CONQUISTADORS TOUR DAY 21
Part of the advantage of starting to tour heavily now in my life, as a "responsible adult", is that I've been over partying for a long time. I like it, I do it, but it is not the aim of the tour, or my involvement in music, as I have seen it be for many younger people. Still, it happens, and when it does, what I really need in the morning is a good cup of coffee. And around the corner from last night's venue, there it is! I start the last day of the tour drinking a cup of Gimme! coffee. (Gimme! is a small company based in Ithaca, and I probably spent as much time preparing this tour at the Gimme on State Street as from my place in Ithaca.) I guess they sell their coffee to this coffeeshop in Dayton. They don't fuck around here. I wait for maybe 15 minutes while the one customer ahead of me has his coffee so carefully prepared by the barista you'd think a too-fast pour would cause the world to explode. Barista and customer discuss the number of "grains" or whatever in various coffee grinds. I like coffee, but not that much.
Four and a half hour drive from Dayton to Pittsburgh. Not much to see until West Virginia, and I regret not having time to take it slow, it's so clearly another world here, time passes differently. I start to think about a different kind of travel, now. I am always gathering and always sharing ideas, but on tour I am consciously disseminating them. So I suppose when I go to listen to music, or visit a gallery or museum, or hear a speech delivered, or explore a city, I am gathering them. I will have a little time to walk in some mountains coming up, to process them.
When I released Unison Lines with my longtime collaborator and friend Rafal Mazur last fall, I was immediately contacted by Stephen Pellegrino, in Pittsburgh, who not only bought a copy for himself but for a local radio station. What a complimentary and generous and encouraging thing to do! I met Steve at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, in Florida, in 2005. We were both associate artists in residence in Henry Threadgill's group. (Quick piece of context: Threadgill has been a massive inspiration to me for years.)
Pellegrino is awesome. He's a radical theater-maker, composer, and accordionist, and a master at the lost art of drywall plastering. He and I have kept in touch, and shared a bill in Pittsburgh a few years ago. The Pittsburgh experimental scene is unfortunately dominated by a very odd character that most folks who have passed through know about, and I did not appreciate the way I was treated last time I came through, so Pellegrino arranged and promoted a concert on his own for me. He opens with his MAN FROM 'NYAYZAR performance, telling stories, overtone singing and playing quirky accordion pieces. The show is at a small art gallery that has some good stuff on the walls, but smells a bit like a New England gift shop. We have a small crowd, mostly men, who sit at the start of my set frowning and with their arms folded. Kind of a huge contrast to most of the tour.
One of the difficulties arranging and promoting this thing is that no one had much of an idea of what would happen. Some folks expected free jazz, others noise, others synth drones, and still others "punk-folk". I didn't really know what would happen either. My set has grown and developed as I've played it. In Pittsburgh my saxophone playing was promoted, so the drums and organs and vocals stuff may have thrown some folks off. Although I emphasized different things in every show of the tour, I decided early on not to make assumptions about "what people would like". I wanted to learn about the music by presenting something similar to a lot of different people, in a lot of different contexts. Although I sense, in this working-class town, for a crowd that is radical-sympathetic, that the messages in the songs are appreciated, I think the folks in Pittsburgh may have been just as happy to hear a saxophone-only set. I would love to do a saxophone only tour, but man does the Farfisa sound good 21 days in. Maybe next time, Pittsburgh!
SET LIST 4/11
Conquistadors
Rocket Ships
A Bloodletting
What We Have
Caldicott
The Love Story
Four and a half hour drive from Dayton to Pittsburgh. Not much to see until West Virginia, and I regret not having time to take it slow, it's so clearly another world here, time passes differently. I start to think about a different kind of travel, now. I am always gathering and always sharing ideas, but on tour I am consciously disseminating them. So I suppose when I go to listen to music, or visit a gallery or museum, or hear a speech delivered, or explore a city, I am gathering them. I will have a little time to walk in some mountains coming up, to process them.
When I released Unison Lines with my longtime collaborator and friend Rafal Mazur last fall, I was immediately contacted by Stephen Pellegrino, in Pittsburgh, who not only bought a copy for himself but for a local radio station. What a complimentary and generous and encouraging thing to do! I met Steve at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, in Florida, in 2005. We were both associate artists in residence in Henry Threadgill's group. (Quick piece of context: Threadgill has been a massive inspiration to me for years.)
Pellegrino is awesome. He's a radical theater-maker, composer, and accordionist, and a master at the lost art of drywall plastering. He and I have kept in touch, and shared a bill in Pittsburgh a few years ago. The Pittsburgh experimental scene is unfortunately dominated by a very odd character that most folks who have passed through know about, and I did not appreciate the way I was treated last time I came through, so Pellegrino arranged and promoted a concert on his own for me. He opens with his MAN FROM 'NYAYZAR performance, telling stories, overtone singing and playing quirky accordion pieces. The show is at a small art gallery that has some good stuff on the walls, but smells a bit like a New England gift shop. We have a small crowd, mostly men, who sit at the start of my set frowning and with their arms folded. Kind of a huge contrast to most of the tour.
One of the difficulties arranging and promoting this thing is that no one had much of an idea of what would happen. Some folks expected free jazz, others noise, others synth drones, and still others "punk-folk". I didn't really know what would happen either. My set has grown and developed as I've played it. In Pittsburgh my saxophone playing was promoted, so the drums and organs and vocals stuff may have thrown some folks off. Although I emphasized different things in every show of the tour, I decided early on not to make assumptions about "what people would like". I wanted to learn about the music by presenting something similar to a lot of different people, in a lot of different contexts. Although I sense, in this working-class town, for a crowd that is radical-sympathetic, that the messages in the songs are appreciated, I think the folks in Pittsburgh may have been just as happy to hear a saxophone-only set. I would love to do a saxophone only tour, but man does the Farfisa sound good 21 days in. Maybe next time, Pittsburgh!
SET LIST 4/11
Conquistadors
Rocket Ships
A Bloodletting
What We Have
Caldicott
The Love Story
Labels: Conquistadors, music, travel
posted by Keir at 6:30 PM
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