Woodland Tree Oh February Acoustic Session

Warmup with Woody on Guitar and Andrew on Bass (10 megs)
Warmup with Andrew on Guitar and Woody on Bass (5 megs)

Here are a couple of short warmup jams for each of the two instrumental configurations we've been working with.  The twist for this night is that we were convening in Woody's lovely apartment and so Adrian was playing a few small pieces of percussion with chopsticks and the bass was running through my ancient and tiny all-purpose practice amp.  The bare sound simultaneously brought out both restraint constant exploration of the boundaries.  I think great things would've happened if we just kept jamming, but I'm soo glad we switched our attention to the compositions.

This was one of those nights where I wish I'd just recorded everything!  Especially while working on arrangements, the stripped-down setup made it so easy to hear each little sound and vocal harmony and somehow the grooves were extreee detailed and infectious.  Lots of surprising progress on some under-construction compositions!  Looking forward to more very soon.

Woodland Threesome Jams (October and November)

October 22nd Warmup (7 megs)
November 12th Warmup 1 (13 megs)
November 12th Warmup 2 (23 megs)

Here are some clips from two different Trio combinations:  Adrian plays drums throughout, but the first clip has Woody on Guitar and me on Bass and the other two are vice-versa.  More details later!

Toast Fantasy August Studio Session!

Warmup Jam (10 megs)

Here's the warmup jam from Toast Fantasy's August 13th studio session.  These warmups often seem extra steady and unambitious (usually in a good way) after setting up all the gear ... a sort of settling process perhaps.  The mix is barely beginning to develop here (super rough eq/level/room pass so far) but I'm already loving the sound and looking forward to pulling together the tunes we tracked later in the evening!

(I almost forgot: This was also my first session with my new MarkBass cabinet!  I finally traded in the old Aguilar for a 210 and am sooooo happy!  The Aguilar was a great fit for the NeonBrown years, but the 12" speaker just wasn't notching well in this 2-guitar group.  The new cab handles an extra 100 watts and the 10" speakers naturally push the frequencies I was craving (and it's freaky-light!  Actually lighter than the old one).  You'll notice the highs are radically rolled off in this mix ... an approach I'm really digging at the moment ... pretty close to the sound that was coming straight out of the cab after some radical shaping with a graphic EQ pedal (without the EQ it sounds closer to my old sound, but with much better presence and penetration in the mix ... so it feels like I'll have lots of options going forward!)

Toast Fantasy Aborted Studio Recording Session!

Warmup Jam (12 megs)

(temporary bonus tracks for the band and other early-birds:)
Falling
Night
SkitteryFive
Woody'sChanges

Toast Fantasy had scheduled a studio tracking-session for this particular Friday in early July, but the MOTU 828 would consistently crash every time we tried to launch DP.  Adrian patiently tried to debug the problem for most of an hour before we gave up and decided to play with some new structures instead.  By the end of the evening, we'd made so much progress on completely new material that I think all four of us were grateful that things had gone as they had.

The first clip is the 10 minute warmup-jam/purge after we had finally given up on the multitracking setup.  "Falling" is a capture of Adrian's idea for a dynamic arrangement of the structure that we had planned to multitrack that night.  "Night" is a rough arrangement of a simple structure that I'd been planning to introduce soon (based on a weird musical dream in Canon Beach).  "Skittery Five" is a pleasantly crazy angular structure that Five had been playing with (it actually has a real name that I'm not sure I'm remembering correctly) ... the rough version you hear here is our first playthrough of the idea.  "Woody's Changes" is something moody and spacious that Woody brought in that might eventually have vocals.

Toast Fantasy at the Fremont Fair!

Aphid Tea (7 megs)

Here's an extended piece of mostly-improv (around the simple C# min groove of Aphid Tea) from Toast Fantasy's hour-long set in the blazing heat of Sunday's Fremont Fair.  Many thanks to the bookers of the Center Stage and the listeners who braved the desert-like conditions on the pavement in front of the tent!

(check out the part where the medium-dogs-and-drums parade goes by -- partly playing along it seemed...?)

Toast Fantasy at the Blue Moon

Warmup (3megs)
Jam from "You and I" (7 megs)

Here are a couple of clips from Toast Fantasy's first real public performance, at the Blue Moon at the edge of the U. District.  We opened for Portland's "Lost Ox" (excellent!) and Seattle's "Argan Band" (trancellent!).

The main focus of this blog is unstructured free-jamming, so here is our brief ambient/exploratory opening jam, and the closest thing to pure improv that happened in the rest of our short set: the modal jam-section from the debut of "You and I".

Toast Fantasy June Ramp-Up #2

Warmup Jam (9 megs)

Here's the warmup jam from the final Toast Fantasy rehearsal before our first public shows (at the Blue Moon on Thursday and at the Fremont Fair on Sunday)!  This was an extree-fun jam, and the tunes sounded great as well ... Looking forward to sharing this group with a live audience!