supermellow semi-outdoor Drone session

Vaughan - voice, acoustic guitar, dan bau, percussion
Keith - mandola, electric guitar, acoustic bass guitar, mini Casio keyboard, bells, percussion
me - saz, balalaika, body percussion
Henry - Roland percussive samplepad, percussion
John - acoustic guitar, acoustic bass guitar, voice, percussion, harmonica
James T - poetry, percussion, glockenspiel, triangle, slidewhistle, etc.
Annie Q (left early) - flute, alto saxophone, voice
Brian (arrived late) - hand percussion

Listen Here
It's that time of year when Vaughan invites the Droners out to Sherwood for sessions in his barn. It's an open-sided structure, so there's an outdoor feel to these sessions. On the plus side, that meant we got evening chorus birdsong woven into our playing (particularly noticeable when the first long piece - just under an hour - came to an end). Less positively, some of us (based on blood type?) were eaten alive by midges for a good part of the session. But that didn't detract from what was one of the most enjoyable COTD sessions yet. An especially harmonious grouping of players this time, predominantly acoustic instruments, and a lovely mellow groove throughout a lot of it. John was playing some Latin-flavoured stuff on his acoustic guitar, and I locked right into that. I also played a lot of balalaika in the second half, which was more successful than usual due to a different amplification arrangement (playing though John's little mixer with a pre-amp). It still sounds like I'm playing down a telephone line, due to pickup I made from a musical birthday card speaker, but I quite like that.


photos of Sherwood House gardens by Vaughan (he's the resident gardener)
Vaughan was playing some nice stuff on his dan bau (a one-stringed Vietnamese instrument), but somewhat hindered by having lost his pick (a special bamboo thing). Also, he wasn't loud enough, as usual! James read an entertaining poem about memory loss, and Keith was making some far-out noises with a little Casio keyboard played through a wah-vol pedal.

As Keith was dropping James Turner off after the session, we noticed Nigel from the Future Sound of Exeter having a cigarette outside the North Bridge Inn. They're now doing some kind of Saturday events there, so Keith took the opportunity to ask if we (the three people left in the car, being the three members of Orbis Tertius? could perhaps get a slot. That would be nice, although I think the poster I saw outside the pub saying "COSMIC DISCO BOOGIE SOUL" might have something to do with them, explaining why Nigel said something about me having to play more funkily. Not sure I can do that...

four nights, ten bands

I've been out the last four nights catching a lot of excellent live music.

Wednesday, I cycled in to Whitstable with my saz, intending to play at the fortnightly open mic at The Smack (a friendly little pub not far from the seafront). Unfortunately (or not), I was out of phase with my Wednesdays, and when I arrived, could hear there was a band playing. I expected covers, or stodgy pub rock, but got a pleasant surprise, in the form of Zinta and the Zoots, a Whitstable/Canterbury band who aren't bad at all. Zinta's got a powerful voice, writes good songs and the band are nuanced and slightly quirky. Miles the keyboard player was doing some nice stuff with a melodica and glockenspiel (simultaneously), and had an Indian harmonium set up (although I had to leave after the first set, so I didn't hear him play that). Not the kind of thing I'd go out of my way to see, but seated on a sofa in The Smack with a pint of Shepherd Neame spring hop ale, it was thoroughly enjoyable.

Jim Womble, who used to put on gigs in the area about fifteen years ago, recognised me as I was leaving. It was he who brought my psychedelic dub friends the Oort Cloud over from Belgium to play at the Whitstable Assembly Rooms for the spring equinox of '93 (a highly memorable night!). We reminisced about such excellent events as the time Ohm Sounds (his operation) got both Zion Train and the Revolutionary Dub Warriors on the same bill (about £4?) at the now-defunct Assembly Rooms for an equinox all-dayer.

Jim's not promoting any more, but was playing, until recently, with Thanet-based spacerock band Aurora. They were playing in Whitstale a couple of nights later (Friday), supporting the reformed Crow. Again, I cycled out (along the cycle track through Blean Woods) - a cold damp night. This one was at the East Quay, a relatively new venue attached to a micro-brewery on the seafront. Crow are a heavy tribal psych-rock trio (most of the time) who I saw numerous times back in the early 90's. They split in '95, around the time I left the area, but they've got back together in the last year or so (inspired by a touching request from a dieing friend/promoter that they reform to play a gig in Folkestone in his memory). Aurora were entertaining - their front man, Lord Armstrong of Sealand - theatrically played a theremin to great effect, made indecipherable prononouncements and wore daft costumes while a guitarist made pleasingly loud, thrashy spacerock textures and a third member handled the electronics. Like a lot of music with sequenced beats, though, it failed to really take off, being locked down to a quartz-pulsed grid. There were lasers and projections, etc. - a worthy attempt to create something of a psychedelic happening - but not really any appropriate surfaces for them to be projected on. Aurora claim to be predominantly a festival band, and I can see why. Unfortunately, Puffin the flute player has been axed from the line-up (I would have liked to have heard a bit of flute or sax in there).

Aurora's audience was small, but appreciative - mainly men within a rather narrow spacerock age-range - so I wasn't quite sure Crow were going to get the audience they deserved. But, in the interim between bands, a psy-trance DJ filling in the time, the place suddenly filled up with people of all ages, and a tangible sense of anticipation filled the place (along with a few whiffs of dry ice). This built up as the band took to the stage. I was struck by how well they all looked - the dreadlocks are gone, Chris almost looking younger than he did back in the old days, Martin about the same. Mark Dixon, the local didg player (the first person I came across who played didg, before the festival didg-glut of the 90's) opened the proceedings, as he often used to (dreads all gone, shamanic tatoos all over his head!), causing the audience to surge forward and generally deepening the sense of anticipation. Chris took his time building things up with some beautiful ambient guitar lines, and then - WHAMMM!! - they took off with that classic Crow super-heavy riffage. Martin and Mike-the-bassist are completely synched in with each other, even more than they used to be, as far as I can remember and it was quite musically humbling to witness them all in action. The Killing Joke influences (something I'd failed to pick up on back in the 90's) were very much in evidence.


Crow - photo by Amy Bailey
They played about two hours, a few mellow dubby bits, one funk-rock track (the only bit that didn't work for me), but mostly the heavy instrumental stuff. Mark rejoined for another track (doing a bit of overtone chanting and delivering some indecipherable lyrics about UFOs and 'watchers') and the psy-trance DJ occasionally added some tastefully subtle swirly synth sounds from his DJ station off to the side of the stage. Overall, it was quite an emotional event. They've only played a few gigs since reforming, and this was the first in Whitstable (their hometown), which clearly meant a lot to them. From the enthusiasm of the crowd, I'm guessing that a significant proportion remembered the Crow-of-old, but there were also a lot of younger faces who just weren't old enough to (yet were fully into it). After a few too many overly staid, sit-down gigs at OSMC, it was nice to be seeing a band where there was a bit of moshing and generally wild energy going on.

One of the things which struck me was how 'clean' it was - not just the clarity of the mix, or the precision of the playing...somehow it had a very 'clean' energy, almost reminding me of straightedge hardcore (energetically, rather than musically). The old Crow had (perhaps as a resdue from their days as some of crusty squatter band Door Marked Summer) more of a chaotic, druggy, off-kilter vibe about them. And here was Chris, short hair, clean white T-shirt (with an 'om' on it, reassuringly), sneakily checking his mobile phone for texts between songs, leading the same band through the same basic material, connecting with the past but not attempting to recreate it. An epic set, great venue, great audience. There were even some performers from Kent Circus School doing UV juggling, diabolo, etc. but unfortunately, due to the size and forward-surging of the audience, they were squashed in a little space next to the speakers. Anyway, it's heartening to know that Crow are back, and it'll be interesting to see what new stuff they come up with.

Cycling back through Clowes Wood, I stopped to listen to a nightingale singing. This one was a lot closer than the ones I'm used to listening to (deep in an abandoned pear orchard near where I live). Musically, they're still miles ahead of anything humans can manage!

Going back a day (for reasons of continuity) - Thursday - was the fourth Moonlit Fingertips evening at OSMC. This is local psych-prog-folk band Syd Arthur's acoustic/folk night - I got to the first one, but missed the next couple, being in the States. Tom Holden played a pleasant enough set of imaginative singer-songwriter material - didn't make a huge impression, but I've been a bit spoiled for interesting live music of late. Next it was Syd Arthur's Liam and Raven, on acoustic guitar and mandolin/fiddle respectively (Raven is Kate Bush's nephew, I've just read). Their stuff has come on leaps and bounds since I last saw them - they played a blinding set, really crisp, inventive prog-folk with fantastic instrumental interplay and uplifting energy. I was quite taken aback at just how good it was. Barnaby from the School of Imagination (the headliners) joined them on a dayereh (or similar frame drum/tambourine type thing) for one piece, adding a strong cross-rhythm that pushed the music even higher. They finished with a version of "Pulse", a Syd Arthur song, and I suddenly noticed that the syncopated guitar/mandolin interaction is very strongly reminiscent of early 80's Zimbabwean guitar bands. Although I've been listening to that stuff since the late 80's, I think it was because I'd just that day been listening to Thomas Mapfumo's 1980 album Gwindingwi Rine Shumba that I made the connection. I spoke to Liam about this afterwards, and it's clear that the similarity isn't an intentional one. So, fascinatingly, they seem to have arrived (via their prog/Canterbury polyrhythmic explorations) at the same kind of style of string playing...and this is something rooted in very ancient African spirit possession ceremony music, played on mbiras, for countless generations before Thomas Mapfumo, et al. electrified it as part of the revolutionary movement of the late 70's.


The main act that night was School of Imagination, seemingly from somewhere near Salisbury. They've played at The Gladstone Arms, a pub in SE London where Liam works, which is how they ended up on the bill. I read something on the OSMC site which described them in terms of the Incredible String Band and Buena Vista Social Club - this sounded intriguing enough, but it's not really an accurate description. The band's led by a ukelele player (a good one!) called Barnaby - who had played some frame drum with Liam and Raven. They're almost entirely acoustic (one semi-acoustic guitar) and they have a lovely, easy, samba-like groove running through most of what they do, with appropriately delicate Latin-tinged percussion. But the Hispanic influence made me think less of Cuba and more of LA - Love, in particular, were evoked somehow (not overtly, but the vibe was there), with the semi-acoustic guitarist managing to fool my ears into thinking I was hearing horn riffs. But also, somewhere in the vibrational mix, were the (not at all Hispanic, but possibly influenced at some level?) Byrds, Beach Boys, Mamas and Papas...even trippier late Monkees. Or maybe it was just me. The ISB thing perhaps makes sense in terms of the warmth and overall feel, but I was also made to think of lesser known English pastoral prog bands like Capability Brown and Gentle Giant (even though the SoI didn't sound at all like them). It's clearly to their credit that I can't think of any musical reference points beyond these vague feeling-based ones! One remarkable piece they played seemed to fill in all the musical space between the psychedelic Beatles ("Across the Universe", "Within You Without You") and epic mid-period Floyd numbers ("Echoes", "Atom Heart Mother" - those horn sounds again!).

Two nights later (Saturday), Syd Arthur were headlining an electric event at The Farmhouse, with The Jimmy Jones Band, Sàvlön and The Moon Music Orchestra also on the bill.

I arrived just after the JJB had started, and guessed, wrongly, that I was watching the MMO. I'd seen the former name on posters around Canterbury in the past and had an immediate aversion - something about bands named after one of their (presumably egotistic) members...amusingly, though, there is no Jimmy Jones in the Jimmy Jones Band and they seem like really nice, approachable people dedicated to their music. It's a instrumental mix of trumpet, sax, awesome bass, interesting Afrobeat-influenced electric guitar and drums. There as a bit of funk in there, but it was the PiL/On-U/Factory kind of funk, and it really suited them. There was clearly a jazz component, but was there a bit of the old Canterbury sound in there, I found myself wondering? Just as I was wondering it, I heard a couple of older blokes behind me discussing just the same thing, before going on to talk about Egg's 1974 album The Civil Surface. So perhaps there is. Great stuff, anyway. Who is Jimmy Jones, though?

A young woman who'd suddenly stepped out in front of my bicycle near the Cathedral gate as I was on the way to the gig (no accident was caused) recognised me and kindly came over to apologise. She seemed to know Syd Arthur, and set me straight on who I'd just seen and who I was about to see. MMO were in fact a "crazy folk band", I was told. Sort of. They use a mandolin and a banjo, but their biggest love appears to be southern boogie-rock...and I've not got a problem with that. After a rather long wait, a four-piece took to the stage (actually, only three of them did, literally - the organist stayed down on floor level to save having to squeeze his Hammond up on stage) and launched into a very pleasing kind of dubbed-out boogie. This band was clearly the odd one out of the four on the bill - conventional time signatures, singing in American accents and displaying an overt sense of humour. Their take on this music seemed to have a Ween- or Zappa-like irony about it, but it was more than just a pastiche. As that first song built up to a climax, two people suddenly rushed onto the stage, creating a moment of confusion in the audience - what was going on? They hurriedly took off their coats, one grabbed an electric guitar (already tuned and plugged in), and the other, blonde curls beneath a trucker's cap, with a "Lyrnyrd Skynyrd" tanktop (confederate flag and all!) grabbed a mic, and we got a ripping guitar solo and some appropriate backing vocal wailing. "All part of the act!" joked the bassist after the applause died down. The newly arrived guitarist then explained how he'd told the taxi driver that if she didn't hurry up, the band AND the two of them (a couple it would seem) would be splitting up. So that got their set off to a great start. He actually looked a bit like Vince Noir from The Mighty Boosh, and this made me realise that what we were seeing was quite close to what a second-season episode of the Boosh might have looked like if their band had gone through a southern rock incarnation.

Because of the late start, they only got a four-song set, but they made the most of it. It gradually became apparent just how good their organist Harley was (he got a couple of solos), and they ended with an epic, euphoric rock-out with him going completely mad on the keys...he even went as far as nearly tipping the organ over in an Emersonian catharsis. Huge applause. The Canterbury prog crowd was won over, clearly.

At one point, the late-arrival singer/guitarist explained that the band ran a little pub in Southeast London called The Gladstone Arms, and invited us all to stop by, should we be in the area. "There'll probably be some prog on the stereo if Liam's working", he laughed.


Syd Arthur at the Amesham Arms in London last November
Syd Arthur were next (despite headlining) - quite sensible considering the time. And what a revelation! The West African sound I mentioned earlier in relation to Liam and Raven's set was even more in evidence with the electric version of "Pulse" and the familiar "Planet of Love". They opened with a long, spacey Gong-like intro (I've been listening to You lately, and this was in that kind of vein), built around Liam's live guitar processing (fiddling most effectively with his rack of effects - he Raven and Joel have about 20 pedals between them!). The whole set was much more spaced out (a lot of that guitar processing), yet crisper than I've ever heard them. There was a joyous intelligence about it all. I'm glad I've stuck with them, despite being rather unimpressed when I first saw them a couple of summers ago. The funk elements annoyed me then, and they've gradually transmuted them into something else - still angular, but more organic, less formulaic. Those (unintended) African resonances bring in a sweetness to the sound. There's a precision about what they're doing that was (as with Crow) musically humbling to witness, and they're just getting better all the time. All four of them were playing flawlessly, and as a unit they were brimming over with energy. And there's no posturing, attitude or swagger, despite having a dedicated local following, a clearly adoring crowd - just a highly laudable dedication to their music. They ended with a new song called "Exo Domino" (I think) which shows a very encouraging development in the sound...lots of changes of time signature, but somehow avoiding the stodginess of so much prog-rock...there's a lightness on the feet, almost a pixie-like, 'sparkly' energy. They encored with "The Willow Tree", which went down extremely well with the crowd.

I've even got used to their name (a terrible name, I thought at first..but it's OK, really).

Last up were Sàvlön, a local prog-thrash(?) band. Again, lots of stop-start timeshifts produced by a serious bunch of musicians, but the metally/hardcore feel freshened things up a bit. The two guitarist were playing in a Discipline-era King Crimson kind of polyrhythmic way (but using more abrasive sounds), the bass player and drummer both spot on. A few samples and squelchy synth noises got thrown in to vary the sound. I saw them last year in a local pub (by accident) and was most impressed to know such stuff was going on locally. As with then, I'm not really sure what I think about the grindcore-style vocals, but they kept me awake - it was a long evening. Fans of late 80's 'No Wave' and hardcore bands like NoMeansNo and Blind Idiot God should certainly check this crew out.

If there's a 'new Canterbury sound' in evidence here, it's a post-funk, post-punk kind of thing, having integrated those new elements. What does it have in common with the Canterbury sound of old? There's the quirky jazziness, the tendency to play in unusual and ever-shifting time signatures, but also a serious dedication to the music that overrides any concerns about 'image' or 'entertainment'. And somewhere in there, a peculiar sort of Englishness. What's so heartening is to me is that a (largely younger) crowd is excited by something artistically challenging, and free of all the posturing and attitude which is so common among aspiring young bands.

banjo-playing parapsychologist

I try to limit this blog to music-related content (otherwise it would take over my life!). This is barely within the remit, but I just feel like it needs to be as widely seen as possible - the implications are staggering. My excuse for including it is that Dean Radin, the veteran parapsychologist being interviewed here, has played 5-string banjo (and fiddle) in various bluegrass bands! He also played classical violin professionally for a few years. I interviewed him myself, in connection with an online 'retro-psychokinesis' experiment I set up back in the mid-90's.

The cartoons are a bit silly (and clearly nothing to do with Radin himself - similarly the embedded 2012 reference), but don't let that put you off.

BirdsBeesSaz

Last Sunday morning, the day after my old friend Eldad's wedding (at Kew Gardens - beautiful!) I was feeling particularly happy and inspired. It was a beautiful, still, sunny day, bluebells, stitchwort, campion and other wildflowers in profusion around me, and the birdsong was particularly intense. Mainly because of the birds, I set up my MiniDisc recorder to capture a bit of saz-and-birdsong. As soon as I switched it on, there was a loud buzzing in my headphones. It took me a while to realise that this was due not to a technical fault, but to a swarm of bees which had just arrived above my head. They were getting interested in a nearby, recently vacated hive, and so I seized the opportunity to record my saz playing accompanying a swarm of bees! Sadly, when the swarm was just about over, I realised that I'd left the recorder on "pause". But I carried on recording for almost an hour, and have edited the best bits down. There's still a bit of buzzing audible, but it's the birds which are most prominent. It's mostly free jamming, incorporating a few fragments of recently composed tunes like "Midrash" and "Graviton". Track 4 is an attempt to play "Pisci Cuspus", interupted by an overflying helicopter.


bluebells and beehives
Listen Here
There were also some chickens in the area, and at the end of the first track, you can hear me attempting to respond musically to their squawking (not easy, as there's no predictability in the number of pre-squawk clucks). Distant gunshots (pheasant hunters in nearby woodland) can also be heard throughout - keeping it real, you know how we do!

Beltane time distortion

I got back to the Garden of England in time for Beltane. This turned into a several day thing. Beltane eve (Thursday) involved sitting 'round a little fire with Dave and Libby, noodling a bit on my saz, then heading down to the abandoned pear orchard to listen to the recently arrive nightingales. Friday (the first of May) was Nick and Jo's tenth wedding anniversary party in Whitstable, so I cycled over for that. No live music (just cheesy house and a bit of soul music on the stereo), but there was a fire in the garden, and I was happy to find that Bob and Helen (once half of local folk band The Tree Party) had come down from Norfolk. I've still yet to play music with them (I was just getting started on guitar during the Tree Party days and by the time I was playing saz, they were settled out in North Norfolk). Saturday and Sunday involved more fire and merriment, but no music.

Bank Holiday Monday is Whitstable Mayday, so Andy Bunkum, Tim and I headed over to watch (and quietly critique) a succession of Morris sides dancing outside the library - ranging from rough pirate/biker looking types to twee "Women's Institute Morris", but all with the same vibeless music, I'm afraid. Eventually they processed up the High Street en masse, which lifted the energy a bit. After they stopped for multiple pints and general milling around near the Horsebridge (almost completely killing the vibe), they proceeded up to Tankerton slopes, accompanied by Jack-in-the-Green (someone under a great mass of greenery), where we were encouraged to sing the "Whitstable Mayday Song". This is written to sound traditional, but I suspect it was written sometime in the 80's. The sentiments were generally OK, apart from a suspect line about blessing this land with "power and might" (we'd just been discussing the links between folkdance/music and ultra-nationalism, especially in continental Europe - Andy was jokingly referring to one of the more serious sides, who had red crosses on their chests, as "BNP Morris").


Jack-in-the-Green, and strange wooden horse thing - photos by Nick Morley
That evening, the three of us reconvened at Orange Street for a kind of "medaevil fancy dress" gig - "Princes in the Tower" (an acoustic subset of Circulus) followed by Les Derniers Trouvèrs from France. The latter had come over for the Hastings Jack-in-the-Green celebrations, but Jason (who organises these "Twilight Folk" events) had had them recommended by Kim Thompsett, whose band his girlfriend Naomi plays cello for. I'd seen the poster and had a been a bit put off by the "theme park" quality of the promotional photo, but Tim was keen, so we thought we'd risk a fiver on it.

Both groups turned out to be very capable, musically, and were in period costume, but the audience was just a bit too polite (and seated) for it to really work. The Princes used mostly stick drum, crumhorn(?) and cittern. The cittern player also sang and explained all the songs ("a bit too didactic", opined Tim), switching to a saz (which went unexplained) for one tune. That's one of the few times I've seen anyone else play a saz in a non-Turkish context. The Trouvèrs were a lot more lively (there were more of them too), beautiful costumes, very good energy - percussion, a very large mandola-shaped instrument, something like a viola da gamba, bagpipes, whistles, flutes and various crumhorn-like wind instruments. They did their best to communicate with limited English, and definitely won the audience over, but no one got up out of their seat, making the whole event feel unfortunately awkward. You could really picture a load of people responding much more kinetically in a festival setting (it seems they have someone to teach/lead traditional dances for such events).


most of Les Trouvers, plus various Canterbury folkies
Andy pointed out the musical similarity with instrumental techno, as well as a Gong influence (more a vibe thing than a sonic thing). To finish their second set, they got various local folkies up - Phil the hurdy-gurdy player, Kim Thompsett and Naomi shaking bells and freestyle vocalising, the percussionist from Relig Oran playing stick drum - plus the Princes doing their respective things (I could really relate to the experience of trying to play a saz in a loud folk jam where no one can hear you, and it just boils down to a semi-pointless 'chunga-chunga' strumming). Tim detected a definite "pixie magic and slight shifting of planes" during the penultimate piece where the music felt nicely out-of-control for a little while.

One of the best things about this event was the way it was amplified. Rather than trying to mic up each individual instrument and voice (which would have made the end-of-set free-for-all impossible, as well as killing the 'period' vibe even further), three or four mics were set up at the front of the stage, and that was it. Ambient miking is the way to go for these 'quiet' gigs, something I've discussed before with Nathan from Glastonbury's (now defunct) Fabulous Furry Folk club. Joel from Syd Arthur was behind the desk, doing an excellent job of (as far as was possible) keeping everything sounding nicely balanced.

On Wisconsin

Quite a lot of musical activity to report since the Florida excursion... [incidentally, that long write-up of my Suwannee experience attracted more comments than any previous blog entry, as well as particularly satisfying one relating to the previous posting about my time in Buffalo, which makes me remember why I bother with this blog - it was from David Nanni from Red Headed Stepchild, check it out]

There was a weekend which involved jamming on a Friday night (actually very early Saturday morning) with Peter (electric guitar), Shelly (drums) and Bob (bass - formerly of Irene's Garden), then, later that afternoon going up to Erik Moore's place in Wausau for more jamming with him, Shelly and Peter. Erik's got a baritone ukelele now, played brilliantly through wah-wah and fuzz.

Listen Here
He also gave us all copies of a new CD compilation of stuff he's done, including a couple of covers of his songs by other people, one being an electronic version of "Pin-up" by a Brazilian MySpace contact he's never actually met...like a lot of Erik's songs, this one is very personal, mentioning numerous friends by name, so it's funny hearing an anonymous Brazilian singing earnestly about these Stevens Point characters. The CD also includes a memorable electro-acoustic cover of Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf".

On the Sunday, Pete and I were invited along to join Shelly, Bob and Wheaty (keyboardist and one of the founders of The Stellectrics, before they became Irene's Garden) for a rehearsal - they're getting a 'lounge rock' band together, trying out various lead instruments and front-people. Being aware that this was just a guesting situation, and with Pete riffing away enthusiastically and Wheaty piling on the chord changes, it was hard to know where to put myself, musically...but it was a worthy challenge and the recording sounds better than what I remember the session feeling like.

Bob, as well as playing a very solid bass (and some guitar, keyboards and drums), has also taught philosophy and logic (having written a PhD dissertation on consciousness, computation, the "symbol grounding problem", etc.). The following weekend, he ended up leading a philosophy discussion that I was invited to at Shelly's house (an informal group that meets occasionally), talking about the mind-body problem. That made for a very interesting early evening - fifteen people sitting around with bottles of beer - and varying amounts of knowledge, insight and rhetorical ability - trying to make sense of the relationship between the phenomenon of neural activity and the experience of consciousness.

Irene's Garden were playing a (fairly rare, these days) show that night, though, so we wrapped things up fairly quickly - the mind-body problem still unresolved - and headed downtown to catch the second set. It was in the basement of what's now called "Steel" - a tacky nightclub which was formerly the Clark Place, and before that the VFW Hall where our friend Marty Cable used to put on hardcore bands in the late 80's. The band continues to try different line-ups - Sarah, Jenny and Wheaty are what's left of the original Stellectrics, Jeff's still on lead guitar after a good few years, there's a familiar looking drummer, and an excellent new bass player (I mentioned to her afterwards that I'd been seeing this band since 1987, and how I found her playing perfect for their sound - she laughed and pointed out that she was born in 1987). They played a semi-acoustic set, Jenny on mandolin, Sarah on acoustic guitar and Jeff on acoustic some of the time. I was expecting all the old favourites, but they've been working on a lot of new material, and it sounded excellent, really refreshing. They're not trying to re-live anything, very much looking forward, despite the fact that the audience was composed almost entirely of old friends (not much of a younger crowd, but great to see they're still doing their thing regardless).

I would have liked to have concentrated a bit more on the music, but kept being greeted by a succession of old friends, so I was half-listening, half-conversing and shuffling around a bit on the edge of the dance. At one point where Sarah didn't have any singing or guitar parts to worry about, she (now a grandmother of five years!) was down in the audience dancing with the rest of us, something I remember happening almost twenty years ago, impressing me (then and now) with the sense that this band was very much "of the people".


Irene's Garden a while back (looks like Bob on bass)
As soon as Irene's finished their set and started packing up (sooner rather than later, as the nightclub soundsystem kicked off upstairs), Van Morrison's song "Tupelo Honey" started playing over the PA. This isn't a particularly well-known song of his, but I'd had it, distinctly, in my head all that afternoon, for the easily identifiable reason that I'd bought my parents some authentic tupelo honey down in Florida as a small gift. I'd always assumed the song somehow refered to Tupelo, Mississippi (home of Elvis), but it turns out that there's a tupelo tree, and its blossoms give rise to this particularly noteworthy, sweet, floral honey. Anyway, I'd been wanting to hear that song all day, and it just came on...one of those things.

Tuesday nights are now "song swap" at the Elbow Room, almost certainly the most cheerful and tolerant of Stevens Point's many bars. It's an entirely acoustic event (although on one occasion, Loopy set up his keyboard with a very small amp). I got to three of these - one was very country-oriented, one a weird blend of country and metal and the third pretty much just rock and metal, but all with acoustic guitars - and my saz, of course. It's all a bit of blur now, but I have some vague recollections of the first one: playing "Hey Hey, My My" with Tom and then going off into a jam...Joe (who turned out to have run a squat bar on Berlin for years) siging "St. James Infirmary", something with Loopy on Keys, something bluesy with Otis (of the Alligators) on harp and someone else on keys... Neil Young's "Pocohontas", Robert playing Leadbelly's "Midnight Special", the Stones' "Dead Flowers", "Wagon Wheel" (that song again) and a Radiohead song I didn't know...Jason from local country/classic rock cover band Rattlesnake and Eggs played the Georgia Satellites' "Keep Your Hands to Yourself" (something I've not thought about for at least fifteen years, but seemed to be able to play), Hank Williams' "Jumbalaya", Bob Seeger's "Turn the Page", and a gleefully delivered succession of gratuitously stupid country songs and raucous barroom sing-a-longs (there was even something that began "I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison/I went to pick her up in my old truck"!)

The next week, afer having dinner at JP's house over on the west side and listening to Tom Waits' Bone Machine, we headed down tot he Elbow. Someone called Steve, a bit of a walking jukebox, played something off Damn the Torpedoes, "Hey You" from The Wall, "Learning to Fly" off that dubious late 80's Waters-less Floyd LP... then I got into some really interesting classical/metal inspired jams with Dale (who's known for playing elaborate Slayer and Metallica medleys on his acoustic).

The third one involved Neil Young's "Old Man", the Marshall Tucker Band's "Can't You See" an unidentified song by Tom, Metallica's "Fade to Black", "Comfortably Numb" (i got to play the second solo, and got really into that!). I got talking with Jim Prideaux, Amherst-based architect (of Cornish descent) and guitarist with local blues heros Otis and the Alligators. Someone was asking for Led Zeppelin, and some got played, but we were deep in conversation, but then suddenly he was leading us through "Stairway to Heaven", with Steve taking the vocals, about four guitarists plus me - a bit of a mess, but lots of fun (the rock crowd from Rosholt loved it - one of whom kept expressing his enthusiasm for "the guy with the gourd" - i.e. me). I've only ever attempted to play that once before, and it was a simplified reggae version (with Justin Love at the Lost Troubadours gig in Brighton last year), but it's amazing how familiar it is after all these years of hearing it - my fingers just knew what to do.

Thursday nights in Stevens Point are open mic at The Afterdark (what was once The Mission). I got to a couple of these and jammed with Ed (a couple of bluesy pieces got recorded, and sound really rather good).

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On one occasion a trio of young beardy student folkies got up and played old country/bluegrass/gospel stuff - "May the Circle Be Unbroken", "I'll Fly Away", "Wagon Wheel", etc. - very similar to the Suwannee vibe. But then, for something completely different, Candra (who last year was always sitting quietly at the back of the coffeehouse making a sculptural chainmail headdress out of beercan pull-tabs while I was jamming with whoever) got up and sung an a capella re-write of Bessie Smith's "Graveyard Dream Blues" (it seemed simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar, so I had to ask her about it in the end), before supplying backing vocals for a young friend singing refreshingly weird and not-at-all-country songs about frogs, icefloes and geology.

There was a brief prog-ish jam at the house of a reclusive bass player called Buzz who Peter introduced me to. We intended to do more of this, but it never came together unfortunately.

Trivia weekend - this is a part of St. Pt. culture that can't really be explained, only experienced. No jams, but Erik Moore showed up with his ukelele to our team HQ on 2nd Street and provided late-night entertainment on the smoker's porch, making me wish I'd brought my saz. As a result of 90FM's playlist, I ended up with various oldies, novelty records and rock classics stuck in my head for days after (The Doobie Brothers' "Jesus is Just Alright With Me", (the incongruously British) Foghat's "Fool for the City" and The Ramones' "Rock 'n' Roll High School" come to mind...the one everyone seems to remember from Trivia is The Trashmen's "Surfin' Bird", which for some reason has become almost synonymous with the contest). Maggie and Ken turned up from Madison to join us ("Servants of the Beer God") on Friday night. They're still both playing in Marques Bovry's band SoDangYang, and gave me a copy of the new four track EP Piñata (including a song MB wrote for Maggie to sing lead on) - good stuff.

There was a most enjoyable and free jam with Dan Miller once again in the old house on Franklin Street overlooking the river. He played his Washburn six-string electric bass guitar, what he calls his "big heavy guitar", and some really beautiful sounds were produced that afternoon.

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We were hoping to get together at least once more, ideally with Alex from Elf Lettuce (as we did last year), but sadly that didn't come together.

One Wednesday, I sat in with Sloppy Joe for their weekly slot at Iola's Northland Ballroom - something of a tradition now. Dale, the amazing banjo player from The High Water Band, joined us for the second set. The open mic portion of the evening (between sets) began with Shawn Wolfe singing some of his songs, then a banjo player with a captivatingly tuneless voice called Kevin - he played a couple of songs, can't remember the first, but the second was "There's a Hole in My Bucket" (the children's song). He was quite extraordinary - apparently has been coming to the open mic for years, used to regularly flee the stage in a moment of stagefright terror, and clearly is still not at all comfortable on stage, but he keeps coming back, and somehow that lends his performance a weird validity. The words "New Weird America" have been diluted to a point of meaninglessness now, but (at least to me) this was entirely new, weird and American. A young picker from Waupaca called Bobby Burns (with roots in Neenagh, Co. Limerick) got up and sung a couple of ballads with most of SJ backing him - I jammed with him and his friends a the SJ 4/20 campout last year, and we got talking. One of the songs ("Off to Sea Once More") was learned from the Garcia/Grisman Grateful Dawg DVD, something I must check out.

SJ started their set as just Gavin, Stef and Jeff (it's all very relaxed these days, Jimers and Jamie still at the bar with their regulation bottles of Sierra Nevada pale ale). The first song was the best example I've yet heard of the gorgeous, earthy harmonies Gavin and Stef seem to effortlessly produce - it was a mining ballad called "Dark as a Dungeon", and sadly, my MiniDisc wasn't fully set up at that point. It was for the second song, but my saz wasn't coming through the PA (problem with my lead) - that was "Make Me a Palette on the Floor", which I'd have loved to have joined them for. Jeff found me a lead and I then joined in on Hank Williams' "You Win Again", followed by a succession of country, bluegrass, gospel and 'slopgrass' originals. I really love this band - and I'm quite sure I'd love them if they didn't happen to be my friends. They seem to embody everything I like about American music and culture, and so it's a real honor to be welcomed onstage with them whenever I'm around.


the Northland Ballroom, quite some time ago
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Towards the end of my stay, I got out to Stef's farmhouse out in Scandinavia for a jam. Lots of songs - can't really remember much about it, apart from how tired I was - my eyes couldn't stay open, I was surfing the boundary of sleep and waking, and during at least one song, I fell asleep while playing the saz - my hand just fell off the fretboard. I recorded all this, though, and some of it's just about worthy (Michael Hurley's "Moon Song", George Jones' "From the Window Up Above", Stuart McNair's "Building a Fire", Guy Clark's "I'm All Through Throwing Good Love After Bad", The Hackensaw Boys "Box of Pine").

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She also played me some of Michael Hurley's new album, Ancestral Swamp and some old songs off a Folkways LP called Folk Ballads from the English-Speaking World (she's particularly interested in an old ballad about the silkies). In the morning we listened to some recent, bluegrass-inspired Dolly Parton, including her version of "Stairway to Heaven"(!)

During my last full day in Stevens Point, I got a phone call from someone who'd once heard me jamming down the Elbow Room, and hence found myself cycling over to the west side (house number 1117 - synchronistic weirdness tying in with a late night conversation at Stef's - another story...) to record a saz track for a song by The F.I.B.'s (a local band based around a couple of guys from Illinois - "F.I.B." is unfavourable Wisconsin terminology for men from Illinois, you can probably work it out). They're a quirky band, not limited by any particular styles, having a lot of fun and writing dozens of songs at the moment. This song was called "Spider", with a Flamenco-ish flavour, and I could see why Jim, the songwriter thought to include my saz (the A mode he wrote it in is slightly reminiscent of North African music). I felt very comfortable with the song and the relaxed attic recording set-up, so I laid down four takes for them to pick and choose from, as well as a few possible intros they could use. The band - Jim, Paul and Stan - were all most appreciative of my efforts, as was their engineer and cohort Amanda.

It was only after the last take that it occured to Jim to mention that in the week between then and the previous time we'd talked about this possible recording session, HE'D HAD A HEART ATTACK - a full-on heart attack, while they were engrossed in another recording session. He'd only got out of hospital on the Thursday, and this was Saturday afternoon. Clearly this man was enjoying life to the full, wholly aware of his own mortality, so his positive response to my contribution to his song felt really quite moving.

The last night at home with my parents I played a few games of chess with my dad (and won one! triumph at last!) and put together a playlist of interesting sounds: Yusef Lateef, Ornette Coleman, a field recording of pygmies in the Ituri rainforest, Spiro, a Soft Machine bootleg (Oslo '71), Dembo Konte, Gilles Peterson's compilation of groovy Brazilian electronic, Mulatu Astatqe. Usually, when I'm there, I listen to lute music, classical guitar, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Ruben Gonzalez (the sort of stuff they already like), but I thought I'd expose them to some different stuff. And they were getting into it, my dad even unconsciously nodding along to some Brazilian D'n'B as he contemplated his next move.

Another pleasant surprise was discovering a compilation tape I'd recorded for my Mum in 1989 or 1990. It started with "Kana Vatsvene Vopinda" by Mechanic Manyaruke and the Puritans, from an LP I bought around that time from a little shop in Camden (no idea where that ended up). Pure, joyous, Zimbabwean gospel music from the 80's, the sort of stuff I used to tape off John Peel and Andy Kershaw back then. I remember listening to it back then and how happy it would make me feel...and it sounded just as good now. I recorded the song onto my laptop and have been listening to it repeatedly (you can hear a short clip here).

I got a lift down to Madison with Peter, via the Native American petroglyphs at Roche-a-Cri (overlaid with layers of 19th and 20th century graffiti, carved and sprayed - "a catalogue of fools", were the words that came to mind, although I found myself wondering what the original rock carvings would have looked to the tribal elders at the time, who'd almost certainly have been continuing a long, long tradition of revering the unblemished rockface) and Devil's Lake, which, in the mist, made me think of North Wales, Guatemala or Japan, but NOT southern Wisconsin. We drove straight to Ken and Maggie's, where Maggie (now working full time at wonderful WORT) made us dinner. We then jammed on the porch - Eno's "Burning Airlines Give You So Much More" (from Taking Tiger Mountain), Stephen Stills' "Long May You Run", Townes van Zandt's "Pancho and Lefty", some nice jams...Ken got home late from work, and we jammed some more (something Pete's working on in five, a Marques Bovry song, "Burning Airlines..." again, "Ghost Riders in the Sky", even some ELO(!)) I'm quite happy with my edited highlights:

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Devil's Lake, Wisconsin
Peter had hoped that we could meet up with the Malian kora player Tani Diakite, now resident in Madison (Sloppy Joe shared a bill with him once at some cultural event, and Gavin copied me his CD enthusiastically a couple of years ago). That didn't happen, but perhaps next time. The same night, up in Stevens Point, Pato Banton, with an eight-piece band, was playing at The Afterdark. They only ever seem to have juvenile punk bands playing there these days, and the night a semi-legendary reggae artist turns up from Birmingham, I had to leave...