What the hell I've been up to...

I'll try to keep this brief because as usual there is a lot going on:

Coming up on Sunday, February 28th, is Broadcloth's performance at The Stone in NYC. Previous gigs and rehearsals only got better and tighter, whether performing compositions or doing free improv, and it should be pretty clear with this set how much work Anne, Nathan and I have put into making this group as organic as possible. We've also established a Myspace page for the group, found here, which hopefully will be followed by something more closely resembling a webpage.

The following two days, An Historic will perform in New Haven. Monday is a brief set at the Beatnik 2000 series in New Haven at Cafe 9, which will be a shorter set. I sat in with Jef Wilson's band Schwa on that series less than a month ago, and it lived up to its name, with music, slam poetry/spoken word accompanied by hand percussion - perhaps living up to an aged artistic ideal but certainly not the sort
of thing you see often in New Haven - plus it seems to be fairly musically inclusive, evidenced by my accordioneering being booked for the gig. Cafe 9 is generally considered a dive with good music and decent beer, so it's a win-win venue all around. This usually gets going around 10 PM.

The next day I'll perform at the first show I ever booked. Mogli and Fairy Boy and the Official Suckers will be rolling through on tour from Nova Scotia, and they both represent an energetic, melodic strain of acoustic punk that is quite worthwhile. (Plus Kyle Fairy Boy describes himself as queer-panic folk, which is a better subgenre than I've heard in awhile.) Feral Flowers (aka Jeff P) and The Book Slave will also perform, and that pretty much means shit is gonna burn the house down. A truly diverse cast of musicians, all somehow contained under the banner of acoustic punk. This will be at the Elm City Infoshop (Neverending Books) at 810 State St, and the space will be open at 6:30, with the show probably starting an hour later. Vegan potluck, money for touring bands, etc.

There’s also a good chance that on Saturday, March 6th, I’ll be appearing as a performing guest on Jef Wilson’s radio show, the Jef Sessions, on WYBC 1340AM / 94.3FM. It airs between 12 and 2 PM, and I’ll be a guest during one of those hours. Again, details forthcoming.

All these An Historic appearances will be building up toward the recording of a new EP, which I mentioned a while ago but had put on the back burner in favor of other projects. I wrote four of the songs for this project within a week’s time, with two others falling out more or less spontaneously in subsequent short periods, and have been revising them slowly as I’ve learned them. The EP will contain these new original songs and one or two folk/public domain tunes I enjoy. I envisioned these songs to be as stripped down as possible, in contrast to the layered tunes I’ve been slowly self-recording that comprise the “Ephemeral Stampede Demos” project, which is meant to serve as a stopgap until a later, higher-quality recording can be produced. The tunes for this EP (yet untitled) are mostly accordion and voice, with some having drums and some clarinet overdubbed into the mix. I’ve performed two of them so far at shows, and will be trying the rest out at upcoming gigs.

The release of G. Zarapanecko’s “Glitterdammerung” is quite near, and to top it all off (since, let’s face it, who’s gonna buy it anyway?) the digital release will be free for the first 12 days. Hot damn.

Finally, after much delay, procrastination and setback, the song cycle “Passing a Penny” based on the poetry of Rob Talbot, is complete. The work is due to be premiered at the Uncertainty Series in May with Anne Rhodes singing, along with some other solo accordion compositions I’ve been slowly working at for awhile, which really came together once I got my new accordion last year. The music is best described as alternately manic and melancholic, a duality that describes the poetry (and probably myself better than I’d care to admit) quite well. Save the date – May 8th is going to be a barn burner, and it’s the first of my through-composed compositions to see a performance in over a year.

That's really about it. I ranted about the concept behind "Orchestrion," Pat Metheny's newest album recently on my Myspace blog, and I forgot to cross post it here. You're not missing much. I did so without having listened to more than one or two video clips of it, but really, finding out about the album was a catalyst for some ideas I'd been mulling over for a while anyway...check it out at http://myspace.com/adammatlock if you are for some strange reason a completist about my written word.