John Griogair Bell - Arlecchino Malbenvolio

So, I’ve been hearing about Hillstomp and I noticed a flyer in some window for this show on Feb 22nd at Ash Street Saloon.

Hillstomp will be playing with Sassparilla Jug Band and McDougall.

From the Ash Street Saloon’s website:

Fri Feb 22nd $6
Music at 9:30pm

Odd that Hillstomp’s site doesn’t mention the time for this show; must have missed it since all the rest have times.

Hillstomp is also playing a bunch of shows at the McMenamins venues in March as part of the 2008 Great Northwest Music Tour.

I found a flyer for this in the lobby of where my acupuncturist has her office. Cheb i Sabbah is going to be in town on Saturday Mar 1st.

Saturday, March 1st – 9PM till LATE
315 SE 2nd (click for map) – 21

Celebrate the release of Cheb i Sabbah’s new CD, “Devotion”!
All Night Global Electro-Organic fusions &
Classical concert of sacred Sufi music at 9PM sharp.

There’s a large number of others playing that night too, it looks like from the information page. So, who knows how late Cheb i Sabbah will actually be on stage, but it looks like it will be a pretty interesting night.

Advanced tickets are $18 via Brown Paper Tickets.

Update 19feb08 @ 3:35pm:

I got an e-mail from one of the organizers of this event saying:

For now, I just thought I’d answer your inferred question about Cheb i’s play time. He’ll be getting onstage a bit before midnight. There will be several hours of wonderful music and interesting people before that, too, so I hope you’ll come check it out.

Here’s a link to download a song from Chebi’s new album:
http://sixdegreesrecords.com/devotion.php

Yep, sounds pretty great!

I had a very interesting weekend at Camp Latgawa, near Medford, with the ManKind Project. Clearly, I didn’t become more photogenic, but there’s some definite differences between my before and after pictures. I look pretty funny in both, actually.

I just got back from the Loch Lomond show at the Funky Church. It was pretty great. I had an oddly difficult time trying to get people to go to the show with me. I sent out the clarion call to my people, but no one could go. Someone that was going with me ended up not being able to go at the second to last minute.

Well, at the last minute, out of the blue I heard from a friend from the old days in Seattle that I hadn’t seen in something like 9 years; and so invited her and we met again after so many years at the show. There was a sad moment when she pointed out that we were probably the oldest people there … Last time, there were parents of one of the artists, so I was not the oldest in the room. This time, once it was pointed out, I definitely felt out of place …

… until the music started, anyway.

Kele Goodwin (Oops, see the update below …) was up first. I saw him before at the previous show I attended at the Funky Church, but this time I didn’t recognize him. I even picked up a few songs on CDR at the last show, but didn’t entirely recognize the music. On one song he did some fancy plucking, which I don’t know how to describe exactly; except that it was a complex motif with a moment of double-time finger-work.

This time, he seemed particularly down and left the stage quickly after he was done. He’s got some great material and it was good to see him play again.

“I don’t love you the way you think I do”

Amen, brother.

David Strackany swooped on stage like Will Ferrell’s Elf wearing a Supersanta cape and revealed his secret identity as Paleo. Or, is that the other way around?

Paleo was great. Paleo sounded like  … um, the bastard love child of Shaggy, from Scooby-Doo, and Bob Dylan? His performance style was an interesting and forced technique, but it worked. You can get an idea about what I’m talking about by checking out David’s myspace for Paleo. In the live performance, there were moments when I thought the intensity didn’t match what was going on in the song, but also suspected that he was responding to some of the distracting noise being made by in the venue while he was playing.

Quite a few times, I found myself laughing with the lyrics. There were some great bits of writing in these songs. There were a few songs that were packed with sparkling use of language, especially one song about a sad little road in Oregon, which I didn’t locate on his site yet.

He actually was offering a burned DVD of mp3′s. Unfortunately, the bitrate is pretty low for these, so it’s a bit hard to understand the lyrics from this collection. However, the lyrics are available online on David’s website for Paleo.

So, the burned DVD is a 17-hour album. David did a project where he travelled the country while writing a new song every day for an entire year. I have so much respect for a project like that. Really amazing. I’ve tried to write every day in my journal, or to force myself to write some poetry every day; but, I don’t manage to do it for very long. What a cool thing to have done:

“one year, 365 songs, and 215 shows across 152 cities in 45 states and 54,434 miles”

Wow.

I’ve tried to do projects like that in the past without setting a definitely ending, and I fall off that wagon pretty quickly. But, even just doing a daily bit of work like that for a short period of time, I can definitely say I have a glimpse of how amazing and wild that kind of year-long commitment would be.

Seeing David play in that intimate venue really makes me wish I’d seen Dylan somewhere similar and as a younger performer.

“you be careful what you pay for
when the soul is your receipt”

Amen, brother.

Tonight’s Loch Lomond performance was like a drop of water in scotch. The rich strength of Loch Lomond was surprisingly mellow tonight. I’m always surprised at how different they are each time I get to see them play. There are changes in who’s on stage each time, and the feeling is still great but slightly different.

Tonight, maybe because of the small venue and the feeling of being on the home field, Ritchie and the group were very relaxed and maybe even particularly happy.

My dad was in a barbershop quartet when he was young. I never heard them because I wasn’t born yet. But, a relative once told me a little about one thing they did: they would switch places on stage and sing different parts of the song. Well, there’s definitely a feeling of play in that, and something that I saw tonight at the Funky Church was something I knew already, but wouldn’t have seen in a larger venue with a more formal appearance. Loch Lomond is full of talent and the way in which many are able to switch places with each other and play different instruments and parts is fun to watch, and more likely to be seen in a more intimate venue, I would guess.

Loch Lomond is such a great band comprised of so many great people. I feel so glad that I’ve had the chance to see them play and experience not just their artistry but also their sense of levity and joy in doing their art.

Update 13mar08 @ 9:39pm:

So, I feel a bit foolish. Kele Goodwin sent me an e-mail to say that it wasn’t him. Which, you know, makes sense that I didn’t recognize him or his songs this time … because they weren’t. Kele suggested that the person that filled in for him was Galveston. So, you know, check Galveston’s page out. There’s a couple of songs there you can listen to.

And, while you’re at it, check out Kele’s page too. When I first saw him, he had a CDR that he made available in some fancy stitched envelopes. Nice attention to detail, and good stuff on this disc too.

Via the Loch Lomond shows page, they will be playing at the Holocene on Apr 2nd, at 9pm. Playing with Loch Lomond are Bodies of Water and Le Loup.

Interestingly, they aren’t listed on the Holocene calendar page …

Oy, Loch Lomond also played again at the Funky Church on Jan 29th, but I didn’t hear about it. They must not have sent anything out via the announce list. Bummer! That’s a pretty small venue, so maybe it wasn’t something they wanted to make a big deal about? I wish I’d heard though. Last time, it was Ritchie himself that mentioned the Funky Church show to me when I bought their CD after the Portland Cello Project show at the Aladdin … so, maybe I should have bought another CD after the Doug Fir show?