume? I'm not sure … but it seemed to work perfectly for this particular event.

At the time, I felt like the first set had been much stronger than the second, but while Set 1 may be a bit more coherent and seems to have the tightest lyrical-standard-interpretations of the evening, the second set has an undeniable bacchanalian charm, even in its roughest moments (the mid-set instrument swap ;)).

Thanks to Dennis (missing in this next one) for the photos!

And just in case you happen to see this right after I post it (hopefully Weds night), don't forget to come to our monthly Cafe Enlighten gig tomorrow, Thursday, June 9th, 2011! I'll be doing the opening set at 8pm, followed by as much WEGO as we can fit in by 10:00.

Andrew Woods: May Guitar-and-Voice Happenings

2011-06-06T22:36:00.000-07:00

May 27th Guitar and Voice Set (34 megs)
May Guitar Storage (7 megs)

Here are a pair of guitar-and-voice recordings from late May.

The first track here is most of my opening set for Lark vs. Owl (a fantastic duo featuring WEGO's Dennis Jolin and his partner in decibel-crimes, Matt) on Friday, May 27th at the Enlighten Cafe. Both I and 'Lark vs. Owl' had clusters of shows around the same time as this one, and so this poor little Enlighten show was probably a little neglected in terms of promotion. But the small group that did make it comprised an intimate and attentive audience! My set ran about 40 minutes, but I've trimmed out some of the banter and completely removed 'Anyday Traffic' (which I've finally decided just doesn't work in its current arrangement) … in the hope of providing a slightly more compact listening experience here. Highlights for me include 'Ocean Waves', 'Under the Tent', and the 911 pocket-dial from my new phone at the top of the set.

The second clip is an edited chunk of one of the late-night guitar-and-voice garage sessions I've been trying to fit in a couple times a week. With how frequently I've been doing these, you'd think this would be an especially choice morsel, but since I've been doing exactly zero notating of these recordings, the selection here was chosen more or less at random and then just edited down a bit to improve momentum. Nonetheless, it's a little window into my otherwise windowless (though now considerably more rat-free) garage at a time when I happened to be there.

If you'd like to hear more of this type of thing in person, my recent cluster of shows continues for one more week still as I'll be playing the opening set for the monthly WEGO slot at the Enlighten Cafe this coming Thursday, June 9th. Show up at 8pm to hear a short set of guitar-and-voice, and stay until 10pm to hear the sounds of the ever-evolving WEGO!

WEGO: May 12th Enlighten Show!

2011-05-18T16:00:00.000-07:00

Ian's Set (51 megs)
WEGO set (68 megs)

Here are the recordings from WEGO's May show at the Enlighten Cafe! Ian McKagen played a sweet, extended-and-completely-unamplified guitar-and-voice set to kick things off, followed by about an hour of the Woodland Experimental Groove Orchestra. Orchestra-members for the evening included Woody Frank (guitar and voice), Jenny Freeling (djembe), Dennis Jolin (various and sundry), Ian McKagen (guitar and voice), Jesse Silvertrees (djembe and voice), and Me Woods (bass-box and voice).

Some great collective harmony and momentum here, and also plenty of typically-surprising spontaneous departures. Highlights for me included the debut of 2 brand new lyrical standards ('Poker Face' and 'Workin for the Weekend'), a solid round of "Boom Chaca-Laca", and another strong final gag -- rewinding the clock from 10:01 back to 10pm. Ian led one of our most ecstatic versions of the Beyonce tune to date. And Dennis brought out a tiny battery-powered amp that hung off the bottom of his guitar and uke. With combinations of that and some of his more portable percussion, he then "took it on the road", extending the groove to various parts of the house with his own roving "surround speaker".

Sadly, I'm noticing that the bass-box is having a hard time keeping up. (Was it that buried in the house? It didn't *seem* that buried at the time, but maybe it's because I was sitting directly on it ... or the recorder was in some sort of low end frequency-cancellation hole…?) I know that when we're quiet enough to hear the hand-drums well, I can get plenty of low-end (100-hz) push, but even with the new EQ, it just doesn't have enough 600-hz growl to bring the funk. :( I'm gonna try a couple of things, but I'm considering a switch to electric … or maybe I'll try out the key-bass again. That could be cool. We'll see. Regardless, just having the vocals up to a decent level seems to keep it entertaining!

WEGO: April 14th Enlighten Show!

2011-04-16T16:12:00.000-07:00

Opening Set by Jesse and Jenny (25 megs)
WEGO Set (91 megs)

Here are the recordings from our April 14th show at the Enlighten Cafe! Jesse and Jenny did a short opening set of lush dynamic arrangements, full of both passion and restraint, and crowned by some truly moving rising swells of rhythm and harmony. After that, WEGO played a single 80-minute-ish set, broken only briefly at the mid-point to overwrite a few of the items on the boards.

Dennis was out with explosive barfing for this one, so the lineup was: Woody Frank (acoustic 6-string and voice), Jenny Freeling (djembe and voice), Ian McKagen (electric guitar and voice), Jesse Silvertrees (keys, djembe, and voice) and Me Woods (bassbox and voice).

I'm still finding myself a bit overwhelmed with a wealth of bus-projects, so I'll restrict my core commentary to that for now. However! I would like to take a tiny bit of space here to double my pleas to for you to share your impressions below in the comments. Even though I *know* people are downloading these, the main text has gotten a little lonely here recently (sniff), so if you were there at the time or get a chance to check out the recordings, consider adding a quick footnote and letting us know what part you found most memorable (or simply finishing Ian's pre-show limerick).

Fever Break

2011-04-05T22:04:00.000-07:00

Fever Break (3 megs)

April 1st marked day number 14 or so with my bottomless-yellow-snot-and-low-grade-fever buzz. However, April 1st was also the release date of my debut guitar-and-voice release, and I was feeling pretty jazzed in spite of my condition. I channeled a little bit of my release-day energy into about 20 minutes of guitar-and-voice improv in our sun-room, recorded direct through the board. Wow, do I love the sound of that stereo (humbucker and condenser) acoustic pickup!

Above is an edited mix of not even the stupidest part of what happened there. As with the album track about my hat, this was just the very first thing out of my mouth … it took several more minutes to warm up into the extra stupid stuff.

WEGO: 1st Monthly Enlighten Show!

2011-03-14T23:06:00.000-07:00

Woody's Set (37 megs)
WEGO Set 1 (60 megs)
WEGO Set 2 (23 megs)

Here are the recordings from the first in our ongoing run of shows (2nd Thursday of every month!) at the Enlighten Cafe! Woody played a fantastic opening set to kick things off a little before 8pm, and then WEGO played what was essentially a single hour and a quarter set, with a brief on-stage break to add a few new chord-changes to the boards. I'm going to try to hold off and leave some space for people to call out the highlights in the comments below, but I personally reeeeeally enjoyed this night. :)) It felt like the recent adjustments we've made are really opening things up beautifully. And the additional percussion (see lineup notes below) magically agitates the itch to dance … at least in my head when I listen back … no actual upright dancers this time, but it feels like we'll be supporting them well next time they step up.

Orchestra for the evening was Woody Frank (guitar and voice), Jenny Freeling (djembe), Dennis Jolin (percussion and uke), Ian McKagen (guitar and voice), Jesse Silvertrees (keys, djembe, and voice) and Me Woods (bass-box and voice).

So yeah, whether you were there at the time or are downloading from afar, I invite you to give us a glimpse of your view in the comments below!

WEGO: March 1st Rehearsal

2011-03-07T22:11:00.000-08:00

Set 1 (58 megs)
Set 2 Condensed (20 megs)

I know I say this a lot, but from my perspective, this was another big breakthrough rehearsal! We made couple of specific focus changes here, with the aim of increasing groove and the idiosyncracy of our interpretations of the Lyrical Standards. I'm going to try an experiment and not bore you with the details for a change, but suffice it to say that it seemed like a success to me. With the new foci, you'll see it takes us perhaps a bit longer than usual to warm up into full vocal interplay, but the grooves are indeed deeper and more open and it's a bit of an understatement to say that the vocal stylings were idiocyncratic!

The orchestra for the evening was Woody Frank (guitar and voice), Jenny Freeling (back on djembe!), Ian McKagen (guitar and voice), Jesse Silvertrees (keys, some djemb, and voice), and Me Woods (bassbox and voice). We spent quite a while setting up in a more realistic stage-configuration and discussing the focus changes we wanted to make, but still managed to fit in a short set and an even shorter set. The second set started as more of a "let's do one more little experiment" sorta thing and maintained that vibe throughout, so I edited some of the noodling and banter out here in order to bring you the bizarrely inspired remnants.

For me, in addition to the increased sparseness and funkitude, the high points of the evening both came from the voice of Ian McKagen, who closed Set 1 with a deeply disturbing mellow-death-metal version of 'Rainbow Connection' and jumped up early in Set 2 with a ween-esque country rendition of "Crazy Train". Oh man, also I'm just remembering, Woody set up a soooper soulful version of Electric Avenue mid way through the first set. … so sweet.

Call out your own high(or low)lights here in the comments, and please join us for the very first in an ongoing series of monthly shows -- 2nd Thursdays!! -- at the Enlighten Cafe in Ballard, this Thursday, March 10th!

WEGO: February Birthday Glow

2011-02-25T22:55:00.000-08:00

BS Box (1 meg)
Sound Check (4 megs)
Set 1 (71 megs)
Set 2 (55 megs)
Set 3 (16 megs)

Here are more than enough recordings from the strange and powerful "February birthdays" house-party we played on the 19th. The whole thing went down at the same house as the Halloween party. The most notable setting differences this time were the new acoustic format and the party's strict glowstick-and-candle-only lighting scheme. By the second set, our eyes had grown so comfortable in the dark that the headlamps that we were wearing to light up the signal boards felt like searing spotlights.

Speaking of birthdays, has it been a year now since we started this project? If not, it's definitely getting close. And it still feels like it's evolving quite quickly. Yes!

So much went down at this party that I'll let the recordings speak for themselves. It's pretty easy to hear the ebb and flow of energy. Most of both the highs *and* the lows come in sets 2 and 3 (really just a brief water-break between them). …from oddball inspirations like "Holy Shit, This is It!", "Jesse's Sweet Sweet Groove" (my personal high-point of the night) and my weirdly entertaining duet with Woody on Justin Timberlake's "Sexy Back" to the occasional vocal breakdown that may have overstayed its welcome. (There's sooooo much I'm not mentioning though! By all means, call yours out in the comments below.)

I played this show with a new EQ pedal for the bass-box that gives me a significantly increased amount of tonal/volume control, but there are still a couple of things that I want to try to tweak with the overall group sound. Hopefully at our next rehearsal. It was a rowdy enough party (with huuuuuuuuge electronic music playing during our breaks) that it's a little hard to guage our sonic effectiveness for the event, but I did get plenty of sincere compliments in addition to the undeniable compliment of frequent dancing listeners. I feel like we might've supported them a little better, but I'm grateful for their commitment nonetheless!

Again, I was the only one with a real vocal mic, so you'll hear our recently customary group shout-singing throughout. It actually works surprisingly well! But I'm beginning to think we've outgrown it and could really improve our range with a full set of mics. (The rest of the singers are just too versatile to reduce to the top 1/4 of their dynamic range!)

This is mostly "as it happened", though I *have* edited some of the crowd banter out here and there to protect the guilty. Whether you were there or not, let us know what you think!

WEGO: February 11th at the Gypsy Cafe

2011-02-17T15:42:00.000-08:00

Andrew's Opening Set (32 megs)
Set 1 (45 megs)
Set 2 Truncated (12 megs)
Brief Video Clip From Andrew's Set (21 megs)

Here are the recordings from WEGO's February 11th return to the Gypsy Cafe. The Gypsy is that wonderful bohemian lounge at the bottom of Stone Way in the heart of what I'm gonna call "Freelingford". You know the one! Actually, I'm assuming you were there because geez-oh-man-oh-howdy did we have a large and energetic crowd that night!

It was my turn to do the opening set for the evening. Since I'd just finished recording my acoustic album, you'd think I would've been well-prepared, but I had decided to add a trio of new covers to the set "just to keep things fresh". I'm still in a slightly weird place with performing this way. The audience connection and the guitar-and-voice part feel consistently strong these days. However -- especially with a big crowd like this -- the solo sections still tend to feel under-supported with my finger-picking approach. Perhaps I didn't have the changes for the new ones down enough either…? Just now I'm thinking maybe I should turn up a bit and play more lightly throughout, so that the single-note stuff can keep up with the strumming without me having to snap every string so hard. Another possibility (almost the opposite in a way) is that my strings are too light and loose and I need to get some fatter strings so I can lay into it more without saturating the single-note stuff so quickly … though this would likely make any tap-styling seem even quieter by comparison … hmmm). Regardless, just doing it more is sure to help and in spite of my second-guessing here this show did continue the upward trend in my interest in the format.

After that, it was two rowdy sets of WEGO. We had planned to set up our own PA and monitors for this one, but for various reasons it just didn't happen and the sound on stage ended up varying from okay to muddy. This no-doubt increased the challenge in building tight grooves and hitting crisp transitions, but I'm happy to report that the mix is totally listenable on the recording. And the playful energy and some inspired lyrical renditions come through quite clearly in places.

Random notes: Ian was sporting an extra clean and present tone for this one, playing through one of the beautiful house acoustic 6-strings. Dennis brought out a drum and shaker, adding some nice depth to the groove, but sadly Jesse abandoned setup of his keyboard as it started getting late and so we didn't get to benefit from the inspired harmonic additions that we've become spoiled by at rehearsals. But he *did* sing more than usual, and that of course was a good thing. Take set-2's "Let's Dance", for example. This show featured some first appearances of what are sure to become regular lyrical standards: Country Roads, Ain't No Mountain High Enough, American Band, When I Think About You, Electric Avenue, and probably at least one more that I've forgotten.

And yeah, wow, what a great crowd! Standing Room Only for the first half of the night, and people actually took advantage of the opportunity to dance! Dancing makes me happy.

I had forgotten to delete the recordings from the previous get-together and so the portable recorder ran out of flash-ram at about 15 minutes into the second set, but I think things went pretty well for that set too. If you remember anything particularly awesome (or disturbing!), by all means call it out here in the comments. Oh, and speaking of, check out these great photos taken by my "friend" David Levin. ;)) If anybody got any photos of WEGO in action, please send them my way ... They can't possibly make me laugh as hard as these, but I'll probably add them to the post anyway.

(Addendum: Thanks to Kyle for stepping up with these extra photos!)

WEGO: February 1st "Rehearsal"

2011-02-08T20:03:00.000-08:00

Set 1 (22 megs)
Set 2 (37 megs)

The original intention with the Woodland Experimental Groove Orchestra was that we wouldn't need to rehearse after the first couple of months, but ironically -- as the membership has become more steady (much steadier than I ever imagined) -- the vision and tools of the project have become more and more intricate. And I couldn't be happier! As the core group has invested themselves so fully in the concept, the possibilities have grown at least proportional to the investment and it seems like the horizon is wider than ever. The occasional rehearsal allows us to evolve both our methods of communication and our collective understanding where we want to go with them. Sometimes, as you can uncover in these recordings if you're listening carefully, we're playing with our own esoteric improv exercises that may eventually translate into specific signals or may just broaden and inform the overall range of our collective groove.

Dennis was missing for this one, so it was just Woody (guitar and voice), Ian (guitar and voice), Jesse (piano, djembe and voice) and me (bassbox, ass-hat-glockenspiel and voice). I love Jesse on djembe, but this one reminded me that we really need to bring in some more percussion to free him up to play more piano … it's a big positive addition!

All in all, a great night. A few new lyrical standards for this one and lots more on the way! Even the classics were approached extree-strange-style. High moments abound…

As always, please enrich the dialogue here with your comments below!

WEGO: Enlighten Cafe #1

2011-01-17T22:20:00.000-08:00

Ian's Set (41 megs)
WEGO Set 1 (52 megs)
WEGO Set 2 (29 megs)

Here are the recordings from the Woodland Experimental Groove Orchestra's first ever appearance at the Enlighten Cafe in Ballard. Though we hadn't played together since well before the holidays (perhaps over a month earlier), the musical interaction was confident, energetic, and playful throughout. And shit!: the Enlighten Cafe is such a great place. Great location, great sounding room, beautiful and comfortable decor, and great people working there and wandering in to eat, drink, and listen. If you missed it, you definitely missed something, but don't despair, because it seems as though we're going to be playing there again!

Ian McKagen opened the evening with a half-hour set of guitar and voice -- the first I'd ever heard from him. We ran into some fairly severe technical difficulties with his sound-hole acoustic pickup, resulting in some sporadic and occasionally humorous radical shifts in the sound. But Ian was cool and flexible throughout, modifying his arrangements on the fly to make light of the situation and keep things flowing. Eventually, he ditched his vocal mic entirely and finished out the second half of the set in nearly full-acoustic mode, filling the room with a sweet set of soulful originals. In fact, hearing his clear voice open-air for the second half of the set really drew my attention to what a great-sounding space we were playing in.

After that, we squeezed in a medium-length and a short set of WEGO (probably a great overall mix for a Thursday night). Orchestra for the evening was Woody Frank (guitar and voice), Dennis Jolin (ukelele and percussion), Ian McKagen (guitar and voice), Jesse Silvertrees (djembe and voice) and Me Woods (bassbox, voice, and occasional trumpet). Whether it was fool-hardiness or inspiration, we decided to shuffle the lyrical standards and assign them randomly rather than having everyone lead the ones that they'd been most commonly singing. And, at least from my perspective, it was a great success … something I'd like to establish as tradition. Since we were each working from a pile of sheets that we weren't used to, we even hit a bunch of new ones that we'd previously printed out but never seemed to make it into the rotation in previous shows, as we each would tend to stick to the ones we felt most comfortable with. So you'll hear many (though not all!) of our classics here for sure, but also a few first performances -- including Woody's first take on "Sexy Back" by Justin Timberlake and Jesse's completely unplanned introduction of "The Rainbow Connection".

AWD Guitar-and-Voice Improv

2010-12-29T22:58:00.000-08:00

Grunge-Wear Revival (1.3 megs)
Numb Fingers (1.9 megs)

Here are a couple of quick edits of some solo guitar-and-voice improv. The first clip takes place in the bathroom, as I warm up for the very first session of an as-yet-unannounced recording project with some free-association around my recent near-full-time habit of wearing a knit cap to mute the damp Seattle winter chill. The second clip is from this afternoon in my "basement" (glorified crawlspace) during my final capture session of the project. Here, clumsy noodling gives way to an extended unison guitar/voice lament on the circumstances that have numbed my fingers.

So yeah, I'm working on a possible thing. If the editing of the intended (composed) material for the recording yields anything interesting, you'll be hearing more soon!

(photo also from today, from inside of a temporary sleeping-bag-hut capture space)

WEGO: Justice Rocks!

2010-12-13T22:23:00.000-08:00

Mono MP3 (uber-crap sound fidelity) (16 megs)
Short Video Clip (14 megs)

Here's some material from our short set kicking off a night of music to raise awareness and funds for a group called "Justice Works". This particular event ("Justice Rocks") was focused on reforming Washington State's 3-strikes sentencing law, a great cause in my book!

The orchestra for the evening was an acoustic quartet of Woody Frank (guitar and voice), Ian McKagen (guitar and voice), Jesse Silvertrees (djembe and voice), and Me Woods (bassbox, trumpet, and voice). At our 6:00 sound-check -- even before Ian had arrived -- it was obvious that the sound was going to be rich and responsive on stage. We did have a few technical difficulties getting Ian's guitar amplified later on, but I think for the rest of us the mix was unusually warm and balanced, and the easy visual and sonic communication immediately inspired cascading waves of relaxed but energetic improvised groove.

I had forgotten to transfer my portable recorder back into my gear bag after my recent trip to Hawaii, so the thin, weirdly compressed, and often distorted mono documentation posted above was captured through the built-in mic in my laptop. It's not the cleanest or highest-fidelity of our mp3s by a long shot, but I think the performance warrants a listen anyway. Tina also managed to capture a brief video clip before Lucy got creatively involved in the filming, so I've posted that as well.

For me, this was a very satisfying kickoff to our upcoming acoustic phase! (As always, please add your own thoughts and editorializationifications in the comments below.)

WEGO Acoustic Session #2

2010-12-07T09:22:00.000-08:00

Clip 1 (24 megs)
Clip 2 (25 megs)

Here are the recordings from our second acoustic get-together (our first after deciding to try shifting to an acoustic format for a while). Dennis was unavailable for this one, so it was just Ian (guitar), Jesse (djembe), Woody (guitar), and me (bass-box and trumpet). As expected, the vocal interaction was fantastic in the new space between the shorter-sustaining acoustic events. And to my ear, there was at least as much dance in the sound.

(There was a third and even longer set with plenty of really interesting movements and probably more experimental playing, but since this was Woody and Ian's second back-to-back rehearsal of the day, and I was fighting a pretty bad chest-cold (which will be obvious if you try to listen for my voice and realize that the only one left unaccounted for is the wheezing falsetto that sounds like a cross between Tom Waits and a female soul singer who's spent the past week passed-out in the gutter), we also ran out of steam in places, and again I'm too busy/lazy to mine out the good bits, so I've just the final set out for now.)

So, enjoy! Minus the missing players -- Dennis, Jenny, TQ, and whoever we else we manage to rope in…? (Drop us a line if you know somebody who would be a good fit!) -- this is the basic sound we'll probably be working with for a while. I'm looking forward to exploring and expanding from here. And as always, whether you were there at the time or have downloaded these mp3s onto your phone and are listening on the subway in the other Washington, don't hesitate to add your own comments here below!

WEGO: Shipwreck #2 (Nov 20th, 2010)

2010-12-05T22:26:00.000-08:00

Woody's Set (42 megs)
WEGO Set 1 (51 megs)
WEGO Set 2 (56 megs)

Here are the recordings from WEGO's November 20th show at the Shipwreck Tavern in West Seattle. The evening started off with a super strong opening set of guitar and voice by Woody. I don't think I had heard him play solo-acoustic in at least 2 years, and it felt like he had shockingly come into his own in the meantime! This tradition of opening sets by a different WEGO member each time is turning out to be a damn-good idea. I'm already looking forward to a Ian's set next time we get to play a full night.

After that it was two full sets of the Woodland Experimental Groove Orchestra. This was the show that convinced us that we needed to try switching to a more acoustic format for a while. We *almost* followed our new amp-aiming rule (see previous post) and it *almost* worked. (As testament to its potential effectiveness, notice how the one amp that wasn't tipped up monitor-style is much louder than the surrounding rumble.) However, by the end of this show, it felt like we might have a bigger problem than just balancing the volumes. After some thought, it seems that there's just an inherent expectation-problem when you've got 3 or 4 instruments all running through 12-inch cabinets. Generally, that sound works pretty well for really loud volumes. A full drum-kit and a large bass-amp can keep up with that and make it sound appropriate, but with hand drums and just another 12" cabinet for the bass, it ends up feeling like you've got two completely incompatible bands playing on the same stage because they were double-booked and are trying to get along. Because the sound has a "rock" timbre, but is under-supported, the guitars tend to try to play more to fill things in, which only makes the sound more unbalanced. It's a vicious cycle. On the other hand, acoustic instruments and hand-drums marry quite well, with no reduction in the ability to dance.

So, I'll definitely miss the sounds of my new synth rig (perhaps it'll return eventually, even in the acoustic format), but last night's all-acoustic rehearsal was perhaps the best WEGO yet, and really has me convinced that acoustic is the way to go. Plus, it'll give me a chance to focus on the possibilities of the newly-improved acoustic bass-box and even dabble in some sporadic trumpet action.

But back to the Shipwreck show! In addition to the paradigm problems touched on above, we also had some pure physical musician-placement problems (and possibly some beer-problems ;) that exacerbated the effect of some sloppy signaling. If you listen carefully, you'll definitely hear us trying to verbally work out the intended meaning of a signal several times throughout the night. But these kinds of train-wrecks are all part of the potential of the group and from what I can tell from the audience's perspective are far outweighed by the fun of watching us try to program the music on the fly. There were a couple of previously-unknown guys in particular who showed up near the end of the night and for whatever reason immediately understood and enjoyed what we were doing. It was a nice synchronicity when one of them shouted out "Tom Sawyer" -- one of our regular Lyrical Standards until quite recently. So Tom Sawyer it was!

(text from sometime last week during the winter storm in Seattle ... image from Kona, Hawaii this morning ... nut-stick-and-leaf boat sculpture by Ketil Jonsson ... sand castle by Tina and Lucy and Ketil (and here's how Ketil wanted the colors to look))

WEGO: Sock

2010-11-13T21:40:00.000-08:00

MP3 (77 megs)

Here's the single set from what I consider a real breakthrough WEGO rehearsal on at least one dimension. The orchestra for the evening was Woody Frank (guitar and voice), Ian McKagen (guitar and voice), Jesse Silvertrees (djembe, piano, and voice) and Me Woods (key-bass, keys, and voice).

It's not so much that this features the best versions of several of the regular lyrical standards or any particularly zany energetic peaks (though it has plenty of great examples of each), but this was the rehearsal where I feel like we may have finally grokked a particular mix problem that would occasionally spring up with frustrating results. And I think we've hit upon a simple fix that should be able to consistently prevent it!

Since I went on about it so much last week -- and since I know you all come here first and foremost for in-depth mix-analysis ;)) -- I'll go into a bit more detail. I'll call this problem the "Unintentional Volume War". That is, it takes place in a group of competent listeners who aren't idealistically committed to ear-splitting volumes for their own sake (and is above and beyond the general tendency for people to want the music louder as their ears warm up). In this case, it's obvious that nobody is *trying* to bury the other players, and yet each player's volume keeps rising until it reaches the point that the old-folks in the room (me) stop turning up and start begging for everybody to turn down.

The solution might sound obvious, but I seem to keep forgetting it in spite of the fact that I know I've fixed this same problem in previous bands with similar solution, so it seems like it's worth laying out fully here. Most portable guitar-cabinets (and my keyboard-speaker) are low to the ground. Each player tends to set up so that they're standing directly in front of their own instrument speaker so they can adjust amp-settings, etc… These types of speakers throw a pretty narrow cone of sound. It's not like you won't hear it from off-angle, but it's about 4 times as loud if you're directly in front of the speaker. So, hopefully by now you can picture the problem: Since most players' heads are several feet above the ground, each player's sound is louder to everybody else in the room than it is to them, unless they're born with the exceedingly rare extra pair of ears in their calf-muscles. It's quite common for a player's sound to seem obnoxiously loud to everyone else in the group but still feel like they can't hear themselves well enough. So they turn up even more! The solution is to make sure that each player's amp is louder to that player than it is to everybody else in the room -- to treat the amps more like stage-monitors. In a small space, this usually means tipping the amps up at a 45-degree angle so that they're aimed closer to the head. I've blathered on long enough about this, and I'm sure you can all work out the implications, but suffice it to say that this simple change makes a huge difference.

Anyway, as I ramp up on other bus-projects again, I've got less time for cutting these recordings down, so you're getting another behind-the-scenes view here. Perhaps partially as a result of the new sonic and cognitive spaciousness, we were able to pull off some pretty adventurous uses (and hybrid usages) of the signaling language. A number of times, you'll hear us discussing the implications of what we're trying on the fly. And sadly, the best of the "sock"-themed freestyling happened before I started recording, so apologies for what is left here! ;))

Happy HalloWEGO!

2010-11-03T13:41:00.000-07:00

Set 1 (79 megs)
Set 2 (68 megs)

Here are the recordings of the Woodland Experimental Groove Orchestra at my fine friend Rusty's Halloween party. Rusty always throws a great party -- mingling groups of friends from diverse parts of his historical and current life -- and this was no exception! Rusty and his roommates Kim, Kyle, and John boldly opened their space at 8pm, and the costumed crowd of (I'm guessing) about a hundred people came and went until well into the morning of Halloween. Meanwhile, WEGO set up in the upstairs living room and played two roughly-hour-plus sets between 9pm and midnight. The Orchestra for the evening consisted of Woody Frank (guitar and voice), Jenny Freeling (occasional djembe during the second set I think), Dennis Jolin (uke, mandolin, and timbales), Ian McKagen (guitar and voice), Jesse Silvertrees (djembe and voice), and Me Woods (keys, misc, and voice).

This was a huge loose sprawling show with some high points and plenty of rough patches. I'm tempted to try to condense these recordings down to the most appealing sections, but I'm pretty busy on my commutes at the moment, and I'm afraid that the sonic quality of the mix (balance, clipping, etc…) just doesn't warrant the effort.

There were a couple of key problems that -- at least in my mind -- made it tough for this show to ever get off the ground musically (if this is your first visit here, or your first listen to WEGO, I'd recommend skipping down to one of the previous show-entries). First, the mix was way out of balance where I was. I can't speak for what anybody else heard that night, but where I was it sounded about like it does on the recording, but ear-splittingly loud. (Actually, the recording is also improved a bit with some EQ and compression, but you get the idea.) I tried a slightly different approach to the keyboard-amplification for this show, running it direct through the board to the stereo vocal-spearkers and using my bass amp as an extra low-frequency amplifier for the whole PA. However, even with a PA speaker aimed directly at me, I couldn't hear the treble (right hand) half of my keyboard unless almost everyone else had stopped playing. Furthermore, since I was the only one with the vocal mic, we chose an uncomfortable split between a range that would keep up with the guitar and timbales and one where the open-air vocalists could be heard a bit. The result was a treble-heavy din, leveled just under mandatory ear-plug volume, requiring any vocals besides my own to be shouted at the top of one's lungs (some impressive use of this style in places here, but of course, you only get so much range with this approach). Jesse didn't show up until about a half hour after we started and I forgot to put on my leg-shakers until only a few minutes before that, so of course it was difficult to resist over-playing to fill in the rhythm. For whatever reason (maybe to draw attention away from the mix…?) we also sang a bit more than usual and so we had to start repeating Lyrical Standards. Though really, is there a limit to the number of ways that you can sing the theme from Cheers? I think not. Still, we'll probably still want to get a few more in the hopper for longer shows like this.

In spite of all of that and within the confines of what was possible, the playing is really solid from everyone. There are some cool sections in the middle of the second set where we really surrender to the limitations and it breaks down into a full-blown percussion-jam. And near the end of the night, there's a weirdly fun section where a guy wearing a really long fake-beard (I assume it was fake! … or perhaps he's of muppet descent) got ahold of one of the mics and started gently and musically exhorting the crowd to take off their pants and "put some honey on". Another nice thing: the police didn't show up until right *after* we'd finished playing.

So, overall: not really up to the potential for warm dynamic multilayered groove that the group usually manifests, but perhaps a bit like a best-case drunken party jam. And at several points during the night, a thin line of costumed freaks materialized in the narrow space between us and the couch, grinning and dancing hypnotically to the lurching grooves … mission accomplished!! :))

Special thanks to Rusty, Kim, Kyle, and John for puttin' this thing on! (Feel free to share your own memories here below in the comments.)

WEGO: Folklife Demo

2010-10-21T21:46:00.000-07:00

Clip 1 (Crazy Train --> Billy Jean) 18megs
Clip 2 (Safety Dance --> Beyonce) 18megs
Clip 3 (Djiln in Seven) 0.5 megs
Clip 4 (Blue Sugar) 13 megs
Clip 5 (2 of 8 to 2 of 4) 4 megs

Here's the majority of an October 19th acoustic session with Woody Frank (guitar and voice), Dennis Jolin (mandolin, ukelele, etc…), Ian McKagen (guitar and voice), Jesse Silvertrees (piano, djembe, and voice) and Me Woods (bassbox and voice). (Everybody played some percussion at one point or another too.)

I tuned the bassbox up to EADG (from its usual C#F#BE), which definitely seemed to improve its responsiveness and dynamic range while cutting out some of the clickety string-flopping. While this was all captured open-air direct to stereo, we spent a bit of time trying to place the mics for a good mix and the results are quite nice. Couple that with the increased delicacy of the acoustic format and some extra strong vocal-interaction, and I think this might be one of my favorite WEGO recordings yet!

Use the track titles as a quick guide to the Lyrical Standards covered. The highlight of the evening has to be clip 2's sea-shanty version of Beyonce! (If anything else stands out for you, call it out below in the comments.)

WEGO: Return to the Gypsy Cafe!

2010-10-12T21:45:00.000-07:00

Jesse's Opening Set (41 megs)
WEGO Set 1 (56 megs)
WEGO Set 2 (55 megs)

Here are both sets from last Saturday's Woodland Experimental Groove Orchestra show at the Gypsy Cafe, featuring the first public additions of Woody Frank and Ian McKagen (both on guitar and vocals), and the second-set addition of Jenny Freeling on djembe. (Also in the Orchestra for the evening were Dennis Jolin (guitar and keys), Jesse Silvertrees (djembe, keys, and voice), and Me Woods (keyboard-bass, miscellaneous, and voice).

Jesse's stellar homoerotic baths-of-Star-Trek themed invite eventually went out to something like 400 people and set a wild-but-sensual mood for the sizeable crowd that responded. The show opened at around 9:30 with a fantastic 35-minute solo set of piano and voice by Jesse himself (first link above). WEGO went on a little after 10pm, and managed to stuff in two 45-minute sets before midnight.

It may not have been our tightest or "groovinest" show yet, but 4-part cycling vocals and a densely interlocked guitar-heavy sound drove us to new levels of energy and abandon. Chaotic, sprawling versions of everything from Def Leppard to Beyonce collapsed into and returned from psychedelic free-space as the revelers shouted and filled the Gypsy Cafe with bubbles and the crackle of bubble-wrap. I even saw a couple of people dancing! At a coffee house!! Mission accomplished. :))

Oh yeah, one other thing: In addition to his guitar, Dennis set up a keyboard that he'd never brought out before. He had carefully selected some weights to lock down various keys to create adjustable droning chords. At the time, I was in a really noisy spot in the mix, so I didn't notice it consciously, but I'm looking forward to a second listen to see what he ended up doing with the rig!

And finally, whether you were there at the time or are just listening to the downloaded sets at home or on the road, I'd like to invite you to call out your own highlights and/or add any other thoughts in the comments below.

(Bubbles in the image above from a photo I found on Flickr by Glenn Loos-Austin ... and adapted under the terms of a Creative Commons license 2.0 )

WEGO at the Shipwreck

2010-09-13T22:27:00.000-07:00

Set 1 (39 megs)
Set 2 (68 megs)

Here are the recordings from the (2nd ever!) Woodland Experimental Groove Orchestra show at the Shipwreck Tavern in West Seattle. The Quartorchestra for the evening consisted of TQ Berg (guitar and voice), Dennis Jolin (guitar and voice), Jesse Silvertrees (djembe and voice), and Me Woods (keyboard-bass, keys (first performance with the new soft-synth rig) occasional percussion and voice).

It was my turn to do the opening set for this one, so I did my usual Guitar-and-Voice-with-shakers thing (a short 6-song set of originals, including an arrangement of my latest long-distance-collaboration with 5-track, "Under the Tent"). After that, it was two sets of WEGO.

The first set was fairly traditional WEGO -- well realized as I recall … with inspired mid-tempo grooves and a suite of our core lyrical standards.

The second set was just a touch more open, with a few less changes (longer sections of modal jamming), more odd-time overlapping measures, and even a 20-ish-minute section where I was working from a short sheet of clever lyrical inspirations provided by a lady we'd never seen before (thanks for those!).

All in all, it was a great high-energy night (thanks to everyone who made the trip to see us!), which really re-affirmed the power of the format for me and seemed to kick up the momentum looking ahead to October's Gypsy show.

(Finally, whether you were in the group that night, listening from the house, or just grabbing the recordings over the net, please add your thoughts/highlights/etc… in the comments below!)

Keyboard Circle

2010-09-13T22:20:00.000-07:00

Clip 1 (22 megs)

Here is the first half of our Sept 1st WEGO rehearsal with Jesse and me and two brand new recruits: Jenny Freeling (on Djembe) and Aaron Sarnat (Piano and percussion) ... both fantastic contributors who I hope will join us again! Nothing but hand-drums and keyboards this time. Damn hippies and their keyboards!! I've edited around a bit of the obvious learning and reviewing here, but even with half the group consisting of brand-new players, the evening was chock-full of sensitive counterpoint and inspired wackiness, and so the remaining material is quite good.

Nevertheless, if you're tight on time, the clear highlight so far is the last 4 minutes of Clip 1 (starting at the 14-minute mark) : "Piggy Toe".

(more soon!)

WEGO First Ever Public Performance! (Gypsy Cafe)

2010-07-13T21:54:00.000-07:00

Set 1 (53 megs)
Set 2 (71 megs)

Thanks to everyone who came out to the first 'Woodland Experimental Groove Orchestra' show!! In spite of the fantastic weather, a few of our core members being unavailable for the date, and the unfortunate coincidence with the 'Tool' show at Key arena, we managed to mostly fill the Gypsy Cafe with generous listeners. (This was my first ever show at the Gypsy. Man, what a sweet space! Feels great, sounds great. I really hope they'll have us back again.)

All in all, it was a super-solid, and occasionally awesome first-show for the project, featuring a well-seasoned quintet of Michael Chapman (horns, percussion, and vocals), Dennis Jolin (ukelele and vocals), Abraham Neuwelt (electric and acoustic percussion and vocals), Jesse Silvertrees (djembe, keyboards, and vocals), and Me Woods (keyboard-bass, treble, and vocals). The 'Lyrical Standards' were hitting pretty hard throughout, including a first-ever version of a rather-well-known song by Queen. In talking with friends at set-break and closing, I was psyched that long-time listeners seemed to genuinely appreciate both the sound and the concept, and felt that the group already showed great potential beyond some of my previous all-improv experiments. I fully agree! And the fact that most everybody in the group is actually offering constructive criticism and helping plot our next-steps makes it feel like we might be onto something good here.

Check out the recordings and let me know what you think!

(Photo stolen from Dennis' FB page -- which explains why he's not in it … another friend was taking photos as well, so I'll probably post a couple of those when I can get them.)

******

Update (August 29th) ... finally found the other photos from David and Naoko in my inbox! (...still no sign of Dennis, but some closer looks at Abraham and Michael here)

WEGO Rehearsal #7

2010-07-09T07:57:00.000-07:00

June 30th Set 1 (64 megs)
June 30th Set 2 (33 megs)

Here are the recordings from our last get-together (on June 30th) before our first show (at the Gypsy Cafe on July 10th). The lineup for this recording is Chapman, Jolin, Kristmann, Silvertrees, and Woods.

There are a couple of slow patches near the top here, so I've done a tiny bit of pruning right at the beginning of the first set -- removing a tad of the opening build-up and the first half of Crazy Train (which, with the exception of the remaining chorus, is better represented in our earlier recordings). I did, however, decide to leave in the brief call from Tina right after we started up. The background banter, which I hardly noticed at the time, cracked me up on first playback. Beyond that, and some solid versions of several of our established lyrical standards, this rehearsal also features our first ever "Light My Fire" (lifted from the radio on my way over), and our first inclusion of the 7/4 motif in Tom Sawyer.

WEGO Rehearsal #6

2010-07-02T21:54:00.000-07:00

WEGO Rehearsal 6, Set 1 (27 megs)
WEGO Rehearsal 6, Set 2 (39 megs)

Okay, I know I said I wasn't going to put any more clips of the new group up until after our first show, but these are just too good! (And there are some even better ones from last week's rehearsal, that I'll probably have bundled up by the middle of next week.) Besides, nobody but the band is really following this blog right now… right?

These are from our June 6th get-together, our first with Daniel (need to look up his last name) on guitar and voice -- mostly sitting out as he absorbs the general concept (you'll hear quite a bit more of him in the next post). Players for the evening were Dennis, Ian, Michael, Abraham, Daniel, Jesse, and me. After our usual rehash of the basics for newcomers and a special presentation of the Gestural Signaling Language (…near the end of the previous get-together, we had decided to convert most of our pre-codified verbal signals to hand-signals and I had written up a rough pass at them in the interim), we started the night still missing Michael (who showed up mid first-set) and Ian (who arrived just as we were wrapping up the first set).

The first set seemed to start a bit slow, and I made quite a few edits for its presentation here, but it's still chock-full of interesting movements, including a surprisingly emotional version of 'Crazy Train' right near the top and a pleasantly loose and lively 'Pour Some Sugar' later on. At the break, we set up Ian's rig and launched into a solid (and here unedited) second set that ran the gamut before closing with our first ever version of 'Tom Sawyer'.

Sadly, this jam marked Ian's departure for 2 months to fish in Alaska for the Summer, so he won't be there for the show on the 10th. But I'm greatly looking forward to roping him (and hopefully his fishing partner -- and fantastic guitarist/vocalist -- Woody) back into the lineup when August returns him to Seattle.

Man am I looking forward to the Gypsy Cafe show! Here's a flyer:

Split Key Soup with Elephant

2010-06-12T22:31:00.000-07:00

SplitKeySoupWithElephant (16 megs)

Before I tell you about the recording for this post, I wanted to say that the new group-project is sounding great and growing well! (If you haven't been back to the blog here in a while, I've been silently updating the previous post with new recordings of each rehearsal, so you can just scroll down there to hear a bit of where it's been headed.) In fact, just this past week, we booked our first show for Saturday, July 10th at the Gypsy Cafe on Stone Way between Wallingford and Fremont. The group is going to be called the "Woodland Experimental Groove Orchestra". And for now, I'll just say that it's an all-improv dance band with -- as you might expect -- a couple of key twists. In order not to reveal too much more of what we're up to, I'll probably keep the next couple of rehearsal recordings off of the blog here, but if for some tragic reason you can't make it to the show on the 10th, check back here in mid July for the recordings from our first show!

In the groove orchestra, I've dropped my traditional role as a player of stringed-instruments and am instead holding down the bass (and a bit of harmonic counterpoint) with an old Yamaha keyboard run through a Boss wah/leslie modeling pedal, the overdriven channel of my Carvin tube guitar head, and out through the ported Aguilar 12"-with-horn bass cabinet that I used with Neon Brown. By splitting the keyboard (bass for the left hand and some form of "keys" for the right) and using a couple of simple effects (the wah and the tube-fuzz) to warm up the diverse (often cheesy) built-in voices, I think I'm getting a surprisingly versatile and pleasantly classic sound.

Which brings us to this week's recording. I haven't really touched a keyboard more than once or twice a year since finally leaving the cover-band business (1993?), so it seemed like maybe I should practice a bit. Keys (as opposed to all but my most electric stringed instruments) have the added bonus of being quiet enough to play in the next room while Lucy is asleep, so I've been spending 15-30 minutes noodling around each evening at around 10pm, and have even started recording these sessions for the last couple of weeks.

The clip above is from the first one that I recorded -- some time last week. Here, as with all of my evening noodling, I'm not running through the amp-configuration that I use with the group. …just through a simple solid-state fuzz-box that's part of the wah-modeler and then straight into the board (which I monitor with headphones). The clip drifts through some mellow improvised changes which occasionally showcase one of the polymeters I've been playing with. Listening back, I'm happy with how easy it is to generate relaxed momentum and spontaneous counterpoint with no looping or delays. It seems I'm playing more like my two-hand 'plank' technique than how I used to play the piano those many years ago, and I'm liking the effect. The vocals are another story… :)) While I sort of like the secretive-sounding hushed tones of the 10pm hour, it doesn't feel like my best lyrical dexterity. So, In spite of the evidence of the last 3rd of this recording, I want to assure you all that I haven't turned to late night solo-drinking. I was just a bit sleepy.

New Project Teaser and Rehearsal Log

2010-04-16T21:53:00.000-07:00

Here are some selections from the exploratory "rehearsals" for a new project. I won't reveal too many details yet. For now, I'll just say it attempts to build on the tools, energy, and personnel of the later Chai House years. These selections aren't necessarily representative of what we'll be doing (the numbers -- of players -- are often wrong and I've tried to obscure the process a bit in the edits here, since we're still more learning the tools than employing them in their intended context), but Iiked the sound quality and the energy of these recordings enough that I wanted to share some of them. They're mostly intended as a log for the group itself, and perhaps as a hint to the curious NBP-fan of things to come. Until we start playing shows, I won't add new posts for this material, but will just continue to add tracks to the list below.

R1_TwoOutOfFour (1.5 megs): From the first get-together. We spent most of our time in a productive discussion of the concept and tools this night, but still managed to play for close to an hour. I'll probably add more clips from here eventually ... just wanted to post this one as a good example of what it is (wink wink)

R2_LookinForAGirl (14 megs): Lots of tools built during this get-together, but my bass tone was so tiny and distant that most of the recording is a bit harsh ... that is until this clip from the end of the night where I drastically re-adjusted my sound and we did one last series of movements. (may still post some other condensed clips eventually)

R3 (43 megs): lost the best vocal chorus and some really great jamming when I mistakenly thought I was recording our second movement, but still plenty of great ideas in this condensed version of what was left. Personally, I think the key-bass tone is finally working on this one ... and the tools of the project feel pretty solid now! Looking forward to at least one more to try it all out with a larger group. Then, hopefully shows!! (and I'll stop being so secretive about what we're up to :))

R4Awarmup (6 megs)
R4BamoreKeytastrophe (23 megs)
R4Csalsaritaville (53 megs)

Here's the material from April's get-together, featuring the first-time addition of Abraham Neuwelt on percussion. It just keeps getting better! The grooves are consistently strong (and interesting!!) here, and get even stronger in the third clip, where I begin to focus more on bass. At the time, I thought the second clip -- in spite of some solid playing by the others -- was mostly crap (It seemed the solidity and interest of my bass grooves were suffering as I tried to join TQ with my right hand in the upper melodo-harmonic area of the mix). But in listening back with my ear on the full mix, even the second clip is full of good moments -- even after my keyboard gets stuck in 'dual'-mode and loses all "bass". It's nice to have Jesse alternating back and forth between the djembe and the piano here! Maybe he could bring his keyboard out to shows? It feels like we just need to reach that critical 6+ person mass and we can start playing out! (I know I said I was going to edit these down to hide the process and remove the rough-spots, but I'm really low on time at the moment, so these are unedited.)

R5_1 (25 megs)
R5_2 (56 megs)
Finally, 'Critical Mass' achieved!! :)) We had a couple of cancellations and *still* managed to make it to 6. Great density, momentum, and groove. Further innovations to be integrated into the tools, but mostly, this was the meeting that proved to me that we're ready to play some shows.

Just realized I hadn't been listing who was playing with me on these until the R4 session (though the metadata on the files will have the last names) ... think I'll continue to avoid outing everyone here for now, but hopefully it'll become clear enough soon when we find a live venue for this stuff.

(iPod-touch doodles courtesy of my long bus-commute to work)

Neon Brown Presents: "The End of Neon Brown Presents"

2010-04-10T14:45:00.000-07:00

Aphid Tea (13 megs)
Under the Tent (3 megs)

(WARNING: This post was either going to be super short and sweet or embarrassingly epic ... I think it'll quickly become obvious where it went.)

As it was actually happening, it was hard to get much perspective on the closing of the venue that was my every-other-weekly gig from Summer Solstice of 2002 to January of 2010, Mr. Spot's Chai House. Over time, I've learned to run less from these sorts of things, but I still tend to look at these types of events with my eye mostly on the doors that they open up (and here, as always, I see many new opportunities) ... only later getting much sense of the losses involved.

Lodged at a jaunty angle into the aorta of Ballard, the Chai House was not only the original home of the now-wildly-popular Morning Glory Chai, but became the root venue for 'neon brown'. Adrian and I (neon brown) played at the Chai House's new-location-opening-party on that June evening of 2002 ... and before that, under other band-names at their previous location just down the road. In addition to hosting and/or launching countless other unique musical projects, the Chai House was employment and/or social-center for a large, passionate, witty, diverse, and open-hearted clan of baristas, artists, students, and other assorted freaks and luminaries.

As an audience, the crowd there regularly applied perhaps the broadest ears I've seen in my playing so far, embracing our wildest lunatic moments and then asking for more. For instance, on the 4th Thursday of May, 2003 ("heenD for dummies"), we invited all of the guest musicians who had joined us over the first year and sang hEEnd lyrics over huge walls of improvised-madness. It was actually somewhat frightening at times, but the recordings from that evening -- and throughout our run there -- proved surprisingly listenable -- if you were into that kind of thing... ;)) The results were a continual reminder that risk/vulnerability are vital to getting to a meaningful place with improv. This recurring realization eventually resulted in the generation of structured-improv tools that were specifically designed to maximize not safety but risk. These tools, as we continue to refine them at other venues in the future, will owe their specific shapes in large part to the formative processes of the Chai House ... just as our lineups will owe their constituents to musical connections forged there.

Starting very near the beginning with Victor Trey, a tradition developed: We were never quite organized enough to get the Chai House our list of guest-musicians or a theme in time for the printing of the monthly schedule, so someone there would just invent a title for each show. As Adrian and I eventually phased out our opening set of written material, these short morsels were often so ripe with layered potential, that for many years most of my singing on any given evening focused solely on unpacking various interpretations and free-associations from the show's title. For instance, Neon Brown Presents:

"Kung Fu Biter"
"Chili Cheesecake"
"Can't Brain Today"
"Felonious Monkey"
"The Metal Years"
"Burning the Man"
"Flan-tastic"
"Mo, the Barking Arachnid"
"Gnawing on Kneecaps for 200, Chuck"
"Czech is in the Male"
"Vampy the Dental Wizard"
"Elmo and Grover Attack"
"A Wii for Fido"
"Neon Brown Beats the Rainbows out of Kittens in a Burlap Sack"
"A Pandemic of Extra-Firm Tofu"
"Killer Gerbil Wheels"
"Pretty Boys in Outer Space"
"An Evening with Butter"
"Unilateral Carp Tarp"

...just to name a few.

So I guess perspective on the closing of the Chai House is coming in small waves. Certainly more now as I've begun to notice and really mourn the hole in my creative flow and my social life. Especially in recent years, as Adrian left for Portland and I took over sole responsibility for our slot there (eventually introducing and attempting to evolve two distinct improv formats each month -- the Woodland Acoustic Orchestra and the Juggler's Challenge Revival Series), planning, booking, and anylizing/documenting our work there was a substantial and often emotional piece of my creative life. And it was a piece of such unique flavor that despite working in a fairly creative profession and living in an amazingly creative family, the scene there stimulated specific artistic aspects of me that probably don't get enough stimulation.

In looking on this experience with gratitude, I first need to thank Adrian. In addition to growing up (truly as friends) together, Adrian and I played music somewhat religiously together from 1993-2005. At the time, even though it's occasionally discussed, it's hard to fully appreciate the musical telepathy that develops over all of those years. This telepathy, now established, seems to defy decay, as every rare opportunity that we find to play together is marked throughout by surprising discoveries that bubble up from an inevitable chemistry. Nonetheless, it is indeed a sad situation that I don't get to play with him more often these days, and it's not clear how the demise of the Chai House will help this situation.

One of the audio-clips way back up there at the top of this post is "Aphid Tea", a track from our 2004 CD, "Nice Feathers". Aphid Tea (and several other tracks on that CD) was recorded live at the Chai House in December of 2003. We spent a couple of hours before the show setting up all of our recording gear and then played some of the tunes we wanted on the CD with full abandon -- repeating sections when they became too loose rather than holding back for the recording. We had a great crowd that night. You can hear them joining in on the chanted "Chai" refrain at the end. This particular track was recorded in one take and then condensed (still pretty hefty ... I should go back and look at the un-cut length one of these days). As with the other tracks recorded that night, the sound is pristine, with hardly a clue that we were playing to a room full of people and an espresso machine. ...at least until the "Chai's". The written structure of this tune consisted of a bass-line and a short vocal-chorus, so hopefully lots of room to explore that telepathy that I was talking about.

The second clip is a partial mix of a tune I'm calling "Under the Tent". Not only is this a long-distance collaboration with L.A.'s 5-Track, who sat in with Adrian and I for the first time during that very same Solstice-of-2002 show, but I realized the other day that I may have been subconsciously writing the lyrics about the "Neon Brown Presents" experience. More info on this piece will probably be added HERE, when I put together a final mix.

But back to the present: I want to sincerely thank all of the musicians who sat in with us over the years -- both those we knew from before and the far greater number who I met and learned to love in the heat of the music. There's no way I could possibly list them all here, but you know who you are! Thank you for your particular voice, and the bravery and humility required to share it in the context of 'Neon Brown Presents'.

Sincere love and thanks also to all the super-baristas (Erin, Chloe, Sarah, (Tom from the old days!), and all the rest!) -- genuinely warm and vibrant souls one and all. You guys really set the tone ... Even on occasions where I would arrive in Ballard disheartened from some frustration at my day-job or zombified by the Bellevue-to-Ballard commute, your infectious presence would always dislodge the cruft and set my mind right for play. And it made the ongoing series immeasurably more gratifying that you all seemed to actually enjoy listening to and interacting with our music!

Sincere thanks to both the original (Jessica) and the new owners (Chris) of Mr. Spot's for embracing the clan that lived there. I think many of us were a little worried that something would be lost when the new owners came in, but I think we were all very pleasantly surprised with the respect that was shown for the unique organic character of the place.

Thanks to all of the listeners (and -- in later years -- explicit participants). The Mr. Spot's crowd was certainly one of the most interactive around. But even when you weren't directly messing with us, it really isn't bullshit when I say that your energy often drives the music as much as that of the guys with the guitars around their necks! If the music is to be open, it has to be open to all of that, and the listeners there often brought the magic.

And while on the topic of listeners, a special thanks is certainly due to Jim Varnum, probably our most loyal fan, unofficial benefactor of the project, genuinely great guy, and -- I gradually discovered -- builder of quite a few strange and beautiful instruments (the latest of which I need to bug him for details on, as it was just getting underway when we played our last show in January).

I don't know what else to say. (...not that this isn't already long and incomprehensible enough for any newcomers to this blog! ;) Maybe this will be the last of it. Or maybe I'll be still be adding comments with newly recalled memories to this posting mid-century. Or maybe the Chai House will miraculously spring up again in a new even-more amazing location and I'll look back on this attempt to create some sense of closure and chuckle... who knows.

Atomic Lead Release Party 2010

2010-03-22T23:04:00.000-07:00

Set 1 (60 megs) -- the wandering and highly inconsistent set
Set 2 (50 megs) -- the more coherent and recommended starter set

I just haven't been pulled to experiment with my various loopers as much recently, but when the chance to play the yearly-ish Atomic Lead comic-release party came up again, I couldn't resist dusting them off. Well over 3/4 of the measly practice time I had set aside evaporated just trying to decide how I was going to configure my sound. Most of my recent playing has been at least semi-acoustic and has oscillated between the extremes of just-me-and-my-acoustic and freejamming-with-5-other-musicians, which probably explains why I put together the sonic-palette that I did. After all of that open music, the usual dense hypnotic polymetric wall of overlapping micro-grooves just seemed a little too ... well ... dense, hypnotic and wall-like. And maybe a little too safe/obscured. So most of this year's show was just simple textural or minimalist groove-loops on one of the line-6s, spilling whatever crossed my mind out on top through the other channel. A little more space ... a little less urgency and agitation perhaps. More room for surprises. But as always, not too attention grabbing, so as to work as background for the event (perhaps this isn't a situation in which one expects to have a break-through performance, but I just try to play to the room and see what happens...).

It had been so long since I'd worked much with loops at all that it wasn't until the 2nd set that much ease and flow developed. Factoring in the tasty morsels from the first set and the overall length and exploratory vibe, I'd sortof rather be presenting a super-condensed highlights-only recording, but no time no time! So this is everything after the very earliest lopped-off noodlings from the top of the night. (I'm hoping you'll forgive me in the retrospective light of the better things coming around the corner soon. :)) Actually, the whole thing might work better if you listen to the 2nd set first and then decide if you want to dive into the somewhat-less-consistent-but-idea-rich 1st set.

This was a direct-from-the-board recording, so most of the leg-percussion and occasional noodling with the table full of percussion toys is lost here (possibly for the best), but there are some occasional neat effects where the crowd noise bleeds through the main vocal mic with one or another bizarre vocal-fx patch making it sound like the processed field recording of a dinner party. Also lost with the lack of an open-air mic are the justifications for the periodic extended disappearance of any new material over the loops, as people frequently approached me to discuss the gear and/or process mid-set. (Thanks to Billy Harper for the photo ... and thanks to Edward and the other artists for another inspired issue of Atomic Lead!)

WAO Presents: "Butane-Bob and the Blue Flames"!

2010-01-30T18:01:00.000-08:00

Set 1 (101 megs)

Not only was Tuesday, January 26th (2010) the last 'Woodland Acoustic Orchestra' show (a tradition that I was surprised to look back and discover started all the way back in February of 2007 with the original 4-piece lineup of Philpin, Smith, Strauss, and Woods and "Neon Brown Beats the Rainbows out of Kittens"), but it was also the last 'Neon Brown Presents:' show, (a tradition that's been running twice a month since summer solstice of 2002 ... but more on that in my NBP wrap-up post.)

Befitting just such a momentous finale, we had a huuuuge orchestra, including long-time collaborators TQ Berg (guitar and voice), William Precht (accordion, bass-box-drum, and others), Dave Foley (stick-tambourine) Dennis Jolin (ukelele and voice), Ian McKagen (guitar and voice), Jesse Silvertrees (djembe and voice), Daniel Nelon (voice), Bill Wolford (banjo and iPod), and Me Woods (bass-box, trumpet, percussion, voice), *plus* first-timers Elliot Levin (guitar) and "this guy", whose name I never did learn. Anybody? ...not to mention the spirit of John Foss on 'super-barista'!!!

After a fantastic 6-8pm DJ set by Skoi and a speedy setup, we kicked it off with a "3, 2, 1 Lunch" (what Tina and I say before hoisting Lucy up over our heads) and rolled our bittersweet way to 10pm with a steady cascade of grooves -- shifted periodically by our traditional white-board-based signaling system -- and lyrics -- improvised on the spot either from the evening's theme or some other half-conscious brain-tickle brought to the fore and decorated.

With the late start and the momentum provided by the strong collective vibe, it was really just a single set, with only a brief stall at 9:20-ish as we unplugged Elliot and Bill and added William. But I might break it up there, depending on how it feels on a second listen. (Aw screw it! I'm leaving it all there for posterity. There's a bit of entertaining banter there and the rest is a pretty nice sound-collage-intermission.)

All in all, it was a great glowing musical celebration and a fitting farewell to the series at Mr. Spot's Chai House. (Thanks to Robert and Tina for the photos!)

Juggler's Challenge Revival (Episode 25)

2010-01-15T15:46:00.000-08:00

Prelude (11 megs)
Set 1 (58 megs)
Set 2 (41 megs)

Here's a Juggler's Challenge Revival show that is noteworthy in so many ways! Just looking at a couple of "set-and-setting" factors, it was the first show on our new Tuesday slot, but then -- with the sudden news of the closure of the Chai House at the end of January -- unexpectedly also became our last JCR show! (...for quite some time, at least) I'll try to talk more about some of the significance of that in February, but for now lets return to the specifics of Episode 25:

The band for the evening was a tight quartet of TQ Berg (guitar), Dennis Jolin (guitar), Jesse Silvertrees (djembe, voice, and piano), and Me Woods (keyboard and voice). Challengers included a few Chai House regulars and several old friends who had come out to help celebrate the last JCR for a while.

Set 1 warmed up with a deep, melancholy prelude of Def Leppard style guitar-arpeggiations. TQ picked up a variant of Dennis' line so quickly here that I didn't know who had started first and was convinced it must have been a riff that TQ had been playing with at home (Dennis is playing it first on the recording at least, but who knows what happened before I started up the Edirol...?). Then at the beginning of set 2 -- where TQ *did* start off with a riff from one of his old compositions (omitted here in the recording) -- Dennis somehow telepathically hooks up and spontaneously weaves a spot-on 2nd guitar part. Especially in the second case, I was certain they must've been rehearsing these bits, but apparently not!

Finished challenge-sheets started appearing near the projector during the prelude, starting with a "musical experience in 10 words or less" and continuing through fresh new versions of just about all of the current challenge styles. Highlights appear throughout the evening, but some of my favorite 'juggles' of the night happen towards the end of Set 1, including one of my favorite Abstract Graphical Scores (built entirely of recognizable forms while nonetheless retaining strong abstract (gestural) properties), another highly exploratory and rousing version of "5 Adjectives", and a particularly ridiculous version of "The Key" to close the set.

Set 2 had some fun moments as well, jumping right in with a truncated story about Sasquatch the Labor Negotiator and continuing boozily through to the closing "Style Blender".

So that's about it for this one for me. While we're quickly coming to the end of the NBP (at Mr. Spot's Chai House) recordings, I wouldn't worry about this blog drying up any time soon. I doubt that even this sad situation is going to be able to kick this 'walking-with-spontaneous-music-and-worshipping-the-footprints' monkey off my back. But man, it's gonna be tough both to leave this fantastic ongoing gig at the Chai House behind and to try to decipher some of its significance for me. Luckily there's still one left so I can put that off for now! :) So, if you're reading this before Tuesday, January 26th, 2010, there's still time to come out and celebrate one last time with us as the 'Woodland Acoustic Orchestra'. As always, please add your own liner-notes here in the comments and I hope to see you again soon!

WAO Presents: "Save The Last Dance For Party Steve"!

2009-12-30T11:18:00.000-08:00

Set 1 (64 megs)
Set 2 (27 megs)
Timelapse of the Whole Evening (14 megs ... just video for now ... will hopefully add an audio track soon)

Here's another surprisingly unique Woodland Acoustic Orchestra show, this time with the Chai-House-provided theme of "Save the Last Dance for Party Steve". The orchestra for the evening included John Beezer (rad 80's electric 6-string), TQ Berg (guitar and voice), Dennis Jolin (ukelele and miscellaneous percussion), Jesse Silvertrees (showing up mid-way through set 1 on djembe and voice), Me Woods (bassbox, trumpet, and voice) and a fantastic piano player named Colin (on the house piano) who we hijacked after hearing some of his magical key-noodling while we were setting up.

I'm enjoying the top of the night quite a bit now on the recording, but given the fantastic group we had out, it really did take us a while to get much momentum built up! For at least the first 20 minutes, the music kept drifting to a near-halt before each signaled change. Still, the spaces between signals were beautiful, and it seemed we had built up just the right amount of heat to make a quick switch from slow-boil to steam-fireworks when Jesse arrived with the djembe (at about 28 minutes in). And from there, we were suddenly able to maintain some energy even across the occasional signaled transitions.

You may notice a mysterious guest-vocalist on the recording: a guy that we've seen a few times before who we took to calling "party Steve" by the end of the night. He was playing the part beautifully, but then suddenly disappeared right before the "last dance"! We mostly couldn't hear him singing at the time, but he's clear as a vacuum on the recording since he was usually sitting on the front couches right next to the Edirol (singing "GO! ... GO!", laying down beat-poet versions of "takin' care of business" -- see JCR episode 21 --, and even briefly commandeering Dennis' dumbek -- which we quickly confiscated, since it was still the top of the night and we were barely keeping it together *without* the addition of semi-random finger-drumming. ;)

As I mentioned above, things really took off when Jesse showed up. I think Sarah nailed the strongest parts quite well as "heavy tribal" (albeit with diverse stylistic layering and many a harmonized anthemic chorus). All in all, as the energy built through crescendo after crescendo, it was a great cathartic evening and a fitting end to both 2009 and our long run on 2nd and 4th Wednesdays. Starting in 2010, we'll be moving to Tuesdays, where I'm excited to continue to expand the tradition, but where we'll definitely miss seeing our Wednesday-night super-baristas!

So that's about it for me for this one. As always, please call out anything I may have missed here in the 'comments' section and I'll look forward to seeing you all again in '010!

Juggler's Challenge Revival (Episode 24)!

2009-12-12T21:34:00.000-08:00

Set 1 (43 megs)
Set 2 (30 megs)

Watch out!! It's Juggler's Challenge Revival Episode #24! Just when you thought we might not do another 3 piece drummer-less JCR ... Bam!! We totally did. It's a good one too. In fact musically, the first set had so many transcendent moments that I just about transcended my fecal-continence!

Jugglers for the evening were TQ Berg (guitar and voice), Donovan Raymond (bass and voice) and Me Woods (guitar and voice) ... plus William Fallen on my percussion-pile for the first couple of movements and David Testa on some of the same toys for the last couple of movements.

Challenges were slightly sparser than usual this evening, with slightly more room for free-jamming, but the input we did get was absolutely top-notch, including a whole packet (!) of eerily expertly-crafted abstract graphical scores by Chloe. I swear she made the whole set in under 10 minutes and they looked like they were penned by somebody who had just returned from a 6-month retreat studying Cornelious Cardew (though she claims no knowledge of his work or even graphical scores as a compositional form). We only "performed" 2 of them (I add quotes here because these are chock-full of strongly implied structure -- certainly on the difficult end of graphical scores, with plenty of justification for actual study before a successful "performance" could be declared!). I've included those two here (click on the photos for more detail), but I've also captured the rest of this epic packet, which I will be showing off to my fellow graphical-score geeks and possibly bringing back to future JCRs for extensive exploration. ;))

These technically-rich graphical scores shifted the whole discussion into a realm of music-nerd humor where jokes like "Fallopian mode? ... that's like Phrygian, but with a flat-1" seemed funny.

Due to miscellaneous baby-related transportation needs at home, I was traversing the 3 legged commute from home to work to the Chai House without a car on this particular night, and so had packed as much gear as I thought I could fit into my my backpack and a suitcase (the overhead projector, a couple of mics and cords, a couple of strings of bells, and my frog-blocks) to drag through the unusually icy weather from bus to bus on my merry way to audience-interactive glee. I *did* manage to score a generous ride to the Chai House after work with one of my coworkers, allowing me to add my office guitar to the minimal show-rig. Plugging straight into the Chai House PA with only the addition of a fantastic chorus-pedal that TQ brought out for me, I managed to find a simple sound that again raised a joy in the creativity that limited options often inspire. (TQ was also kind enough to bring out his v-bass for me, and I would say I was foolish for not taking the opportunity to play it -- I'd really like to someday! -- but I'm so happy with where the music went that I can't say I'd change anything!)

And, on that note, I think I'll add my usual Rachmaninoff ("dum da da dum") here by asking you all to add any related thoughts you might have to the comments below.

WAO Presents: "Grand Master Flash Drive"!

2009-12-07T22:25:00.000-08:00

Set 1 (64 megs)
Set 2 (30 megs)

Here's another extremely varied, pleasantly chaotic, and occasionally brilliant Woodland Acoustic Orchestra meeting! Principals in attendance included TQ Berg (vbass and chorus pedal), "Filthy" (fretless bass), Johnny Greene (dumbek and others), Ian McKagen (guitar and voice for the first set, and misc. percussion for the second set), Donovan Raymond (Ian's guitar for the second set), Me Woods (guitar, trumpet, percussion, and voice), and a boy who I'm going to call "Piano Magic" for the time being.

I finally played another short acoustic set here to open up the evening (debuting "Hey Bean", a song I started writing about Lucy when she was a couple of months old), so this was my first WAO appearance with some steel-string playing in months. It was a pretty good set in terms of the musical performance, but I always feel that if I don't play in that format pretty regularly, I'm so confused about where to put my eyes while I'm playing and what to say between songs that the whole vibe goes in a direction that doesn't help people to enjoy the tunes...not "uncomfortable" so much...just maybe overly introspective...? I'm gonna try to keep doing a short set every 4th Weds for a while and see if I can improve some there. Anyway, While I always enjoy the way the density of the Orchestra allows me to experiment with some of my weirder instruments, it was nice to have the full-range flexibility of the traditional -- if untraditionally tuned -- 6-string. In other Andrew-centric news, I think this was *by far* my best trumpet playing at one of these yet! I've been pulling it out a couple of times a week at home and listening back here, I'm really noticing some progress. ...definitely encouraged to keep working with it.

This show was extremely fun to play, but I knew the musical coherence was hit and miss, so I wasn't sure how the files would play back. But the way the recording filters down to just the sonic-component of the evening allows an active listener to easily weave a unifying -- if ever-hue-shifting -- thread through the whole night. One of my favorite WAO recordings yet!! (Note: the momentum *does* take several minutes to pick up at the top of the night, so if you find the first bits to be too wandering, just jump ahead a few minutes.)

The Chai House had provided a typically clever theme for the show that I regretfully failed to even look-up until listening back to these just yesterday, when I realized that we hadn't addressed it at all: "Grand Master Flash-Drive".

The kid that often travels along with Filthy's entourage joined in for the whole second set on piano and was *fantastic*! In spite of being introduced to him several times, I can't remember his name now (I blame it on the weird swiss-cheese-brain-high that often accompanies these shows...but I feel like it gets mentioned somewhere in the second set there...send it along if you catch it!), but his playing was sublte, energetic and simultaneously responsive to key and rhythm. The dude has got it!! I hope he joins us again.

There's so much detail and variety in this show here, that to even begin to log the interesting bits seems like an overwhelming task, so I'll just leave it to you to discover (and call out in the comments here!). But I'd just like to note one extra-cool effect in the recording: Ian was a few minutes late returning for the second set, so Donovan -- who usually just joins in for the electric shows -- hopped on his guitar, prompting Ian to settle in on the couch with a few percussion toys, playing ever so tastefully, but only a couple of feet from the recording mics. Since the sharp attack of his playing at that distance was far above the levels of the remaining instruments, but still below the clipping threshold of the recording, my usual post-compression/limiting pass results in some fairly crazy fluttering that I for one find extremely interesting!!

JCR Episode 23!!

2009-11-29T18:09:00.000-08:00

Set 1 (59 megs)
Set 2 (42 megs)

Here we have Juggler's Challenge Revival Episode #23! The high number of defectors this evening \ ; { ) > left us with a percussion-less electric trio of TQ Berg (guitar), Donovan Raymond (standup-bass and rap-master) and Me Woods (keys and voice). As a juggler's challenge event, this was probably not as traditionally effective as the last one with nearly the same lineup (skip down two posts to October's), but it *did* feature some fantastic and relatively-musical "out"-style playing, and at least a couple of memorable Juggler's Challenge gems. (Speaking of!... I just noticed -- after upgrading to the new blog-editor here -- that the editor is now setting these images up as links to the larger images that I upload to the site, so if you're not seeing as much detail as you might like, from here on out, you should be able to just click on the image for a larger view. Very cool! :)

The location of the mics (low and directly in front of TQ's amp) probably isn't ideal here, but the recording works anyway, on the strength of TQ's consistently inspired playing. In "andrew's gear" news, this was my first show running the keys through my guitar-FX, and I really like the results! Mostly, I enjoy the simple tones of the keyboard, but I like how the pedal-rig allows me to manipulate the sound on the fly a bit, as well as capture a loop now and then when appropriate. The one thing I should probably add to this process is a little more time setting up a pleasing EQ through the PA before I get started, as I tend to find myself just rolling off more and more of the high-end on the keys as the volume ramps-up over the evening (which seems a little more crude than optimal :).

So, since I'm a couple of weeks behind here, I'm gonna leave it there for this one. I realize this is another rather stripped-down entry, but I encourage you to call out any personal highlights in the comments (as will I, when I get a chance to listen again). The good news is I'm now finally finished with production on the iPhone game I've been working on with game-developer Kevin Kinell and artist Dylan Sisson (www.yipe5.com )! So not only will that be available soon, for anybody who's interested and has a compatible device, but my upcoming show-entries here should be more timely and substantial again for at least the next little while.

Woodland Acoustic Orchestra (October 2009)!

2009-11-09T17:47:00.000-08:00

Set 1 (50 megs)
Set 2 (46 megs)

Here's another Woodland Acoustic Orchestra show, featuring a stirring quartet of Dennis Jolin (Percussion and Voice), Ian McKagen (Guitar and Voice), Jesse Silvertrees (Djembe, Piano, and Voice) and Me Woods (Charango, Trumpet and Voice). I had a lot of fun this evening! A pleasant sense of abandon bubbled throughout, with just enough cohesion to keep us moving through distinct realms and passages.

The Chai-House-Provided theme for the evening was "Hallo-Fiend Band-Snatchers", and indeed we were missing quite a few of our regulars. Just who could these band-snatchers be? I for one am beginning to suspect the minions of my old nemesis "Idle Hands", who has also managed to gobble up all of the time that I had intended to put into writing up this post and instead confuse me into creating music and sound-effects for his first ever videogame . Typical!! I'd already spent several weeks as his captive, crafting a "theme-song" for the occasion of the release of his Vinyl Toy. This latest project is a new (iPhone based) installment in Kevin Kinell's clever and highly addictive old-school RPG, "Yipe!", with all new art by Idle Hands' principal minion, Mr. Dylan Sisson.

Perhaps, if I can escape Mr. Hands' clutches over the next few weeks, I will write up an addendum to this post highlighting some of my favorite musical passages from the evening, but until I'm free again I'll have to leave any of that sort of detailed documentation to you (here in the comments). Pray for me! And, if you get a chance to put together a care package, I really enjoy candy-corn (and my nails could use some filing...hint, hint...ahem).

Juggler's Challenge Revival (Episode 22)!

2009-10-23T10:06:00.000-07:00

Set 1 (56 megs)

Break it down! (1.3 megs)

Set 2 (45 megs)

Hey All! Here's another great Juggler's Challenge Revival show, featuring a drummer-less electric quartet of TQ Berg (Guitar), Dennis Jolin (Guitar), Donovan Raymond (Bass and Rapmaster...more on that later! :), and Me Woods (Keyboard and Vocals). By Tuesday, efforts to find a drummer for this one already weren't going well, and so I decided to see what would happen if we tried an electric group without drums. We'd done this before, but usually with an attempt to fill some of the gap with looping. This time, since I knew I'd be racing over from my soccer game at the last minute, I decided to forego the loops -- and even the vocal fx -- and just showed up with an old Yamaha keyboard and a mic. I have mixed feelings when I say it was a *huge* success for the format! ...mixed because I know so many fantastic drummers. But the vocals were effortlessly audible throughout the evening here (a first for the new format...I greatly enjoyed the opportunity to *sing* more and shout less :), and without the looping, the music organically rose and fell orchestrally in response whatever the movement desired. Even though the guitars are usually what buries the vocals, it seems that it's the drums that set the volume that push the guitars into that territory. Perhaps I can convince some of my drummer friends to come out with simplified hand-drum setups for the next few of these...? I'd really like to try this again!

TQ and Dennis were like stereo treble magic all evening long,

both playing rhythmically and texturally in a way that elevates the guitar beyond it's stereotypical role in rock music. Both of these guys really work from their tone. They seem to build reactively off of whatever sound is in the air and this really keeps things true! Donovan was typically brilliant on the bass and supplemented this with some ground-breaking work on his Realistic (TM ;) Rap-Master. A tiny radio-shack keyboard with an attached microphone that packs in a couple dozen (?) "awesome" keyboard voices and somehow allows you to sing through a weird shiftable harmonizer at insane volumes without feeding back. There is truly something weird going on with that mic-setup! It would audibly harmonize casual conversations at the other end of the room right through the PA, but wouldn't feed-back unless pushed to ridiculous levels and would nicely clamp any close vocals down to a pleasant dirty crunch. Donovan worked this and his bass (alternately and simultaneously) throughout the evening to truly spellbinding ends.

Thanks to the donated Yamaha from my mom, this was perhaps my first real appearance on keyboard since my last cover-band in the very early 90's. Oh the memories... (shiver)

The audience of Challengers for the evening was certainly small in numbers (tiny actually!), but giant in inspiration. The photos from this post include just a few of the sheets they provided. In a way, it was great that it was so slow. It felt a bit like an intimate house-party, and Chloe even had enough time to complete a few sheets -- including two of my favorites: Set 1's epic closer, "Oh Shit, It's a Cactus!" and perhaps our most abstract graphical-score to date (which -- I think -- opens Set 2).

So that's about it for me on this one, except I'll just say that switching back to recording with the external mics (as opposed to the Edirol's built-in pair) has been well worth it! The recordings have been really rich and spacious renderings of the evening's sound. Check 'em out! And let me know what you think here in the comments...

Woodland Acoustic Orchestra Presents: "System of a Clown"!

2009-10-05T20:57:00.000-07:00

Set 1 71 megs

Set 2 23 megs

Here's a fresh and ultimately very satisfying WAO performance. The Orchestra for September included TQ Berg (v-bass and voice), Dennis Jolin (percussion, electro-uke, and voice), Ian McKagen (6-string and voice), Jesse Silvertrees (djembe, other percussion, and voice) Adrian Woods (percussion at the very end of set 2) and Me Woods (charango, trumpet, percussion, and voice). The Chai House had provided the theme "System of a Clown" for the evening and it was a great springboard -- both lyrically and, eventually, energetically.

By browsing the parentheticals in the list above, you can see there was quite a bit of instrumental diversity this month! It was also fantastic to have so many players adding their voices throughout the evening. Jesse (in his first -- and hopefully *not* last! -- NBP appearance ever) not only brought a new depth and solidity to the groove with his tasteful Djembe playing, but adeptly jumped right into the mix with great signals and vocals both. TQ, in the absense of "Filthy" on bass, gradually brought in more low end and contrapuntal rhythm as the evening progressed, building up the mass and momentum of the sound in a smooth trajectory aimed squarely at 10:00.

The first set featured a few bumpy patches, interspersed with sporadic brilliance. I perhaps took a little of the creative wind out of our sails by encouraging signalers to focus on structural -- as opposed to thematic/story -- signals. Usually we get our legs under us by charging off on a collective realization of something like "Bamboo-Lord Deals Robotussen". ...which is also fun! :) I was interested in bringing out more of the hard-shifting, challenging odd-time grooves that the WAO format is capable of. (I think my revised approach would be to encourage people to simply supplement any conceptual signals with a structural one.)

Granted, the structure of this show strayed a little further than I would generally like from the core strengths of the 'Acoustic Orchestra' format (mostly around the two goals of intentional-ambiguity/overlapping-threads and playing *through* the signaled-changes). But I realize now that this is mostly due to the gradual influx of so many great new players, and I think I should be able to easily bring some of those elements back with a simple review of the tools before the next show.

So, all that being said, many of the signaled changes still pack a nice wallop here, and many of the "songs" from this particular evening are unmatched in recent WAO history. Truly spontaneous, sprawling, and vibrant...ecstatic collective tributes to the concept of the moment! My personal favorite is probably the first set's "It Aint Easy" (starting at around 29 minutes in). The whole celebratory movement builds gradually against Ian's and my traded verses, with some spot-on clown-FX from Dennis gleefully slapping us in the face like a pair of size-22 shoes. And the brief second set is nearly all gold!

What was your experience of the flower-spray?

Juggler's Challenge Revival (Episode 21)!

2009-09-18T19:49:00.000-07:00

Set 1 56 megs

Set 2 (truncated) 18 megs

Here's another typically atypical and -- for me at least -- highly entertaining Juggler's Challenge Revival show. Jugglers for the evening were TQ Berg (guitar and voice), Dennis Jolin (percussion and voice), Ian McKagen (bass for 1st set, guitar for 2nd), Michael Perry (drum-kit), and Me Woods (trumpet and voice for 1st set, bass and voice for 2nd). The JCR idea-engine whizzed smoothly along in 21st gear for the whole evening here, with the return of some veteran Challengers from the early shows providing so many colorful and odd-shaped "balls" that by the end of the second set, we'd Juggled barely over half of them. For me, the highlight was perhaps the 1st Abstract Graphical Score (starting at about the 40 minute mark in Set 1), which landed on the overhead projector with 3 perfectly open-ended linked-symbols/drawings. We'd just worked through the dangling necklace of notes and the slice-of-bread with the giant keyhole in the center, and I had just begun wondering what to put on the other side of the door when Krista (sp?) added the sparkly octopus. For me, that's what Juggler's Challenge is all about!

The first set began right as Ian (who had graciously showed up to fill-in on bass at the last minute) finished setting up his rig and then abruptly and mysteriously booked out the door, saying that he'd be back in a couple of minutes. In the absence of bass, the first few minutes featured some beautiful open space and then an "interlude" of some of the most vicious feedback we've gotten in years (the biggest peak is actually clipped out of the recording here to spare your ears :). Unfortunately, since TQ was set up near the PA I think we mistakenly focused on the wrong mics in fixing the problem (his and Ian's), when I'm pretty sure now that it was the mic that we had set up for Michael's harmonicas, but which by then had been passed over to Dennis who was much closer to the speakers. Oh you bitter whiner, blasted "hind-sight"!! In any case, within another minute or two, Ian was back and we were off and running again on our first module. From there, it was a supremely beautiful evening, marred only slightly by one guy's repeated requests for "Takin' Care of Business".

On the recording front, I think the return to the split-mic really helps spread the mix and bring the vocals forward a bit (the left mic was strategically placed quite close to one of the PA speakers). But apparently the excitement of the set-break erased any memory of the recording gear from my mind and I didn't remember to restart it again until probably over half-way through the second set, missing a stellar warm-funk warmup, a bluegrass-folk-boogiewoogie-motown-electronica version of the innuendo-fueled mad-lib song, and a story of Frodo the Hampster Farmer and Jinxmooh the Assistant Demigod.

One detail I wanted to call out: I *think* most of the other Jugglers understood at the time, but since I've been known to advocate for lower volumes in the past, I wanted to clarify that the bit that starts just before 8 minutes into what remains of the second set was pure theater. ...not an artsy way to try to get people to turn down! This was the 2nd graphical score of the evening, and I was pretending to be an elephant getting paranoid that the cops would bust him for smoking pot with his fellow pachydudes in the storm-sewers. I swear it was right there plain as day in the score! ;)

Okay, that does it for me for this one. Anything else that I might've called out? ...please add it in the comments here.

Woodland Acoustic Orchestra (August 2009)!

2009-08-29T21:19:00.000-07:00

Set 1 57 megs

Set 2 19 megs

Bonus: aWoods Solo Set Opener 18 megs

Here's an unusual and -- I think -- very successful WAO show featuring TQ Berg (6-string and voice), Filthy (fretless bass), Johnny Greene (dumbek), Bill Wolford (banjo and 1-string bendy thing), and Me Woods (guitar, voice, trumpet, and miscellaneous percussion).

As we were playing, I think many of us were oscillating back and forth between complete absorption in navigating the gentle musical chaos and thinking "wow, this sure has been chaotic for a while now!". As such, in spite of the glowing reviews from several listeners, I wasn't sure whether it was as strong as our average show, but now that I've heard the recordings I'm a complete convert. Rhythms, melodies, lyrics rise and fall amidst a loosely-organized, constantly collapsing and overturning musical babble. Each thread seems to emerge, gently pull on some neighboring tangles and then unwind back into the mass of soft colourful yarn. The maturity and active ears of each musician are on full-display as they patiently respond to each other without forcing any particular groove or motif to the forefront. The general patience with inconsistency allows layers and layers of overlapping and loosely-connected patterns to build and shift against each other. This is advanced listening to be sure, but not so easily dismissed as wankery in my opinion. In the second set, things became more conventionally stable but still great.

So, I think I'll leave it at that for this one. As always, I encourage you to add your own thoughts below in the comments section. Oh, and one more thing: Many of the "signals" written up on the white-board by the various band members were unusually conceptual and even pleasantly risky...just so you don't give me too much of the credit (or blame ;) for the somewhat questionable lyrics!

JCR Episode 20 !!

2009-08-17T20:57:00.000-07:00

Set 1 56 megs

Set 2 24 megs

The 2nd Wednesday of August was another in what feels like a steadily-building series of Juggler's Challenge Revival shows: Episode 20! Jugglers included Woody Frank (Electric Guitar), Dennis Jolin (Percussion Spread), Donovan Raymond (Bass), Paul Turner (Drums), Adrian Woods (Loops, Chimes, Vocals, Percussion, "Crust-Wave"), and Me Woods (Vocals and Trumpet).The audience-interactive portion of the show went better than ever, with the seasoned band making grand use of input-sheets that seemed to pile up on stage before we were even plugged in. A heaping of heartfelt thanks to everyone who added their words, ideas, and drawings! It was a model JCR show. (Also, for posterity, this was the debut of the "5-Adjectives" sheet.)

This was Woody's last show of the Summer before he heads back to CA for the school-year. We had thought we were going to have TQ on guitar again this week as well, so Dennis was 'all-percussion' instead of his usual strings/percussion mix. As it turned out, instead of our usual 3-or-4 treble-guitars, it was just Woody. But let me tell you, if anybody can play with enough energy and versatility to make up for 2 extra guitarists, it's Woody! And indeed he did. With his single guitar playing a key role in outlining a wide range of diverse styles and syncopations for each movement, it was an inspired and fitting end to our all-too-brief Summer run with him. We'll definitely be looking forward to seeing Woody again whenever he's back in town next!

Dennis had decided to (for the evening) trade in his strings for an impressive spread of hand-percussion that just about filled the entire abandoned drum-riser. It seemed that no one -- except possibly Dennis himself -- was hearing enough of him at the time, but on the recording his supremely tasteful grooves and pinpoint-targeted soundscape additions come through pretty clearly and really bring some tang to the sauce.

I'd been eager for my next chance to play with Paul, but had been waiting for a non-chai-house show, in light of our common Juggler's Challenge difficulty with volume-balance and Paul being one of the hardest-hitting drummers in the city. But in running into him at the previous show, it was suddenly clear that we needed to try it. Mercifully, he brought a range of lighter drum-whackers, allowing his precise, intricate, dynamic-driving magic to transform the JCR format. I now greatly look forward to rotating him into the band more regularly!

It was fantastic to have Adrian back again as well, soundscaping just below the threshold of perception with mostly just house-mic input and hacked fx-loops as only he can! (I even caught him playing percussion on the table-legs towards the end of the night. :)

I played Trumpet again! ...and it was much less embarrassing this time. I think I'll do it some more.

At this point, I think I should mention that it's hard to imagine even pulling these shows off these days without Donovan on the bass. I guess -- since the format tends to shift happily to accommodate whoever's there -- we'd manage, but Donovan brings it all: rock-solid, bone-shifting grooves (across a diverse range of feels!) that never fail to either trigger or seamlessly integrate a new thread or concept. Somehow he manages to "fill" us towards a new chord or through a turnaround at just the perfect point in the lyrical structure every time. It often feels like he's already memorized the chart for the song that we're supposedly making up on the spot, but I suspect he's just a really good listener.

Okay, that's it for me on this one. Please add your own thoughts and observations here in the comments!

Woodland Acoustic Orchestra Presents: "Super-Cali-Fraggle-Rastafarian"!

2009-07-28T21:54:00.000-07:00

Set 1 70 megs
Set 2 24 megs

WAO coalesces again here for another successful run with the whiteboard-based signaling approach! (See the post from the end of June below for more details on the format.) This month featured a plentiful orchestra of regulars, including "Filthy" (Fretless Bass) Woody Frank (6-String and Vocals), Dennis Jolin (Ukelele, Percussion, and Vocals), Ian McKagen (6-String and Vocals), and Andrew "me" Woods (Fretless Classical Guitar, Trumpet, Vocals, etc...). We also had a two-piece dumbek section of new-ish arrivals, Johnny Greene (who gave me a CD of a well-recorded, mind-blowingly technical, and thoroughly listenable 20-minute drum-solo!...but more on that later) and Seth "I-don't-know-his-last-name" (the guy seen directing the Abstract Graphical Score in the post below). For the first set we had John only (from the couch in front of the stage), but sometime later in the evening, Seth grabbed my unused dumbek from the stage and joined him on the neighboring couch. Together, the extra percussion extended the grooves out into the house and untold dimensions beyond.

In addition to the continuous stream of expertly signaled direction from within the Orchestra, we also had an unusually fruitful Chai-House-provided theme for the evening (reportedly by Erin...if so, then bravo, Erin! :): "Super Cali Fraggle Rastafarian". As with a handful of the best themes we've had in the past, the story of a ganja-toking Muppet on the road in Northern California shaped the show from first notes to beer-o'clock. (I only wish the theme had been listed on the Chai House's calendar like it usually is...after the show, I got to talking to a guy who remembered Fraggle Rock better than I did and I realized there was so much untapped potential there! ...so many details that were apparently wiped from my 13-year old pre-rastafarian mind.) But kudos to the group for the nuanced improvisation, the many fantastic -- and often theme-appropriate -- signals, and the stellar muppet-vocals.

I think this might be the first time that the fretless nylon-string has been to the Chai House in at least a couple of years. It seemed to add a nice bit of tonal contrast against the two steel-strings, and the lack of frets forces me to keep things simple, which is great with so many players. It's been much longer since I've seriously picked up the trumpet (...junior year in high-school?), and my impression as I was playing was that I was mostly making a fool out of myself. But listening back to the recordings I really liked the added texture and I don't think it should take me too long to get back to the point where I can find a way to play things that people can enjoy listening to. So perhaps I'll make this combo my WAO rig for a while and see what develops!

Neon Brown Presents: "Juggler's Challenge Revival (Episode 19)"!

2009-07-13T20:39:00.000-07:00

Set 1 54 megs

Set 2 25 megs

Timelapse of the Whole Evening 9 megs

Another 2 fine sets of Juggler's Challenge! July's Jugglers included TQ Berg (Guitar from the last bit of Set 1 on), Woody Frank (Guitar and Voice), Michael Perry (Drums), Donovan Raymond (Bass), and Me Woods (Acoustic Guitar and Voice). It's great to have Woody out during these summer months when he's not away at school. He always brings a pot full of melody, driving rhythm, and unique energy. And this evening in particular I got a number of compliments about his playing. The rest of those guys: Idiots, all! ...I mean genius! sorry, "genius" was what I meant to say. It was a good lineup all 'round.

Ian McKagen created the 'Insider's-Surprise' -- the first free-form entry of the evening, played while the bulk of the Challengers are familiarizing themselves with the format and deciding what to put on their first transparencies. He penned a perfectly whimsical riff on the Chai-House-provided theme for the evening: "Acoustick Popsickle" (sic). (If you're new to these shows, see some of the other Juggler's Challenge entries below for more context.) From this point, it seemed that no other explanation was necessary as first-time Challengers immediately grokked the concept and jumped right in with a steady stream of inspired input.

Building a consistent group for this format was clearly paying off this evening, as the Jugglers brought more subtle cohesion and spontaneous momentum out of their diverse experience with vaguely similar forms from previous shows. I had a lot of fun start to finish! The audience was generous and involved and the players were amazing. The fine-print paragraph that follows addresses my only ongoing difficulty with this format. This difficulty is addressed here in the form of a lengthy analysis of the sound-mix and the presentation of part of my grand-unified-theory-of-ideal-live-performance-EQ. Unless such things interest you, feel free to skip ahead.

Sorry to ramble on about the mix every time, but -- especially with this audience-interactive format -- I really do think that getting a good volume balance is near the top of a very short list of logistical/technical keys to getting the format to work. And I keep kicking myself because I never seem to be able to figure out how to fix the problem at the time. As usual, the vocals were slightly more audible at the beginning of the night (and perhaps generally more intelligible than what was captured on the recording), but again they became progressively buried and by the end of the night, I was again singing in a very narrow and loud dynamic range (shouting), just to get the notes -- much less the words -- to cut through. And I think my conclusion after this show is that this problem generally has everything to do with the treble instruments being out of balance. Again, I couldn't figure it out at the time. This time, TQ was *plenty* quiet. He tipped his amp up at a 45-degree angle on stage and played at an unusually low volume (most likely too low, since we were both up on the tiny stage, and I know he was being careful not to braise my ears...but it was a good experiment and generally I think the tipped-amp approach pushes things in the right direction). Woody's amp, on the other hand, was in the traditional flat-to-the-ground position, and -- in retrospect -- was probably a few notches too loud. He's a solid listener and could clearly tell something was up, because by the middle of the set, he wanted me to turn up my guitar to match. But by this point, the vocals were both too loud and buried. One could argue that I should just turn them up, but I could already see the wincing near the PA, and in retrospect I think the vocals were already perfectly situated in relation to the drums and bass. (If I'm going to complain so much after the fact, I definitely need to get better about figuring these things out on the spot.) But this brings me to my general formula for band eq: The bass should be the very loudest...especially with Donovan's all-lows tone. It provides a solid foundation to the frequency pyramid and doesn't interfere with the audibility of the treble instruments, even if they're much quieter than they generally tend to be. (In fact, if you *did* want an audience to embrace a band playing really loud, the best way to do it is to make sure that the low frequencies are the loudest. We used this approach for half a decade in 'neon brown' and had virtually no volume-complaints, even at tiny coffee-houses that generally eschewed electric music. Conversely, If the bass frequencies aren't keeping up, even a modest volume can feel harsh and overwhelming.) In terms of instruments and VU meters, the vocals and drums should be next loudest. You should be able to hear the words and the vocalist should be able to sing at lower dynamic ranges from time to time and still be at least audible. Then the treble instruments (guitars, keys, saxophones, chain-saw) should be notched in a bit below those. You'll still easily be able to hear every note they play (since the bass and drums don't generally interfere with their frequency-range and the vocals are intermittent) and their tones will provide plenty of power and texture without being on top of the mix. Anyway, that's the theory...

Okay, endless theorizing over! I hope none of the fantastic players who have been joining me feel in any way put-off by my theorizing. I certainly blame no-one but myself and my consistently poor planning and communication on this issue. It's obvious that everyone is trying to get a better mix. But since I'm hosting the show, people are probably trying to listen to my suggestions and I'm not giving good ones at the time.

Some of the highlights of the evening included the "Style-Blender" module (consistently working it's chaotic magic these days), the abstract graphical score (written(?) and directed by Seth), the 2-characters-meet module (with input from both the house and the baristas), any of the purely instrumental bits, and -- for sheer shock-value -- my guitar crashing off the side of the stage at the end of the first set.

Never fear: though I was vocals-only for the second set, the pickup batteries weren't too hard to get back into their slot on the weekend...once I could loosen the strings and hold the guitar over my head in a little better light.

Did I forget anything? Please feel free to add your own liner-notes (and/or rebuttals to my grand-unified-theory-of-performance-EQ) here in the comments section.

Woodland Acoustic Orchestra Presents: "Hot Lettuce with Sweet Mayonnaise"!

2009-06-27T10:54:00.000-07:00

Set 1 50 megs

Set 2 30 megs

Timelapse Quicktime of The Whole Evening 18 megs

click here for a larger view of the panorama

Here are both sets of June's breakthrough 'Woodland Acoustic Orchestra' performance! Expecting at least a couple of the musicians to arrive slightly after 8pm, I had prepared another short acoustic set to use the gap to test some arrangements. But by 8pm, the core group for the evening -- TQ Berg (Steel-String), Woody Frank (Steel-String), Dennis Jolin (Ukelele, Table, and Bike Wheel), Ian McKagen (Steel String), and Me Woods (Bass-Box and Percussion) -- were completely set up and ready to roll! (At this point, we didn't realize that the Chai House clock was over 20 minutes behind due to a failing battery, but it sure *felt* like we were off to an early start.)

And a strong start it was! With a solid critical mass of 5 players right from the top, we were finally able to explore the new signaling approach that I'd been planning to try as soon as we had enough musicians to pull it off. This new "breakthrough" system is actually pretty simple: A white-board is set up in front of the band -- facing the stage. Once a groove is established the first player works their way out of the jam and writes a signal (chord-change, time-change, stylistic/structural concept, etc...) on the board. While the composer-of-the-moment is getting their instrument back on and re-entering the groove, everyone is quickly reading and integrating the signal...preparing a musical response to it. After the signaler has insinuated their way back into the groove, they signal the transition. Everyone changes what they are playing in accordance with the signal.

Any time after this point, the next person in the circle puts down their instrument and writes a new signal on the board -- during which time, the rest of the group can ignore them and just concentrate on developing whatever movement has come from the previous signal. And this group of players definitely rocked it! ...deftly manipulating the abstract system to maximum effect, while keeping enough moment-to-moment focus for expressive instrumental interpretation and some interesting vocal-additions.

I really love the effect of rotating through the line-up with each player contributing creative open-ended compositional direction and the group spontaneously responding! And the written format naturally breaks up the mix (as each player in turn has to temporarily stop to write) and allows the band to communicate without "tipping their hand" to the crowd.

The audience, not knowing exactly what the syntax of the signal was, picks up only on whatever semantic value it added to the collective groove, unburdened of their own interpretations of how the group "should have interpreted it", yet simultaneously just a wee bit curious as to what words might've provoked the latest large-scale shift in the sound. From informal polling of family there that night, it seems to produce a pleasing mystery.

For the second set, frequent drop-in collaborator William Precht was available to jump on the piano and so we all tuned down the 3/8 of a step to match the average of the Chai House piano's scatter-plot tuning scheme.

It was a welcome addition, providing a new dimension of rich sustained warmth for the remainder of the evening. At about 10:12, after a third extension of "Super Barista" (still failing to get a reaction out of Erin and Rita :), I glanced up at the clock and was surprised to see that we had already gone so far over time! This, of course, was before Erin told me that the clock's battery had needed changing, and I suddenly realized that our seemingly magic ability to start on time -- and then play such an amazing second set that it appeared to catapult us through some sort of experiential worm-hole -- was actually just the result of the two of them deciding that they should probably wind it ahead to "Ballard Standard Mean" time, in case we looked up for reference.

Anyway, that's just about it for this one from me. Special thanks to Tina for the photos! And as always, I encourage you to add your own show-notes here in the comments.

Neon Brown Presents: "Juggler's Challenge Revival (Episode 18)"!

2009-06-17T21:14:00.000-07:00

Set 1 50 megs

Set 2 37 megs

"Wednesday, June 10th, 2009. This is Juggler's Challenge." This week's typically raucous interactive-music extravaganza featured veteran jugglers TQ Berg (Electric Guitar and Vocals), Dennis Jolin (Electric 6-String), Michael Perry (Da Kit), Donovan Raymond (Bassss), Me Woods (Hybrid Guitar and Shouting) and -- for the second set -- Woody Frank (Acoustic Steel-String). Continuing to build upon the recent Juggler's Challenge Revival momentum, episode 18 featured plenty of inspired Challenger (audience) input and the various sounds that this input provoked from the band.

Set 1 started off with the usual warmup jamming and show-introduction, followed by a less-usual kick-off sheet from within the band (thanks TQ!) to get us going. The "song" that resulted was one of my favorites of the night. IMO, this is another fine example of the increased synergy within the group resulting from retaining most of the same Jugglers from show to show. And this particular idea seems like something we should keep doing (helps tie that first 20-minute free-jam while waiting for Challenger input into the rest of the show)!

As the Challenger input started coming in, the music built on plenty of continuity, creative counterpoint, and ready energy. Several of the pieces spontaneously developed distinct repeated movements (verses and choruses?...sortof). A rich sonic palette combined with some new and effective leadership on the part of the other Jugglers really made this a breakthrough JCR show in my mind. Michael brought out a sheet as a screen for the overhead projector, and TQ even launched a whole movement on lead-vocals, which makes me think I should really set up some extra mics and try to lure the rest of the band to step up to the mic from time to time. Thanks to the band for continuing to jump right into the mess each month!

Speaking of energy, somewhere in the second set, I began to realize that my ears and the small vocal PA couldn't quite keep up with the swelling sonic mass. At the time I couldn't clearly determine or articulate the problem (you'll hear me repeatedly calling for general volume reduction towards the end of set 2), but in retrospect it's clear that the two electric guitars, while perfectly balanced with each other, ended up well above the remaining instruments and were most likely the searing stereophonic source of my ringing ears. (Given the often laser-like throw of a 12-inch guitar cabinet -- stealthily spitting fire well beneath the altitude of the average player's ears whilst flash-cooking the corneas of the guy who's only 7 feet further from the amp -- I suspect neither of them had any idea at the time.) Even still, with a bit more shouting than is maybe ideal, I think most of the concepts came across at some level and a good time was had by all!

That's it for me for this one for now, but as always, please jump in with your own observations, favorite morsels, costume-suggestions, etc... here in the comments section.

The Woodland Acoustic Orchestra Presents: "Unilateral Carp Tarp"!

2009-06-01T20:50:00.000-07:00

Set 1 37 megs

Intermission (Bonus) 3 megs

Set 2 (Truncated) 23 megs

This entry's recordings are from May 27th's superb WAO show! (The Woodland Acoustic Orchestra presents: "Unilateral Carp Tarp") Like many of the acoustic shows, for the first half of the week, it looked like we might have a fairly huge orchestra. But like many of the acoustic shows -- even after I had eaten my entire plate of food for the first time ever and played a short 4-song solo set to stretch things out a bit -- we ended up starting the first set with a scant trio of musicians. ...thankfully, in this case, the very capable Dennis Jolin (Ukelele and Percussion) and Aaron Stepp (Fretless Bass) joined me (Six-String, Percussion, and Voice).

I had planned for a more formal signal-driven evening (using two white boards facing the band as a way for the musicians to log simple concepts where everyone could see them before signaling the change). But with a trio's ability to turn-on-a-dime, coupled with the expected drop-back to 2/3rds power every time somebody would have to stop playing to write something on the board...well, we didn't end up using the boards.

Nevertheless, I thought this first set was pretty fantastic! Dennis' sweet mid-rangey riffs looped perfectly across my warm/sparkly acoustic-jazz and Aaron's brilliantly syncopated bubbling bass-pointalism. Momentum was unbroken as the soundscape morphed from one relaxed contrapuntal mood to the next.

For the second set, we were joined by William Precht on percussion and electric kalimba. We also had a guy named Jo(h?)n playing some extra percussion from the couch. He must've been operating under the "first, do no harm" principle, because his additions were so sparse and/or tasteful that I didn't even notice him on my first pass through the recording. (I'll have to listen more carefully and see if I can pick him out next time.) William is always a super strong contributor and this set immediately opened up into a much broader space with -- for me -- cosmic overtones. Much like the first set, each movement segued beautifully to the next. Everyone really seemed to be having a good time. Sadly, though I had thoughtfully prepared the recorder for battery-only operation following the demise of my power-adapter, I had neglected to delete the tracks from the previous show and so we ran out of memory about 10 or 15 minutes before the end of the set. Stupid, stupid show-host/documentarian! Bummer to lose any of such a great set, but I guess at least the recorder -- unlike previous recorders I've worked with -- didn't trash the whole file when it ran out of room. :) And the remaining 20 minutes are well worth checking out!

I'm also including some of the setup for Set 2 here as a bonus intermission track. I liked the way the various noodly instrumental textures collage against the last of the Chai House break-music.

Well, that's it for this one for now. As always, I look forward to reading your thoughts about the show here in the comments.

Neon Brown Presents: "Juggler's Challenge Revival (Episode 17)"!

2009-05-16T11:00:00.000-07:00

the show 102 megs

Here's a top notch Juggler's Challenge Revival show by a group that is mostly a duplicate of April's 5-piece band, but with two extra musicians. So, all told, that's Noah Adler (Mandolin), TQ Berg (Destroyer), Brett ??? (Big Sax), Dennis Jolin (Electro-Uke), Michael Perry (Drums), Donovan Raymond (Bass) and Me Woods (Hybrid Guitar and Vocals).

For those of you who are interested in numbers but not good at counting, that's 7(!) people at a fully-improvised event where (1) interpreting audience-input in a relatively focused and accessible way and (2) keeping the instrument volumes in balance with the vocals are both of fairly-high importance. And really, on both of those counts this was possibly the best group yet! Apparently, if the players are actively listening (something I know I can count on from all of these guys), 7 people is actually a great number of people for something like this -- allowing each person to play more sparsely and have plenty of leftover attention to explore and amplify whatever conceptual challenges the audience has thrown our way.

Throughout the evening, grooves, melodies, and counter-melodies morphed and intertwined seamlessly with nary a hint of devolving into an escalating-volume war. In fact, now that I think about it, we actually had 8(!!) for a while when William Precht briefly plugged in a thumb-piano for perhaps our most nuanced, uplifting, and rhythmically-interesting piece of the evening.

We started a bit late due to a combo of transportation malfunctions and generally poor time-management on my part. Except for Dennis, who was still completing his marathon journey to the Chai House, we were all finally ready to go at around 8:30, when I got a funny feeling about the recording device and decided to check the adapter.

Sure enough, the AC-power adapter was shorting and the screen was already flashing the 'low-battery' message. Sensing that it was likely to be an extra good one, I booked over to the drug store on foot while everybody else started warming up with some instrumental grooves. The recording here starts when I got back about 10 minutes later and stuffed the new batteries in. Since, we had less than 90 minutes from our start-time to Chai-O'Clock, the show became a single unbroken marathon set!

With only a little hounding of the audience on my part, the transparencies began showing up on the overhead-projector early in the evening and became ever-more-inspired, all the way up to the closing verbal input of the night from Erin, "Snails Exploring an Abandoned Salt-Mine".

Here's a rough outline of what went down: 0:00:Warmup-Jams/JC-Introduction/Dennis Arrives/More Jams, 20:30: 'A Musical Experience in 10 Words or Less with Some Cheating', 27:30: 'The "Musical" Love Song', 39:30: 'Todd's Abstract Graphical Swirl-Score', 44:00: Thumb-Piano Jam --> 52:45: "The Key", 59:30: Challenger-Penned Lyrics ("Leanne Rhymes With Busta"), 1:09:00: Sadbot's Grand Cycle, 1:15:30: Snails Visiting A Salt Mine, 1:24:00: Introductions/Sweet Home Mr. Spot's.

So that's it for this one! It feels like this format is really starting to come together. I'm looking forward to coming up with some new challenge-templates over the next month. I'm also looking forward to seeing where this goes if we can keep at least 75% of the band from show to show and can make the whole concept as accessible for the Challengers as it seemed to be on this particular Wednesday. As always, feel free to add your own notes in the comments here!

Neon Brown Presents: "Woodland Acoustic Orchestra" (April '09)!

2009-05-02T18:41:00.000-07:00

Set 1 58 megs

Set 2 25 megs

Here's another full evening with the ever-mutating Woodland Acoustic Orchestra. This month's lineup consisted of Noah Adler (Mandolin), Dennis Jolin (Percussion), Aaron Stepp (6-string Bass), and Me Woods (Acoustic Guitar and Voice). After the minor sound-reinforcement debacle of two weeks previous, I brought my own mini-PA to this show, which allowed us to easily plop the speakers down in some much-more-ideal locations. I suspect the sound from most random places in the audience is usually pretty decent even with the built-in PA, but having greater mixing freedom certainly made it much easier for us to hear each other clearly and -- coupled with some much-more-thoughtful mic-positioning -- definitely yielded a better balance on the recording.

Even still, things took a while to get rolling. Something about the way we started seemed to push us into a corner from which it took a while to figure out how to step away. I'm guessing the general vibe for most of us was something like "man, I feel like I'm already playing too many notes to easily move this somewhere else, but it still feels like we could use some more momentum". To be fair to all of us, the Acoustic Orchestra is a slightly unconventional and ever-shape-shifting beast, and it can often take a while to figure out how to work with (or maybe relax-into) the balance of sonic textures on any given night. Also, we were still a little bit under critical mass for ideal "Acoustic Orchestra" action. Generally it seems that a minimum of 5 players makes it easier for each player to find a nice sparse approach that allows plenty of room for listening, more-effortless mutation, and greater overall momentum...which means signaled-changes can have huge impact without bringing things to a halt.

Nonetheless, for whatever reason (in spite of my many theories, it really *is* a stubbornly mysterious process) things seemed to magically gel about half-way through the first set and -- for me at least -- floated on various incarnations of this inspiration for the remainder of the night. (And really, even the first half of the first set has plenty of interesting ideas. Just consider jumping ahead a bit if you if you're not enjoying the beginning...it really *does* get quite good!) As with many of the best Acoustic Orchestra shows, multiple simultaneous interlocking melodies form a rich grooving tapestry full of new sparkling details on each listen.

Lyrics, as usual, were mostly lifted and twisted from the Ballard News Tribune, although the end of the first set features what I thought was a rather entertaining extended piece of blather. This bit was inspired by the very cool surrealist art that had been hanging at the Chai House since at least the previous Juggler's Challenge show (thanks to Dennis for the photos here!

...if this art is still there next time, I'll try to remember to write down the artist's name and post any relevant links here).

Okay, that's it for me on this one. As always, if you were there or have been sampling the recordings, feel free to add your own comments/context here in the comments section!

Neon Brown Presents: "JCR(16)"!

2009-04-11T09:03:00.000-07:00

Set 1 46 megs

Set 2 36 megs

Here are two fine sets of Juggler's Challenge music featuring a fantastic quintet of TQ Berg (Destroyer), Dave Foley (Drums and Vocals), Dennis Jolin (Guitar), Donovan Raymond (Bass and Vocals), and Me Woods (Direct Guitar and Vocals). All of these guys are versatile improvisers and great listeners -- and therefore extremely well suited to the audience-interactive format.

This was to be the first Juggler's Challenge Revival episode with the new overhead-projector, and so I expected a bit of extra complexity during the pre-show setup. What I didn't expect was the Chai House's already-hobbled PA 'jumping the shark' sometime over the previous 2 weeks. It's hard to even recreate in my mind the bizarre configuration in which the remaining barely-functional speaker-cords had been hooked up to the power-amp, but the net result was about 40 minutes of fussing with it only to achieve a mono signal with the highs and the lows located in completely different parts of the room. I'll test it again over the next few shows to see if it improves, but from here on out, I'll also be lugging along my own PA, just in case.It took a while to get the Challengers going with the new transparency-based input (I'm suspecting that my attempts to cajole them into action were being translated into a muddy jumble by the remaining PA components.), but we did actually get our first transparency up and projected before the end of the first set (the "innuendo-fueled-buttrock-anthem"). And, thanks to some spacious and synergetic free-grooving by the band, the half-hour wait was quite enjoyable (for me anyway :)!

Interactivity really picked up for the second set, with a second mad-lib song (the "fuzzy" love song), a great 'musical-experience-in-10-words-or-less', and a sweet tune based on a set of lyrics written entirely by the Challengers. We even got our first ever abstract-graphical score designed in the way that I had imagined they would be! Kudos to David Kimber for drawing something that was actually abstract and which could reasonably be interpreted from left-to-right. I sorta botched the directing of it (once we had set our 1-minute time-limit, it would've been better for everyone to just glance at the timer to help them determine where they were in the score rather than wait for me to advance the marker, which of course I wasn't doing because I was playing :), but I'm going to post a photo here, in case it inspires any future score-artists to build on this very elegant concept. Note that the staff-line here isn't literal (with only 4 lines)...only suggestive. Rockin' good!

Well, that's about it for this one from me. But again, if you were there or are listening to the recordings, feel free to add any entertaining details that I might've forgotten here in the comments section.

(Oh, another quick note: Near the beginning of the show, I announce "Weds, April 8th, 2008. But that was just the flavored syrup talking...this show was in fact recorded this past week, which is well into 2009.)

Neon Brown Presents: "Woodland Acoustic Duo/Trio/Quartet"!

2009-04-02T13:29:00.000-07:00

Prologue 12 megs
Set 1 43 megs
Set 2 30 megs

Here is a prologue and two sets by a small-ish Acoustic Orchestra of Dennis Jolin (joining me in the prologue and throughout the evening on various percussion, melodica, and even banjo for a brief second), Aaron Stepp (laying down the magical idiosyncratic grooves on Fretless Electric Bass), Donovan Raymond (Piano at the end of each set) and Me Woods (mostly Guitar and Voice, with brief stints at dumbek, wood-blocks and manual-tube-driven-voice-leslie).

I had thought this might be one of our larger Orchestras, but -- true to form -- I sent out a very late reminder to the musicians (well really I just forwarded the show-listing with their names in it) and by 8pm it appeared that it might just be Dennis and me...which it actually *was* for the 10 minute prologue...but Aaron showed up with his bass towards the end of that, and we even added Donovan Raymond on the Chai House Piano for about 10-20 minutes at the end of each set.

This was a weird one for me. There was a huge appreciative audience the whole evening, with lots of friends in attendance, and I knew we had a great group of musicians, but with the PA speakers' super-wide spacing (about 12 feet off of the edge of each side of the stage) I was having a hard time hearing things in balance and so was struggling to find harmonic/rhythmic coherence and a place to settle in the mix. My playing in particular felt like it was lurching along and tripping up the beat fairly regularly. Even the vocal additions (from the Ballard News Tribune and the want ads from the back of the Seattle Weekly and the Stranger) seemed precariously perched atop the crumbling grooves. (And the 'Super-Barista' in the second set is a nearly incomprehensible hideous sprawling beast that only a fan of the most disorganized overlapping melody and lyrical wandering could love!) But then, near the end of both sets as Donovan would join in on the Piano, we'd all work through a challenging 5 minutes or so of trying to figure out how to play in the new landscape before being suddenly and mysteriously overtaken by a wave arising from nowhere and carrying us to the climax of each set on a smoothly building drone of ecstasy. (Start at 27:00 in set 1 and 17:20 in set 2 to jump right to these portions.) Listening back now, I'm actually enjoying most of the night here, and I'm particularly blown away by how many different sounds are coming out of Dennis' area of the mix...some truly diverse and well-seasoned hand-percussion!

The recording here suffers from some of the same problems as my ears did at the time: My cavalier attempt to not over-think the positioning of the mics has positioned them too far from the PA speakers and too close to the percussion and especially my dry leg shakers. If you start playing each set at a volume that sounds appropriate for the wash of cracked nuts that comes first, you'll end up feeling like you're listening to a guy shaking a rattle in time to a band that's playing in the other room. If, on the other hand, you imagine that you've walked into a jam-party late enough that the only available seat was right next to the guitarist's brashly-rattling leg, perhaps it's possible to tolerate a volume where you'll be able to absorb some of what the other musicians were up to. I've also done my best to apply some selective EQ and compression, slightly improving the balance.

My left leg was sporting a new set of bells that -- as my partner Tina will readily attest -- I spent several evenings tying onto various unsatisfactory leg-attachment devices before settling on an "elegant" system that knots them into a single length of panty-hose. It took at least 3 minutes or so before individual bells began tumbling loose onto the stage (...but there's a simple fix for that which I won't go into now :).

This night was *also* the first Chai House visit of my 9-week old daughter Lucy (pictured here with our friend Melvin) who, to my slight surprise and great delight, seemed to really enjoy herself -- apparently staring intently at the musicians and wriggling aggressively throughout the first set.

Neon Brown Presents: "JCR(15)"!

2009-03-17T20:21:00.000-07:00

Set 1 50 megs
Set 2 30 megs

Here are two sets by a drummerless-but-plenty-solid-nonetheless trio of TQ Berg (Destroyer), Colin Higgins (Electric Guitar...in his first appearance with NBP in several years due to his busy guitar-teaching schedule), and Me Woods ("Bass" + Loops and Vocals). ...an anonymous artist's rendering is included to the left here.

The theme for the evening was Juggler's Challenge, and the first set is indeed partly influenced by input from the Listeners (Challengers). I set out 4x6 cards and a noxious Sharpie and -- much like the past two Juggler's Challenge Revival episodes -- sang/exhorted the audience to put anything on the cards that they thought might make interesting inspiration for music. First set we got a great page of lyrics (by a guy named David that I'm pretty sure I've met a few times at the Chai House before), and a beautifully-minimalist card with the words 'A Boy Named "Pines"' on it, and even a brief guest-vocal appearance by the afore-parenthetically-mentioned David. I still don't have the overhead projector that I'm certain will really kick-start this Juggler's Challenge concept for people, but it seemed that the small crowd was paying attention enough to keep up with what we were working on anyway.

(Left: Daylight Savings Time had just kicked in the previous weekend. The abrupt change to setting up the gear before sunset is always cool and a little pleasantly melancholy somehow.)

Back to the music: In spite of my idea that I would try not to, "bass" was looped, and it did indeed seem to provide a nice bed for all manner of harmonic and textural exploration. All three of us were holding back a bit it seemed, allowing a gentle and spacious collective vibe to emerge. It's been a while since the last time all three of us played together, but it's possible that people besides me will hear a certain mutual confidence in our approach here. Nobody (except possibly that annoying bassist! ;) is trying too hard to "make it happen" and so the music is relaxed, even when it builds energy. Speaking of energy, anyone who was there for the "great bass-induced power-amp explosion of 2009" (see "Ninja Poodles on Beets" below), might be mildly entertained to hear that I had replaced my deceased neon-brown-era power amp with a wildly overpowered hEEnd-era Peavey CS-800. It performed admirably, though I fear that with repeated uses my back wouldn't!

The crowd was significantly sparser for the second set, and so -- partly due to my neglecting to mention the format for the evening again -- my only themed-utterance was mockery along the lines of "Screw you guys for not providing any input in the second set!" But the trio's approach really seemed to grow a bit here, with a less reserved and even less idiomatic approach to our weaving and tumbling lines.

So that's about it on this one from me, but please add your own comments here if you were there or listened to the recordings and noticed anything entertaining that I might've pointed out.

Neon Brown Presents: "Woodland Acoustic Orchestra" (Feb '09)!

2009-03-02T21:14:00.000-08:00

Set 1 47 megs

Set 2 32 megs

(+ Bonus Timelapse Movie of the second set 4.7 megs)

February 25th started with a trio of me and two guys I'd never played with before: Noah Adler (Mandolin) and Aaron Stepp (Fretless Electric Bass). The funny thing is that it wasn't the first NBP for either of them! Both Noah and Aaron made their debut at the previous month's acoustic-orchestra night, during the first week of my new baby daughter Lucy's life -- when even dragging an acoustic guitar to the Chai House was still sounding a little ambitious and off-topic...though if it had been a week later, I would've loved to have brought her out to just sit on the couch and drool to the grooves. (I believe that unrecorded evening was a quartet of John Beezer (Guitar) -- in his last NBP before his move to New York City -- Dennis Jolin (Nylon String Acoustic through Wah), and Aaron and Noah...supposedly, it was very mellow and trance-like that evening, and -- I'd guess from my more recent jam with them -- awesome.)

But back to the February: What a great trio it turned out to be!!

We discussed possible signals before we started, but ended up having plenty of momentum and diversity to quickly forget them. I was admittedly a little rusty from lack of recent fretboard time, but Aaron and Noah were sharp and versatile and it seemed we quickly found and explored a common love of what I'll try to describe as "tweaky odd-time groove mutation" -- where a group locks in on a repeating syncopated line and then each player in harmony gradually pushes the rhythm and angles further and further away from the path of least resistance (see 15:30 or 36:30), while simultaneously maintaining a consistent and well-defined meter. The level of attention required for this type of playing almost by necessity becomes exhausted from time to time, and so we would break down (probably a welcome breath for the listeners as well) into a wide range of more spacious and conventionally-rhythmic movements as well. I'm already looking forward to next time with these guys. (Oh yeah, and the "lyrics" that creep in from time to time during this set were from the back-page-classified-ads from the Stranger.)

Second set, we were joined by the always melodic, energetic, and inspiring Chris Powers (Acoustic Guitar), briefly by a percussionist who I don't believe I'd met before, and eventually by Daniel Nelon, whose smooth and modally innovative vocal work carried us to the end of the set and decorated a sweetly-harmonized "last call" right before the final bell. Daniel is always a great addition, but after the brief taste of 'what-could-be' here, we agreed to bring him back for more of the show on a day when I've got more lyrical creativity and we can really explore the chorus-harmonies! I'm looking forward to that too. :) ...and also to any listener or player comments on this post or on your experience of the show or recordings. Please add them here in the comments section!

Neon Brown Presents: "Juggler's Challenge Revival (Episode 14)"!

2009-02-13T15:04:00.000-08:00

Set 1 46.8 megs

Set 2 45.3 megs

Here's another high-energy Juggler's Challenge Revival (episode #14) with Zane and Anders (formerly of the Consul)...this time with the added pleasure of their new -- and fantastic!! -- drummer, David Testa (in his first NBP appearance). I can't say enough about the bad-ass-itude of this lineup, especially along the axes of intricacy, syncopation, mood, and balls-to-the-wall energy! It's always a bit of a challenge at the Chai House keeping the vocals up to the energy of the instruments with these guys, but I think we did okay this time, with one PA-speaker near us as sort of a monitor and another over closer to the bar and aimed right out into the middle of the house (if you've been following my comments from previous postings, you'll know that I view 'ease-of-lyrical-comprehension' to be an essential element of a good Juggler's Challenge show...otherwise, it's all just distracting from the jams, right?).

Juggler's Challenge Process Notes: The new thing that I wanted to try this time was to have the audience call out the key-changes, using a simple three-column multiple-choice interface. I think this is a decent idea, but the interface seemed not to encourage further changes once a key had been selected and so -- after a few heavily-solicited changes -- it mostly languished on the coffee-table, unnoticed by Juggler and Challenger alike. Rather than using up an entire white-board, I think the next step for this sort of thing would be a three-dial system, with the hope that big dials will really lure people to touch and re-set them. As with episode 13, I simply gave out the other white-board with a vague request for pictures and/or words. Aaron Stepp (basist for the previous and upcoming Acoustic Orchestra shows), stepped right up and filled the board from top to bottom with no less than 6 brilliantly-quirky song-ideas, continuously re-filling at the top with the same high-quality challengement (that's right, I said "challengement"!) as we moved down the list. Also, it's been suggested several times now that an overhead projector would be a welcome addition to the Juggler's Challenge experience. That way, the conceptual input would hopefully be easily readable by both the Juggler's *and* the Challengers, increasing the general interest-in and understanding-of how the input was being interpreted in the music and lyrics. Hopefully more on that soon...

Back to the show: We had a great crowd throughout the evening, with most people sticking around from first-to-last notes. The recording of the first set is a mixed bag. The music (after a couple of minutes of mild technical difficulty) is lively and diverse, but volumes were more out of wack and both mics were pretty far from the PA speakers, so you might just want to ignore the vocals rather than trying to follow the buried conceptual threads. I made some adjustments to both the mics and the PA for the second set and the lyrics/concepts are definitely starting to creep through here on the recording. The band was really cooking by this point and the audience was large and responsive. The whole show is worth posting, but if you're at all pressed for time, the second set is where it's at!

So yeah, check these out. And, whether you were there or not, if you really liked a particular section or have some context or clarification to add, please call it out in the comments section here!

thanks for listening,

-andrew

Neon Brown Presents: "Ninja Poodles On Beets"!

2009-01-16T22:10:00.000-08:00

Set 1 51 megs

Set 2 23 megs

Here it is: the first NBP of 2009, and the first new Juggler's Challenge Revival episode since July! Two sets in two unedited clips. The lineup for this one was a quartet of John Beezer (Direct Guitar), TQ Berg (Electric Guitar), Dennis Jolin (Drums) and Me Woods ("Bass" -- really an octavized bass-amplified plank-tuned guitar). I'd been feeling pleasantly low-energy for most of the afternoon and was starting to waffle on doing the usual Juggler's Challenge elements, but with the house nearly-full at 8pm, it was clear that some sort of audience-interaction was called for. Trying to split the difference with my mellow energy, I just gave the whiteboards out to the Challengers with very little briefing (maybe mentioning something about lyrics and pictures). Before 10 minutes had passed (usually the first input has to be pried out of their hands at around 20, at which point things start picking up) there was already a full set of lyrics and most of another.

The band worked really well with each other right from the start, leaking out a seamless stream of endlessly morphing wide-panned uplifting melancholia. Space and emotional-texture was the order of the evening. So great to have TQ back again! Originally known to me as a bassist, he's a long-time collaborator -- since at least 1995...? -- and has always been a musician with a truly unique earpoint, but I've got to say his guitar playing, which he started seriously much more recently has gotten to be amazing, especially his ability to improvise effectively in his own unique voice. Beezer made another step in his gradual transition to a full-blown Electric Guitar appearance by standing up and somehow making completely clean guitar the lushest sound in the room. And Jolin was fantastic on his first NBP-turn on drums, rolling out waves of organic groove, even around my muddy bass loops! With the huge variety of instruments he plays, you can expect to see lots more of him too in the coming year.

Near the end of the first set, I thought perhaps we'd do something for just one more white-board of lyrics but during the beginning of that movement one of my FX pedals suddenly turned off and then on again. Mysteriously, I couldn't get any sound again... Eventually, amidst the faint smell of fireworks, I noticed that my power-amp wasn't lit up anymore. I'm assuming the smell was the mini-mushroom-cloud from its sudden demise (a great excuse to finally get a decent bass-head...?). I plugged into the PA for the second set.

The Chai House had switched bookers again and there was no posted title for the evening. When somebody came up to the bar while we were setting up and asked what was up for the evening, the barista and I whipped up "Ninja Poodles on Beets" -- which actually isn't too bad as NBP titles go! There were a few riffs on it right at the top of the show and a couple other times when things slowed down, but clearly -- as with the copious audience input -- there was lots more there left un-mined.

Set 2 includes a sharp and timely "tribute" to the Bush years by guest-vocalist Brian (don't know his last name...perhaps Beezer can add it in the comments here). I didn't even know what he was singing about at the time, but on the recording it's plenty clear and -- I though -- hilarious.

The Challengers gradually expanded their lyrical input, embedding some crazy drawings (including one -- which I wish I'd been able to photograph before it was erased -- of a bulging-eyed demon barfing out various words) and even a masterful board where the words and the art seemed to fuse into a single abstract musical score (photo here). Looking at it again, I realize my riffs on this last one really just began to taste the tip of the juice-berg.

In closing this gargantuan post (perhaps I need a self-imposed word-limit), I'd like to again encourage you all to add any of your own recollections or comments here in the 'comments' so that more than my own ramblings are part of the context for listeners who weren't there and even for those who were, should they come back to this post in the distant future.

Thanks for listening!

-andrew

(in addition to the other sets posted below, there are still a few of the older shows up at http://www.neonbrown.com/jotw.html )

Neon Brown Presents: "Abstract Imperialism"!

2008-12-17T23:18:00.000-08:00

Set 1 47 megs

Set 2 30 megs

Here's something that was rare even back in the days when Adrian was doing these with me regularly: an all-improv loop-driven set with just the two of us! I'd been doing a similar thing with Denali Williams in our all-improv duo Bicuspid, and had even played a couple of great shows in a similar format this Fall with Paul Turner (which I still need to post here at some point). However, for me the real genesis for this format clearly lies in 'neon brown' and especially an all-improvised show that Adrian and I did in Portland a couple of years ago. In that particularly-magical show (tragically, not recorded), we played well over an hour of some of my favorite music of all time -- mostly just loop-jamming but often re-interpreting lyrics from across our catalogue over whatever was happening musically at the moment. This still ranks as one of my favorite shows ever, and I've always looked forward to the opportunity to try the format with Adrian again.

Well this past Wednesday (December 10th) we finally managed to arrange something similar for the last 'Neon Brown Presents' of the year, and while we're perhaps not quite as fluid as we were two years ago, there were stil plenty of magical moments. Adrian brought out his beautiful rolled-steel kit along with his usual side-car of electronics/FX. I played my favorite electric 6-string, split right off the bat by a new panning/volume pedal which allows me to arbitrarily control how much goes to each of my two looping/FX rigs -- all resulting in a wide stereo sound with lots of looping-options.

The first set starts really nicely and has plenty of comfy grooves, some great aggressively-polymetric syncopation-jams, and even a couple of ugly spontaneous re-works of recent 'neon brown' tunes (near the end of the set, it just seemed like time for some lyrics). But the second set is where things really began to gel and the weirdness really surfaced in a beautiful way with an extended Ween-like tune (Bunny, Kitty, and Horsey's Revenge) and the strangely-compelling grooves that surrounded it.

(unedited clips right there at the top of this post...photos by Robert Kirkpatrick)

ps. Older postings still available for a limited time at the old JOTW page.

Neon Brown Presents: "Full of Life and Turkey"!

2008-12-06T22:01:00.000-08:00

Alrighty, here's the first posting of music in this new location!

Set1A 13.6 megs

Set1B 38 megs

Set 2 49.1 megs

The November 26th show was a great example of what the Woodland Acoustic Orchestra has been like recently: A couple of scheduled musicians, supplemented by walk-in regulars, and even a couple of unknown first-timers sprinkled in for good measure. ...all held together by some collective thread that seems to make itself alternately obscure and tangible to each participant.

Our yearly Thanksgiving Eve's show always has its own special energy. This year, with the Chai House closed on Thursday (the usual open-mic night), they'd made some effort to move the open-mic to immediately before us. We were still the only thing listed on the web-calendar, but the open-mic was listed as the only thing on the printed schedule for Weds. Low-grade confusion gently rippled the waters and set the stage for a great confluence of attention (and a very enjoyable intermission of open-mic performances).

With most of the scheduled musicians still MIA, Willaim Precht (Tabla and Dumbek) and I (Plank-Tuned 6-String) mic'd up the tabla that somebody had left onstage there and began slightly after 8 with a short movement of just Guitar and Percussion. This was the first time I'd heard William on percussion -- knowing him more for his guitar-work in & ampersand -- and I was immediately blown away by his playing. At the time I was somewhat disappointed with my own, but listening back it seems that what I felt as lack of strong momentum on my part comes off more as tasteful reserve :). I really like how this section plays in the recording.

Things just kept growing from there as John Beezer showed up and plugged his Electric Guitar straight into the PA, along with Chris Powers (who I believe you can hear joining in un-mic'd at the end of the short first clip) in only his second NBP appearance (after his walk-in debut 2 weeks earlier on elecric). Chris also provides great rootsy vocals for extended movements near the end of each set. Slightly later, we were joined by Zach (don't know his last name or even if I'm spelling his first correctly) on harmonica. Early in set 2 there was even a 4th guitarist that I've never met before (and have sadly already forgotten his name...apparently he's an open-mic regular...?...perhaps if you know who this was, or what Zach's last name is, you can add that in the comments here, along with any other observations/comments!) who drove an anthemic chord-change-based movement with some great urgent low-chording.

(unedited clips)

Replacing The 'Jam of the Week' Page

2008-12-02T22:51:00.000-08:00

Hey All! Before I start using this space for its planned purpose -- to share the very newest recordings of whatever has happened with my many fantastic musical friends and I most recently-- I thought perhaps I should acknowledge the amazing scope of musical experience that its predecessor page has hosted.

The 'Jam of the Week' Modular Album Page came into being sometime in the mid-late 90's (perhaps '96?), on the website of my first extensively-improvising group, the 3-piece Jazz/Buttrock Fusion unit, "hEEnD". Like the various composed projects that followed and continued to fill the page (the short-lived-but-fruitful 5-piece "Falling Down Time" and the two-piece "Neon Brown"), this group did at least as much improvising as regurgitation of written material at both rehearsals and shows. We recorded most of it (leading to a serious VHS-tape storage problem) and even got around to editing down some of the more memorable sections. In the early days, due to our limited storage space, we would put up a single hyper-edited 3 to 5 minute clip. In later years, as our growing improvisation and engineering skills increased the listenability of the raw-recordings, our output became unmanageably large, and our patience for editing waned in direct proportion to our increasing appreciation for 'the unvarnished jam', we began posting longer and longer clips.

Even in the early years special guests would appear on these recordings from time to time, but eventually, Adrian and I (neon brown), began hosting twice-monthly shows at Mr. Spot's Chai House in Ballard (Neon Brown Presents:). At these shows, we would play at least one set entirely improvised, joined by 1-3 invited special guests. The free-formity has gone even further in past two years -- as Adrian has resettled in Portland -- with me continuing to host these shows in various acoustic, electric, and audience-interactive formats. Different lineups every show. All improvised for both sets. Most of the time now, I'll just post the full show unedited, but sometimes I've done some more extreme editing and multitracking of material from these shows, and I'll usually post these too. And things *continue* to evolve. So for fans of the 'Jam of the Week' page, there should be lots more of the (un)same great material to be presented here as our musical adventures continue together.

I'm moving the page to a blog format mostly to enable my fellow musical travelers to add their own entries to the diary of our journey in the comments here (I can't believe I didn't realize that this needed to be done earlier!). That means you!: musicians, listeners, etc... Please use the comments to say a little something about *your* experience of the particular show/recording.

And I'm reluctantly changing the name of the page from 'Jam of the Week' to 'FREELAB (Floating-Roster Ever-Evolving Live-Album Blog), to avoid confusion with the now very popular hip-hop 'Jam of the Week' page.

Okay, that's it for now... Check out the older recordings while they're still there at http://www.neonbrown.com/jotw.html and look for the new stuff to start arriving here soon!

thanks for listening,

-andrew