Dragons 1976 Baltimore 6-24-2006

Drove down through the rain from New York to get to Baltimore & Normals Books, home of the Red Room. Audrey Chen helped set up the night which had two groups playing, us and a quartet of Chen, John Berndt, Charles Cohen & Paul Niedhardt. Because of the rain both groups had a little it of noise to contend with, namely a leaky roof, and it really did affect the performance, but in a good way. The crowd that came were listeners, so in the quiet spaces during the quartet's set drips of rain worked itself into the music, which tended to be sparse between the group swells. Their quartet had alot of sounds to work with - Charles plays the Buchal along with assorted other electronics and has a real control of it, Audrey uses Cello and voice, and has lots of option swith each, Paul tends to use the drums & percussion as noise generators more than as a kit, and John played alto and soprano saxophone - lots of extended technique to get out a lot of sounds.
Our set was affected by some food poisoning that Tim & I got the last night we were in New York - pizza....but we made it through playing Drifting, Passage & Sock It. Kind of a shorter set in terms of songs, but longer in terms of improvisation. The Red Room records all their shows and have a duplicate ready to give to the musicians afterwards, which is a really good thing to do. Being able to hear back what you played the day before is a good thing to have access to. After packing up we got some food at a Korean/Japanese restaurant that's open until three AM. Finished my night with Sushi and Miso Soup.

Dragons 1976 New York Two Shows June 2006

New York City, not a place I've had much luck in playing shows at in the past. The scene there of course is overinundated with musicians trying hard to get gigs, plus there just don't seem to be very many places committed to presenting creative music, especially if your not already famous or playing with someone famous. We played two spots, the Tank in TriBeCa and a record store called Marquise Dance Hall in Williamsburg.
The show at the Tank was set up by our friend Jon Philpot of Bear in Heaven, we met him a few years back when we played a show together at the old 3030 space in Chicago at a show that Brad Loving set up. The first set was none other than Brad under the monkier Lobisomem with Jason Ajemian playing bass with him on laptop. Dragons played second and Bear in Heaven third. Unfortunately the show was a two hour affair for three groups. I guess regularly the Tank tends to have only two bands. So, the sets were short, but a nice amount of folk showed up and Taya and the others at the Tank were real friendly, and gave us some extra time.
The next night at the record store turned out pretty good too. I went down to Williamsburg from where I was staying with my aunt & uncle on the upper east side. When I got there Jason was playing with Brad again as Lobisomem and there were some people listening inside and Tim was talknig to Matt Bauder outside. It was good to see Matt, I don't know the last time I saw him. Even though it was real hot inside the record store, we played a good set and a nice amount of people showed up including Jon Philpot and Matana Roberts. We finished our night by going across the street to Clem's, where Joe from bear in Heaven tends bar.

Dragons 1976 Boston 6-21-2006

We had a two day stay in Boston, well Tim & I did anyway. We had our last day off of the tour before a stretch of thirteen straight nights with some playing involved. We got down to Boston on tuesday afternoon, Jason headed down to New York to play with Matt Bauder and Alan Licht. Tim & I hung out at Charlie Kohlhase's place - he's got a great jazz record collection. We spent much of the time we were there picking out albums we hadn't heard and watching some videos of jazz music. It was a nice way to spend a day off on the road. The first night we were there we actually rehearsed with Charlie's group "The Explorer's Club", another good way to spend some time off, playing some music you'd not before.
The show on wednesday was at a space called the Lily Pad in Cambridge. The order for the night was Dragons's, Explorer's Club, then a set with both groups - so three drummers, two bassists, three saxophones, a trombone and a guitar. Unfortunately, Jason ran into all sorts of bad traffic on the way back from New York, so his trip took 6 hours instead of the more typical 4. We pushed back the start of the night and within 15 minutes of him getting there we started playing. The set turned out pretty well, we started with Passage, our slowest piece, moved into Drifting and ended with Brand New - did I forget one? Maybe. I remember the set wasn't supposed to be too long because we started kind of late, but I think there was one more tune in there. Sorry.
I've been playing louder on this tour, now a week into the tour I feel like I'm getting more used to playing that loud, which is a good thing. Most of the folks at the show were other musicians and it was good to talk to them.

Dragons 1976 Portland 6-19-2006

The tour continues through hot highways that are getting more humid as we've come down out of Canada and into the northeastern states. After a 12 hour stopover that included playing at a place for a few friends and "industry" (service) in Syracuse, we drove out to Portland Maine for a monday night show at Space Gallery. It was a triple bill with another trio of saxophone bass & drums called Mystic OutBop Review and Fence Kitchen. I'd never been to Portland, but it seems like a decent place, the gallery defintely has a good thing going on and we had tasty burritos in the Old Port section. By the time we played a good crowd had showed up and we played just one set - our first show with other groups so we could concentrate all our energies into one. We did our most standard set nowadays, starting with Felt and moving gradually into Passage. After taking a breath we got got into a more drone based mindset before settling into Drifting. We ended with Sock It, a song that was included on a compilation put out by Arthur Magazine in conjunction with the Suoni Per Il Popolo Festival in Montreal. On this last song, we had Jason's friend Johnathan Bangs come and play with us. He's a trumpeter & a dragon '76, so it made sense. The folk in Portland treated us well and we were glad to have been there.

Dragons Montreal 6-15-2006

We got into Montreal right during rush hour - there was a pretty serious accident slowing us down on the way into the city - looked liked about ten cars were involved two of which were in real bad shape - one completely flipped. Other than that the road from Toronto was nice with the slight Candian countryside rolling by.
We played at the Casa del Popolo as part of the Suono per il Popolo festival which is going all all month here in Montreal at the Casa as well as the larger venue La Sala Rosa across the street. We thought we'd have a chance to do a bit of practicing but were shut down by the sound man after just five minutes - one of the toughest things to do on the road is practice. It was alright though - by the time we played later in the night there was a good crowd and we played two sets with lots of energy. Our second set was an hour long and we took no breaks in between any song. Almost exhausting but I think it was more because the room was a bit warm than due to playing. During the first set we played a new piece which is very fast with almost a march-like quality - I had told Tim that I would cue him out with me in order to leave Ajemian alone, who I hadn't told about the cue - I was trying to surprise him, but when I cued out Tim & myself, he stopped as well - it created this pretty great long moment of awkward silence where no one clapped and we said nothing - I broke the silence by playing the rhytmic introduction of Heater.
We had an extra day off in Montreal - I spent most of the day walking around the town - there was a large street fair, mostly filled with shops, but some buskers and stages also. A good place to have a day off - but hot - it's summer after all.

Dragons 1976 Toronto 6-14-2006

Tonight was the first time Dragons 1976 has played in over a year. I flew to Chicago on tuesday and after meeting up with Tim Daisy at his place got a falafel at Sultan's in Wicker Park before heading over to Johnathan Crawford's place to help print the covers for our album Winter Break. After not getting much interest from any labels, we decided to make a limited release of 150 CD-Rs with handmade silk screened packaging. My first time back in Chicago since last December was spent working quickly to make sure we had the artwork printed, cut & folded before hitting the road.
Daisy played a show with the Rempis Percussion Quartet at the Hideout on wednesday night before we left town at about 1:30 AM. Jason Ajemian got into chicago on wednesday afternoon after flying in from Switzerland - he'd been there playing at an Art Show in Basel with his brother Lucas. So, a lot of driving late night and the next day to get us to Toronto on time to play at a club called the Red Guitar. It's a nice place - has two levels - one where the music is played and the full course menu is available, and above that a lounge and patio. We ate some food and had some good coffee - Ron Gaskin showed up a little later.
We played two sets to a small but attentive audience. As we had no time for any rehearsals before this date the music was loose but also fresh. We played many of our old tunes like Felt, Canopy, Heater, Brand New and tried to work in some of the new material I'd written recently. It felt good to play with Tim & Jason again - I definitely played more open than I had in previous incarnations of this band.

Dragons 1976 Summer Tour 2006

Starting June 15th I'll be on tour with Dragons 1976, here are the dates, come see us if you can!

Thursday June 15th
Toronto
The Red Guitar
603 Markham street
(414)913-4586
www.theredguitar.com

Friday June 16th
Montreal
La Sala Rosa
4848 St Laurent Blvd
9pm


Sunday June 18th
Syracuse,NY
Ohm Lounge
Armory Square 314S Franklin St
(315)475-1985

Monday June 19th
Portland Me
The Space Gallery
538 Congress St
9pm

Wednesday June 21st
Cambridge,Ma
The Lily Pad
1353 Cambridge st
8pm

Thursday June 22nd
NYC
TBA

Friday June 23rd
NYC
Marquise Dance Hall
251 Grand St
Brooklyn


Saturday June 24th
Baltimore,MD
The Red Room
425E 31st street
8:30

Sunday June 25th
Washington,Dc
House Party TBA

Tuesday June 27th
Richmond,Va
TBA

Wednesday June 28th
Charlotte,NC
The Evening Muse
3207N Davidson St
(704)376-3737

Thursday June 29th
Greenville,Sc
Cafe Bohemia
2W Stone Ave

Friday June 30th
Columbia Sc
The Whig

Saturday July 1st
Columbia Sc
The Hunter Gatherer
900 Main St
(803)748-0540

Sunday July 2nd
Nashville,Tn
Ruby Green

Monday July 3rd
Lexington Ky
Underlying Themes
110S Upper St
8pm