Tea With Warriors

Hello, and welcome back!

I have lots to write, but that will have to wait for another time. In the meantime, here are a couple tracks I've made in the last few months. Both of them were for contests at Indaba.com. 

The first is a song which was aiming to be placed in a TV show called "Bar Karma", set in the year 2058. The instructions were to write a song that would be playing in a bar in 2058 when the U.S. is under a dictatorship. I chose to go the route a harmless bubblegum-sounding song with hidden revolutionary meaning in the lyrics, which would slip by the censorship computers. It's called "Empower the Resistors". I was pretty proud of myself, since it may be the fastest I've gone from writing a song to having the finished recording-  less than 7 days. 

The second track is for a Paul Simon remix contest, and is my take on his new song, "Love is Eternal Sacred Light".  Like many creative projects, this grew out of trying out some new software, in this case the Studio One DAW I downloaded recently. I threw the vocal track in, and picked a drum loop almost randomly and they fit pretty well, in a way that inspired me. So I just fixed the timing of the vocal to match the beat, and wrote some chords on the guitar and synth to go with it. At this time, I still haven't listened to more than a few seconds of the original. I've only heard the vocal track in its entirety. I hope that someday I am driving to/from work, listening to WYEP, and I will hear the original version, and have a surreal experience like, "Hey, there's a remix of my remix of the Paul Simon song!".

I just finished working on a collaboration with a Pittsburgh lyricist/singer, Michael Blackstone. You can hear samples here or on iTunes. He came to me with lyrics for a couple songs, and sent me some files with him singing what is in his head. I wrote music for it, and produced everything here at my home studio. It is also my first project using Addictive Drums, which I can't say enough good things about.

Now that that is done, I'm thinking about and starting to work on my next CD. Like with "Niagara", I don't know what the outcome will be, but I have a direction in mind. I think it will be based around percussion/guitars/violin again, but don't hold me to that. I also have a lot of nice electronic pieces I made in the early 2000's, which I've never released. I would like to get them into the mix as well, but haven't figured out how yet.

If you're looking for a daily dose of contemporary experimental music, my neighbor in Greenfield, Kerrith Livengood,  has a blog where she is making a new piece every day for a year. It's hit or miss, but some are really awesome. My favorites are the flute-based ones (that's her main instrument), but the other day there was a really nice one with poetry and manipulated background noises which I thought had a really nice texture and rhythm. I read about her on the Pittsburgh New Music web site, but it turned out she is a friend of a friend due to her involvement in Alia Musica, which is a local group of composers/players who put on a concert of new music every couple months or so.

Over Christmas, I released a Tea With Warriors single, "Tell Me What You Want", now available at CD Baby and iTunes (iTunes has a generous one and a half minute preview as well). Lyrics by Ben Feldman, and lovely cover photography by Margaret Sharrow.

My friend John Szinger, who was a bandmate in college, and played sax on my song "Happy Monkey", has just put out another CD under his band name "Buzzy Tonic", called "Face the Heat".

Of course I'm biased because I'm friends with the guy, but this is a really excellent piece of work. I haven't seeen him a lot since college (20 years ago), but he's a very energetic, friendly, outgoing guy, but a little bit contemplative and intellectual at the same time. This is apparent when you read his blog and the music reflects it as well. I would describe it as a prog rock/pop/jazz mix. He and his brother Martin also freely admit a heavy influence of Steely Dan, which to my ears manifests itself in the jazzy chords and unusual lyrical themes, but lacking the cynical edge often associated with Becker and Fagan.

John describes the songs himself on his web site but here are my impressions. The CD starts out with an energetic blast of heat with "Heat Wave", which if you knew John, you would say this song sounds exactly like knowing the guy. Hard to explain what that means, so I guess you'll just have to hear it.

"Angel or Alien" is an example of the contemplative nature I mention above, a sci-fi musing with a prog-rock feel, evoking the spooky but beautiful feeling one sometimes gets walking alone at night.

"The Nine" has the prog-rock love of odd meters, and he really makes this flow nicely, and adds in some distant Tolkien-inspired speaking to nice effect.

"Fine Red Wine" is a love song to his wife Jeannie, whom I also know, since they were college sweethearts and she would be present at Infinigon rehearsals, in a non-Yoko kind of way, and offer constructive criticisms, such as coaching us to learn the harmony vocals on "Lucky Man". I like to think that this song was John's response to my song "Universe of You" on Quiet Revolution, which was a love song to my wife. I didn't know the inner workings of their relationship, but apparently Rush and Mexican food were very important!

"Who Can Fool Me" is possibly the angriest you'll hear Szinger get- I forgot to ask him about it, but it reminds me a bit of "The Royal Scam" because of the c-minor electric piano chords and the scam/fooling connection. I wonder if he noticed it too, or deliberately used it.

"Earthbound" does a fantastic job of evoking a cold dreary day emerging from the ground at Times Square, near John's job. John and I are both from Buffalo, and it has a certain resonance for me in the way I think of winter, dreariness and beauty all mixed up together.

"Green Glove" gets the family involved- Jeannie on background vocals, and daughter on flute, I think. Very charming, and I'm glad he decided to persevere in fleshing out the arrangement and keeping it on the CD.

"Making Miles" shows being a prog-rock fan doesn't preclude being able to put together a pretty, pleasant accessible song.

"Touch the Ceiling" is an old Infinigon original that we played back in Buffalo. John did a great job on the vocals, thanks to coaching by me and Diamond Dave- I sent him an mp3 of the isolated vocal track from "Running With the Devil" just for laughs, and suggested he do his vocals in Dave's style. I guess my humour is a little bit too dry, since he took me seriously. However, once I heard what he did, I thought it was great, and told him to keep it even though I had only been joking. I also love the Buffalo/Toronto-specific vocal tag in the fade-out. Perhaps it's a tribute to the mysterious 420-lovin' former Infingon singer Stevie "Tumbleweed" Mineo? Oh, and it has some fantastic guitar work by John Neumann

In my last post I mentioned seeing the group "Victoire" back in August here in Pittsburgh. At the show, I passed on picking up the new CD "Cathedral City" because I was in money-saving mode, but I did put the release date on my calendar, and ordered it the day it came out. well, I got it in the mail, and must say I'm really taken with it. It's been on my iPod for the last couple weeks, and I haven't gotten sick of it yet. Unlike a lot of music, it really holds up to repeated listenings. I'm not sure why I like it so much. It does touch on a few things I like- "organic" sounding composition (by which I mean sounds kind of improvised, even though it isn't), a nice combination of real chamber instruments with well-chosen electronic sounds (not unlike my own music, if I may be immodest for a moment), and a moderately strong Philip Glass influence (I think the bassist is a member of the P.G. Ensemble as well). Actually, listing those things makes me see, duh, of course I like it, since I like all those things.

Victoire and composer/leader Missy Mazzoli have been getting a lot of good press, and it's not just hype. You should check them out.

Wow, it's been awhile since I posted! It's been a busy summer. The first half involved a lot of home repair/improvement during my free time, and the second half was quite a bit more enjoyable, with going to some concerts with friends, and also pretty busy at my day job.

There's some really interesting stuff around Pittsburgh if you know where to look. One event I really enjoyed was one of the monthly "Culture Club" meetups at the Carnegie Museum, back in March. Some contemporary musicians from U. Pitt, led by Roger Zahab, played some new compositions, including some "walking around" improvisations amidst the sculptures. Afterward, still high on some good music and the free drinks, I walked around and looked at some of my favorite paintings and sculptures in the modern part of the museum just before they closed.

In July, my friends and I enjoyed some excellent music from the PIttsburgh New Music Ensemble (www.pnme.org). We managed to get to two of the four concerts this year, which was an improvement over last year when I made it to only one! It's hard to explain why I like this group so much, so please check out their web page and any reviews of their concerts you can find. All I can say is, it's very interesting compositions, played by excellent musicians who love the material (otherwise they wouldn't travel to and stay in Pittsburgh for a month every year), accompanied by very nice visuals, and organized into interesting themes and programs. I look forward to getting to at least three of their concerts next year!

Last month, things slowed down a bit, and I only made it to one concert, of the chamber group "Victoire". The venue was pretty hot and stuffy with no water fountain, but the music was really good. Opening the concert was a unique Pittsburgh act by the name of Midge Crickett, who sings and plays cello and ukelele. I recommend checking out her song "The Menstrosity" for a good laugh.

You can read about Victoire, PNME, and other Pittsburgh New Music Events at http://www.pittsburghnewmusicnet.com. Be sure to click on the links to the individual groups listed, since there are sometime events that haven't yet posted to the newmusicnet web site.

I've also been cruising the music classifieds on Craig's List, looking for collaborators, and people to play with just for fun. So far I've talked to someone who wants to get together and work on new age/cinematic/mellow guitar music, and another person who is putting together a KISS cover band to play on the weekends. I've been having fun learning the Ace Frehley solos that seemed so intimidating when I was 10 and first picked up the guitar. I'm thinkin of putting together some instructional YouTube videos to show how to play some of the solos I've learned in the last couple weeks. That should be fun!

A couple weeks ago I got a new guitar, an Ibanez AF75 hollow-body electric. You can see me doing my Steve Howe impression on Youtube.

A few years ago, I was obsessed with Yes' "Tales From Topographic Oceans" album. A lot of people (especially music critics) really put it down for being long-winded. I would have to agree that it is long- the first time I listened to it, I thought, "this is a lot of aimless noodling". I put it away and didn't listen to it for another 5 years, when on a long car ride through the hills of Kentucky at sunset it all made sense. There are a lot of beautiful themes running through it, and I found that after several listens, those themes became like landmarks on a long journey, and with familiarity, the trip becomes more enjoyable.

In 2006 and 2007, I chose my favorite themes from "Tales" (and one non-"Tales" Yes song- can you spot what it is?), and arranged them as a string quartet. I recorded the individual parts at home, playing the violins myself, and using a pitch-shifting plugin on the violin to get the viola sound. The cello is just a sampled cello, so sounds a bit artificial. Recently, I got a convolution reverb plugin, and I convolved everything with an impulse response from the Concertbegouw, to make it sound like I'm playing in a great hall in Amsterdam. That's also me doing the chant on "The Ancient".

I sometimes fantasize that David Harrington and the Kronos Quartet would want to play it- I think it may be too conventional for them, but on the other hand I think I remember hearing in his interview on "Echoes" that David Harrington is a prog fan. So who knows.

Here are the mp3's, free to distribute. The score and parts are available upon request.

The Revealing (Science of God)

The Remembering

The Ancient

Ritual

Back in 1983 or so, there was a television show I used to watch on a station from Ontario called "Bits and Bytes", starring Luba Goy and Billy Van. It was all about computers (mostly the Apple II and the Commodore PET, I think), which I was just getting interested in, and had a really cool theme song, done all with analog synths. There are videos available on YouTube of segments of this show which are fun to watch if you want to relive the early 80's.

I made my own cover of the theme song, which I'm posting here. I'm trying to improve my production, mixing and mastering skills, so if anyone has any comments about that (not my singing- I already know that sucks) I'd like to hear.

Monday night, I saw Jane Siberry perform in someone's living room on Wilkins Ave- 5 feet in front of me, excellent acoustics- dissembling and reassembling songs on the fly, mixing in stories. I'm still getting my head wrapped around it all. What a beautiful voice up close with no electronics in between. And Brad Yoder, a fellow Pittsburgher and her opening act, was excellent as well!

I went up to her afterward, and mentioned I was the guy that wrote to her a few years ago. Here's the email:

Hi Jane,

   I'm looking forward to hearing "Lily". That's the perfect

name for a Jane album

  Anyway, I have a white Ford Tempo. My wife likes to call it

"the raft", as in "The White Car the Raft".

Anyway, "The White Tent The Raft" just came up on random play on

my iPod, so I thought it a sign I should write you and tell you

this.

Cheers,

John

her answer:

Thanks, John.

I hope you are doing well.

The White Car The Raft

Gears of Motile.

I got a big kick out of that- TWTTR is probably my favorite Siberry song, and it is the first one I ever heard (way back in Buffalo, in a turbulent romantic relationship), and which made me an instant fan. So having custom lyrics written for me, even if it was only three words, was quite an honor.

Anyway, she didn't remember this email exchange. She just said "You and your wife must be good with words", and that was it. So I finished my chocolate chip cookie, went over and bought a couple Brad Yoder CD's, and headed out.