We arrived at the Charlottesville studio last night just after sunset. This place exceeds my expectations so far. It's beautiful, comfortable and has everything you need, but it's not overly lavish or excessive. It's perfect actually.
We spent last night getting set up and getting initial sounds. Today we started tracking in earnest. We started with a song called Cold Mountains, which we learned from the singing of a woman named Texas Gladden.
We're now working on a song called Calvary. We learned this one from Dock Boggs and shifted the melody by one beat in relation to the accompaniment to give it a really funky syncopation. Greg got the idea from his mother who's a dance instructor here in Charlottesville, VA. Her young dance students often mistakenly count things one beat off but the result is really hip.
Although the photo in this post could be a future portrait of Greg and Aoife, it's actually Dock Boggs and an unnamed woman.
I'm in Brooklyn, NY getting my things together to drive to Charlottesville, VA. Today is arrival day at the recording studio retreat. I'll be there for the next 10 days with Crooked Still and producer Gary Paczosa. I'm really excited about the new material we've worked up and can't wait to get going bringing it to life. 10 days is a lot of time and it'll be nice to hopefully not feel the time crunch as much as a normal studio experience.
On another note, I'd like to send an internet shout out to my good friends in the fine Vermont based band, Nightingale. Their new CD, Jolie, is fantastic! I've listened to it three times in a row this morning and it's been the perfect thing to get me in the mood to make music. Nightingale is one of the few bands I can think of where the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts and they are a source of constant inspiration. If you haven't heard them, you should. www.nightingalevt.org. You won't be disapointed.
I'm reinstating this blog effective immediately. I started blogging almost two years ago while in the recording studio with my band, Crooked Still. Next week we're heading back into the studio, which reminded me that I had retired from blogging last April. So like Michael Jordan, Lance Armstrong and Brett Favre, I'm coming out of retirement in honor of the big studio push.
Next week, I'll be heading down to Charlottesville, VA with Crooked Still and producer/engineer Gary Paczosa (Alison Krauss, Dolly Parton, Dixie Chicks) to an amazing the retreat recording studio just outside of town. Keep an eye out here for news from the studio as it develops. It should be a blast!
Since I'm getting back in the swing of things here, I'd also like to take this opportunity to tell AT&T to officially fuck off for providing shitty cell phone coverage in my neighborhood, coming up with a lame solution to the problem with their Microcell product and then not even allowing me the choice to participate in said lame solution by not offering the product here in the fine state of Vermont.
I just finished a great Crooked Still tour. 9 gigs. 9 days. 2500 miles pulling a trailer. No nervous breakdowns parking in NYC. It was an amazing tour. We started in Princeton, NJ where we played for Brittany Haas's senior recital. It was so much fun and her duets with Dan Trueman were magical. We also had great shows in Toronto, Ann Arbor, Brooklyn, D.C. and a sold out hometown show at the Somerville Theatre in Somerville, MA. Check it out:
I'm now in Vail, CO skiing with my siblings, who live out here. Traveling out here without a bass made me realize that people who complain about flying are full of shit. Unless they are traveling with a baby.
There was 14 inches of snow last night and today was a pretty amazing powder day. Check out my brother Paul's wind blown look after having his hat torn off in a glade. Looking good, Paul.
I'm off for a couple of weeks until Crooked Still plays a show in Rosendale, NY with our friends Mike and Ruthy on April 3rd and then on April 4th in Putney, VT with Sam Amidon. Should be a nice break.
Speaking of Sam Amidon, he has an amazing SXSW recap that was published in Time Out New York.
That's all for now.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
I've gotten so caught up in my real life that I have completely lost sight of cyber life. It's time to set things straight.
What's new you ask? Well, I can ski and so can my friends in the Infamous Stringdusters. Here is some footage of us skiing in Big Sky, MT. I'm in the green jacket about 50 seconds in and am the first in the video to hurl myself off of a cliff!
I can also Twitter. Or is it Tweet? I'm still new at this.
Today is election day and I am posting here with the single purpose of urging you to vote for Barack Obama for President of the United States. Our country will be better for it. Here are a few videos that I find inspiring:
According to the Washington Post, Gov. Sarah Palin said this at a fundraiser in Greensboro, NC:
"We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation."
I wonder if she'd think this fine video featuring friends Dirk Powell, Christine Balfa and Linzay Young is pro-America? I certainly do!
If you've never been to Louisiana, go now. It's one of the most unique and wonderful cultural experiences you can have in this country. And the food isn't bad either.
Contrary to rumors you may have heard, I did not open my own bar and I do still have a blog.
What's my excuse for such a long absence? Mostly procrastination but also a good deal of general laziness.
For the first time since April, I have a full week at home. That's right, I haven't been at my home for more than four consecutive days since April 28th. I'm now looking at eight days in a row. I'm not sure such a drastic change is healthy so I was thinking I should load my car up with all of my gear and drive around for a few hours and then unload it all just to ease into things a little. A couple of days of that and I'll be ready to jump back into domestic life!
Seriously though, I'm back in Brattleboro after a ten day tour in the south that started with a few Crooked Still gigs and ended with a week of shows with Lissa Schneckenburger and Owen Marshall. It was a great run and we got to visit with lots of old friends.
We concluded the tour with an amazing show at Pete's Candy store, our favorite Brooklyn venue. We played the late set and after the show we all crowded around the TV in the bar to see our friends, Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, Jake Silver and Ruthy Merenda perform with Pete Seeger on Letterman. It was truly amazing. Here it is:
Here are some more videos and photos to get you caught up on some things I've been up to this summer.
On Mountain Stage
The Alberta Street Pub, Portland, OR
On another note, you should all go out and buy Mark Erelli's new CD, Delivered.
I think it is his finest work to date and in the singer songwriter world, he is a beacon of light in a shit storm of mediocrity.
And you also need to hear Charlie Haden's new CD, Rambling Boy.
I've been trying to sound exactly like Charlie Haden ever since I first heard his bass playing with Ornette Coleman. His new project is a country album that features the amazing singing of his three daughters as well as Ricky Skaggs, Bruce Hornsby, Rosanne Cash, Pat Metheny and an unbelievable version of Old Joe Clark sung by Charlie's son in law, Jack Black. You heard me, the star of School of Rock, High Fidelity and founding member of Tenacious D is now singing old-time music with jazz legends. It's a strange strange world.
After an amazing three night traveling triple bill with the Infamous Stringdusters and Chatham County Line, I'm now in Boston for four shows at Club Passim with Crooked Still.
Last night was the first night and it was probably my favorite show with the new lineup to date. Playing at Passim is always special for us and this being the first Boston area show with Brittany and Tristan it was even more memorable.
Check out this clip of Neil Young's "Helpless" from show at the Bowery two nights ago.
The other big news is that Crooked Still now owns a cargo trailer to haul our gear around. I was really excited about this but let me tell you, parking a trailer in New York City is no picnic! The good news is that we now have tons of room in the van for an entourage!
That's all for now. I'm off to buy an iPhone. I might try my hand at some live blogging from the stage. Not sure how the logistics of playing the bass and surfing the web at the same time will work.
For those of you wondering what it's like to travel with a double bass, here's a photo taken at the Kirkwall airport in the Orkney Islands.
After an amazing tour in Denmark with Lissa, I met up with Crooked Still for the start of our summer CD release tour. Still Crooked, our third CD and first with new members Brittany Haas and Tristan Clarridge will be officially released on June 24th, but we decided to jump the gun and make it a world tour by spending a month in Europe before heading back home for festival season.
After Denmark the next stop was the Orkney Islands for the amazing Orkney Folk Festival. The lineup at this festival was amazing and we got to collaborate with our friends Kris Drever and Eamonn Coyne as well was Irish music powerhouse Solas and English folk singer Martin Simpson. Martin blew me away with his version of Little Musgrave, a song I perform with Lissa quite often. Here I am sitting in with Kris and Eamonn at one of the concerts.
It was an amazing time and I don't think any member of Crooked Still went to bed before six AM for the entire festival. It never really gets completely dark in Orkney this time of year which I think helps with the party stamina.
In an odd stroke of luck, the weather was perfect for the four days we were there and we were able take an epic 12 mile bike ride out to see some incredible standing stones and a 5000 year old village called Scara Brae. This place is older than Stonehenge and the Great Wall of China! Not to mention these things are huge!
After Orkney, we headed back to mainland Scotland for some gigs in Glasgow, Edinburgh and a quick trip down to Newcastle, England. Here's us at BBC Scotland after performing live on a radio show.
Except for our excursion to England, we relied entirely on public transportation for this portion of the trip, which is no small accomplishment with a double bass, cello, 5 people and all of our gear!
Here's slightly dark, but nice sounding clip of us at our Newcastle show.
We're now in Ireland and have had a great week of gigs! We also had a day off where we were able to hike out through a cow pasture to get a view of the Cliffs of Moher from the south, away from all the tourists. Ireland is a pretty stunning place.
We're here for two more nights and then head straight to California for a few shows! Check out the brand spanking new Crooked Still website for details. www.crookedstill.com
There are tumbleweeds blowing across my blog! Sorry for the lack of activity here the past few weeks. I'm back.
I spent the past week playing at the Shetland Folk Festival with Lissa Schneckenburger and now we are starting a week of gigs all around Denmark. Once again, we are joined by Keith Murphy on Guitar and Stefan Amidon on drums.
The Shetland Folk Festival lasts 5 days and is sandwiched between twelve hour long, over night ferry rides from Aberdeen to Shetland and back. All the performers for the festival are on the ferry together, so it's a huge party from the start. Here's a typical daily itinerary at the festival:
3:00 PM - Ride bus with four other bands to a remote village 4:00 PM - Sound check for concert 7:30 PM - Concert 11:30 PM - Ride bus back to Lerwick (the biggest town in Shetland) 12:00 AM - Party at the festival club. Huge sessions, dance parties, late night concerts 4:00 AM - Festival club closes, head to house party. More sessions etc. 7:00 AM - Breakfast 8:00 AM - Head to pub. More sessions and wackiness.
Stumble home sometime between 8:30 AM and noon.
And this goes on for FIVE DAYS STRAIGHT!!!! It's insane.
Even though Americans are not cut of for this level of partying, we put in a solid showing. We really bonded with the great French Canadian band, Le Vent Du Nord, and shared the stage with them a few times. Shetlanders are known for their fiddle playing and partying stamina but the Quebecois boys gave them a run for their money and did us proud. It was a blast.
Here's a couple youtube clips of us at one of the shows:
Shetland is also insanely beautiful in a kind spare and stark way. This is the typical look of the countryside.
Tons of sheep, puffins, seals and of course, Shetland Ponies!
I really love coming to Europe to play, but I have to say the one thing that drives me up the wall is the currency. Don't get me wrong, I love that all of the bills are different colors and that these days as the American dollar continues to tank, it's like getting a pay raise over here, but the amount of change I end up with is staggering. My pockets are always loaded with fistfuls of change! And the coins here are freaking heavy. I guess they don't call them pounds for nothing!
I just received this email from some friends who are performing in a month long Irish dance show in the mid-west. To protect the innocent, I'm changing the names and details, but you'll get the idea. It sounds amazing and bizarre. Here's the recap I received:
We are part of an Irish dance show that runs for 5 weeks and goes like this:
1) Fire dance + pretty girl dancers skipping around with bright orange scarves 2) Michael-Flatley-Riverdance-knock-off moment with boy dancer 3) Band number: two trad Irish tunes, goes into reggae groove in the middle 4) Mark comes out as emcee in green velvet jacket with gold sparkles 5) More music: Mark & Sharon sing a song, there's harp moment and bouzouki feature 6) Dance challenge! Mark introduces the contestants wrestler-style... 7) Square dance (hearing Mark say "allemande left, and around you go," is priceless) 8) GOSPEL NUMBER! Sharon & Liza, dressed in white bridal-style gowns (I am not kidding...) sing a glory-hallelujah-televangelist song. This is supposed to be a slick "Irish Gospel" number, whatever that means. This is an amazing and FIERCE dodgy moment. It's definitely my favorite part of the the show. 9) Finale, complete with percussive a cappella dance line
Oh, and shows begin at 11am--and the theater is full from the first show. It might seat 2,000? Not sure there... At each show I get one or two religious pamphlets, or Books of John.
Ok. I admit it. I have a google alert set for my name and the names of every band and project I am associated with. Lame? Perhaps. Self indulgent? Most definitely.
Anyway, this just appeared in my inbox and comes from the Sunday Times in London. I thought I'd share it with you since Crooked Still is part of it and a large chunk of the piece is about my good friend and sometimes neighbor, Sam Amidon.
I just got back from a run of shows in Maine and Boston with Lissa Schneckenburger! It was a great little warmup tour getting us ready for a bunch of CD release shows next month, which will celebrate the release of her new CD entitled "Song." Here's what it looks like:
One of the shows was a house concert in Camden, ME at the home of Tess Gerritsen who is a New York Times best selling author! Traveling around as a musician, you meet a lot of relatively successful and famous musicians, but it's not everyday you meet an author whose work is consistently listed with genre fiction heavyweights such as Stephen King, Tom Clancy and Michael Crichton! She's also a pretty damn good fiddle player!
I love artist residencies at venues. Giving a musician a weekly time slot for a set period of time where they can be loose, experiment with new material or new collaboration and simply play music they would otherwise not play if it were a typical gig. I think that sometimes musicians, myself included, get too caught up in putting on a "show" and forget to be spontaneous and relaxed and play for the sake of playing. A residency allows a musician to get away from their typical thing in a format that gives the audience a glimpse into their creative process.
I've recently been a part of two fantastic residencies in Boston. I mentioned a couple of posts ago being a part of Rose Polenzani's Sub Rosa series which is a residency of sorts and last Saturday night I played a bit with fiddler Hanneke Cassel at her late night residency at Club Passim. It was a blast and great to see and hear Hanneke in some different musical settings than her usual trio!
In honor of my love for the absentee ballot, which I cast here in Vermont a week ago, I have posted a video of Crooked Still rehearsing "The Absentee" in the studio! I hope you like it. Please get out and vote!
People love Bluegrass. I mean, I love bluegrass too, but some people love it so much that they'll park themselves in a hotel lobby for four days straight, in the middle of February, and play music with everyone and anyone who comes through the door.
Indoor bluegrass festivals such as Wintergrass in Tacoma, WA generate a kind of hive mentality, with musicians and fans swarming to listen to and play as much music as they possibly can before they have to go back into hiding before the summer months. I think because it is indoors and the frenetic energy can't escape outside, it creates a sort of human equivalent to sonic feedback. It's actually pretty cool.
Anyway, Wintergrass was an amazing time! It was Crooked Still's first festival appearance with the new lineup and it went great. We had Casey Driessen filling in for Brittany Haas on fiddle (she's in panama studying sloths or something). For a cool review of our set check out www.festivalpreviewblog.blogspot.com. Here's the view of Mt. Rainier from my hotel room:
I also heard some great music, the highlight of which was a late night jam session in a hotel room with Darol Anger, Mike Marshall and the Swedish band Vasen.
Before heading to Tacoma we were in Big Sky, Montana a week earlier where our ride to the airport was a SUV stretch limo! As if the SUV wasn't obnoxious enough, someone had to create this beast:
I have to say, it was pretty awesome to ride in it!
Other than all the great music at Wintergrass, the high point of the weekend was taking a trip with Aoife O'Donovan, Kimber Ludiker and Margaret Glaspy up to Seattle to an espresso place called Vivace. Seriously, there is no better espresso in the country. If you are within a hundred mile radius of Seattle, you have to go!
mmm, mmm.
I also got to visit the Fremont troll, which is very cool, if not a little creepy. That's a real VW bug it's holding on to.
This week I went into Boston to participate in Rose Polenzani's crazy monthly event at the Lizard Lounge called Sub Rosa. It is sort of a curated open mic. Well, actually, it's more of a closed mic, but I think that's a good thing. Different people get up and sing a song or two and nobody knows it and you have to learn it on the fly. It's awesome and so is Rose. Check her out at www.rosepolenzani.com.
I decided to take a couple weeks off from the old blog while I went on my honeymoon. Nothing says romance like wireless internet, but I decided it was best to spend my time enjoying the Caribbean islands of St. Croix and St. Thomas with my wife, rather than with my eyes glued to my laptop screen.
The trip was a honeymoon for a week or so which then morphed into a gig/island vacation with Wild Asparagus on St. Croix. Both events were a huge success!
I think it's a bit tacky to blog about my honeymoon so here's my thoughts on the working vacation portion of the trip!
St. Croix is a cool island with amazing beaches, outrageous snorkeling, a rain forest, and a vibrant local culture. It's also home to a very cool kind of music called Quelbe. Here's what wikipedia has to say.
I got to hear an amazing set by a musician named Jamesie Brewster. There are varying reports, but everyone is pretty sure that he is between 80 and 90 years old. When I saw him and his band, they started playing at about 9:45 pm and Jamesie wore dark sunglasses the entire time. He's now my hero. Needless to say, he sounded amazing, as did his band. Here's a youtube video about him and Quelbe music.
A percussionist named Juni Bamba, who used to play with Jamesie, sat in with Wild Asparagus for a few nights. We ran into him one day on our way home from a beach on the west side of the island and he informed us that he had just acquired a four foot tall drum that "sounds like thunder!" Here he is with said thunder drum.
I'm now in Big Sky, Montana for the Big Sky, Big Grass festival with Crooked Still. Tim O'Brien, who recently sang a harmony part on the new Crooked Still CD, is also here, as well as our good friends the Infamous Stringdusters. It's been a blast so far!
Those of you who know me, know that skiing is my favorite thing to do, so to say that I am excited about the 40 inches of snow Big Sky has received in the past week is an understatement. The skiing has been amazing! My camera battery died on the slopes today but here is picture of me from last year at this event!
Also, my good friend and fellow blogger Sam Amidon got a mention in the current issue of the New Yorker. Way to go, Sam! He is mentioned briefly in a piece about composer Nico Muhly, who did all the orchestral arrangements for Sam's new CD, All Is Well. It's a great story and you should all read it. Sam's CD is amazing and so is his coop blog, www.speakpeppery.com. You should buy his CD and read his blog too.
After three different flights and 30 hours of total travel time, I finally made it to Scotland! My bass and luggage however were lucky enough to spend an extra night in London. Thank you American Airlines.
Celtic Connections was amazing. I played two fantastic Concerts with Lissa Schneckenburger. We also taped a performance for Scottish television which will air sometime later in the spring. The band for this festival was Keith Murphy on guitar, Stefan Amidon on percussion, me on bass and of course, Lissa on fiddle and vocals.
It's really great to play with Keith, Stefan and Lissa. I think we really play well together and we performed a lot of music from Lissa's new CD, which has just been finished up and will be released in April.
The first night we opened up for the wonderful Irish singer, Heidi Talbot. It was a great show. The venue was a beautiful converted church here in Glasgow. It seems that this city is filled with one stunning venue after another. Check it out.
Scotland does have some odd food though. Everyone knows about haggis, but I discovered this on a menu:
Rumbledethumps? What the hell is that? Seriously, that's the weirdest, most non-descriptive name for food I have ever seen. At first I thought is was some sort of inside joke to puzzle Americans, but it turns out it's mashed potatoes with cabbage and onions in it. It was actually pretty darn tasty. Here's some more information on this delightful cultural cuisine.
The other surprising thing that Scotland has a lot of: Starbucks. Within three blocks of our hotel in Glasgow there were four Starbucks. Seriously. Now don't get me wrong, I'm thankful to have reliable espresso while in the UK, but this was a bit out of hand. Considering it's so hard to find decent coffee in Europe (Italy excluded of course) I was thinking that some of these could perhaps be more evenly disbursed throughout the EU.
Much of the fun of this festival is the late night party. After all of the concerts are over everyone convenes at the hotel where there is a festival club. Bands play informal short sets there and inevitably, you find yourself up until dawn playing music and hanging out. Here's me and tenor banjo whiz, Eamon Coyne getting a good start.
We even managed to keep Keith up until the wee hours, which is no small feat. Here's the proof.
The highlight of the festival for me was a concert by the Swedish band, Vasen. I think that this was the most exciting musical performance i have ever seen. Seriously amazing. It was as close to perfection as it can get. I was blown away, inspired, and humbled by their performance.
