music
Bill Frisell and Friends
Wendy and I worked together at a small tech company for a couple of years. We’ve stayed in touch since then and recently she pinged me about getting together to catch up. She suggested checking out the first night of Bill Frisell’s residency at Yoshi’s Oakland. Sarah wanted to come along too, so we all got there early to have dinner and thereby get good seats for the show. It was actually the first time I’d eaten there, and I wasn’t disappointed. The calamari appetizer, the edamame and, the sushi were all really good.
I knew Wendy wasn’t a big Frisell fan, so I was a little surprised. But this was part of her project to do something different from her usual routine each day for a year. Luckily for her, Thursday night wasn’t experimental music night, but rather Frisell’s more country music-oriented project. The announced line-up included bassist Tony Scherr, drummer Kenny Wollesen, avant-guitarist Marc Ribot and pedal-steel player Greg Leisz, as well as a special surprise mystery guest from Nashville: Buddy Miller.
The result was a country set of songs layered with beautiful steel guitar work, extended harmonic space, and a sprinkling of Frisell’s melodic lines.With three guitarists and a steel player, there was not a whole lot of room for Frisell to stretch out, and I’ll admit to a little disappointment not to get more from him. Marc Ribot also contributed and sang several songs, giving the set a darker and noisier edge on several songs. Ribot plays guitar like a man having a seizure, and that angular energy gives you the feeling that something unexpected is going to happen any second.
With all that, Buddy Miller was really the star of this show. I had seen Miller when he toured with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, and enjoyed his work on that project, but I didn’t really get a sense of his depth. Last night was different. From his wonderful singing and solid playing, to his hilarious stage banter, he’s a great musician and tremendously entertaining.
Miller and Frisell have recently finished recording together in Nashville with a number of guest artists and singers. Much of this set consisted of songs recorded in that session. Needless to say, I’m already really looking forward to the CD coming out.
Extracting the Root
I forgot to post earlier about the latest piece I added to the Sound page:
It was a collaboration between myself and Mike Mogan in the late 80′s. I am not sure of the year. It actually made it onto a cassette release of a compilation of Fresno indie music. I’m not sure what kind of music to call it, but it was influenced by early, so-called world music, Peter Gabriel, and ECM jazz stuff. I can’t remember what the title is a reference to. It was actually quite a challenge to record as it was done on a Tascam “Portastudio 244″ 4-track cassette recorder. There were quite a few parts and stereo imaging of things, so there was a lot of careful bouncing tracks down. It is hard to believe we managed to do it with somewhat decent mix levels and minimal tape noise.
Mike played rhythm guitar, the cool double-tracked guitar solo, and synthesizer. I played rhythm guitar (the part with the dubious timing), acoustic 12-string guitar, and did the drum machine programming. It was my first drum machine, the E-mu Drumulator. This thing came with a stock set of sounds that was a basic drum kit. Eventually, you could add, I should say change, sounds by swapping out the computer chips onto which he sounds were recorded. Here I have the ethnic percussion chip set going. It sounds a bit dry and forward in this mix. I think we actually recorded a sync track for the drumulator on the tape and printed the stereo percussion part straight to the mixdown.
Introducing Sound
I have finally introduced Sound to SightWordSound. It’s extremely rudimentary, but it’s a start. So, if you go to the Sound page, you can click on bulleted links there to hear mp3 streams of some of my stuff.
In my typical fashion, my prowess for commercialism and self-promotion has lead me to begin by uploading whacked out experimental sound pieces that will probably drive most people away. But fear not. If anyone comes back for more, I’ll eventually get some old song stuff up here, too. I have hours of tapes going back to some of the earliest garage and experimental days. It will be a treat to be able to share with people, particularly you far-flung players on these recordings, where ever you now live.
Blogger’s Block and Video Fun
I am having a mid-life crisis. That is my excuse for not writing anything in such a long time. I also notice that the longer one goes without writing something, anything, the easier it is to continue not writing. So, my new strategy is to participate in that time-honored practice of bloggers the world over: recycling content. So, in the spirit of writing something, anything, in order to make it a habit, i have written this as a preamble to the video below. I think it’s an inspiration to middle-aged breeder hipsters like me. And maybe it is an homage of sorts to Art of Noise.
Once i figure out how to embed this feed here, i’ll do it. In the meantime, here is the link.
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