I had the opportunity to play two wonderful shows this week, both with Amanda Jo Williams.
The first was held at a place called the Echo Country Outpost, which co-owner Chris insists is “not a venue”! What it is, is, is a funky little store on Echo Park Blvd (corner of Duane, out past Chango a ways) that I couldn’t tell exactly what they sell but I am certain it is cool, whatever it is.
For the occasion (perhaps the first show held there? perhaps it will be a monthly event from here out?) a stage existed at the back of the main room, on which played first a group (in this instance a duo tho sometimes they are larger) called Verb The Adjective Noun. Originally from Boston, temporarily not living in their bus, they were very tight and propulsive, not just for a duo but all around. One of them played guitar and sang, and the other played guitar, banjo and lap steel with equal and impressive facility. Good vocal harmonies. Rootsy without spilling either too far into tradition or too far into singer-songwriter ickiness.
The headliners, Abilene of whom I believe set up the show, were called Sundays Soundtrack. They had a wonderful upright bassist and two wonderful women and they were vibey and moody and harmonistic and bouyant and I enjoyed them a lot.
We played in between.
So, a little show in a little store, but there were at least 60 people in there which made it FULL, and I don’t think I’d ever met more than a half dozen of them before. We had a rough set, new bass player (he did a fine job, but it was his first show with us) and tuning issues for me and Amanda, but the people really dug it, they laughed with us not at us and by the end we had a wonderful energy going, the best energy I’ve felt in a room yet at a Los Angeles show. Score one for Echo Country!
…
OK, and then last night we played at the Echo Curio, which is very possibly my favorite in-town venue to play at. It’s run by the awesome Grant-and-Justin dynamic duo, there’s an amazing stream of art that passes across the walls and a room full of weird records for cheap, we played at the top of a bill of ridiculously talented women (which was a new and wonderful context to hear Amanda’s music in) and once again a room full of 60 total strangers and a few good friends just dug us to death, kept us going for an extra tune or so past what Amanda had intended to play. Let me tell you, we felt GOOD. And the new bass, upright Jef Hogan (with one ‘f’), really makes it.
Also on the bill last night were Fort King (who I didn’t get to hear cos I was eating a burrito next door, but they were very nice) … Beliss, a duo of sisters (I am told) whose vocal harmonies are unusual and beautiful and who feature lush acoustic guitar voicings and electric-upright bass-playing to die for. Or at least to swoon about … and Ora Cogan, who might be a cosmic parallel to Elizabeth Cotton or Karen Dalton, who sings like no one else I’ve heard (beautifully, swoopingly, in a round and full voice) and who coaxes lovely rich tones from an electric hollowbody Gibson tuned in an array of unusual manners.
Solid week.
Tune in later for the weather!
featuring Woody (acoustic guitar) and 5-Track (acoustic guitar)
For the evening of March 4 we assembled a group including Jef Hogan (electric bass), Jon Franco (drums), Jennifer Ng (percussion), Woody (acoustic guitar) and myself (acoustic wah-wah guitar).
I had one rehearsal with Jef and John (who also play bass and drums for Greg Franco’s Rough Church), one run-through with Woody, and a loose jam with Jennifer, in the few days before the show. Many of the band members had not met each other until they arrived at the venue. This is less unusual for me than might be suspected.
Viento y Agua in Long Beach is a “coffee house” with wonderful energy, constantly changing art on the walls, the occasional model skeleton, many books, and a warm and inviting stage (and sound system) which was conceived and assembled by Angie Evans. I’ve played a few shows there, by myself and also with Cricket and with Amanda, and every time I’ve felt good and played well.
This was the first time I’d played some of this material in a long time, and the first time I’d ever played some of it with a band. The two acoustic guitars kept the energy closer to the ground than usual, and the songs and improvs worked together for a change instead of fighting for space. The existence of dual percussionists also contributed to the effortless momentum of this group’s sound. We had momentum without frightful velocity.
Good show. Hope we do it again.
I’m doing some work for a friend.
It’s unusual work, for me, lately. I am proof-reading a forthcoming book release for Tarpaulin Sky. I used to do this with my own work, with that of my friends, and once with a lengthy book in the true crime genre, written by my father, which is called Stalemate. But it’s been a while since I did all that. I don’t try to publish my own writing, when there is any, and besides I would probably ask Zinnia to do the proofreading if I had any that needed to be done.
I am enjoying the work. Partly, because it is interesting work. Editing. Spotting the flaws in something and getting rid of them so it can be what it set out to be. Partly, because it is an interesting book. More on that later, when it is out and you can buy it and find out for yourself. Let’s say it this way: I am not sure that I would have read this book were I not proofreading it. But I am glad that I am reading it, and I would recommend this book to anyone that likes innovative, strange, or offbeat short fiction that is not entirely abstract or deliberately nauseating.
But I’m not going to tell you what it is. Not until it is out, and you can buy it and find out for yourself.
*
Meanwhile, I am recording an album with a band called Rough Church. Rough Church is led by Greg Franco. Greg plays the guitar, writes songs, and sings. He’s been doing this for years. We met sometime last year and he asked me to play with his band and help record their new album. I said OK. The other band members are Jef Hogan (bass) and Jon Franco (drums). Jon and Greg are cousins.
We’re recording in Echo Park, which is where I live, which is very convenient. We rehearse in Washington Heights, which is further away but not prohibitively so. Greg has a nice place with a fine view and the air up on his hill is always clear.
The engineer working on the album, in whose studio we are recording, is brilliant. He is doing amazing work. I can barely think sometimes because my ears are so finely tuned and Andrew Bush (the engineer) has ears which are even more finely tuned than my own. But it doesn’t seem to bother him. He’s had his own studio for time which can be measured in decades (at least one-and-a-half of them, I believe) and he knows how to get great sounds out of it.
He also knows how to nudge sounds around digitally to make a better take out of a few not so good ones. This is probably a good skill to have, and he is applying it effectively with us, but I also feel that this is a good skill not to overuse. I am not saying that Andrew overuses this skill, and in fact his results so far with Rough Church have been brilliant. I have no complaints. But I am keeping an eye.
Greg thinks that Andrew made some minor digital changes in one of my guitar solos on one of our songs. I have mixed feelings about this. If I played badly but he liked the ideas and thinks he can make something good out of them, then I am all for it. But if I played something deliberately and well that just sounds a little off to finely-tuned ears (and I am wont to do such a thing as that) then I want to hear it the way I played it.
I have listened to the track where Greg says this happened, before and after versions, and I don’t hear the difference. I will ask Greg to point it out to me, and if I hear a problem I will make a note of it. But on fairly close listening I don’t hear it, myself.
*
So what Andrew appears to have done, if anything, is a bit like what I am doing: proofreading.
When a writer (or a guitar player) likes to work in a style that is not specifically normal all the time, then it is not always apparent where a comma should go, or whether or not a musical phrase is off-time.
Proofreading. A word which sounds to me increasingly like a stifled sneeze. I have to get familiar enough with the writer’s style to know when she meant to do things a certain way and when she just got excited and distracted by what she was writing and overlooked a few details.
With any luck, Andrew is doing the same thing with my guitar solos. And with any luck, he and I are both good enough at our jobs to know how to leave it alone when it should be left alone and also to make the correct changes when necessary to bring out the purest possible flowering of the artist’s original intent.
I am not used to having my guitar solos proofread. I would think that a writer would be more comfortable with this, as it goes with the territory pretty much from day one. Then again, even as a writer I have had my issues with proofreaders. I often feel that they do not understand me or my intentions. I don’t think there’s a good or bad to it, but regardless of whether I am writing or playing the guitar, I think one of my aims would have to be to do it well enough in the first place that proofreading is unnecessary.
I have been reading this:
Body Language, by Mark Cunningham
It’s the kind of language play that I like to make Lady Z read for voiceover practice, or to look at on airplanes, or to read out loud to unsuspecting visitors over tea and psychedelic music. I think stuff like this is a hoot, though the humor that I see is often not so much in what is being said as it is in the way it is being said.
In this case, the language is organized according to body parts on the one hand and, I believe, letters and numbers on the other. (It’s a 2-sided book, y’unnerstand.)
I’m not sure I always agree with the perspective being expressed - in that I’m often not entirely sure what the perspective is that is being expressed - but the use of words is really delicious (the way it is being said, again). I’m taking it slow, about 40 pages into the BODY half (and it’s taken me a month or more to get there) but I’m already enjoying revisiting certain bits as I flip through looking for the place where I left off, or trying to determine which half of the book is which.
Click here for more
information about Mark Cunningham’s Body Language
directly from the mouth of the publisher,
which is to say:
Tarpaulin Sky Press
dig it,
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** NOTE: I am so far enjoying the LANGUAGE or “Primer” half of this book somewhat more than I did the BODY half … perhaps it is the subject matter? The style is equally compelling, but the content is less gooshy and somewhat less fatalistic (or so it seems to me … perhaps it is merely less inspiring of fatalism in my particular psyche? a question best left to the experts …) Whatever, “Primer” rocks.
I am greatly honored (again) to have my work listened to, dug, and raved about by the Arch-Drude himself, Julian Cope. You can read his rant here, about 2/3 down the page:
http://www.headheritage.com/addressdrudion/129/2010/
Among other things, he says that this disc “showcases both 5-Track’s role as natural instrumentalist freebluesman, but tends to overlook/underplay his excellence as a singer of freaked out-yet-enlightened field holler,” which is a WONDERFUL thing to hear. He also says, and this might even be better: “What I rarely get sent – and what makes 5-Track so unique – are songs of such calibre as ‘Floating Around’, ‘It Could Be Time’, ‘Hot Potato Pie’ or the be-all-and-end-all epic ‘He’s not Dead, He’s Just In Texas’.”
As it happens, I got another review today, as well, for the same disc. Here’s a link if you’re curious:
http://babysue.com/2010-Feb-LMNOP-Reviews.html#anchor41664
OK, so in terms of my thesis re: the subtleties of Los Angeles weather I could not have picked a worse time to begin. The weather here this past week+ has been nothing if not DRAMATIC. One 40-something Los Angeles native and lifelong resident told me this was the wildest set of storms he’s ever encountered here - before embarking on a rant about the misnomer that is “global warming” … hence, I advised, the increasing usage of the more accurate term, “global climate change” … and there we are.
The last few days have been cool, mellow, round, pleasant, the sun not showing it’s face until late morning but then coming out in strength … but a benign strength, and the air has been very clear, tasty and breathable. We’ve been up in the canyon a part of the time, where it’s just bound to be nice … but it’s been nice down below, too. I was there.
Yesterday it rained a bunch more. I took a couple of mid-length walks in it, to the library and to the rekkid store (more on that later I magine). A pleasant woman working as security on a media shoot of some description (I mean, they were filming something … not that they were shooting at the media, fortunately or un-) asked me where my umbrella was, and I replied that I am from Seattle … which is true, although more by inclination than by birth. It felt good to say it, and not at all dishonest, and it is in fact probably why I don’t use an umbrella.
But as I explained to my climate-concerned friend, although it does rain most days in Seattle, it does not DELUGE or DOWNPOUR so very often, and it almost never rains ALL DAY.
OK, and as for the effects of the aberrant weather on the Los Angeles population:
There was a woman pacing up and down on the sidewalk across the street from my apartment. It was not an even pace. She tended to cover ten to fifteen feet at a circuit, but not always the same ten to fifteen feet, meandering up and down over thirty yards on a five minute cycle (yeah, I paid way too much attention to this). She was blonde, pudgily proportioned in a lump and unhealthy way as if she had been stuffed badly, wearing mainly a shapeless black dress and little white heels, carrying an umbrella and talking on a cellular phone into which she was hollering:
“WEEAUUGGGGHHHH! WHOA! YEEOWW!”
Each exclamation punctuated with a wobbly marionette-like dip of one knee.
“God is ANGRY!!! Get thee behind me, Satan! YAAAUUGHH!!”
… And on and on, some of it less intelligible than other.
From time to time, either she lost her phone connection or she got hung up on. When this happened she would calmly and quietly, picture of normalcy, stop her pacing, examine the phone, re-dial, and then pick up right where she’d left off, pacing and kicking and glossolating.
When it rain down here, the crazies come out.
Current listening includes “Fight On, Your Time Ain’t Long,” a collection (sans liner notes) of acoustic gospel including a track by Bukka White and also a whole lot of amazing stuff I’ve never heard of with lines like “I wouldn’t mind dying / but I got to go by myself…”
This LP is fun to play GO to. Really. Just ask John Norwood. It’s on Mississippi Records, if that helps you any.
On cassette I am playing close attention to “Good As I Been To You,” an early-90s recording of acoustic folk-blues by Bob Dylan. Favorite tracks on there include “Blackjack Davey” and “Jim Jones” though “Froggy Went A-Courting” is hard to deny. Bob still using his ’80s voice for the most part. He settles back down through-out his next, similar, album, “World Gone Wrong” and has regained his fullness by “Time Out Of Mind” yea unto the present day. Go Bob!
And, of course, anything that sounds good in the rain is welcome on my turntable today. Time for coffee and staring into the clouds.
It rained. During the night. When I woke up this morning I was dreaming about snow. Specifically that I was in the house next door to the one I grew up in, encountering many strange coincidences involving my banjo-playing pal Paul Johnson, Mr John E, a Los Angeles-based band called Seasons which I encounter from time to time, and maybe some other things and people I don’t quite remember. A series of half-recognized women were introducing us all to each other via references to shows in Seattle and New Hampshire and the realization that we were all far more interpersonally interconnected than ere we had suspected … well, that was the substance of the dream. Not bad.
But all I wanted to say was, it rained last night.
I’ve been ranting for about two years now to anyone who will listen that, while I don’t have a problem with 70 degrees and sunny, anything gets old if it’s every day. Give me wind, give me rain, give me snow - doesn’t have to be for six months at a time, just a little bit of something for variety.
After two years of ranting like that, I decided that Los Angeles does have every bit as much meteorological variation as anywhere else, but it takes place on a subtler level. So subtle that most people don’t notice it. The desert people, the rural ones, I’m sure they catch it. But here in Smog City we don’t pick up on it so much, I think to our detriment.
Can’t get away with that in Boston or Seattle. It rains, it’s raining. It snows, it’s snowing. Deal with it. Here, OK, the temperature dropped a degree and a half. What of it?
But I’ve decided to start paying attention, see what happens. Weather has always been a big part of my life, whether it’s walking to work in air so cold my hair freezes and breaks off, or watching the ice chunks float downstream in the spring, or sitting by a river in the late summer and smelling fall on a warm breeze with a cool center.
I’m going to have to attune myself to more subtle weather situations if I’m going to appreciate and relate properly to the Los Angeles experience. So:
It rained last night. I don’t know how much, cos I was asleep. It is drying up already, though it is not yet especially warm out (tho hardly chilly - bare feet and a lightweight longsleeve is fine). The air still smells moist, but not deeply or densely so. I knew something was up because the sky was white when I woke up around 9:30 (plus I’d been dreaming about snow. For a moment I thought perhaps it had snowed here. Before that I wasn’t sure exactly where I was). It is still a bit dim out, the light from the sky is mellow. This will likely change by early afternoon at which point I expect we’ll get back to about 70 degrees. And sunny.
More later,
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