New musical changes in the works…

Last weekend my friend James Hughes drove all the way to Flint from Grand Rapids to hang out with me and brainstorm some ideas for a new music direction. James is a fantastic bassist and guitarist but he also has a degree in composition as well as a special knack for arrangements. He played in one of my favorite Michigan groups, Open Land, and also performed with Jetty Rae at the Lilith Fair last year.

After Cameron and I hooked him up with a giant breakfast, I showed James one of my newer piano songs that I’d been playing, but I felt that it needed more support from other instruments. So we hashed it out all afternoon, various strings and sticks and keys and cups of tea sprawled about the livingroom, and eventually we came up some ideas that stuck. James has much fancier sound equipment than I, which helped a lot.

James has a lot of connections with other musicians in the Grand Rapids area and if everything goes according to plan, there will be a new ensemble forming within the next few months! Which means more full band performances!

After we ran out of juice, we refueled at The White Horse so James could get a taste of Flint’s best pizza, then he headed back west.

Stay in your seats, folks. New sounds are coming your way.

Release Show

The show was, in a word…

…FANTASTIC.

Thanks to everyone who made it possible.  <3

It’s like Cracker Jacks…with less cavities.

On my last day of Christmas break I’m spending the evening at the diningroom table trying to finish stamping the rest of the Beards EP sleeves. My entire music library is on shuffle and out of nowhere I get this idea…

What if there was an extra somethin’ somethin’ that came with this CD? No, nothing like that. Maybe something like put a sticker inside each of the sleeves? No, not all of them. Only some of them, so it’s like a special exclusive bonus. And I’ll write a note on the back with instructions to visit this page and write a comment to report the finding. So how many should there be? 50? 20. No, my hand will cramp too much. 10 is too few. 15. Perfect.

Longwinded explanation of something much simpler: There’s a hidden sticker inside 15 of the EPs. Don’t bother trying to peek inside to see if you can find one, I already fool-proofed it. You’ll just have to cross your fingers and toes!

But really, if you do find a sticker inside your CD sleeve, please visit the link above and let me know! It’s a place for you and your fellow sticker recipients to meet and gloat!

Top Four Concerts of the Year

As 2010 comes to a close, I reminisce my favorite concerts of the year. It’s impossible to list them by best to almost best, so instead I’ll put them in chronological order.

May-  Open Land and Jessica Ripka
Trinity House Theater
Livonia MI

Both fantastic Michigan artists that I have had the honor of performing with, and I met both of them at one of The Ark in Ann Arbor’s Open Stages (one of the best places to meet and network with other local musicians, but that’s for another post). I opened for Open Land at a coffee shop in Grand Rapids in January, and they were great, but something about the Trinity Theater brings out the best of any band. I was completely blown away and any high standards I had walked away with from the Grand Rapids show had now been raised ten fold. Dean’s stage presence, voice, and songwriting are all enviable by any greenhorn folk musician(including myself). The whole band was so tight, so in tune to each other, and so precise, without being robotic or “premeditated,” I still can’t figure out how they pulled it off. Jessica Ripka is quite the anomaly as well. I freaking love this girl. Perhaps the metaphor of someone’s hands floating effortlessly across a keyboard is a cliche, and maybe describing someone’s voice as decadent as cheesecake is a cliche too (or maybe I’m the only one who ever used that to describe anything). But those are the images I manage to conjure in my weird little mind any time I am delighted enough to enjoy Jessica’s performances. This was the first full length set I had seen, which was much more enjoyable than the short, two song allotment at Open Stage. One of her songs was recently featured in a Tom’s shoe commercial!

June-  Kings of Convenience
The Crofoot Ballroom
Pontiac, MI

Besides the fact that Erlend and Eirik put on a completely captivating performance in which I was mesmerized in full mouth-gaping-open fashion, there were a lot of other co-factors that went into this show’s fantasticness. Such as the fact that I managed to get Cameron and I on the guest list so we were able to go in for free, and the encore performance of Paul Simon’s You Can Call Me Al, which erupted into a complete audience participated dance and singalong on stage. Yes, I got to sing and dance on stage with Kings of Convenience! This is a band that I have been listening to since I was 17, and they weren’t the kind of band that had to grow on me after a few listens. I fell in love three seconds into the first track. They played all the songs I hoped they’d play, and many new favorites. The audience was respectfully quiet yet enthusiastically appreciative of the performers.

August-  Red Tail Ring
Hollerfest (Frog Holler Farm)
Brooklyn, MI

I’m going to try not to ramble about how much I love Hollerfest and instead focus on Red Tail Ring, which was my favorite performance of the whole day I was there (Who Hit John? was a very close second). Red Tail Ring is a guy-gal duo from both the upper and lower peninsulas of Michigan. I was mesmerized by their intrumentation, original songs, and new takes on traditional folk pieces, but what I was most impressed with was their incredibly lush and creative harmonies. I’m a sucker for vocals, and these two epitomized everything I love about melodies and what the human voice can do. PlusbeingatHollerfestwhichisthemostincrediblemusic festivalyou’llevergotomadethewholethingevenbetter okay that’s all I’m going to say about Hollerfest!

October-  The Marvins (as Cake)
The Crofoot Halloween Party
Pontiac, MI

Ok, so maybe this shouldn’t count, since this wasn’t a concert showcasing the band’s own music. Actually, screw it, I’m making the rules so it counts. Let me explain this show a little bit first. It was a Halloween bash at the Crofoot in which all of the bands performed as other bands. My friend and fellow music teacher/coworker Jason Demmon (who will be performing at the CD release show!) is in a band called The Marvins, and they were performing as Cake, which happens to be one of my favorite bands. So I was already getting myself way too excited for this set. Yes, I was that annoying person in the Where’s Waldo costume jumping up and down like crazy and singing along and generally being way too excited. (Cameron took a video of this spectacle but it’s way too embarrassing.) But I couldn’t help it! These guys were playing all of my favorite Cake songs really, really well! Plus they were dressed up like zombies! It might as well have been my birthday!

Happy 2011!