The recent IT BREAKS south east US tour with David Grollman and Brendan Landis was really great. Not a bad show in the lot and we met so many cool folk. Thanks to all of them for putting on shows, telling friends and offering hospitality. We recorded every show and got video of several of them and are processing the results now.
I have a few more NYC area shows in late April/early May, after which there will be a performance hiatus thru late July. The occasional show will surface, but for the most part I’ll be roaming around the east, scoping out possible places to buy an affordable little fixer upper and to test out the ‘Roaming Residency Program’ idea.
Roaming Residency: rather than one night tour stops, the idea is to stay (or be based) in a one place/area for a few days to a couple weeks, getting to know and play with locals, work on music, composition and recording!
So if you’ve got an extra room for me to work in or need a visit this summer, lemme know. I’ll be bombing around in Gertrude, aka the Emergency Music Response Team Vehicle (my 2002 Ford diesel E350 re-purposed ambulance) with gear and a ready made place to lay my head if necessary.
Thurs Mar 29 is Avant! Guitar! Night. Likely to become a monthly series wherever I am located…which is Brooklyn for now. The first installation is at Legion Bar and is a dandy.
1) James Beaudreau / E. Ryan Goodman acoustic guitar duo.
This past winter, I was watching American Astronaut with music by the Billy Nayer Show, loving the tone dripping tremolo/angular guitar work and thought, “what is this guy up to now?” Turns out this guy is James Beaudreau and he lives in NYC!
2) Brett Zweiman Trio.
Mystical guitar man, $50 Trumpet dude and curator of the local improv freak out called A Night of Clutter, brings it on.
3) Rob Cambre / Marco Bucelli guitar / drum duo.
Rob is our guest of honor. Fab guitar maven hailing from New Orleans where he is a driving force with the fabulous Rough 7 and curator/pomoter of improv and out music with folks like Borbetomagus’ Don Miller. Marco is a Brooklyn based drummer (and fellow Italian) with various projects including his collaboration with Xenia Rubinos and Hypercube.
4) Grollman / Lightning / Landis
My new NYC based, twin guitar/electronics & drum trio with David Grollman (snare drum) and Brendan Landis (guitar). Our specialty is short pieces – generally under 3 minutes.
Prehistoric Horse provokes audiences through spasmodic bursts of snare drum (david grollman), guitar (lucio menegon), cello (valerie kuehne) and occasional unprovoked dramatic outburst. A very intense and dynamic form of improvisational music that sometimes borders on sheer noise and incorporates the absurd. A mashup of Bennink/Nakatani/Frith/Frisell/Bach/Britten/Bi-polar disorder punk rock sounds. “…spasmodic bursts of clatter and skree via cello, drums, and guitar, typically played in ways that would make conventional music teachers shudder in horror.” (Seattle Stranger)
…played the Boise Creative And Improvised Music Festival this past weekend. Did one set as Strangelet (with John Hanes on electronics) and another as Prehistoric Horse (a new collaboration with John, LM, drummer David Grollman and cellist Valerie Kuehne). The Horse did a lot of wandering about Boise and had a lot of fun just hanging out. Our intense thirty minute set on saturday night started off an evening of incendiary performances by Emily Hay/Motoko Honda, Colter Frazier/Rob Wallace, Jim McAuley and Kribophoric.
The venue for the festival was The El Korah Shriner Hall (entertainment unto itself with a kick ass grotto-bar, prop room and fully costumed group portraits). Attendance was better than past years (it was free), but slim at times and there was the feeling that most of Boise had no idea or care that this was going on. However, the audience was polite, attentive and given what must have seemed like pretty confusing music to the majority, appreciative.
john hanes & lm
We attempted some guerilla promotion tactics during an outlandish visit to the 8th street pedestrian, which was mostly met with polite smiles and the occasional offer to stop by the festival. During the promotion blitz, we were approached by a photographer for Boisestyle.com – perhaps attracted by our thrift store furry puppet accessories (that he chose a picture of just me & my monkey over one of myself, the monkey, Valerie and her Wooly Mammoth puppet is baffling).
Boise is a vanilla kind of place. It’s pretty small and it doesn’t take long to walk back and forth across the downtown and we did so several times – not much else to do. We stopped in for pizza and beer at our favorite joint and discovered the salvation of the saturday late-night streetcart shawarma guy (doing our best to safely run the gauntlet of staggering frat-party drunks filling the sidewalk).
woolly mammoth & wylie monkey
All together an odd setting for such music. So how is it we end up back here in this high desert potato town playing crazy-ass improv and experimental music year after year? One: the performers. Many of the same players who made last year a highlight were there and it’s fun to hang out with them. Two: Kris Hartung & Jeff Kaiser . Kris is the guy who has made great efforts to put together the Creative and Improvised Music festival for four years running and Jeff has been responsible for curating and raising the level of talent. Bravo, guys.