Woody and 5-Track and Astrol Waters at the LoFi Performance Gallery

Woody and 5-Track (38 megs)
Astrol Waters (62 megs)

Here are some recordings from the groups surrounding Skating Polly at their recent show at the LoFi Performance Gallery.  After an opening set by Woody and Five (above), Skating Polly played an explosive set of highly original music.  Astrol Waters closed out the evening, beginning with a poem by Ty Berry and immediately segueing into one of our best sets yet (IMO). 

For this performance, Astrol Waters was 5-Track (guitar), John Leighton Beezer (bass), Ty Berry (voice), Brandon Herzberg (guitar), William Mapp (drums), and Me Woods (bass and misc. percussion).

WEGO Pre-Chaistock Rehearsal

recording (64 megs)

Here's the rough recording from WEGO's small-group refresher-session a week before this most recent Chaistock.  This rehearsal was only attended by about half of the group that ended up playing at the LoFi, and I didn't initially release it because I didn't want to spoil the suspense for the show/reunion.  But wow there are some tight and funky change-interpretations here, and some great chemistry throughout!  

(with 5-Track (guitar), Woody Frank (guitar), Sheridan Riley (drums), and Me Woods (bass))

The Walking Faces at Seamonster Lounge

Set 2 (58 megs)
Set 3 (35 megs)

Here are my recordings of the 2nd and 3rd sets of The Walking Faces' recent show (Weds 11-18-2015) at the Seamonster Lounge.  The Walking Faces are 5-Track (guitar-bass and voice) and Patrick Lenon (drums).  I sat in for the second set on guitar, with Woody Frank joining us for the 3rd set on bass.

(Thanks to Zinnia and Five for the photo!)

Set 2:
Tourists
Kipple
Speaking Through You

Set 3:
13 Rider
Blowing in the Wind

Chaistock, Fall 2015!

WEGO (46 megs)
Astrol Waters (49 megs)

Another magical Chaistock has come and gone!  (this past Sunday, as I write)  Here are recordings of the two projects I played with:

WEGO -- on the back stage, with 5-Track (guitar), Woody Frank (guitar and voice), Patrick Lenon (drums second half), Ian McKagan (guitar and voice), Zack Milstead (harmonica first half and bass second half), Sheridan Riley (drums first half), and Me Woods (bass first half and vocals throughout).

Astrol Waters -- on the front stage, with 5-Track (guitar), Ty Berry (voice), B.W.H. (guitar), Reed Hutchins (voice), Sheridan Riley (drums), and Me Woods (bass).

(Here's a photo of WEGO)

Barfing Faces

1st Movement (27 megs)
2nd Movement (17 megs)

Here's the recording of the first movement of last night's jam with 5-Track (guitar) and Patrick Lenon (drums).  Why "barfing faces"?  Well, because I clearly lack basic common sense and good-taste.  But also because Five and Patrick are also a duo called The Walking Faces.  Not convinced yet?  Also, at least partly because the rental car I was driving that evening smelled more than a bit barfy.  And, perhaps most importantly because the music often possessed what Colonel Bruce Hampton would call "the threat of vomit" (a good thing, in his book).

Astrol Waters at Hobbitstock-2015

Clip A (21 megs)
Clip B (37 megs)

 Here are the rough recordings from Astrol Waters' set at Hobbitstock 2015.  Astrol Waters is apparently now the name of the group that first played together at Tim's Tavern as Samsarama.  For this set, players included 5-Track (guitar), Ty Berry (voice and trumpet), B.W.H. (guitar), Ben Ireland (drums), William Mapp (drums), and Me Woods (bass) ... and possibly others, there was a lot going on!.

(The photo at the top left here is of Immanent Transcendence, who gently pried the lid off of the evening at 8pm sharp, while there was still some daylight.)

I haven't listened to these too carefully yet, but a quick note is in order for those who weren't there:  Before the first set, as I was transitioning over to the electric bass from the previous jam on the bass-box, I hit the 15db pad on the direct-box to keep from deafening everyone with the pop.  As I should've suspected, I forgot to un-pad it before we started playing and so -- while the mix sounded pretty great where I was -- the bass may have been mostly non-existent out front until whenever I realized what had happened.  For the second clip, the bass is plennnnnty loud!

More on the beautiful experience that was Hobbitstock-2015 soon!

Samsarama at Tim's Tavern

Full Set

Here's the set from June 25th (a Thursday during a unusually hot spell of weather for Seattle) with B.W.H's improv-project, "Samsarama".  The lineup for this particular evening was 5-Track (Guitar), Herzberg himself (Guitar), Patrick Lenon (kit, first half of the set), Sheridan Riley (kit, second half of the set), and Me Woods (Bass), PLUS Ty Berry on voice/spoken-word and Trumpet.

Six Sided Cube at the Widdershins Solstice Party

Movement 1
Movement 2
Movement 3

Here are the recordings from an unusually hot (temperature-wise, at the very least) extended set to open up the Widdershins' 2015 Summer Solstice Party!

Six Sided Cube Almostice

Lonely Woman (Ornette Coleman)
Afterburners
Floored
Various

Six Sided Cube at Beats and Bohos

Movie Clip A (108 megs)
Movie Clip B (90 megs)
Movie Clip C (117 megs)

Audio Clip A (3 megs)
Audio Clip B (2 megs)
Audio Clip C (4 megs)
Audio Clip D (4 megs)
Audio Clip E (5 megs)

Here are some short clips from our set last Friday at Beats and Bohos, for their yearly art-walk.  So much to discuss here about the evening and the set, but for now:  Thanks to Woody Frank for joining us for the second half of the set -- starting at clip D above -- and thanks to everybody for coming out and listening and hope you enjoy these exerpts!

UPDATE (6/25/15): Sheridan's friend (Dio?) took some video of the show.  Somewhere, there's supposedly a view from the front, but all we have at the moment is this second angle from behind the kit.  So I added some layers and made a couple of short clips (exactly matching the lengths of the audio clips from before).  More soon!

Six Sided Cube (Late April)

Movement 1 Unedited
Movement 2 Unedited
Movement 3 Unedited
Movement 4 Unedited

Here are some unedited rough-mixes from last night's Six Sided Cube session.  More infos soon!

Bad Spoons

1st Movement (available below from Cosmic Primitive!)
2nd Movement (available below from Cosmic Primitive!)
3rd Movement (available below from Cosmic Primitive!)
4th Movement (available below from Cosmic Primitive!)

Here are the roughly-assembled movements from last night's jam with Marc Cantlin (guitar), 5-track (guitar, bass-in-4th-movement), and Me (bass, guitar-in-4th-movement).  UPDATE: material from this session is now a Cosmic Primitive album-release, so I'm removing the raw recordings ... here's a link to the released-album from the same material

Six Sided Cube March

1st Movement (18 megs)
Video Clip A (190 megs)
Video Clip B (204 megs)
Video Clip C (293 megs)
Video Clip E (291 megs)

On Weds, March 11th, Sheridan (drums), Five (guitar) and I (bass) got together for another session.  I had enjoyed watching Five's guerilla video from the previous one, so this time I brought out my SLR and my multi-input setup so we could place a few close-mics and rebalance the sound a bit in post.  Here's the recording of the first and possibly most-coherent overall movement...? (where I hadn't started the video-capture yet), AND a series of short video clips from the later 2 movements, during which there were also plenty of high-points.

Six Sided Quiet

Video Clip (506 megs)

2nd Movement (37 megs)

3rd Movement (20 megs)

Here's a panoramic from our super-restrained-volume session last week (Five's neighbor -- *across* the street -- apparently just sits around next to his front window waiting for something rhythmic to tempt him with the devil's gyrations, at which point, he telephones directly to the landlord to preserve his purity.)

On listening back, my first take was that the attempt to get by at such a low volume had resulted in a sound that was too unbalanced to bother posting anything.  But Five had filmed the first movement, and so I decided to take the last 10 minutes of it and add the audio from the Edirol.  The bass is a bit buried and you can't see Sheridan perhaps at all, but I think it's still a nice taste of the evening's good musical vibes.

UPDATE (2/26): just added 5's mixes of the second and third movements!

88-Sided Cube

Warmup Jam (6 megs)
Main Set (34 megs)

Here are the recordings of Six Sided Cube's (5-Track on Guitar, Sheridan Riley on Drums, and Me Woods on Bass) first public performance at Pioneer Square's 88 Keys Dueling Piano Bar, opening up for Protycal Octycal (another all-improv group also hailing from deep in Chai Territory).

Oil Bubbles

Bubble 1 (21 megs)
Bubble 2 (14 megs)

... a couple of clips from the first of what I hope will be many 3-piece free-groove sessions with Sheridan Riley (drums) and 5-Track (guitar).  I'm playing the wave bass through 5's ampeg.  The first clip is edited a bit, but the second is all "as-was".