photos from the artwalk gig
Playing the Artwalk in downtown LA was a pretty good time all right. The owner of the gallery I played in was a bitter guy who glared at the musicians, but the room was laid out well, there was a good flow (and ebb) of people, and it was fun to play my songs with pals instead of by myself.
Downtown is always a circus on Artwalk nights. I took photos and posted them on Flickr.
proposing to a centerfold
If I don't make Vorbis and Flac versions of some recording, I'll get complaints. But if I do make one I won't get listens.
My heart is with the Vorbis fans. My head says that the time and disk space is wasted. For now I'm still sticking with it, but it I might as well be proposing to a centerfold for all the good it does.
gallery shows 1/14 and 1/16.
Tomorrow night January 14 2010 during Artwalk I'll play a slack little gallery in downtown LA called The Exchange. Exact location 114 W 5th Street, Los Angeles 90013 (on 5th Street between Spring and Main). Time is more or less between 7:30-9:30. Probably two 30 min sets at 7:45 and 8:30, followed by a set by Dick & Jane. I'll have a trio with David Orser on standup bass and Scotty Boyd on mandolin. We'll be playing uptempo roadhouse rube jazz and jug sounds, more recent and raucous than the solo instrumentals I usually post on the web. This place is a nice room to hang around in, super laid back, good for chatting and whatnot.
On Saturday night January 16 I'll play a party for FORTH magazine at G2 gallery in Venice Beach. G2's address is 1503 Abbot Kinney. Set time is about 7pm, I think. The band will be Tom Marion on mandolin and David Orser again on bass. The crowd will be attractive and stylish, a decent wine will be forced upon attendees, and I imagine it'll be a groovy little deal. That's for the west siders among you.
Both shows free as a bird and free as in beer. And both times I'll spend the overwhelming majority of my time quaffing the wine and blabbing with whatever pals stop by. So stop by to quaff and blab.
photos from a couple gigs
Playing a school for disabled children up in north Hollywood:
The kids get up and mosh, bang on whatever in a semi-rhythm, and generally create pure bedlam. Great crowd. They put the cool indie kids at rock clubs to shame.
Playing at a nursing home in the valley:
The ladies at the nursing home flirt like mad. One was very grabby in a physical way. I felt like Tom Jones.
The day after I did this show I got an email from my aunt saying that my mom was very jazzed because some musician had come to play old timey music in her nursing home. Not the same nursing home that I played at. So it was a moment of instant karma, the good kind.
But let's agree to ignore the freaky Oedipal aspect of karma and my mom's flirty peers. Because that would be freaky.
bumper breakdown from Thorough School
"Juba Breakdown" is the first tune in Ellis' Thorough School for the Six or Seven- Stringed Banjo (PDF). It's a lot of fun to play.
Juba Breakdown (MP3) Juba Breakdown (Ogg Vorbis) Juba Breakdown (Ogg FLAC) Juba Breakdown (MP4 video)
This recording is 1:10 long. The tune would be a natural fit to connect segments in a larger piece like a radio play, so I have also clipped out shorter snippets to fit as needed:
Here's the sheet music for people who are inclined that way (I use the 1st banjo part):
I'm playing it in an anachronistic style, something along the lines of 1930s country, which it absolutely wasn't.
My recording is hereby in the public domain. Do whatever you want with it.
Dyin’ Crapshooter’s Blues
Blind Willie McTell -- Dying Crapshooter's Blues (MP3)
SJI sez:I recently received an email from an enthusiastic Porter Grainger fan. In fact, his first comment was to point out that "Dyin' Crapshooter's Blues" actually made it onto piano rolls! Readers of this blog - and of the book - will know that the composer of "Dyin' Crapshooter's Blues" was Porter Grainger. Grainger was one of those souls who disappeared almost completely from public consciousness, even though he left a significant mark on the music of the 1920s.
Versus --
Essay on Blind Willie McTell on Pseudopodium blog:
[Blind Willie] McTell himself said of his most strikingly original composition, "Dying Crapshooter's Blues" (1.9MB MP3): "I had to steal music from every which way you could get it to get it to fit." Although the criminal's mock testament has a history ranging from Villon to "Streets of Laredo" and "St. James Infirmary," McTell's three years of tinkering resulted in a structure part recitation, part theater -- a three-act pop opera complete with opening fanfare.
{folk,authentic,eternal}, {pop,staged,fresh}
Rather than think of the distinction between folk and pop as being authentic vs staged, I think of it as being about the eternal vs the fresh. Themes of death, marriage, birth, poverty, war -- those are the folk side. Themes of innovation, immediacy, daily life, triviality -- those are the pop side. If you write a country song about video games, it's fresh. If you write a metal song about the death of a friend, it's eternal.
My antique music is sometimes authentic and sometimes staged, but is almost always about eternal things.
simpler times that never were
Acomment in classic banjo forums:
there is a great desire for many people to play illiterate. Movies always show cowboys "making their mark." Reading 19th century accounts of cowboys (Andy Adams Log of a Cowboy and W.S. James 27 Years a Mavrick [sic] for example) paints a different picture of the cowboy's education level.
I seem to have fallen into this trap of thinking that a great deal of folk music is fake. Composed to capitalize on a market of nostalgia. I guess fake is not the correct word. Written for the masses longing for simpler times that never were.
St Louis Waltz sheet music
This post is sheet music for St Louis Waltz, which I recorded as Death Valley Waltz.
MIDI MP3 from the MIDI PDF Sibelius source file
I found the song in a field manual for musicians in the American civil war. That field manual is "The Drummer’s and Fifers’ Guide" by Bruce and Emmet. This guide is still around because it is used by the subculture of civil war re-enactors.
The original is this antique manuscript:
For a contemporary musician that manuscript is a bit hard to read and lacks chord changes, so I wrote out a new version:
nursing homes and hospitals
The profound thing about playing music in nursing homes and hospitals is that it can be a real help for people going through hard times. The live music is basically a distraction. It's escapism. You help people forgot their troubles for a short time.
Sometimes people will get up and dance. Sometimes I'll be rewarded with big smiles.
Other times nothing. The listeners are unmoved and I feel like I'm bringing trivial happy talk to people coping with real problems.
Merry-go-round MP3
Behold! Blue Danube Waltz as a merry-go-round MP3
From Wurlitzer Style 153 Military Band Organ, Volume 16
Discovered at music.carouselstores.com.
Horace Weston’s Old Time Jig returns
Yesterday's version of Horace Weston's Old Time Jig was better than the day before, but it started weak and was emotionally distant. It needed a beginning and it needed fire.
So here it is, the fourth and (I hope) final recording.
It's 1:43 long. It's in A minor. The time signature is 2/4. The tempo is 173.
To the extent possible under law, Lucas Gonze
has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to
Horace Weston's Old Time Jig version 4.
This work is published from
United States.
new! improved! Horace Weston’s Old Time Jig
Here's a version of Horace Weston's Old Time Jig which improves on yesterday's in that it's faster, it fixes a timing problem, and it's on my steel string instead of my nylon string.
Horace Weston’s Old Time Jig
...another recording in the Horace Weston series, this time an 1882 number called "Horace Weston's Old Time Jig."
Horace Weston's Old Time Jig (320K MP3)
(FLAC)
(OGG)
Farther Along living sheet music
I wrote down the music for this classic gospel tune called "Farther Along." Here's what it looks like:
But then I wanted to share the original in case anybody wants to modify it. And then I wanted people to be able to modify other people's modifications. What if somebody makes a recording, and then somebody remixes it? And shouldn't I be able to make successive improvements to the page, in case I find mistakes or ways to do a better job? This could get out of hand. There needs to be a tool to manage it.
So instead of putting my original up on my own server, I put it on Github. That's where you'll find the full size image, the PDF, the Sibelius original, MIDI, and an AIFF.