the sycamore trees
two duos, a trio, and oil painting, an oil barrier
hi everybody -
so far springtime is a blur of stages and corners and my couch in the studio and the cafe I work on my laptop from. I’m writing this right now from the diner table that I eat my meals at home off of, it’s cool and cloudy and the windows are open. The brunt of my creative music time this last month has been dedicated to collaborative performance: two duos with Ryan Seward, one in a church in Colorado Springs, one in a park in Denver for Spoutfest. The latter show involved our spatial duo practice of sounding resonance and “activating” found objects; it’s a satisfying project that we’ve landed on and nearly impossible to document in any meaningful way, an aspect I find extremely compelling. Ryan & I will be at Dogstar in LA on June 16th with a new composition from each of us, duos accompanied by the Dogstar Community Choir.
At the inaugural Mayday noisefest in Colorado Springs, Matthew Langford joined us for a trio in which we played quietly in different corners of the room. After several months of clambering around for a group sound, we found it on May 1st. Matthew & I released a duo record last month, and it didn’t sound much like that.
This past weekend, onestraw & Ghost Canyon hosted the legends Windy & Carl for their first shows ever in Colorado. Carl Ritger & I opened for them on Sunday playing what Matt called “the swamp at dusk music.” This has been a special run of shows, life affirming in their own ways, moments of deepening practices in public; terrifyingly intimate.
As a gift to myself for my birthday, I released a record called Landscape Hocket (Orange County), a large body of work based around a plein air painting of the southern California coast made by Curtis Chamberlain in 1917. The piece was initially commissioned by the Langson IMCA at UC-Irvine and existed as a sound installation there over the fall, but it quickly grew into something larger and it continues to expand into further related work and projects. Included in the Bandcamp download are liner notes written by art historian Marianna Davison, she provides insight and context beyond what I’m able to do on my own. I mostly walk around and organize sound and images and objects. I know it’s a lot of sound, but live in it for a bit.
I’ve made what I’m finding to be a satisfying shift in how I’m working with my paid tier on Substack and subscribers on Bandcamp. Instead of uploading a monthly studio update as a long rambling “podcast,” at the end of every week I’m writing up some kind of field notes of the process. It’s not so much that I think every twitch of mine in the studio is important, it’s that my practice is made up of a lot of very small interlocking interests and gestures and they’re impossible to even mention in a monthly update. These subscriptions are massive assists to what I do and I’m grateful for the interest there so far. I’m doing my best to offer something worthwhile, thanks.
For the past several months I’ve been doing a slow re-watch of Twin Peaks, terrifying and fun and re-enlightening. I’m enjoying how certain elements that struck me a decade ago feel flat, but I’m also finding new resonances. Oil as a mediator between this world and the next has become a node connecting my own memory. The smell of burnt engine oil as the evil that permeates the world, the headache of the over-sweet oil fields on the edge of the Llano near Post, the dusty smell of the oil fields on the warm spring breezes in Littlefield, the sideways appeal of diesel. I’m remembering the panic of nearly running out of gas while driving through the Permian Basin, off-gassing flares all around me, I’m remembering pumping the mixture of diesel and spent vegetable oil stolen from Chinese restaurants out of the tank in a south Georgia parking lot with CJ and Dominique.
This year I’ve gotten several requests for one-on-one guidance on particular sound projects and I’ve enjoyed that new way of working with other artists. I’m not really ready to offer that as a Formal Service, but if that sounds of interest get in touch. We can talk mixing, production, composition, or whatever else. Maybe it’s a more affordable approach to having me mix a project, maybe you just need something to break a creative block.
It’s raining now and I’m going to continue my Twin Peaks run. I’m finishing some laundry and there are about two bowls in the sink I should wash. There’s some red dirt under my fingernails from the hike near Cañon City this afternoon. Tomorrow morning a man is going to come to my house and hopefully fix my garage door opener. After that I’ll work on some mixing and mastering projects, one of those could be yours. Thanks for reading this far, I appreciate it always.