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".

AWD Guitar-and-Voice Improv

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!

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

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!