Andrew Woods: May Guitar-and-Voice Happenings

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!

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!

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

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!