Cartoon Justice 2018 East Coast Tour pt. 1

The planning for a short East Coast United States tour by Cartoon Justice started in earnest in late 2017. We'd all talked about it, decided that it might be fun to hook up with drummer G. Calvin Weston and play versions of sketches from the our collaboration CD with him, Lingua Incognita.
We made it out there to play. It was good. It was not good. It was by turns ugly and beautiful. In other words, it was a tour.
Thoughts from the first half.....

Muchmore's-Brooklyn, NY; 6/2/18
Calvin and I showed up early with a whole mess of drums in tow. We waited for Mika, Kersti, Adrienne, and Eli to show up; when they did, we all found out that the evening had been double booked on account of the guy that had booked Cartoon Justice having been fired. I guess that Muchmore's did not honor his bookings, or he had not left his scheduled shows up on their master calendar. Either way, the situation was fucked up, and our humble little improvising band from California almost got shafted out of our first New York performance. Thankfully, this did not happen, mostly on account of some supremely adept political moves by Adrienne and some strong willed assertiveness from guitarist Ron Anderson, whose Improv Metal band was also scheduled to play. Ron's group set up and killed for a short, 17 minute set of flying shard improvisation, very much colored by Metal. Cartoon Justice got to play for about 25 blissful minutes. Calvin and I basically took one drum kit and split it in half on Muchmore's decent stage. I utilized a brush beater on my bass drum in order to contrast a bit with Calvin's bass drum, which is so strong. After a bit of initial back and forth click and clack testing of waters, the band segued nicely into a good, groovy version of Spirit Aligned Truth, from the CD. After that, we got into a crazy, fun energy jam that felt damn right. Aesthetic victory out of chaos, and a fun, albeit truncated set. I realized that many odd things were going to happen on this trip, but also resigned myself to that being a simple reality of independent touring.
Below: Mika, finally on stage, gets ready to rip into his guitar at Muchmore's

Bushwick Public House-Brooklyn, NY; 6/4/18
After the manic energy of the first night, it felt really good to me to show up and Bushwick Public House and meet the organizer of this night's show, Stephen Gauci. He was setting things up in the basement venue of the club. Featuring a nice big space for plenty of drums and instruments and good lighting, I felt confident that this would be a much easier place to have an event. This feeling was borne out. Cartoon Justice played third on a five band bill, and even this was OK, as every band was cool and kick ass in their own way. Such a pleasure to hear and see all this great music! On our set, keyboard player Eli Wallace joined in, and his sounds added some great flavor to the sound. Two full kits from Calvin and me seemed pretty well locked, with Calvin playing very powerfully. I kept the brush beater on my bass drum for continued contrast with the other bass drum. We tried to use a graphic score that Mika had sketched out, but I'm not sure how closely it was followed. A fun, crazy set that felt a bit short to me, but in light of the large bill, we all agreed that it was best to keep it that way and leave room for the other acts.

Above: many drums; that's Calvin on sitting at the kit on the left
Below: a graphic score!

Below: video filmed by and courtesy of Stephen Gauci, thanks Stephen!

AS220-Providence, RI; 6/5/18
After the crazy energy of Brooklyn, it felt good to drive up into New England for a gig in Rhode Island. I've never played in Providence, and was duly excited to be able to do so. It was also a real honor to spend some time with Alan Sondheim and Azure Carter before and after this show. They're the kind of people that one feels honored to have spent any amount of time with. I'm humbled by their graciousness and generosity. Our two sets at AS220 featured only me on drums, as Calvin had to head home to Philadelphia in order to take care of a family emergency. As such, they were a lot more quiet and free flowing, more relaxed than the previous nights' sets had been. Kersti really shined on sax, and Mika brought out his flute for a nice extended time. I had a great time leading the way with brushes and mallets, trying to keep things a bit more quiet and subdued. It seemed like a good opportunity to pull the energy back and really go deep into the listening vibes, which I felt I did pretty well. The second of our two sets featured digitally generated films by Mika. We hadn't played to them since 2015 or so, and it was awesome to get to do so again. Before heading back to Brooklyn, we stopped off at HP Lovecraft's grave site. Spooky!
Below: Cartoon Justice setting up at AS220

My main takeaway from these first three gigs: independent touring is crazy, uncertain, and fraught with weirdness. Hey, that's life! Stay tuned for rundowns on shows in Philadelphia, Brooklyn, and Manhattan, coming up soon!