Shreveport to Mexico via New Orleans!

So, the tour continues, with my return to the open arms of Shreveport, LA, where I arrive on 25^th January at 6am after traveling through the night from Austin, TX on the greyhound.

I arrive and am met by David Nelson, who takes me back to his amazing apartment on historic Texas Avenue. After so little sleep you'd have thought I would go to sleep for a couple of hours, but we're straight out and having breakfast!

We go to the venue known as 'The Shop' for around 3pm and the space looks like a challenge. It's a large, high ceilinged room with a stage across one corner and the sound and lighting desk in the other. I decide straight away that I am going to perform from behind the audience – one reason for this is so I am not the focus of the piece, the sounds are, and another is so I can control the sound a lot more from there.

After joining many cables together to allow me to do this I find I am getting no sound from the right speaker – this is following major problems with my soundcard, which lead to my having to buy a firewire cable from Radio Shack for over $40!! After much testing of cables and connections, something tells me to check the actual output of the speakers – and lo and behold, no-one is getting sound from the right hand speaker!! a quick swapping of cables from amplifier to mixer and all is good.... Which leaves no time for me to soundcheck.

I should also mention, The Shop has a tin roof, and all the time we were setting up and solving problems the rain battered down on that roof, which was a great sound, but would have ruined most of the evening's sets.

Thankfully the rain does stop around 30 minutes before the doors open!Opening the evening were Jon Mackey and Brittney Maddox, performing together for the first time ever as Soft Troopers, and they were absolutely spellbinding! Brittney has an amazing voice and Jon accompanies it beautifully. Then the loveable maniac Peter Fetterman steps onto the stage, and plays a noisy yet tuneful set using his new instrument, freshly constructed that week. And I finish up, and the piece sounded great in the space (even though I say so myself). A very good night. Also good to catch up with Carrie, Raiven, Conchita, April and a whole host of others I met in October last year.

Then that evening Andy Ezell drives me out around 30 minutes away to take me to the swamp, which is breathtaking and quite spooky, but the idea was to record sounds, and it was totally dead expect for a constantly barking dog! Ah well.

I spend a couple more days in Shreveport, visiting David's families house in Homer and recording gunshots, oil drilling operations and creeks, as well as visiting Moon's Grocery http://www.zydecocruiser.com/nola/food/foodPages/moons.htm for lunch – I wasn't brave enough to try the pickled pig's lips I'm sorry to say... and thanks to Dillon for a short guided tour of the area around Texas Avenue when we got back.

The following day David and I took his canoe out to another part of the swamp, interrupting filming of a movie called 'The Iceman' which was happening right outside his house – it did mean that we got help lifting the canoe out and onto the top of the jeep! Again, very quiet, but we had fun punting around for two hours or so.

The next morning was another early one, with me catching a bus at 7am to New Orleans, getting in around 3pm where I was met by Mr. James Eck Rippie. We went straight to the French Quarter and had various local delights, the best being deep fried dill pickle slices! We also had alligator sausage, but it was really hard to tell what the meat actually tasted like... A fugitive from Shreveport, Meredith came and joined us and we wandered around the quarter for the rest of the day, taking in the Mississippi, Harrahs Casino, Bourbon Street and Frenchman. We also partook in a local drink known as the 'Hand Grenade'! http://www.tropicalisle.com/shop/oneandonly.html

30^th January: James and I head out to a swamp north of New Orleans, which his satnav doesn't seem to want to take us to, leading us up many roads and then telling us to U-turn when legally able to! This time around there are definitely more sounds to be heard, and we take a couple of trails around Tickfaw State Park, also chatting about possible future collaboration...

We hit a few of the late bars and talk into the night, cutting it short as we have to get up around 7am once again, this time to get me to the airport, where I'm bound for Mexico City...

Return to Shreveport...

After losing the first draft of this post, i have rewritten it more as a journal...

17^th January – return to downtown LA, to stay with Yann and Robert, and dinner with Mr. Steve Roden

18^th – breakfast with Yann, train overnight to Albuquerque – train full of characters, notably one guy who drinks beer for the whole journey and a 'lady' who continually drags the 'silver fox' (her words) to the observation car...

19^th – arrive in Albuquerque and try to walk to hotel, only to find sidewalks don't exist from halfway there! Quiet evening in with TV and computer.

20^th – wander around Albuquerque visiting Central Avenue, mainly Lindy's Diner for breakfast burrito smothered in red chilli sauce, and Albuquerque Art Museum, then visit City Hall with Andrea Polli, where each floor has art exhibiting, followed by dinner with her hubby Chuck Varga, who sculpts characters and props for the movies and was also The Sexecutioner in the band Gwar!

21^st – head out to Chaco Canyon and visit the mysterious Pueblo Bonito: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pueblo_Bonito

22^nd – after a night in Farmington, NM and heavy overnight snow, we meet with two lovely Navajo artists who Andrea is collaborating with – an hour in their company leaves me reeling with information and inspiration! I then take Andrea's car and head north to explore the sounds of New Mexico, finding the beautiful Jackson Lake.

Head back to Albuquerque where we stay in Andrea and Chuck's very cool new house.

23^rd – a morning stroll around the plazas of Old Town Albuquerque, chatting to native artists, and then a short flight to Austin, TX – the flight takes me to Dallas first, and while boarding I notice another UK passport – I mention this and the bearer turns out to be a gallery owner based in Bristol!! small world...

On arrival in Austin I'm collected by Henna Chou who runs 'Church of the Friendly Ghost' – we head to her place where I play a show in her living room with the very talented Vanessa Rossetto to a small but extremely lovely and appreciative audience. Thanks to Aaron, Henna and George! And of course Vanessa.

24^th – staying at Vanessa's place I get to hang out with her, her cats and her housemates the next day, visiting the Blanton Museum and the Dobie Mall food court – Niki's Pizza! Then I get dropped at the Austin greyhound station for yet another overnight bus ride, this time to Shreveport...

14th Jan continued...

Machine Shop, as seen from outside the performance space during the concert.

Thanks go to Robert Crouch for taking the photos, to the audience for coming, especially my friends Mark Soden Jr. and Mrs. Soden, and Diane Granahan, all of whom it was great to finally meet in person, and to the Machine Project for hosting us.

And of course to Yann Novak for making such lovely sounds for me to work alongside.

Yann and Robert hosted me during my stay in Downtown LA, and showed me the BEST places to eat - thanks so much guys!

And now I'm up in Santa Monica, staying with a good friend of my brother's - it's very different up here. I went out walking for around 6 hours today, heading south to Venice along the clifftop, through the pedestrianised streets of Santa Monica, unfortunately hitting a huge road that turned into the Santa Monica Freeway, before heading back towards the coast and entering Venice itself.

The promenade on Venice Beach is something to see/hear - so many tents and stalls, all selling very different things - lots of souvenirs, incense, clothes, but also a great one that two guys were running that offered 'very bad advice' for $1! I felt I didn't need that today, but it made me chuckle.

I continued south through this mayhem, hearing about 10 different songs at once, at all times along the way, until I could stand it no more and cut across to the shore.

Looking at a map I must have been about 3 miles away from Billy's place, and walked all the way back along the sea's edge - stopping to record a couple of times of course! I got some great recordings of the sea soaking down through the sand at the water's edge...

EXCERPT OF CONCERT RECORDING

14th Jan 2012 - Untitled (remodel), Machine Project, LA

On 14th January, after a few days of preparation, Yann Novak and I performed our interpretation of a performance by Carl Stone from 1980. Using the text on the Spirit Resurrection website as guidelines for the source material, we worked on various recordings in order to perform the piece in collaboration.

Thanks go to the audience who attended, who were focused and respectful, and seemed unperturbed by the face the venue is open to the street...

i have just tried to upload another photo, but blogger's not letting me, so i'll add another post.

week one

after a pretty long and not great flight thanks to icelandair (i even had to pay for a meal on the 8+ hour transatlantic flight - have they been taking lessons from ryanair??) i arrived around 11pm in san francisco, to be collected at the airport by my lovely friend andrea williams. she promptly whisked me off to her place in oakland where i stayed for a few nights - thank you andrea.
and also her roommate jennifer. :-)

after a lazy day and a great brunch, being served by a very funny waiter with a massive hickey on his neck, i went to a show at the luggage store. i caught the last ten minutes of elise baldwin's set, which was very pleasant, and then had to put screwed up tissue in my ears for a loud drone set by john krausbauer - a good immersive sound with loads of overtones, but the singing put me off a little and i still have a problem when an artist plays in front of an audience, but has their back to the audience... i know a lot of electronic musicians can be accused of not engaging but surely that's just rude!
anyway, i'm glad i went... if only because i know the next evening's music was a lot better!

i had the good fortune to play at the lab in the mission area of san francisco on 6th january, with andrea, jorge bachmann (who also put the show together) and jim haynes. no-one played 'onstage' and i think it was my new good friend jim kaiser who said 'it was like cinema without the pictures' for most of the night, with jim projecting beautiful abstract images in his closing performance.

EXCERPT OF RECORDING OF PERFORMANCE AT THE LAB, SF 14TH JAN 2012

i also got to meet matthew swiezynski, who runs the fanstastic invisible birds record label, after a couple of years of communication via email and facebook. on saturday i visited him in the amazing art and architecture bookstore he runs in oakland, after going to see jim k at amoeba, and we chatted over a glass of wine for a couple of hours - thanks for that matthew.

when i got back to andrea's it was announced that i couldn't leave california without getting drunk and getting naked.... being british (or just being me!) the thought of being naked in public sent shivers down my spine - but hten i thought, yeah what the hell!

so on sunday, on a drive up north through marin county to the wine country, we did what any normal person would do - stopped and tasted some wine! some good, some not very good at all (mostly the zinfandels) and some great - like the primitivo i bought. This was followed by a chilly walk through montgomery woods, which was actually lovely and peaceful.

then we hit orr springs, which has a couple of shallow pools fed by the natural hot spring water, plus there's a large cold plunge pool and an odd little bath sized pool next to it that's not so cold, before you get to the sauna and steam room at the furthest point. and yes, almost everyone was naked. and after a while it really didn't seem so strange... plus it was soooo relaxing. i advise anyone visiting california to try it!

the evening was topped off by a delicious meal with andrea and jorge at a place called mua, which is a restaurant in a converted car dealership, still surrounded by loads of car dealerships!

after one more delicious brunch - which was actually a thai lunch - i hit amoeba once again to drop off some cd's and dvd's for jim k to try and sell, then visited joe colley's magazine shop 'issues' but didn't get to meet the man himself, then into san francisco for my final evening where andrea and i had great tapas. and saw how early san francisco goes to sleep! everything was closed around 10pm!! i was amazed!

this chapter of the story ends with an 8 hour greyhound bus trip from san francisco to downtown l.a.during which i saw some lovely scenery, the towns of san jose, gilroy and san fernando, and generally enjoyed the trip, to be met at the greyhound station by mr. yann novak, who then drove me literally 2 minutes to his loft apartment that he shares with his partner robert crouch, and that's where i am now.
i have already visited the venue that yann and i are to play on saturday evening - an interesting space called 'machine project', and have some recordings to work on for the performance. and sorry to mention food again, but also just had another fantastic thai meal!! seems i'm eating as well as playing my way across the states....