Fever Break

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!

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

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

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

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"

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

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".