Monday, October 19, 2009

hello there,
pretty excited about this week starting tonight...i'm playing with a lot of my most longstanding bands - - -monday night (19th)10:30pm at the clown lounge w/ fat kid wednesdays,
tuesday night(20th) at the kitty cat klub w/ james buckley trio
thursday night at the uptown bar w/ alpha consumer(we play last)
friday night is the pines cd release party for "tremolo" at the cedar cultural center!

hope you all are well!
more soon.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

heres me with the pines playing in studio at 89.3 the current a couple weeks ago:

Sunday, October 4, 2009

things are happening

hi there,
just a quick note to let people know what i've been up too. most recently played a great concert at macphail center for music, with adam linz(new macphail jazz coordinator) and chris thomson, adam played some solo bass, and we played some trio. i love playing the antonello hall, the performance space at the new macphail building.
last week, i was in iowa city at minstrel studio working on pieta brown's new record for red house. i am a huge fan of pieta, and was honored that she asked me to play on the record. bo ramsey, john penner, and steve hayes rounded out the band(double drums!!!)
the other thing i'm most excited about is the new pines record "tremolo" out recently on red house records. we'll be playing a big cd release show at the cedar cultural center on october 23rd, hope you can make it out!

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

well i haven't written anything in months after high hopes of getting this going on a regular basis.
now i'm experiencing major jet lag in france after already having been here for almost a week.
i was fine for the first few days and starting last night, i can't sleep more than an hour or two consecutively so i figured i'd haul my ass over here on the blog and start writing. only so much space ghost coast to coast you can watch on youtube until boredom really sets in. its interesting in this age of distractions ie bored-tube, face-time eater, my-page won't loadspace is that i'm slowly realizing that it these things don't really stimulate my brain at all. of course you can dig around youtube and watch some video of someone showing you how-to, or giving a lecture, or what not, and of course there are things that you can learn, but really really in the end all you are doing is sitting idle and watching other humans do stuff...pretty weird. same sorts of things that make me so upset at millions of people watching "reality tv" which has to be one of the most depressing things ever...what does it take to inspire people to be active whether mentally or physically?
all i hope and dream of is that if someone watches and hears me play music, that they are hopefully somehow inspired to go and do what it is that they love to do as much as i love to play music. i don't care too much about the end product of things, which certainly puts me in a weird spot in this day and age, especially in the music world, which is chock full of stupid marketing, and advertising crap with hardly any focus at all on the fact that creativity inspires creativity.
i go on myspace which is a great tool for hearing music from all over the world that i've never heard and being able to communicate with people that i hear and i'm inundated with the same dumb 5 "famous" "musicians" that i see and hear on tv and at the big game and i'm tired of it and i'm sure a lot of other people are too, but my point is not to bring lesser known people to the forefront, my point is that we are missing the fact that so many people have so much to say in so many creative ways. as we get older we develop opinions of what "fits" or "how its supposed to be" or even worse "well, this is the way it works in this world"....its all bullshit. its all of us buying into some bullshit that some over paid ad jerk decided was super neato that week, and now everyone is supposed to join up. fuck advertising and the people who do it. bill hicks was right. i come from a town where there is a lot of that and i'm sick of hearing about it, and sick of the general conciousness saying that it is important, and that it is a cool thing to get involved with, and that it is a great way to use your music talents and or other creative talents.
200 years ago, with much less advertising, i'd venture to say there were a lot more people who did a lot more creative things with their time when they weren't working. its sad to me that someone who might have been an amazing artist in the 1700's is now called a "creative" at an ad agency and is definitely paid more to way more money than someone who teaches children, and that their creative outlet is really just used as a tool to sell some shit. guess what, people buy tons of shit anyway, it almost seems pointless to me, but i'm no expert in socio-marketing crap, so please don't get upset with me, its just my opinion. and fine if thats your job, i understand that everyone needs to work, but that doesn't mean that you can 't spend time when you're not working, doing something creative for yourself and for the world so as to inspire others to do what they love as well......

now on to cymbals. i have just purchased a new istanbul agop 19"turk jazz ride from tony at cymbalsonly.com....i bought it with the band in mind that i am now on tour with for one month(francois corneloups "next") and it is working out great. its a light cymbal but its unlathed so it has more presence to my ears than a light lathed cymbal...its got a really trashy thing while still being defined enough. . .thanks tony! and thanks Agop!!! they are really making some beeeeuuuutiful cymbals over there at istanbul agop these days. they always have, but it seems they've kicked it up a few notches and they've been stealing away some pretty amazing drummers from that other really famous cymbal company, which tells me they must be really making some nice shit. so for the tour i'm using that, and an older 19" istanbul agop mel lewis crash/ride, and my old standbys 14" paiste traditional hihats. its amazing how cymbals become even more important to me on tour when i'm subject to whatever backline kit is provided(although so far, i've got some great backline juju, 2 vintage sonor rosewood 18,12,14's so far!!!!) ((one of my dream drumsets)) also if anyone cares, i brought along my 1950's 6.5x14 WFL snare drum that i love!!!
alright. i'm totally outta here for now.