Failure Cock will play at the Lab tomorrow night!

Tomorrow night, Failure Cock will play at the Lab, as part of the Godwaffle Brutal Sound Effects Series!
The Lab is located at 2948 16th St. at Capp St., and the show starts at 8PM SHARP!

Rent Romus Life's Blood Ensemble-KZSU, Stanford; 10/8/14

It was cool to stand under the full moon at Stanford last night, and I was extremely excited to and honored to have the drum chair in the Life's Blood Ensemble! Filling in for Timothy Orr felt daunting!
We played six improvisational pieces, all cued from Kalevala-themed paintings done by Collette McCaslin. It seemed to me that we got into some pretty tranced out musical spaces, fitting, as one of the main focuses for Rent is the shamanic tradition embedded within the Kalevala. Of course, when Rent started getting seriously wild with his alto sax, I couldn't help but try and throw in some swinging riffage, but more often than not I tried to use space, leaving as much room as possible for the flutes of Mika Pontecorvo and Heikki Koskinen and delicate vocals of Ron Heglin and Bob Marsh.
At the end of our 50 minute set, I was dripping with sweat and pretty well gone. Hopefully others felt the same way!

Below: Life's Blood Ensemble sets up

Above: Rent Romus and his mighty alto
Below: traps, pre and post freak

Playing tonight on KZSU!

This evening I'll be playing drums with Rent Romus's Life's Blood Ensemble! We will be playing Transitions of the Otherworld Cycle, improvised pieces based on certain aspects of the larger piece, which will be performed in its entirety later this month.
9-10 PM, PDT, 90.1 in the SF Bay Area, or streaming here:
http://kzsulive.stanford.edu/?mc_cid=bafcb7c7f8&mc_eid=853dafa6c6

Bridge of Crows-Makout Room; SF, CA 10/6/14

As I walked into the Makeout Room last night, I reflected that it was a place that I'd never been to, let alone played at. Seems odd, really, as it was in business during the 1990's.
I had a great time playing with Bridge of Crows. We had developed two themes in our rehearsal for this show. One, we seemed to stick with, the other may have gotten a bit lost in the shuffle. Our music felt loose and flow-ey to me; it was great to play along with Eli Pontecorvo's low electric bass tones. We even got a bit of a heckle, a drinkin' gal in a booth wanted us to play a song called Toxic by Britney Spears. Hopefully she wasn't trying to tell us that we'd poisoned her evening with our weirdness. You can't please everyone, I guess.
It was a real pleasure to play Jon Arkin's Sonor Jazz kit. Sweet! His band, Cabbages, Captain and King are super tight and precise, as are Earth Blind. Great instrumental music is happening in the Bay!

Below: Jon's kit. Thanks, Jon!

Above: Eli P's monster low end machine

Many thanks to the Bridge of Crows crew for letting me play with them! 

Earspray-Witch Room, NorCal Noisefest 14; Sacramento, CA 10/5/14

The Witch Room is an absolutely lovely and cool space. Above, an image of a particularly groovy feature of their smoking/lounging porch.
In the lead up to this show, I had been worried that the clockwork logistical nature of music festivals would bump up against Earspray's somewhat detailed set up needs; it takes a lot of time, generally, for us to get the video and electronics up and running. Placed against the tight scheduling, it seemed likely that we'd run up against a buzzsaw of frayed emotions. This indeed happened, sort of, but we were able to get our rigs  up and running.
For me, as with my last Noisefest appearance (2012 with an Andrew-less Cloud Shepherd), I wanted to get into the Noise spirit of the thing and be as noisy as possible. On account of Earspray bringing our own speakers, Ann and Carlos had no monitor mix, so, my noise somewhat overwhelmed their noise, at least on the stage of the Witch Room (which is GREAT!)
We concluded at the end of the day that we had no idea how we sounded.
On a more fun note, there was a guy giving Noise Haircuts, with his clippers plugged into a seriously squirrely amp and pedals. I had a Noise Beard Trim, and Ann had a Noise Haircut. That was surreally fun!

Below: Earspray/ MC Lob Instagon/Carlos/Mark Noise Rig

Below: Ann get a Noise Haircut!

It was great to hear all of the other acts on the bill. I particularly enjoyed Stolen Elk, Instagon, Deletist, and Big City Orchestra. Sacramento always seems like a very livable city. 

Upcoming shows!

October will be a very busy month for me, as far as gigging goes. Upcoming, I have two shows in two days:

Earspray
@Norcal Noisefest
10/5
Witch Room
1815 19th St.
Sacramento, CA
2PM

with Bridge of Crows
10/6
@the Makeout Room
3225 22nd St.
SF CA
8PM

I'm looking forward to both of these appearances! More updates, reflections, etc. next week. 

Crow Crash Radio-Jupiter, Berkeley; 10/1/14

The nice thing about playing at Berkeley's venerable Jupiter is the fact that you get at least three sets. This makes stretching out an imperative, and that Crow Crash Radio definitely did last night. I felt almost as if last Saturday's Oakland gig was a warm up for this short notice appearance. We just used the same set list, but took all kinds of liberties, stretching songs until their almost breaking points. One can't expect to be the center of attention at Jupiter, as its customers are dining and drinking, but that factor can be fine. When we play there, I feel that I can just quietly play and let anything happen in the music; I figure that the audience appreciates not being yelled at and harassed for attention. That's completely fine with me.
Thanks to Andrew for setting this one up.

Below: Crow Crash Radio at Jupiter

Below: best use for a flannel shirt during SF Bay Area "summer"