annapolis

hi world. so i’m a little late to the game on posting my thoughts on our lovely boozey croozey annapolis show, but here we are. i am writing from a place where i see a boat and a dredger and a lighthouse, so i feel fortunate… still, looking back on the annapolis show for wrnr on the lovely boat you’ll see in pictures below, well, it was a very fun show, nearly cancelled due to weather, begun with a bloody mary for me, totally uncharacteristic but rather tasty, and then two sets of music for very nice appreciative people who were drinking an alcoholic tea and an historical figure beer and liquor and shots of tequila with me, well those two guys were, one of whom bought the mask you’ll see in brian’s post below… anyway, here are some pictures, and we’ll see you in cambridge, whately, and beyond….

the longest day

We did the first day of summer very right this year. It started with a long drive down to Annapolis, MD. for the WRNR boat cruise. Three hours up and down the Severn River with a very enthusiastic crowd, some fine BBQ, and a bar fit for a Kennedy. Before we set sail, a thunderstorm raged and threatened to shut down the whole gig. Well, it blew right on by. Then, while Dave quoted Melville from the upper deck, the sun came back just in time to dazzle us with its red and orangy beauty as it set beyond the Naval Academy. We headed west, tuned our instruments, and settled in for a perfect end to the longest day of the year.

thank you masked man

the crowd

philip and blurry brian

the thoughtful voyager

beauty

once

Last night Philip and I saw “Once”. I haven’t been this moved by a story in a very long time. Go see it today. Or tomorrow at the absolute latest.

Two musicians meet in Dublin- a male Irish street busker and a young female immigrant from the Czech Republic. We never learn their names. He’s playing on the street, she brazenly asks him who he writes his sad frustrated love songs for, and their tender story grows from there. It’s a quasi- musical, but not in the traditional sense- most of songs are so naturally incorporated into the story it only barely feels like a musical.

Glen Hansard from the fantastic Irish band, The Frames plays the busker and Marketa Irglova is the Czech pianist. It turns out they made a CD together called “The Swell Season” last year. Illustrating a point in Philip’s entry below, as soon as we returned from the movie we went on Emusic and downloaded the album. It’s as gorgeous as the movie.

More info. including the trailer below:

oncethemovie 

theswellseason 

summer reading/writing

dave’s post made me feel like i needed to weigh in out of literary insecurity. but so far all i’m reading is the latest Harper’s and “The History of Love” by Nicole Kraus, which is amazing so far. also, i’m reading “Magic For Beginners” by Kelly Link. i also find time to read a lot of bullshit on the internet. and i mean, a lot.

the web has changed reading and writing for me, and maybe for us all.

i used to write a lot — journals, short stories, screenplays, poems. its all different, now that we all live in this collective hive mind on the internet. its strange how it all crept up so slowly on us all. 10 years ago, i was making my first babysteps on the web,  utterly entranced by Netscape, email, etc. now its like these things have always existed. and now my attempts at journaling are fallow — blogging in a really personal way, like many do, never took for me — and my paper notebooks have half-hearted entries in them that trail off. so much time is eaten being on the web. yet, i can’t shake it. my career in music means i have to spend a good deal of time here maintaining a presence, being a fast responder, keeping up to date. i belabor the obvious. the web makes things very obvious, and very available, and nothing is very exciting or interesting.

we all bring much to this place, and leave with very little.

used to be, if you wanted an album, you went to a record store. that was the only place you could find it. there, and on the radio. and it was fucking exciting.

now if you want something, you don’t even have to think about it. the distance between the thought, the vague impulse, and the action, of acquiring it, is so short that there is no investment made, no sacrifice, no anticipation. and the art suffers greatly.

but i don’t know how to go back. this is what everyone seems to want.

its nice to hear about a band you like making new music.

Summer reading/recording

I’m reading a book called Footsteps by a Javanese writer named Pramoedya Ananta Toer. It’s the third in a series called The Buru Quartet, and each volume follows the coming of age, the dawning of political awareness, the socio-political strugglesp of Minke, a native who is Dutch educated in early 20th century Indonesia. Minke is the son of a powerful native leader (Bupati), yet his “European” education leads him to write, found the first native owned Malay language newspaper, and work against the Dutch colonial yolk. P. Ananta Toer composed most of the quartet in prison for political reasons. I’m looking forward to finishing all four books. I’d also like to read the last Harry Potter. I was surprised that Dumbledore didn’t make an appearance during the last episode of The Sopranos.

Bassist Tony Levin has been known to read the newspaper while recording his parts. This may, or may not, be true.

A portrait of our bass player

I drew this during a meeting with Brian and Scott. We were planning the Levelette recording session that is happening this week. Brian, too, is in Levelette as well as Winterpills. I’m also in two other bands with the bassist known as “Twinklefingers.” This development clearly sickens me. All of the bands that I’m in are recording at once. Gazooks!

I had trouble capturing the sunglasses Berette in Brian’s hair. The rest of the page is a shorthand track list for the songs Sleazy Season and Kick Around.
I need to find my Playskool xylophone. I think it’s under the passenger seat of my car.

I don’t want toast

I don’t want toast for breakfast. Hmm. I want to hear the rough mix of tentatively titled “The Sleeping Rapist” for breakfast. It’s the last song we tracked, and its a good five beats a minute faster than the demonstration version. I don’t know why anyone is really complaining. The producer played the demonstration version and then said, “OK, now faster! Presto, un deux trois quatre.” There was nothing we could do. He was holding all of our pets hostage in the control booth. I want to hear the song again to see if it feels exciting or like everyone can’t quite find the beat. I had originally thought the song was improved by picking up the tempo.

Do I need to pack up my drums (they are set up in the basement for Levelette, Abeja, Spanish for Hitchhiking recording this week) and travel back to the studio? The producer may call me and say, “if we wanted the continental breakfast we would have ordered the continental breakfast, but you get that for free! We don’t want toast!”

polaroids.

polaroids make everything look so cool. these were taken during our recording sessions for what we are tentatively calling the ’secret blue thread EP’. the film flora bought at a tag sale for pennies — really old film, light-leaky and the colors are off but therein lies the magic.

brian

dennis and philip. this will be the cover of our
‘duo’ album. or, when Kings of Convenience start
their American franchise and we take the job.

dark flora, with dave looking on eerily.

dennis.
outside the studio, there is a canopy of green that hides a drop of about half a mile to the murky depths below. above, the leaves spread out as large as umbrellas to protect us from the heavy rains and the vampire bats. its an inspiring perch.

very nice

Today, we wrapped up the basic tracking for this EP. It went very well I think. During the fleeting moments of down time we discussed the Jew harp, and discovered we share a mutual curiosity concerning the misuses of breast milk.

philip: pianoing

brian: waitin’ and wonderin’

dave: responding to a request to search his luggage

flora: girl in a booth

dennis: preparing to concoct another sonic fable

I have paint in my hair

I’ll rinse it soon, don’t worry. I need to look pretty for tomorrow’s basic tracking. One more song, and then it’s back to my day job as a test subject. I won’t feel let down for too long. It’s been a bloody recording session. I actually put my shoes back on to play drums on a new song which I like to call “He makes a happy party,” when low and behold I realize that my bare foot had crushed a bug. I actually had blood on my heel.

I reminded me of conservative windbag Curt Schilling. Gross.

The song does actually have a nice title that I refuse to acknowledge at this point in time. I was sitting behind the drum set crying over the bug when it occurred to me that if I said a prayer and lit a candle I could call it a sacrifice (an offering to my muse and former nanny) and I knew that I would go on to stomp that bass drum with tenacity.

I’m going to visit my mom and dad on Saturday. They live in RI, and I may spend a few hours at Hazard’s beach. The water is still pretty cold. My mother will offer to pay for a haircut. I may take her up on it. It’s important to look nice.