Shelton Healy Duo - Luggage Store

Played last thursday at the Luggage Store, over in San Francisco at 6th and Market with Trevor. It's been a buy few weeks, but we were able to get together a few times before this show - we've been able to develop what we do together a bit, and this show felt good - lots of overdrive and sample rearranging on my side - we set up so that each of us could sample the other, I felt this was a good arrangement, pretty diplomatic - we played a good 45 minute set, with just one break - we were also able to do a 4 channel recording. the sound is getting thicker, with lots of patient energy. One particularly interesting moment came when I pulled out my electronics and Trevor when into a repetitive syncopated, though slowly changing figure with a steady pulse underlying. I then started processing his sound, splintering it in terms of time and spatialization - we went on from there.

This is part of Trevor's arsenal - originally designed for use with the varitone!

Weasel Walter Large Ensemble

It's been almost two weeks since this date. Sorry for the delay - I know people are anxiously waiting for this posting to come out....
So Weasel Walter was egged on by Sara Lockhart at 21 Grand to write a piece - some would call it a commission. He decided to resurrect a project started several years back - a long form work for nine musicians with interchangeable parts allowing every member of the ensemble both an opportunity to act as soloist and conductor. A good idea for the type of ensemble - one where everyone is an improviser and good ones at that, so that their personalities can have a chance to come through.
The difficulty with long works for large ensembles lies in the rehearsal situation. With the amount of time people have and the lack of money in the non-marketable niche of the music-industry we find ourselves in, it's hard for people to devote time to large projects, mainly because getting everyone to have available time at the same time is near-impossible. For this group, getting nine people once together meant having 5 people rehearse once and 5 people rehearse the other time, and one run-through of the piece the night of the concert. This is pretty much the status quo in many such situations and someday things will be better, we can hope.
Not to say that the results of this night were bad - in fact the music turned out quite well, though I'm still firmly convinced that the more you play material, the more there is to be discovered in it and the more the music can really be influenced by the players, as opposed to the players making the more obvious choices of interpretation.

We were able to record the whole concert and listening back to it now, I'm impressed with how the personalities of and the decisions made by the players developed the piece, which featured several sections of soloist playing over backgrounds based on a tone row followed by cadenza, into one that has it's fair share of peaks, valleys and surprises. Sections are developed and segue into each other, the overall feel of the ensemble changes gradually over time and the playing of all is both high quality and personal.

Ton Duo & Trio Oakland to Santa Cruz

My latest working group is Ton Trio with Kurt Kottheimer on bass and Sam Ospovat on drums. I've written some new music for this group with a focus on melodic content which is interchangeable. Some pieces use the material in a more traditional head format while in others the material is explored more by each player, rearranging the parts simultaneously to create new harmonic relationships.
Our first two dates were at the cusp of September and October, 9/30 at 21 Grand in Oakland and October 1 at Cafe Pergolesi in Santa Cruz. The date in Oakland got switched a few times with the result being a Ton Duo show with myself and Sam. I liked playing the music in this context - we were able to explore the parts with alot of freedom rhythmically, as the harmonic thing was obviously less important. The next night in Santa Cruz I drove down with Kurt and we met Sam at Cage Pergolesi. Apparently there's a "heavy-hitter" jazz club down there that was just a half block from Pergolesi - Dave Douglas was playing there the same night. I'm feeling good about this new group although we've not played many dates yet - Sam and Kurt both seem real into playing working on the music.
Here's one of the pieces, entitled "Internal Frame":

I made this music playlist at MyFlashFetish.com.

Flockterkit 9-26-2007

Played on Wednesday night at 21 Grand again - this time with my group Flockterkit. This group, which started in Chicago with Fred Lonberg-holm, Ernst Karel, Jason Roebke and Frank Rosaly / Steve Hess is based on compositions that blend in electronic manipulation of the instruments. The music I wrote last winter for Peltep has some similarities so I put together a group out here to perform all of that music together. Andy Strain (tombone), Steini Gunnarson (guitar), Anantha Krishnan(percussion), Kurt Kottheimer (bass), and Jordan Glenn (drums). Jordan and Steini played this music as well in NYC when we played at the Stone with Matt Bauder.
I was a little concerned about getting the music together in the week plus a couple days I had after getting back from the Citizens tour, so I planned the music to be played without the electronic parts. I think the music works with or without - though when the electronics are in use it adds quite alot. We added some improvisation sections and I think the group played the music really well. Hopefully some recording will happen soon. Matt Ingalls and Corey Fogel played first that night - a very good duo - played well together and took advantage of 21 Grand's acoustics to pull off some very quiet sections that wouldn't work as well in a dry room.

Weasel Walter Dislocation Unit

Last night played alto in a quartet with Weasel Walter on drums and Kristian Aspelin & Rob Pumpelly on guitars. The music we played was "an exploration of forms by Masayuki Takayanagi", the Japanese guitarist. We did three pieces, a "gradual projection" and two "mass projections". The first was played at a moderate volume - and we kept it there for 10 minutes, playing phrases that were unconnected save for the intentional spacing so that the density would not build and regress. There were spots of silence, and though they were fleeting, were not reacted to in the way of urgency. The second we started a bit more intense than originally planned, but we kept it there for another 10 minute segment. The third we went all out - I played with the help of my JBL speaker as amplification so as what I played was clear to hear over the volume of two electric guitars and Weasel. Even with the amplification I pushed for the full 10 minutes. The performance was video taped, I'm looking forward to seeing the results.

Fast Citizens Charlotte 9-9-2007

Another long drive - Philly to Charlotte, NC. When traveling with six folks, even a routine rest stop turns into about twenty minutes and when that happens a few times a day, that turns into a few extra hours of time on the road. We left Philly at 9:30 and got into Charlotte just before 8 PM. woah.
Brent Bagwell set up a date at a spot that's run out of the back of a vintage furniture and clothing store called the Century. A last minute turn of events brought us down to Charlotte and it ended up working out for the better. Got dinner at a slightly strange BBQ place nearby - got a really tasty veggie burger. Brent played an improvised set with a guitarist and a cellist - they concentrated on more textural and sonic elements than I had heard Brent do before and it was quite nice. Our set had a different kind of energy than the previous 5 nights we've played and I think it was due to the room. Most of the spaces we've played in so far have been very live. Big spaces with lots of hard surfaces. This space was the opposite - thick carpet on the floor and a room full of thick padded chairs and couches and hangings on the wall. It was dry - real dry. So, it tended to take some energy out of the sounds of our instruments and a natural reaction to it came out in our playing - things were more subdued and we went into spaces that we normally don't go into. Keefe had a particularly nice solo during Signs: he, Frank, Anton and Fred really brought it down before bring it back up - with nothing being forced.
Afterwards I and Anton stayed over at Brent's new place - he no longer lives outside of town on the 400 acre farm, but they still do have a charming house and now Charlie, his and Amy's son is getting more mobile ad talkative. Good times.

Fast Citizens Maine to Philly

the shortest drive we've had so far was from boston to portland / brunswick. after getting through the maze of boston streets on a tobacco run for the smokers, we headed up to the farthest eastern point of the tour. the portland area is quite nice in the summer - the second time for me being up that way. keefe set up a date in Brunswick - a small town with a organization that brings in a good variety of jazz music. we got in a few hours early and had time to take our time finding something to eat. the concert was at the pleasant street arts center and we played two sets. i was a bit concerned with the crowd that came up - an older demographic, i thought they might bail after the first set - but they really stuck through it - and enjoyed it. we stayed at keefe's old friend john's place who he first met in arkansas at the age of 14. apparently keefe came up to john, a bassist, on the street and asked him if he could play with him. a few years later they both moved to portland, keefe moving back to arkansas before going up to chicago. john lives in a nicely maintained apartment style home with a view of the back bay of portland. too bad we didn't have more time to stay.

the next day was a long drive to philadelphia. in order to avoid traffic we took a route around the whole new york city / i-95 in new jersey corridor. though it took us a good solid 9 hours we weren't stuck in traffic. the date was at a space in south philly on broad street and produced by bowerbird. there were three sets. first set was shot by shot, a local young quartet with tenor and alto, bass and drums. their music was heartfelt and i really liked how they made music together. jack wright played a set with Michael Johnsen from Pittsburgh, who played some analog electronics and free improvised saw. as always, a solid set of extended sonic techniques from Jack. our set moved along quickly - band theme, big news, looking, easy, arbitrary lane change, pax urbanum, and blackout. the space was a nice big gallery space with large windows from which you could see the twin towers of philadelphia. there was a good sized young audience that was a good listening crowd. afterwards we went to jack's place where we were all staying and hung out pretty late with the philly crew. a good time - john and dan made us eggs and potatoes in the morning before we got on the road to charlotte.

Fast Citizens Detroit 9-4-2007

First stop of the tour - the Bohemian National Home in Detroit Michigan. This large building in a typically thinned out neighborhood in Detroit was once the home of a Bohemian Community Center, complete with a ballroom and classrooms, etc. Detroit is one of those places that is probably alot like what most cities in the US were in the 80s - rundown and dirt cheap. Lots of interesting things we found out from Joel Peterson including that due to the economic depression lots of national chains won't set up shop in town which leaves lots of room for small independent places to go unopposed by those chains - so a coffee shop doesn't need to worry about a starbucks setting up across the street. plus, you can find a two bedroom for $300 a month.
So the first date went well - we played two sets for a small audience - we played well. The room was real boomy and loud - Anton's bass was a bit covered due to that. I recorded both sets and will put up some mp3s from the show soon. Spent the night at the Bohemian National as well - the sound of the summer bugs was steady and loud - and relaxing. I set my alarm for 6:30 the next morning and got a few hours of sleep before the big drive to NYC.

Fast Citizens Chicago 9-1-2007

Flew into Chicago on an overnight flight from Oakland, got into town at 6 AM - two hours earlier than I thought I would, but not ahead of the actual plane schedule. Took the train in from Midway and walked the few remaining blocks to Keefe Jackson's place in Pilsen. Took a nap for the rest of the morning.
Had a rehearsal that night with the Fast Citizens - Keefe, Josh Berman, Fred Lonberg-holm, Anton Hatwich and Frank Rosaly. Good to see everyone and we got right back in where we left off. So we'll be on the road for the next two weeks and the kick-off was a set at the Jazz Fest on the Jackson St. stage. It was in the middle of the afternoon, about 2 pm, but thankfully not hot outside - actually we were all surprised with how the festival folk weren't rushing people on and off the stage which can happen at other festivals. We played a full set, playing mainly tunes off our Delmark record, and two new ones: a short piece by Anton with a collective improvisation, and a new Jackson head that focuses on a big fanfare titled "Big News". The set started out fast with Signs, I came out a little rough with the first solo, I think I was a little cold, could of took that solo back. The middle of the set was well done and paced for the afternoon, centered on Fred's "Pax Urbanum". The first section is being played a bit more relaxed and open than on the recording, which develops a nice shape to the rest of the piece.
We were done pretty early in the afternoon but were to play later that night at the Hungry Brain. I went over to Anton's place in Bridgeport for the afternoon where e made come good food including a particularly tasty hummus while we listened to records.
At the Brain we played The rest of the songs from the album plus another new one by Keefe called "Easy" which features a line played by Fred that tends to turn the swing feel backwards. We had an open ended time to play and the set felt very good. Afterwards we split up into small groups with some other folk who came by including Jeb Bishop, Tim Daisy, Jaimie Branch, Matt Bauder, Jason Ajemian + the wild card of Harris Eisenstadt and Sara Schoenbeck who were literally stopping in overnight as they drive cross country from LA to their new place in NYC. I played in a quartet with Harris, Jaimie and Anton and then played a rough version of "Hold it High" with Dragons 1976.

Aram Shelton Trevor Healy Rooz 8-27-2007

Played a long open set with the guitarist Trevor Healy last night at Rooz Cafe, a spot on Park blvd in Oakland. I met Trevor a few months back when the Pink Canoes played at the Luggage Store, he'd recently moved out this way from New York. We finally had a chance to get together to play last month at his practice space in San Francisco. I really liked what I heard - experimentation balanced with patience. We played for about an hour at Rooz this night, which is a newer space in Oakland - we took our time building different sections and allowed things to materialize. The acoustics of the room - a very live room - made us hold back a bit, but overall I was real happy with the music. I think Trevor was even able to record it to his minidisc but I haven't been able to hear it yet.

Pink Canoes KFJC 8-18-2007

Went down to Los Altos, Ca on a sunny Saturday afternoon. It's only about an hour's drive from Oakland going over the San Mateo bridge. I rode down with Noah and Travis - Noah had just flown back in from New York the night before. We met Zach at the radio station at Foothill Community College. He showed up in his new ride - a pristine 1981 Benz Sedan that he just picked up. Very nice bio-diesel. It was really a gorgeous afternoon with the golden hills that are bountiful this time of year. So, instead of enjoying that, we went inside of a radio station to play some music.
KFJC is out of range to hear up in Oakland, but from the posters I saw on their walls, I wish it was - lots of interesting music dating back a few decades. Bay area radio has a long way to go - KALX needs to pick it up!
We set up all our equipment in a triangular shaped room surrounded by music and played for about an hour on the radio. They're signal kept going out before and after we played, but for some reason the tower kept the power going for our set.

The music turned out real well - with a good range of activity - drones, noisy, active, energy. Turned out that me and my processing are a little dominant in the recording that went out in the airwaves and there's a crazy polarity issue too. check it out:

I made this Flash Music Player at MyFlashFetish.com.

Shelton Allbee Walter Hemlock 7-6-2007

I've been in and out of town the lat few weekends, it's the summertime wedding time of year I suppose. Weasel got a date for our trio with Liz Allbee a little while back, an opening set for the drummer William Hooker. At the end of May we did a recording session at Mills, and in the time since I've been able to listen to those and modify the compositions, changing the parts and adding others, taking into account the way we improvise together to guide the larger structures. I think this group is taking some shape. Our set at the Hemlock had a good sense of direction, and I feel that we were able to get away from the written parts while using them as real reference points. The first piece began with seven two-note chords played by Liz & I, with Weasel playing open. This leads to Weasel alone, with Liz & I reentering a bit later with all short phrases, limited with the dea of no sustain. Eventually I add electronics ad Liz drops out, so there is a duo between me & Weasel before Liz returns on trumpet for the final chord system. The transitions worked well, and I felt that by allowing the electronics to come in over time they truly worked with the arrangement and added something new halfway through the piece. There were some very good moments including a solo by Liz on trumpet.
William Hooker's Bliss Trio was rounded out by Oluyemi Thomas on soprano saxophone and bass clarinet and Damon Smith on bass. They played very well, I hadn't heard William before and wish I had - his playing was right on, especially a moment late in the set when he layed into it on the snare. Olyuyemi sounded great on both instruments, a passionate player for sure. Damon fit right in and had some moments where his bass cut through in the best way - slicing through the intense wall of noise created by William and Oluyemi. A good night at the Hemlock, they should have more free jazz shows.

the Stone May 29, 2007

It cooled off a few degrees here in New York today, not a bad thing at all. I had gone to the Stone on Sunday night to see some music and it was quite hot inside, though not nearly approaching the old 3030 on a summer's day. When playing with Dragons last night at Union Hall I realized halfway through the set the pleasant air conditioning that was keeping things comfortable. Though, you never can really measure the effect of a hot room on the players and the audience - sometimes it forces the music into a different space entirely. Steini and I got to the Stone at about 5:30 after having a nice Indian food lunch at Milon on 1st Ave. Jordan got there soon after, having flown into LaGuardia and taking a cab to Manhattan. Once Matt walked in from the park he was hanging out in we got around to doing the final rehearsal for the music for the later set of the night. I could tell from the practice that the four of us were a good fit.

The first set of the night was Son of Gunnar, Ton of Shel. Though it was our first date in a while, we had been practicing together regularly this past spring, developing our methods so that when we play our sound is there. We played a full hour long set with one break in between. Our second piece was a building piece, I felt really good about that one - it felt quite focused. In general I felt that this set was one of the best we've ever played live.

The second set was the quartet of me, Steini, Matt Bauder and Jordan Glenn. I rearranged the music I had written a few years ago for Flockterkit for this group. It made sense to me in a way as the parts I had written for the cello and bass were many times originally conceived for guitar. I also added a new piece and did some additional processing on the sound of the group for the beginning and ending. We played the set well - I really think that this group will have to play more and definitely record the music. The range of dynamics and energy during the set was one of the strong points, Jordan and Steini both played great, and Matt fit in perfectly. The set was somewhat short, but as I think we knew everyone there, and most stayed from the first set, I don't think anyone was demanding we finish our contractual agreement with an additional 10 minutes of music. Unfortunately we didn't have a way to record the show, or rather I forgot to arrange a way to get it recorded. Too bad.

So, a good night at the Stone. The room felt very comfortable and very right. They've done a good job of treating the room so that it is dry enough while not being dead. The size of the room is intimate and it has a clean look. Definitely a proper venue for the music. Thanks to Fred for booking us!

Dragons 1976 Brooklyn May 28, 2007

In New York for the week here at the end of May. Was invited by Fred Frith to play the Stone on the 29th, so planned a week long visit. Turned out Jason Ajemian had also planned to be out here, so we talked to Tim Daisy and he felt he could come out from Chicago so we could reconvene for a show. Good timing. We played at Union Hall in Brooklyn, a nice sized bar that features indoor bocce ball and a downstairs music room nicely separated from the other ongoings. A solidly nice place all around - the music room reminded me of Cafe du Nord in San Francisco. As we hadn't played together in about four months (back in January when we did a week long southern swing), we met up a few hours before the show to refresh our memories on our music. Things fell back into place perfectly. That's the best thing about playing with good friends - no matter how long it's been since the last time you played, you remember how you play together - just as comfortable as picking up that conversation you left off last time... We played two sets that night - in between which Mary Halvorson and Jessica Pavone played. Their music was great to hear - almost all written out, but with a loose feeling that isn't typical of notated music, except for when the musicians know each other well. Our first set was mostly older tunes from the Winter Break disc (which we are going to print another hundred copies soon) and our second set was mostly songs from the new album which will be released by the Polish label MultiKulti sometime this summer or early fall. Our faithful crowd brought us back to the stage at the end of our second set and after some banter form me we played Heater, off of On Cortez. On our last night Matt Bauder walked up to the stage with his tenor and played a duo with Tim - a good ending to the night. He is an original Dragons after all. A good night to have with Dragons in Brooklyn.

Pink Canoes California April 2007

Over the past few weeks the Pink Canoes have played a string of dates from SF to Davis to LA. Things went well - we played all of the dates with a trio from LA called DSS - Aaron Drake, Phil Stearns and Cassia Streb - no input mixers, radio transmissions, viola. The first night was at G3 on the west side of SF at Geary and 3rd Ave - it's a place that has a weekly noise show on wednesday nights - in a slightly strange club that normally has karaoke. They did have a pretty impressive lighting system - we didn't take advantage of it, but did use a small little enclosure designed for private parties to set up our amps and play like in a music box. Second night was at the Luggage Store in downtown SF and the next we made the hour drive up to Davis to play at Delta of Venus, which had a nice outside seating area for folk. Out two groups were joined by young Solomon on laptop playing his first solo show - it went well. The Canoes all got a little antsy as we notice people trickling out - Friday night in a college town around 10:30 gets people thinking about the closest keg party probably. We played probably are best set I can remember - lots of energy, lots of interaction with each other - and the twenty or so folk that stuck around were into it
We drove back to the Bay that night, watching the Big Lebowski on Noah's video pod. The next night we set up shop at the Revolution Cafe up on 22nd street in the Mission. This place is a popular place - has good Belgian beer and one of the few outdoor patios in SF. We weren't sure how we would fit in the tight performance space but we did and I think the closeness to the crowd was a big benefit - it almost always is. We played that night with Reptet, a jazz group from Seattle who Zack is friends with. Their set began and ended with the horns marching from the street to the stage - good use of the great outdoors....
Last weekend the Canoes drove down to LA as a quartet for the BentFest, a festival going on in NYC and LA this year. The six hour drive down I-5 was actually kind of relaxing - We played at Il Corral on a bill with five groups including DSS, John Richards (UK), Toy Junkies and a duo that blew out the low end of the PA with their Moog ad Doepfer synths - too bad. They did manage to finish out their set pretty well with just the high frequencies.
All in all it was a good time - the music shared qualities every night, I think our interactions with each other improved in each set. We're playing on May 1st as part of a spate of band at a benefit at SF Arts.

Allbee/Shelton/Walter 21 Grand

Last night played at 21 Grand with Liz Allbee and Weasel Walter - I've been meaning to play in a trio with these two since we've played in quintet version before + Damon Smith and Aurora Josephson. I also asked Liz to bring her electronics and Weasel to bring another instrument - he brought a bass clarinet. I brought my electronics along too - more options. I wrote three pieces for us to play through - lots of improvising within, but some chords to be played together to set up tonalities - little melodic phrases to act as points where we could meet up again. Weasel sounded good on bass clarinet - he studied it for a few years back in the early nineties. That's the blessing of woodwinds - maintaining the ol' embouchure isn't as important as on brasses. It was a good group to play with - looking forward to doing it again - the possibilities with all the sounds we can bring are pretty open.... Ben Bracken played with Jackie from JapJap - a piece with contact mics on cymbals, some feedback through contact mics, some amplification and processing though electronics.
If Volition Then played first - Jason Hoopes, Amanda Schoofs, Michael Dale, Andy Strain and Jordan Glenn. They've been improvising alot together and definitely have a concept bringing their music together. Sounded good.

Trio with Weasel Walter & David Slusser

Played last night with Weasel Walter and David Slusser at Scott Looney's 8th St Performance Space. Haven't played with David before - he's a saxophonist and electronicist - I liked how he played both - he brought his soprano and some analog gear, I brought bass clarinet and computer - Weasel brought drums and electric guitar. We started and I noticed that I didn't have really any sound coming from the speakers - looked at Scott, he thought I blew the speakers - a shock to me - I've never come close to doing such a thing - didn't know how brutal I've become Weasel said. Was able to play some electronics through a small amp, but after a bit we ditched the other stuff and just played acoustic. It was a good time - Weasel played in the second set too with Scott, Damon Smith and Kristian Appelin - all free, real active. Scott did some nice sample based electronics - has good control of them using an Alesis device, then played piano - which he plays really well - interesting player with notes and inside the piano. It was a good night - hung out, drank wine, ate BBQ potato chips afterwards - Jen was glad she skipped the John Wiese show for it.

Peltep mp3

I've posted the live recording of Peltep here . We'll be doing a more thorough recording in the next few weeks. .....

If the link doesn't work, you can find it at www.aramshelton.com/audio/Peltep.mp3

Peltep Mills College 2-24-2007

I've been working on new music lately - full band with electronics - the first piece of which is done and titled Peltep. It's for alto, trombone, piano, guitar, drums & percussion. Joining me on the piece were Steini Gunnarson, Kiyomitsu Odai, Andy Strain, Jordan Glenn and Anantha Krishnan. All of the fellows are here at Mills now, and it's a good thing. We played as part of Signal Flow, which is the spring festival for works by the graduate students here. I started working on the piece when I got back to California after my winter travelling - the goal was to write music that used the sound of the group to boost itself - live sampling of every instrument controlled through amplitude responsive devices in MSP. I feel like the finished piece is the best blending I've done yet of the two sides of music that I play - that which is rooted in creative jazz and the electroacoustic composition. The set up included all the instruments being mic'd and sent to my interface, then processed and sent out via quadraphonic sound into the concert hall. Lots of panning motion, dependent on the part of the piece in terms of velocity. I set up the electronics so as to have as little control once we got going - and I think it worked well - set the volume and certain thresholds for the amplitude triggering during the sound check. Definitely happy with how we played it. It was recorded so as soon as I get that I'll post it to my site.

Son of Gunnar, Ton of Shel Chicago January 2007

I was in Chicago for a little more than a week after the Dragons tour ended. My friend Toby Sumerfield asked me to stay in town to play in his large group Never Enough Hope. I took the opportunity to have Steini Gunnarson stop in town on his way back to Californa and Mills from his winter vacation in Iceland so that Son of Gunnar, Ton of Shel could play a few dates. Steini and I have been playing together pretty much since I moved out west. Especially during our first year here we would get together to play. It was a good fit from the beginning. We each played our instruments and did electronics - discussion was limited as we seem to have agreeing ideas of how to improvise music. We've recorded a number of times and are now starting to play more publicly with a record on the way from Edgetone.
We played two shows and were invited by Michael Corsa to play on WNUR. The first show was on thursday night at Enemy, the space ran by Jason Soliday above Heaven gallery. Brian Labycz set up the show for us - he played in duo with Vadim Sprikut, the night rounded out by Architeuthis Walks on Land, a duo of Amy Cimini and Katie Young. Brian and Vadim sounded great - they both play electronics of the laptop kind - they've been playing live dates for awhile now and you can tell it with the fluidity they've got with their computers. Son of Gunnar, Ton of Shel played as a trio with Johnathan Crawford on drums. We got together earlier in the day to play - it was great - played very freely, everything went together. I was happy with the show too, but the private time was something else. Johnathan sounded great - maybe we should make an album called Son of Ghost....
The next night we played at the Empty Bottle, just the two of us. It was great to play the Bottle, Shelly took care of us from the board. Playing through a large, loud PA lets you realize just how much low-frequency you can get out of a computer. We played a patient set - I was happy with it. The thing I like most of our duo is the patience we give to each other. I'm not sure if we've been able to achieve the same level of patience in public as in private, but it's getting there.

Dragons 1976 Carolinas 2007

I'm now back in Chicago after a week long jaunt through Kentucky, Tennessee and the Carolinas with Dragons 1976.

We stopped in Knoxville the day after our Lexington show to play at the Pilot Light. It worked out kind of the way the first time we played there did - the crowd didn't show up until late, were pretty into it and cleared out once we were done. We stayed with Tim's friend Van and Margaret, who are long time friends of Ken Vandermark's. They took care of us with late night enchilada's and morning waffles.

The next day we headed east. This is the fourth time we've done a tour that had a heavy dose of rotation in the Carolina's, thanks to some really good contacts we've made down there in the past few years. This time we entered the states from the west end and hit Greenville after a gorgeous drive through the smokey mountains. Our friend Gene Berger, owner of Horizon Records keeps the flame going down there, next door to his record store is the Cafe Bohemian which is run by a real jovial man named Tripp. This is our third time down there and are always welcomed warmly - this time was no different. Unfortunately it seemed that the crowd 4 days after New Years on a thursday wasn't ready to get back outside it's own doorstep, so we didn't have too much of a crowd. No matter, we played what we play and the few people there appreciated it greatly.

That night we drove to Columbia to spend the night at our man Ross Taylor's ranch. He welcomed us as we got in around 1 am and showed us a rocket pack a friend had just given him - found on some property that his friend and just bought. The next day we hung out in Columbia, getting lunch at the Piggly Wiggly and checking out a state swamp preserve that was used as a place to get mud to make buildings back in the 30s.

We drove down to Charleston in the evening to play at Redux Art Center . Our first trip to Charleston we found out that there a big straight ahead jazz scene there due to alot of tourism in the city. We had a good crowd that night - Redux had a us play two sets for two covers and people came to both. You could definitely feel a shift in the age group in the crowd which was pretty refreshing. It's a good way to do things - starting playing all the time at 10:30 or later is sometimes a drag. No reason not to have show starting at 8 for the people who'll make it. Philip White joined us on the bill - he's out at Mills now, I helped him out last semester as the SuperCollider TA - well, helped him out as much as I could. We played a piece out there here developed which worked with bringing out the harmonics of a bass clarinet with bandpass filters. He made a piece here with just feedback from two microphones, using the filters as a way to bring out different tones. I joined him in the second show on alto - despite having a pretty serious runny nose problem. During the later Dragons set, which I felt was the best one the tour, there was a tremendous rainstorm - tropical style. The sound of the rain mixed in pretty great, especially during some of Tim's drum solos and during Ajemian's phaser-dominated bass solo.

We headed back to Columbia the next evening to play at the Hunter-Gatherer. Ross made us a great dinner of Kim Chi chowder and Mahi-Mahi cooked on a hibachi. The crowd at Hunter-gatherer was a bit loud but uber-appreciative. we had a good time playing and weren't rushed out as quickly as normal for a saturday night in South Carolina (can't sell liquor on Sundays, usually clear people out at midnight).

Our last stop down south was in Asheville. We headed up there early as I wanted to make a visit to my dad and family that I haven't seen in a bit now. We played at the Bobo Gallery, and though they were late to show up, a good sized crowd did make it out - the owner Brad was really into the music and wanted us back soon. It was pretty great to have my dad and uncle in the audience. I haven't seen them in a long time - so them being able to see what I do is pretty important.

We drove out of Asheville that night and stayed with one of Tim's friends way out in the mountains. His friend Steve Alfred recently moved down there from Chicago to start a goat cheese farm. A little random, but interesting. I took the opportunity to sleep out in this big old barn they had there - plenty of straw to use as bedding. Nice and dark. We did the long drive back to Chicago on monday the 8th. It was a good tour - saw old friends & made new ones. The music was consistently satisfying - the new music we have which should be released by 482 Music in the coming months really helped out our sets - the music is definitely getting more energy each time we play together. It was telling when we were in Columbia and we got a request for one of our songs from the crowd - people are into it.

Dragons 1976 Chicago & Lexington

Happy New Year to all!

It's the beginning of 2007 and Dragons 1976 are on the road for a short week-long tour. I flew to Chicago from Florida where I was visiting my family and got together with Tim & Jason for our first date since last summer when we were on the road for three weeks. Our first date was at the Heaven Gallery on Milwaukee Ave. Jason has been maintaining his Protest series there for a while now. Back in the old day Heaven was more known for the dance parties, it's matured since then and playing there is a good time - a nice sounding front room, good location for people to get to, and Dave Dobie, who I met in my first days in Chicago, is always friendly. We asked the GK Duo to play the first set - that's Mattthew Golombisky and Quin Kirchner, two fellows who came to Chicago after I moved out west I think. A good duo - bass, drums and pedal electronics.
We played a set of mainly our new music - all recorded last July after the tour - this tour we really get to learn that material. I was happy with the turnout - Josh Abrams and Dave Rempis swung by after playing a benefit at Subterranean. Haven't seen Josh in a long time.
So, New Years Eve came and went - on the 2nd we got into the Daisy family bikeshop van and headed down to Lexington where our good man Ross had a show set up for us at the Icehouse. We first went by Gumbo Ya-Yas for a good bite to eat - Ross always provides. We played two sets at the Icehouse, started pretty soon after 8 as a good crowd turned out and were done with our second set before 10:30. We played all the new music along with older tunes. Walter Tunis, a writer in Lexington really enjoyed the new material - he's been giving us nods in the press there for a few years now. Really a nice situation to go to. The Icehouse lived up to it's name temperature wise - the downside of having a huge performance space is the heating bills - Brian had a turbo-jet style heater going for a bit, but I remember looking over at Tim at one point in the second set and seeing his breath in the cool air.

Video of Aurora Group

Here's a freaked out video that someone put together of the last time I played with Weasel, Aurora, Liz and Damon. Not good for those who experience discomfort with flashing lights.

Improvising 8th St Performance Space 12-7-2006

One thing I've done alot out here in the bay is play improvised music. And when I say improvised music, I mean it in the "improvised music" way. Free of charts, free of overly defined & sometimes limited concepts, open to possibilities. Out here there are a good number of improvisors with good possibilities for instrumentation. It's a good thing. One "steady" group I'm in is with Damon Smith (bass), Liz Albee(trumpet), Aurora Josephson (voice) and Weasel Walter (drums). This night I played in two quartets: one with Damon, Charity Chan (piano) who moved out here from Montreal, and her friend Scott Thomson (trombone). Scott is visiting form Montreal - is a great trombone player - able to do many things with the instrument, can play quiet... I played alto and it was well paced throughout - from all sonic textures to more lyrical parts. It felt good & went by fast.
I then used both alto & computer in quartet with Noah Phillips (guitar), Cory Wright (baritone & clarinet), Jordan Glenn (drums). Cory moved up from LA recently - a good player on reeds - friends with Noah from there. Our set also went by quickly - I did live sampling of Jordan & myself along with trying out this new system of triggering short samples based on amplitude response - I've developed this as a way to get away from static comupterland - or rather, add to my options. I'm getting interested in just using a large array of sounds, similar in the way that some percussionists just go to work with all their gadgets and bells - one very good one played the same night - Gino Robair. Great sense of timing, and I'm glad he covered the "massage" device he used in the set with a piece of cloth - kept you guessing.
Noah sounded great on guitar - I won't see him for quite awhile as he's going overseas for abit now that he's finished with Mills. We recorded with Charity and Andy Strain (trombone) last weekend (I've been taking advantage of the studio at Mills to fill up my harddrive with some of this improvised music).

Dragons 1976 in Columbia back in 2005

This is a video from back in January of 2005 when we played down in Columbia, S.C.




You could read about it here.

Bill Horvitz Expanded Band 11-17-2006

A busy few weeks here with travelling down to SoCal and back. A few months ago I was asked by Bill Horvitz to play in a large ensemble he was putting together for a few concerts in November - things tend to creep up on you & here we are at the end of November. The group was a twelve piece with Omid Zoufonoun (conductor), Steve Adams (sax/flute), Jon Raskin (sax), Kyle Bruckmann (oboe), Hal Forman (trumpet), Darren Johnston (trumpet), Liam Staskawicz (trombone), Matt Montgomery (violin), Katie Harlow (cello), George Cremaschi (bass), Robin Eschner (piano/vocals), Joseph Sabella (drums), and Bill Horvitz (composer, guitar and vocals). I played clarinet & bass clarinet - since moving out here a good deal of my playing has been on those instruments - even though there's a good deal of clarinetists out here on the scene that are quite good - (Jacob Lindsey, Matt Ingalls for two). Though, I guess folk have an ear towards the orchestration out here & stay away from having too many saxes in a group (a good thing).

This band in a way was a reunion of Harris Eisenstadt Ahimsa Orchestra that played a few date much earlier in the year and the music was much different. The music was written by Bill as a tribute to his younger brother who passed away suddenly about a year ago. He wrote songs that were reminders of what his brother meant to him.
We played twice - once at the Capp St Community Music Center in San Francisco and two nights later in Sebastopol. The Capp St space is becoming a personal favorite, it seems it would be a perfect setting for a festival of improvised music.

Tiny Lights California November 2006

the Tiny Lights are myself, Ben Bracken and Jacob Danziger. Ben & Jacob hail from Ann Arbor and I met them over the years through Matt Bauder. Once out here on the west coast we three started making music together as we all found ourselves at the Mills College. Last spring we started making some music together and this fall we got the opportunity to play four shows with Anathallo, a band from Ann Arbor. ben's brother Dan plays with Anathallo and was the connection for getting this project form the recording land to the live performance world, which is a good thing.
This last weekend we played shows in San Francisco, Anaheim, Los Angeles and Long Beach and it was a good time. When wer recorded our first few songs we used lots of overdubs to record piano, guitar, violin, clarinets, melodica, glockenspiel, bass clarinet, trumpets etc... for these show we had to pare it down to be played by the three of us with one guest each night for a guitar part and some clapping - this was a tough task, but definitley a good exercise in orchestration. I brought my clrainet, bass clarinet and computer, ben brought guitar and computer, jacob brought violin, glockenspiel andboomerang pedal. In each venue we caught the soundmen off guard - they're just not used to be asked for multiple line inputs and they get spooked when a condenser mic is to be used on stage. For us, a condenser is necessary - bass clarinet and acoustic guitar jsut give too quiet a signal for dynamic mics in a live setting. But, each night as we got more used to our setup the sound improved - I felt that I didn't have any feedback issues with my condenser - the only time anything crazy happened with them was in LA when a bad cable was used - apparantly Monster Cables don't work so hot with phantom power.
Anyway, enough about the tech requirements - our shows were fun and though we were playing to crowds that are more used to straight up rock we had some real positive comments from unexpected people. Check out undressmerobot.com for a possible upcoming interview that happened after we played in Anaheim in front of 100 or so underagers.
Spaceland in LA was the best show for sure - great sound, real friendly folk - the electric piano sounded real only there. Watch out for vegetarian tacos in Long Beach - make sure they realize youre asking for "whole" beans, not "cold" beans.............
Hanging in Los Angeles was a good time - we stayed with Justin Shay in Angelinos Heights each night - had good food at the Brite Spot & Home - Jen came down for the weekend also and we got to hike around Griffith Park and have delicious pie at the House of Pies. LA knows how to cook.
As for Tiny Lights, we'll be recording a 5 song EP in the near future and more shows will come.

Quartet Mama Buzz 10-20-2006

It was a friday evening and I played a few sets in a quartet with Ben Bracken, Jacob Lindsey and Ava Mendoza. Two electric guitars and two winds. Ben played tabletop prepared guitar with a large array of devices to get lots of sounds. Ava played in a more melodic style, branching into the sound world at times. Jacob brought his Bb, Ab, Bass and Contrabass clarinets - lots of range and he really knows how to play each. I brought my alto, Eb clarinet and Bass clarinet - so we had many options in terms of sound and range. I'm getting pretty used to playing at Mama Buzz - though it's a pretty modest place to play at, usually there are enough listeners that you can concentrate on playing the music and know that the audience will be attentive and appreciative.

Here's two pictures by Jen Dunn:

Weasel Walter Quartet 10/7/2006

A sunny day in California. A perfect day to drive to a field somewhere near Davis (about an hour away from Oakland) to play a short set of fast & loud at a day long festival. I've been getting to know Weasel Walter better since moving out here last year. He asked me to play in his quartet with Damon Smith and Randy Hunt a little ways back. We've played together before in some other groups, but today was the loud & fast day - after making the drive with Jen & Maria, we found ourselves at a Roadhouse near Davis, in a field with the Numbers playing a set on a small stage. We played on the smaller stage - well on the grass. But that was kind of good cause everyone there circled up around us & it felt more up close & personal. I think our set was about a half hour - and we recorded it. Kind of a strange place to have a little day long fest, but worth the trip.

solo set Mama Buzz 9-15-2006

got back to the bay area more than a month ago, and i've been doing some playing with some different groups, a Moe Staiano date and a few dates with Damon Smith and others. haven't written about them though, have i? Nope. Sorry. But, this last week I played my first solo instrument show....ever? I think so. It took me to enter my 30s (on the 14th) before I would play a show alone with just a wind instrument (well, 2 in this case) since I was an undergraduate at UF playing a solo recital. Why? Well, I usually don't think much of solo sets - music is good with multiple people involved, so why screw it up? Well, (I'm saying well alot) I tried to make this a duo set, but all the folk I asked to play (scott rosenberg, liz albee, though of some others) were all unavailable for this date. So, I decided that solo was the way to go.
I played alto saxophone & bass clarinet - my favorites. It's taken me awhile to start to feel like I'm actually able to play some shit on bass clarinet, but over the few years I've been working on it, things are starting to feel better. I played a set of about 40 minutes, all improvised, with some guiding thoughts, nothing very specific, but a desire to play different pieces, each focused & without playing everything in each piece - it was a good experience for sure. I do remember that after my first bass clarinet piece I had worked up a pretty good sweat. One funny thing was that as I was starting my second piece, on alto, I heard from outside the windows two guys talking about different saxophone players they'd seen play around town - i'm an eavesdropper for sure....

also - i've got a website now!

audio clips!

(not yet, but soon)

guess what it's called?

Rolldown July 2006

I've been busy here in Chicago for the past week plus. One group in particular that I've played with is the Jason Adasiewicz led Rolldown with Josh Berman, Jason Roebke & Frank Rosaly. last summer we recorded as a group at Electrical Studios, since then I think they've played a few dates, but it was good to be able to play together this week. The first date was at Elastic on thursday the 13th. The second was at the Hungry Brain three nights later. We only had a chance for one rehearsal and Jason brought some new tunes that were tricky & good. The music takes advantage of the instruments - with complicated parts in the vibes, harmonizations in the horns, and counterlines in the bass & drums. Jason's composition style is definitely in the jazz tradition, and he's open to free sections right alongside chord changes and everything in between. His pieces strongly influence the improvising sections. Both times we played the band felt very fluid playing together - the best thing about having the experience of playing with people for a couple of years is that you don't need a lot of rehearsal to get things together. At sunday at the Brain, the crowd was really a good size and were listening - we played a full hour set, but it didn't feel long at all. After us, a quartet of jamie branch, jason stein, jeb bishop and anton hatwich played - they're called block & tackle. Pieces by Branch, a trumpeter - repetitive lines, one piece in particular had some really subtle phasing going on which sounded real good. A good night in all at the Brain - I stayed late with Jason as the crowd trickled out slowly - we hung out with Dan and and Jeb Bishop right there at the end.

Back in Chicago, July 2006

Back in Chicago after a long hiatus, got into town on Friday the 7th to play with Dragons at Heaven over in Wicker Park. I had taken the bus down to St Louis to visit Jen & her folks, coming back the bus was a bit late - I got in town at about 10:15, but the show was supposed to start at 10. We were to play two sets, so Jason & Tim played as a duo for the first one. I got in just as they were finishing their last improvisation, after a short break we played our set to some of the Chicago people - as we played more folks showed up - it was a pretty good turnout. It is a different feeling, not living in Chicago and playing here - in a good way.
The next night I played at the Charleston with Josh Berman, Nate McBride and Frank Rosaly. Used to always have a good time when I would play tunes there, so wanted to do it again. A plus is that the Charleston is now a smoke-free bar, so you don't get bombarded by the typical Chicago smoke clouds. We played alot of tunes by Monk, some which I'd never played before. McBride is really on top of those charts, he's good friends with a certain someone who made a lot of transcriptions of Monk's music. That music is tough to pull off - we definitely had a good time playing, but it also re-enforced my respect for the music.
Next up was getting together with the 774th Street Quartet - myself on alto, Guillermo Gregorio on alto & clarinet, Keefe Jackson on tenor and bass clarinet, and Thomas Mejer from Switzerland on contrabass saxophone. Interesting how things work out - we got together as a quartet when Thomas was in town back in 2003 I think, part of the Lucerne / Chicago sister city exchange (which is mainly kept going by Lucerne's government). Last spring we recorded the music we brought to the group (each of us two pieces) as George Hansen resurrected his label Bloody Murder and wanted to put out a recording by us. Now a year later the CD is finished so on this occasion that I'm in town Thomas came from Lucerne and we played at Deadwax records up on Lincoln Ave on Sunday afternoon, Live on Air at WNUR in Evanston and on Tuesday night at Elastic. It was fun to play that music again - each of us our very different in our approach to writing music and improvising, and balancing the different personalities is good times.
The show at Elastic went well, a good turnout including some people that I knew that didn't normally come when I would play concerts back when I lived here. Again, a good thing about visiting. In some ways, it's difficult visiting here because there are so many friends and people I'd like to talk to and catch up with - I'd also like to see other people play, but I'll be pretty busy while I'm here - I'm hoping to catch up with everyone in good time. Good thing I'm not here for just a weekend.
The other thing that I did here in my first 5 days back was play at Myopic with Steve Hess and Toby Summerfield - they on drums & guitar respectively, me with saxophone & computer. It was good to play - I haven't done live electronics in more than a month now - I felt kind of rusty. Got it get it together for a couple of Grey Ghost shows this week and a solo set the next weekend. Playing with Steve & Toby was a good match though - they share a good sense of pace & timing.

A blur of a finish for the Dragons tour

Sorry, the last week or so of the Dragons tour went by quickly, quickly. After playing in Charlotte we played Greenville, Columbia, Nashville and Lexington before heading back up to Chicago. After the Carolina dates, our final three days had a good amount of driving added up which made us a little claustrophobic, but nothing too terrible. A blow-out in Kentucky on the way to a clinic at Morehead State put us about an hour behind schedule, but all was forgiven and we made it to everywhere we needed to make it to.
Playing in Columbia was a good time - two shows in two nights, one at the Whig and another at the Hunter-Gatherer.
Folks liked us enough to come to both shows, Ross Taylor took care of us in his special way, getting us food at the most opportune time and finding a hat for me after my hair started really fro-ing up in the humid southern regions...not that I have anything against a fro, I just don't know if it fits me that well...The Whig is an underground bar across from the State Capitol of South Carolina (and of course the Confederate flag which was recently re-moved from the Capitol dome, but is still prominently displayed on the Capitol grounds). The hunter-gatherer is on the other side of the Capitol, maybe two blocks away, we saw fireworks outside of the floor to ceiling windows at the front of the bar before we started playing.
A seven hour drive the next day got us to Deanna Varagona's place in Nashville, she took us by a cookout before the show which was at a gallery called the Ruby Green. She played the first set solo, with accompaniment by pre-recorded tapes. A large fan kept us cool that night while we were playing (relatively) but was no match for the Big Ass Fan at the new Mecca Dance space in Lexington where we played the next night. Wish I could give a link to the Big Ass Fan company, the thing was gi-normous, though still the heat of Kentucky in July took over....
We played two sets in Lexington to an appreciative crowd thanks to Ross Compton.
Finally got a relief from the heat on the way back to Chicago after a few rainstorms on the 4th of July. The tour ended up well and we're looking forward to the next one.

Dragons 1976 Charlotte 6-28-2006

Down to the south during June, not the hottest of months but the possibility is there for some true heat. Driving in the Benz with no AC....we had driven through rain for about 4 days and it finally stopped, so we were able to dry out the car that had built up some moisture. Got into Charlotte NC on wednesday the 28th - our friend Brent Bagwell set up a show at the Evening Muse, a nice venue in an up&coming neighborhood in Charlotte. Brent's a good guy - saxophonist playing tenor & baritone, we've done shows with him before down here and we played a bill together up in Chicago once - Dragons & his group Eastern Seaboard. For this night there were three groups - his Project Bluebird, a project witha bassist and a doubler on cello & violin. All improvised in a loose melodic style with each of the three building from what they heard each other do previously. We played the middle set & the crowd that came were good listeners, though the energy level wasn't really that high - maybe we could've done more...maybe not. Afterwards we hit a diner in Charlotte for late night snacks before heading out to Brent's place, which he's actually moving from in just a week. He's been living about 45 minutes outside of Charlotte on alarge piece of land with a turkey farm on it, a river nearby, lots of woods and fields with cows being the primaray population. We finished the night off with a glass of scotch and got a goo dnight sleep in the quiet north carlolina countryside.

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

Solo Set 21 Grand 5-26-2006

Played a solo set at 21 Grand last Friday night. It's the first time that I've played a solo show out here - and one of the few times in general. Instead of bringing saxophone, clarinet, etc I used my computer to make the music. Similar to what I do when playing with saxophone & computer, but more static and with more attention paid to the different layers of sound coming out of the audio output. For the set I used two long drum samples, one of Johnathan Crawford, one of Steve Hess & samples of my saxophone, clarinet and trumpet, one each. I got to 21 Grand a half hour after the show was supposed to start - I got my times all wrong and had my folks in town so had brought them up to the Armstrong Redwoods and Goat Rock State Beach up in Sonoma County. But set up quick and was ready to play my opening spot within about 5 minutes - that's a nice thing about just bring the saxophone or just the computer - no big setup system, no microphones etc... There were two other sets - one with Matt Davignon and the last with the group Mire that features pedal steel gutiar, drums & laptop. Unfortunately I had to leave in the middle of their set as my folks were getting tired & wanted to get back to the hotel. I made the mistake of leaving my jacket with the car keys basically on the stage, so had to slide my way up there while Mire was playing - sorry 'bout that...
- glad to play the solo set though and looking forward to doing more -

Pink Canoes Luggage Store 5-18-2006

A thursday night in the summer in San Francisco - that was yesterday when the Pink Canoes played at the Luggage Store on Market Street. Across the street was Phil Lesh & Friends doing there thing, so in addition to the regular tenderloin crack headed madness there were gaggles of hippie-kids getting ready for their show. San Francisco street scenes are tough to beat sometimes.... First show in a few weeks for the Canoes - they had actually played a show down in LA on the 5th opening for a Nels Cline group, but I couldn't make that show. It seems everytime I play with the Canoes it's a little different and I bring some different permutation of my set-up. This night I brought my soprano and the computer. I liked using the soprano in the group - the higher range worked well in being able to be heard without having to play overly loud. Using an instrument sans neckstrap also works well when needing to put it down to concentrate on the computer. Afterwards we all went to the Kerry House, a bar in Oakland away from the tourists. We talked about how to get people to come see our music. If anyone has a suggestion, let us know.

Quintet 21 Grand 4-21-2006

Last Friday I played at 21 Grand in a group with weasel walter on drums, liz albee on trumpet, damon smith on bass and aurora josephson on voice. The group was put together by aurora, who went to Mills and still lives in the bay area. We got together about a month ago to play and what happened last Friday was similar to our first meeting. Everyone in the group are good musicians that have just as good ears and our styles mesh well. At no point did I ever feel that the music was boring, or that something else "needed" to be done, but something else was always about to happen and for the most part all the decisions made affected the rest of the music in the way you'd want it to. Weasel was glad to play in a group where he isn't expected to play loud the whole time, Aurora is about the most tasteful vocalist I've heard in a long time and Liz's trumpet playing is right on, there were parts when each of us backed the other up. We played the longest set of the night, there were three bands, it started at 9:00 and was over by 11:15. We played the second set and we set up in the middle of the room, surrounded by the audience but facing in. This allowed for us to be able to hear each other before the natural echo of the space affected our sounds - a good idea when playing in a bouncy space. We'll be recording in early May, my last recording before the summer break at Mills starts.

A Week in April 2006

The spring is coming into it's own out here in the bay area - this last week was a busy one, being involved in three different concerts in different contexts. Early in the week I played on a concert which featured a string quartet. The 2nd year compostion majors got a grant to pay for a string quartet to play their new compsitions. Paul Scriver wrote a piece for the quartet plus flute, piano and bass clarinet. I played bass clarinet and actually had to borrow his horn as mine, though has a nice tone & I like the feel of the instrument, tends to have trouble with intonation (which I think is mainly due to when it was made - back in the 20s I believe). I enjoyed the piece Paul wrote, some moments which dealt strictly with the instruments timbres, others which involved precise timing to achieve the right musical effect. The quartet which was hired was young & friendly, maybe not super-pro yet, but on their way to being solid. I definitely like the fact that there is challenging new music being written and played out here in the bay, except for a few experiences, notably with Guillermo Gregorio, there could have been more of it going on in Chicago.
There was an electronic music concert at Mills; an exchange between several of the music schools in California, CalArts, Stanford, UCSB, UCSD. Steini Gunnarson & I played as Son of Gunnar, Ton of Shel. We had a ten minute allotment of time, but tried to pack lots into it. Alto, Bass Clarinet, Guitar and lots of different processing. I had a bit of a technological failure at the beginning so Steini stalled the proceedings by rambling on about "as we approach the singularity...." always good to have someone be able to stall for you. Lewis Keller form CalArts brought a nice piece which utilized the sounds of two ibooks - he wrote a piece for wurlitzer and accompanied it by the whirring, static tones of the ibooks - I was impressed with the intonation between the two instruments - some complained that he didn't do much with the sounds, but I thought that it was a good piece - he limited what he could do and built a piece around it.
The Pink Canoes played on that concert and also on Saturday night at 21 Grand. Both sets were short - 10 minutes and 20 minutes respectively. Both times we set up in a way that we could all actually hear each other and it helped immensely. The past few shows we had tried to get creative with our set-ups only to realize later that it was close to impossible to hear each other and therefore be able to react and make music together. On these nights there were ebbs and flows, space was given between the five of us and the results were much better than in the past.

Signal Flow 2006 Mills College

This past weekend there was a four day festival at Mills which is called Signal Flow. I played on one piece each day of the festival and had my piece 'November' performed on Saturday night. November was written for two clarinets, bass clarinet, piano and live sampling & processing via MSP. It was a good concert on Saturday night, most of the other compositions had video along with the audio. Chris Kubick's Crowd Control was a particualr favorite of mine. The piece was based on sound files of clapping , applause and crowd reactions all triggered by Chris clapping into a microphone. Seems pretty simple but turned out to be very well constructed and performed really well in the room. I was happy with how my piece went as well - had a constructive soundcheck earlier in the dayin order to get the levels between the instruments and the computer playback. I set up my patch to be operated by Jacob Danziger, and though I could have designed it to be more automated, I feel that having someone actively controlling the processing and being able to balance the sound from the room made a huge postive impact on the performance.
Signal Flow ended on Sunday with a keg-fueled reception that involved Les Stuck and Fred Frith dancing just as goofy as the rest of us.

SOG,TOS Luggage Store 3-2-2006

First time bringin a project to play in San Francisco proper. The group Son of Gunnar, Ton of Shel, a duo between myself and Steini Gunnarson, the guitarist from Iceland. We started playing together last fall - we've actually been able to play together quite a bit and record a number of the session - sometimes it's just acoustic saxophone and guitar, but mostly we bring our computers along to play. We played at the Luggage Store Gallery in downtown San Francisco. It's right near (or in) the Tenderloin, on the second floor of a building on Market Street. A nice sized space with high ceilings next door to the delicious taqueria Cancun. The first group to play was a trio of Alexander Kort (electric cello) with Marty Dowers (reeds) and Christopher Fleeger (electronics). It was all improvised, Christopher was processing the two instrumentalists via MSP. We played at nine - the space is a bit boomy but we took advantage of this by letting our sounds bounce off the walls. It was a good first show for us - transferring what we do in a secluded environment to a public one is a little tricky, but you've got to do the public sometimes before you can relaly get your thing going. Matt & Rent, who run the series, were really into it and invited us back. Bob Marsh came out also - he lived in Chicago when I first moved there and moved out here about 5 years ago.

Improv Lotto at Mills 11-28-2005

So i was in the contemporary performance ensemble at Mills this semester - it was split between playing some written music (by Terry Riley) and working on improvising in a variety of groups - alot of the time we'd have nice sessions where there'd be randomly picked groups to improvise with each other - some of the time the improvising was really good, sometimes not so good. for the concert we did the same thing - Fred Frith, who is the guide of the larger group, picked the number of players (from 1 to 4) and then names were drawn out of a physical hat (not a figurative one). I was picked to play with Fred, and we did a little duo with him on guitar & me on bass clarinet. It was a nice little piece, we kind of moved around a bit musically, from out of time to in time & back. Afterwards a group of us headed over to the Alley in Oakland - sang a couple of songs at the piano with ol' Ron Dibble.

Mama Buzz Cafe 11-16-2005

My first time playing in Oakland away from Mills College since moving out here in August. I've been pretty content working on music without playing out in the world, I think it's important to not play shows some times. I got asked to play a duet with Zachary Watkins by Noah Phillips, a guitarist I know from Mills. Noah's doing a bunch of dates with Harris Eisenstadt, who I met before in Chicago when he came to play shows there maybe two winters ago.
So it was an early night thing at the Mama Buzz Cafe. I've played with Zach a handful of times while we were working on some music set to a film by Derek Jarman (we were also working with Noah, Ava Mendoza and Travis Johns). He's an interesting fellow, from Seattle, makes music with lots of little devices (circuit bent) and instruments like guitars and keyboards. We did an improvised set - I brought only my computer, no acoustic instruments. Nice thing about that was that I could walk to the Cafe from my place in Lake Merritt. It was a nice 30 minute walk along Grand Ave, and in the nice temperate Oakland climate. We played for about 40 minutes, going here & there, a couple of times some demo songs came crashing out of one of Zach's vaious electronic devices - the second time I sampled some of it with my high quality powerbook microphone and spit it back out his way - we were joined for a bit by Zach's friend Isaac, who is also from Seattle. I don't know if it's a Seattle thing, or because they're good friends (probably the latter) but they both have the same laugh - i can't explain it to you here, but if you ever meet the two of them you'll hear what I mean.
It was good to play - I'd been to Mama Buzz before and was a bit dissappointed, but this time I had some good coffee, and it was dark out, so it felt much more like a little spot than just a storefront on wide telegraph ave. Walked back home along Grand ave, by the park and the lake - a nice stroll.

i really have been playing

hey all, sorry bout the long delay, it's not like i moved out to california and then never played music again. it's not like that - it's just that i'm taking a break from the routine of dragging my gear out to random venues around the town i live in to focus in on some other things. but, i am still playing music. i've been playing with a guitarist from iceland whose name is gundmundur gunnarson but goes by steini. we've been improvising together - some all acoustic, some with our computers as well - we've been recording whenever we play, hopefully we'll get together enough good stuff to put an album together and we can all hear what a florida iceland connection sounds like.
this past weekend i finally me tup with scott rosenberg, he's been living out here for a few years now, lived here in the mid-90s when he went to school at Mills - and after several years of moving around he moved back to the bay. he had called me a few weeks back about hanging out on a recording session on this past saturday night - i was game, so grabbed my clarinet and took the 20 minute walk to downtown oakland. it's a nice walk past lake merritt - the sun was going down - wind was blowing - very fall like. the project that was going on was a series of songs based on steinbeck stories. the first track we played on was set on a party scene, so first we layed down some tracks of scott & i playing clarinet annd sopranino, in a loose fun way. next was some extra percussion and hand claps - we made it sound more like a party - it only took us a little time to fill up the tracks, so we moved on to some other songs which were more dark mood - put in some nice long tones, on another got a bit more loose - scott busted out the contrabass clarinet to get some nice sub tones.
i've been busier at school than i'd at first thought i'd be - but working on good things, going to write some music for violin, clarinet, tabletop guitar and manipulation - when will the first show be in the wild world of oakland or sf? who knows....

24 hour drone 9-3&4-2005

drone d.JPG
Originally uploaded by dragonseventysix.

Second week out here at Mills College & there was a 24 hour drone...didn't know how much I'd be a part of it, but after starting up around 9 on Saturday night, I stayed part of the drone until about 3:30 AM, and then helped Norman, Michael, Steiny, Travis and a few others finish the drone from 5PM to 8PM the next day. It was a good time for a drone, those of us involved would get something droning on our assorted equipment, and then with the aid of feedback or computer noise keep it going while we would take a break outside the room. It was on lthe loud side for most of the time, so a bit trying to stya in the room the whole time. Not a meditative drone, but there were moments....

new digs, new sights

i've made it to the west coast....hard to believe i left chicago a week ago yesterday, it seems like i left yesterday, but i guess three days of straight driving and then a two day trip to a city where you've gotta drive all over does that to you. i've moved into the space i'll be calling home for abit - it's a good spot with aview of the hill across the way, nice windows, a cat named junebug, and a rommate who tends to be gone all day...pretty sweet. i've been getting used to oakland via bicycle, the hills are a double edged sword, going up some of the big ones make you curse, but on the way down the quick ride makes up for it. today i rode up to joaquin miller park, going up there was tough, but the view was worth it and coming down fast never felt so good - i've gotta get used to the descents, it makes you think twice when you're zooming down hills on your bike at 30 or so mph.
i have to say i'm pretty happy with my living situation, though jen will not be here for a few months and that makes things a bit lonely. in the neighborhood there's all the things i need, good coffe place (cafe dibartolo), restaurants, movie theater, park, grocery store, bagels, kosher deli, natural foods store, and of course a starbucks and gap....
working on the gery ghost recording, we recorded just days before i left chicago and we got some very good music down. thankfully i've got plenty of time to editing and mix and make it sound good. i'm looking forward to doing it right, getting it out there and making some noise.

last week in chicago

empty oak st beach
Originally uploaded by lonesome cowgirl.

so it is my last week in chicago. my last show was back on the 24th of july, i've been pretty busy with some recording sessions & figuring out how i'm going to move my stuff across the country. it's going well though. yesterday & today jen & I made it out to lake michigan for some swimming. after a brief respite from the heat, it is back & badder than ever. well, maybe not ever. but it is hot enough to make doing things in the apartment out of the question, unless you want to sweat it out. going to the lake was great though. we had woken early to try to take some pictures of the city with morning light, but the sun gets up real early these days - we were out there by 7 and the sun was already pretty high. we cruised a bit before deciding to go the lake in between the oak street and north avenue beaches. this spot is good because you can jump right into nice cold water, it's deep enough that you don't touch the bottom when you make the leap. good times.
last night i invited folk to the charleston for goodbye drinks. it was a good time - people showed up around 9 or 10, most of the folks at the bar were friends, and it was good to see everyone. when i'd played at the brain two weekends ago i felt uncomfortable with it being my "last show" in town. i hope it's not the last show, i feel like coming back to chicago in one way or another is important & it will be done. last night made me feel good about the folks i know here in chicago.. i know i'm welcome back whenever i'd like to come.

last week in chicago

empty oak st beach
Originally uploaded by lonesome cowgirl.

so it is my last week in chicago. my last show was back on the 24th of july, i've been pretty busy with some recording sessions & figuring out how i'm going to move my stuff across the country. it's going well though. yesterday & today jen & I made it out to lake michigan for some swimming. after a brief respite from the heat, it is back & badder than ever. well, maybe not ever. but it is hot enough to make doing things in the apartment out of the question, unless you want to sweat it out. going to the lake was great though. we had woken early to try to take some pictures of the city with morning light, but the sun gets up real early these days - we were out there by 7 and the sun was already pretty high. we cruised a bit before deciding to go the lake in between the oak street and north avenue beaches. this spot is good because you can jump right into nice cold water, it's deep enough that you don't touch the bottom when you make the leap. good times.
last night i invited folk to the charleston for goodbye drinks. it was a good time - people showed up around 9 or 10, most of the folks at the bar were friends, and it was good to see everyone. when i'd played at the brain two weekends ago i felt uncomfortable with it being my "last show" in town. i hope it's not the last show, i feel like coming back to chicago in one way or another is important & it will be done. last night made me feel good about the folks i know here in chicago.. i know i'm welcome back whenever i'd like to come.

grey ghost / fast citizens / hungry brain 7-24-2005

and all good things must come to an end, or at least a stopping point... as i'll be driving cross coutnry to oakland in a little less than two weeks, this date was arranged as my last night to play at the hungry brain, at least for the time being. josh berman & mike reed, who have been booking the series for several years now, really wanted me to have this night. along with jason ajemian and tim daisy I played the first installment of what is known as the transmission series.
so for my last night there I played with two groups: grey ghost and fast citizens. fast citizens is a band that i truly have a good time playing with and i feel has been one of the most communal groups i've been in since living in chicago. keefe jackson writes most of the music in the group, but it seems like everyone really has an equal say it what goes on in the music, and this is a good thing. also, due to it being a sextet, no personality can dominate too much. johnathan crawford and i have been grey ghost for a good 3 or 4 years by this point, and we've been able to grow to be able to play together with alot of intuition and individuality.
yesterday was hottt, about 105 degrees all day, i had spent it with jen going to places that had air conditioning, first the alliance bakery, then to a movie, then up to argyle street for vietnamese food at pho 777 and then finally the hungry brain. people trickle into the brain later & later nowadays, so it's not really the band's fault that we started aroudn 10:30. both sets were good, and we didn't get done until about 1:00 (pretty late for a sunday). it was a good night and i hope to be back in the not too far future -

electronicians rodan 7-21-2005

it's been a while since i played, i know it - went on a two week trip out west to do some camping out in the olympic peninsula and to find a new place in oakland. you can check out pictures from that trip here. so, who knows how much i'll be playing out once i'm there in oakland, but i'm sure some things will be going on. i'm finishing up my chicago time with some recording sessions, btu also just a few more live dates. next week i'll be recording with this group that we've called the elctronicians. it's me on saxophone & computer, nori tanaka on drums, jason ajemian on upright bass & pedals; and matt lux on electric bass. we've played at rodan a handful of times int he last month or so, and usually have a good time at it, making lots of noise & getting into some real grooves. it's a comfortable gig - have dinner around 9:30, start playing around 10:30, do two sets, and end near closing time. Rodan doesn't have a listening audience, so if you can block them out you can have a good time. It's not a place to be too introspective, otherwise the crowd noise would drown you out. another thing is that we can get real loud real quick in there, and because we've got three good sized amps within about 8 feet of each other, you can be fooled into thinking you're making a sound that someone else in the group is making. it;s kind of like - am i making that sound? why is it so loud? oh, that's cool, oops, not me, oh, it's me doing the really annoying thing right now, or is it? confusing to be sure.
alwaysa good time though, especially when getting the johnny red's from the bar....

grey ghost at heaven 7-2-2005

sittin by the tracks
Originally uploaded by lonesome cowgirl.

the perfect temperature for sitting outside next to train tracks in chicago. it was july 2nd and we had a combination cookout and concert at the heaven gallery in wicker park. we started cooking food around 6pm - brian labycz brought burgers & short ribs, i brought veggie burgers, corn, potato salad & other stuff. it was the good time hanging out on the back roof of heaven & out of the direct sunlight. there was a ping pong table set up on the adjaacent roof - crawford played alot.
the music started at 9 - brian labycz played an electroinc duet with vadim sprikut; fred lonberg holm used his cello as a sounding board for electronic gadgets, and grey ghost played a set which felt very good. we've really gotten to a good spot in being familiar with each other to be able to trust each other in improvising & being able to react to each other in a way that each is independent while maintaining a dialogue.
this weekend was full of things going on - after the show we headed to the beachland for drinks, and after that i went on a late night bikeride to old town and bike - summer bike rides at 4 am are great.....