In which we share Down Home Music’s newsletter! Here it be:
Swaps, Uptones, and Various Ugly Things
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The Down Home Music Parking Lot record swap meet. Sunday, July 30th, from 8am to 12pm. 10341 San Pablo Avenue, El Cerrito. For further info contact JC at 510.525.2129. mail@downhomemusic.com. No entry fee. No sellers fee. Weather pending. All things audio: vintage LP’s, 45’s, 78’s, stereo gear, amps, instruments, and more…
PS. Not to be confused with our 2nd Sunday 45/78 swap.
Eric Din from the Uptones will play his
first show in eons, at Down Home Music
on Saturday, August 12 at 2 P.M.
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We Now Carry Both Retro Garage UGLY THINGS & Futuristic Art HI-FRUCTOSE Magazines
TOMORROW’S ART TODAY
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We Are Beginning to Feature Rare Vinyl LPs from Mr.Chris’s Personal Collection in Our Store
About a year ago I visited Down Home Music for a wee panel-ish discussion with author Bill Kopp, on his fab 415 Records – Disturbing The Peace book tour. After the event, the good folks at Down Home asked me if I’d like to come in and do a solo set sometime, and sure enough, that’s what I’ll be doing this August 12 right around 2PM. We’ll have a flier for this soon I think, and I’ll share it up on the accursed socialnets then, and for now, here it is on a wee down home bloggy post. Pop on in, say hi, it’s free! On a Catursunday, no less.
Hey! I haven’t written here in a while, and I’m excited to pop in and share a few items this morning.
I just released a new song called Misinformed. It’s on Bandcamp now and will hit the streaming contraptions in about a week.
This is the first track on my CONTENT album, which has an official release date of August 1, a CaturTuesday. Why a few months out? So we can release some singles in advance of it and have some fun putting some light on a few individual songs before publishing the whole kaboodle. So here’s an ask – (“ask” is a noun, now, I’m dealing with it..) – my ask is that you give ‘er a listen and if you dig it, buy or share it or both. Elaborate, no? This is our marketing strategy. YOU are our marketing strategy. And regardless of any of it we send you big kittycat love on this auspicious Caturday.
On August 12, also a Caturday, I’m singing a few songs from both my STREET PARTY and CONTENT albums, at Down Home Music in El Cerrito, around 2PM. I’ll be doing this solo, with an acoustic guitar, perhaps telling a yarn or two about my creative journeys and whatever comes to mind, we shall see, and y’all are invited to pop in and join me. The good folks at Down Home will have copies of both albums on CD available for sale, for any CD-inclined cats among ye. We’ll call it my book tour, even though, it’s not a book. It is content, however, I can confidently say.
Dear God, did I EMBED a FB post and PUT it here in my blog?! I did! Can I join the 21st century yet? Here’s the post. Click thru to get yr tickets early! Please pass the word to everybody.
The stars lined up, and we are playing, April 22nd, a Sunday afternoon gig at Ashkenaz. You can read deets and how this came about, on this post at our newly re-fangled webbysite ->
As a guitar player, I’ve rarely used anything but standard tuning. I don’t even like capos. So it was a new challenge to learn three custom tunings to accompany the amazing and beautiful Pollyana Bush, on three Joni Mitchell songs. This is part of her concert series, “Full Circle, musings on Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell, and Carole King.” We’ve done the gig once in the East Bay, and tomorrow we’re doing it in San Rafael.
One of the songs, “Case Of You” was challenging for another reason – I couldn’t not cry when we were doing it. Ridiculous, no? But seriously, once I got the song down, every time we’d play it and Pollyana started singing, my eyes would be raining. This leveled out after a while and I was composed during the performance. I can’t recall another song/singer ever affecting me in that particular way. Why am I sharing this? Oh, I don’t know, why not.
We’re doing “Case Of You” in an open-G# tuning, and I needed to figure out how to make it sound something like a dulcimer doubling a guitar. Luckily, Pollyana has a Taylor acoustic with a cutaway, which is perfect for this. Another song I’m playing on is “Help Me,” which is open-tuned to C Major 7th. Who does that!? It’s been a great experience learning these songs, and to sort of get a glimpse into Joni Mitchell’s creative process. You couldn’t play these songs in standard tuning, it’s physically impossible. I found myself wondering – does Joni play with the tuning and THEN write a song, or hear a song in her head, and then tune the instrument to fit? Both approaches maybe? She uses so many tunings, and they are wildly different. Now I’m fascinated enough to find some interviews with her, and see if she talks about this. Tackling this was made much easier by the wealth of info provided by Joni Mitchell herself, on her own website.
I’m thrilled to be on this gig, with some amazing cats, including the great Raz Kennedy. Raz called me asking if I knew anyone who could do this kind of guitar playing, a few weeks before the earlier concert. I recommended a few players but none were available, so I started learning the odd tunings to see if I could even get there. It turned out to be a really fun and rewarding guitar lesson, and now, as a consequence of this, I wrote a song in open-G! A good friend told me years ago the day you stop learning is the day you die. I guess I’m still alive.
Here’s the concert info, I think some tickets are still available if you are interested.
Oh, and Pollyana, this happened to your guitar case. But don’t worry, Lucy is very neat and does not have fleas.
