Atomic Lead Release Party 2010

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"!

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)

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"!

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)!

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"!

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!!

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.