Spain 7″ release date pushed back, and other news.

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Hi.

Spain’s aforementioned 7-inch record “I’m Still Free” b/w “Hang Your Head Down Low” will not be available for mass consumption on December 15th as planned.  Instead, it will come out January 26th, 2010.  But do not fear.  We are still playing our gig at Spaceland in Los Angeles on December 19, and if you come to this show you may purchase a specially pressed CD of the two songs.  We’re doing a run of only 100 discs through Kufala for the show.  These will look really cool because Nick Van Woert designed the cover sticker.  He is the one who helped me put together this lovely site that you are viewing right now.

In other news, Spring Summer’s record is out.  This is Jennifer Furches’ band.  Our good friend Patrick Park produced, engineered, arranged, and played most of the instruments on this record, but I played the drums on four tracks.  This record is good.  Other musicians involved were Dustin O’Halloran, Robert Schwartzman, and April Guthrie.  Spring Summer will play its first full band gig at Pehrspace on December 20th.

And speaking of Patrick Park, his new album will be released in March 2010.  Not sure if I’m at liberty to say who is releasing it, but just know for now that it will come out.  I played drums on this whole record and I’m really stoked for people to hear it because Patrick is one of the most honest and truly gifted musicians I know.

Ok, that’s all.

Newsy times.

I usually try to avoid being bloggish on this site.  But I wanna start writing more, so… here.

I just finished a week in New York City at the Performa 09 Festival, playing in the show Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #32, Plus created by Mike Kelley.  We spent the entire month of October rehearsing the music in Los Angeles and had a great experience performing for packed crowds at all six performances.  Check out the New York Times review here.

Looking forward, there are a few things I’m excited about that are worth mentioning here.  First, Spain has recorded two songs for a 7″ to be released December 15th, 2009 on the Spanish label Acuarela Discos.  It will be released as part of their “Singles Club,” which is pretty similar to what Sub Pop does.  There are some really cool bands making records for this series (Jamie Stewart from Xiu Xiu, Mount Eerie, etc.), so we’re happy to be a part of it.  To celebrate, we are playing a show December 19th, 2009 at Spaceland here in Los Angeles.  From what Josh tells me, Spain played its first gigs at this club in the early 90s, way before it was even called Spaceland, so this is a little bit of a homecoming.  Come out, see us play a bunch of new jams, and buy our new record.

Secondly, Sam Minaie and Nate Wood have finished mixing and mastering Peter Epstein’s Abstract Realism record, which is going to be released on Seattle’s own Origin Records in early 2010.  The core band for this date was me on drums, Sam Minaie on bass, Andrew Barbera on guitar, and Peter Epstein on alto saxophone.  Gavin Templeton and Brian Walsh also played on a couple tracks.  It’s all Peter’s music, very open structures and lots of free improvisation, all super rad.  Hopefully this band will tour.  Stay tuned.

Lastly, I’m in the process of booking a March 2010 tour for a trio that I’m leading with Sam on bass and Adam Benjamin on piano.  I’m really excited about this project; we’ll be playing music by all three of us, as well as some Monk stuff, some Ornette stuff, some standards, you know… I’ll post those dates as they’re confirmed!  Word up.

Day Is Done

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I’ll be performing in Mike Kelley’s “Day Is Done” live at Judson Memorial Church, 239 Thompson Street, NYC, Tuesday, November 17 8:00pm - Thursday, November 19 10:00pm.

Thank you, Rashied.

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Rashied Ali died yesterday.  Any drummer who has ever tried to play “free” is indebted to him, as far as I’m concerned.  I know I am.  Thank you Rashied for your truly inspirational and inventive musicianship.

Mixtape #1

 

Set list:

“New York City,” recorded outside John Cage’s apartment.
The Cramps - “Human Fly”
John Cage - “3 Dances for Prepared Piano (2)”
Pierre Schaeffer - “Cinq Etudes De Bruits: Etude Violette”
J.S. Bach - “Sonata 1ma in G-Moll BWV 1001: Adagio”
Roy Haynes - “Snap Crackle”
Ex-Models – “Girlfriend Is Worse”
Bolokada Conde – “Yaya”
Brian Eno – “2/2”
Art Lande – “The Baseball Trip – Game 7: Los Angeles Dodgers at Pittsburgh Pirates”
Miles Davis – “Directions”
Emani Sankara Sastry – “Pancharatna Kirtanam - Adi Tala”
John Coltrane – “Saturn”
Iannis Xenakis – “Charisma”
Fennesz – “Transit”
John Zorn Plays The Music Of Ennio Morricone – “The Sicilian Clan”
Gregory Isaacs – “You’ll Never Know”
Don Cherry – “Voice Of The Silence”
“New York City” again.

Benjamin-Mayhall-Minaie tracks posted.

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Sam finally gave me a disc of a gig we did with Adam Benjamin about a year ago.  We listened to it and decided that it was “killing,” to use the parlance of our times.  Despite their relatively poor sound quality, I posted a few tracks in the Listen section.  Pictured above is the guy inadvertently responsible for bringing the three of us together.  Photo by me.

Spain is opening for Tindersticks at The Henry Fonda Theater in LA.

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Spain (one of the bands I play in) will be opening for an awesome band from the UK called Tindersticks at the Henry Fonda Theater in Los Angeles, CA on March 13th.  Tickets to this very special occasion can be purchased here.

See Me Here.

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A Lost Classic

Josh Haden, Joey Waronker, Merlo Podlewski

Josh Haden, Joey Waronker, Merlo Podlewski

Spain’s album “The Blue Moods of Spain” was named a “Lost Classic” by Magnet.  There’s a little piece about it here.  Spain plays at Create Fixate on March 7th.

An Abstract For An Essay I Will Probably Never Write About Radiohead.

There seem to be at least two different kinds of Radiohead fans: those who readily consider everything the band has released as the work of collective genius, and those who pretty much quit paying attention somewhere around OK Computer. It has been my observation that those who fit into the latter category are predominately male.  This makes sense, because it appears to me that Radiohead’s sound and overall aesthetic pre- vs. post- OK Computer work to represent two distinct, opposing male identities.  One identity is the that of the sensitive yet powerful male, more or less represented by the band’s earlier,  guitar-based music, which is replete with conventionally “stable” harmonic devices (most of the songs on The Bends are representative of this).  But a conflicting identity begins to crop up on OK Computer and comes to the fore on Kid A and Amnesiac, both of which showcase a predominant reliance on electronically manipulated sound and relative harmonic stasis or ambiguity (see “Idioteque” from Kid A). The confluence of these factors on Kid A and Amnesiac enable an interpretation of the music as being somewhat androgynous, where the lines between “masculine” and “feminine” musical signifiers become blurry to the point where some males feel the need to disassociate.  Given that the electric guitar has historically served the male performer in molding the audience’s perceptions of his power, what happens when that instrument’s role in the music is greatly diminished?  Similarly, what happens when a more or less conventional usage of harmony is replaced by a static loop of bleeps, blurps, and hums?

And as my friend Nick recently pointed out to me, what about those who didn’t really care about Radiohead until Kid A?

Seeing as how those records came out a long time ago and we’ve all had some time to sit with them, I’m sure someone’s already written at length on this topic before, I just don’t know about it.  If you do, let me know.