Wow!

Ok, it's official. My life is truly, insanely AWESOME! All thanks to this strange talent I seem to possess for plucking strings in somewhat pleasing patterns. Oh. My. GAWD! The show last night was just amazing! I mean seriously. I'm humbled to have been asked to be a part of it. Those of you that were there know what I'm talking about. I'm not sure I'm capable of describing all of the neato but I'll give it a whirl.

So Nathan(nathan_fhtagn) and I are going out to North Carolina pretty soon to play with The Ghosts project and do some tunes that Nathan's written on his own. He asked me to play bass on his songs. In fact, Rachel(theblackdeer), ex singer/flute player for Abney Park, lives there and will be with us providing woodwind duties. Well, it turns out that The Ghosts Project were playing down in Portland with Jill Tracy. And Magpie Killjoy is currently based down there as well. And so Willow(willowperson) and Libby(carpe_jugulum).....

and

as they're known, for obvious reasons, decided to appropriate a venue in Seattle and hijack everyone up from Oregon to do a show in Seattle. I was glad for this as it would be a nice dress rehearsal before Nathan and I go off to play Eccentrik Fest in NC. I had no fuckin' IDEA what I was in for last night. My God. The musicianship, the camaraderie, the sheer POWER of the evening! It was like nothing I'd seen before. Oh, and ladies? Thank you SOOOOO much for your efforts in all of this. I think sometimes that people forget all of the planning and work that goes into putting on a production of this caliber. I'd like to go on the record and say that Willow and Libby are some of the most wonderfulest people on this planet! I'm sure the Indiana suicide rate has quadrupled and that their Governor has declared a state of emergency now that their two finest women have jumped ship and bailed for the west coast. We love you ladies here in Seattle/Tacoma/Olympia!!!!

OK, so the venue. The venue was a place called The Little Red Studio in the South Lake Union area of Seattle. It's normally an adult theater and I'm not sure they usually have bands/music there too often. But the place is beautiful! It kind of reminded me of the indoor part of Bar Sinister down in Hollywood, only with really good nude paintings all over the walls. Lots of velvet and candles and there was a trapeze and aerial rings, really cool place. Decent sized stage (Although there was someone else's stuff up there that we weren't supposed to move....We moved it.) Really nice sized space for the audience as well. I was the first person to arrive, which for anyone that's been in a band with me or knows me at all, they know that's normal. I work for an airline. Being late is not an option for me. It was cool because I got to set up my stuff with no hassles or distractions and I got to familiarize myself with the place. That goes a long way towards me being comfortable on stage. After that there was the load in of everyone elses stuff and sound check blah blah blah. Let's get to the good stuff!

We had a DJ for music before and between sets. This job was handled by the extremely capable Qais Fulton(qnonymous). Who told me that most of what he wanted to spin was eaten during a power surge or somesuch and so most of his play list was done on the fly. As you'll soon see, that was very appropriate for the evening. Thanks Qais! You did a wonder job and I for one was digging the tunes!

So Magpie was first. Yes, Magpie Killjoy is his name! I'd met him twice before. First at C13 down in Portland when I was playing with Abney Park. And once at the art show that Libby and Eliza(vebelfetzer) had just put on. He's a really cool guy. Voluntarily homeless a lot of the time. He makes his living busking with his accordion, singing his songs and selling his jewelery and stuff on the street. He's lived all over the U.S. And Europe. Believe it or not, he'd never played in front of an actual "paid to get in, play on a stage" audience before and I think it freaked him out a bit at first. But he totally owned that crowd. We hung on every word of his funny, happy little ditties about death and how much people suck. And his between song banter was priceless. None of that covered up the fact that he's a very accomplished accordion player. And I just love his singing voice. It's like if Tom Waits started a polka band. I love me some Magpie!

Next up was this guy that Willow and Nathan found busking out on the street one day. A Cello player named Brandon Smith. There are just no words. The guys was piss drunk, totally destroyed someone's bow within 10 seconds of his first song, freaked out and put on one of the most incredible performances I have ever seen in my life. EVER! No, I'm not exaggerating here. The guy is a fucking GENIUS! Ok, here's something that kind of sums him and his style up nicely.

Cello on Ice
He's one of the weirdest bastards you'll ever run into. But in a good way. If I could play half as good as him when I'm a quarter as drunk, I'd think I'd be pretty happy with myself for sure. He was the second guy there and it turns out that he's a decent drummer as well. So he and I had this drum n bass thing going on before the festivities really got going and that was really fun.

Next up was Jill Tracy. If she weighs more than 100lbs soaking wet I'd be amazed, but this big, smokey, sexy voice just oozes out of her when she sings. That mixed with her tasteful, jazz influenced gothy piano lines and Paul Mercer's (from The Ghosts Project) ambient, swirling violin lines just made you want to run home, grab your partner and just.....FUCK! LOL! I told her that in not so many words, and unsurprisingly she said she gets that all the time. She gets asked whether she has sex to her own music to which her answer is "eeeewwww! NO!" Nathan grabbed Tetsuo (my bass) for her set as she was by far the most..."structured I guess?" of the players and he's familiar with her songs. I'll tell you what though, I'm gonna GET familiar with her songs because I'd love to play with her. Nathan did a great job however and looked like he was having a good time. Maybe a little TOO good if you ask me! LOL! I was afraid I'd have to check out ol' Mr. Tetsuo for fluid accumulation before I played him!

After Jill was The Ghosts Project. Basically Paul Mercer on violin, Davis Peterson on drums and Nathan on guitar. No vocals this time. Too bad Mel had to work. She could have totally learned the songs they have up on their myspace page and done them. Maybe we'll do that if they come back through. Still, vocals are not needed when they get on stage. The music started out slow and ambient. Davis was playing drums with soft mallets and Nathan was basically just droning with an ebow while Paul filled the room with phased out, reverbed violin lines while sitting cross legged and tranced out on the floor. Davis was the conductor and he slowly, agonizingly, deliberately brought the tempo up while the other matched him out of pure instinct. The music just would build and build until near the end Nathan's switched out his ebow for a pick, Paul's standing up and Davis has miraculously produced a pair of regular drum stich and everyone just....EXPLODES! That's really the best description for it. Like an A-Bomb or the best orgasm you've ever had X 50. Davis almost fell over his drums when they finished. It was amazing. And then..AND THEN! They start up again only they get Brandon to come up with his cello. They just all start playing and Brandon takes about 3 seconds to figure out where the music's going and dives right in. Magpie is next to me the whole time and he's just starring at the stage and clutching my arm like he's hanging of for dear life. At one point he slowly turns to me and whishpers, and these are his exact words, "I understand now why people dedicate themselves to music." He was literally shaking. And there was a couple on the other side of me and when I looked over, the girl had tears in her eyes. It was beautiful. And powerful. This wasn't her grandma's classical music. It had way more in common with Metallica or Yngwie Malmsteen than Brahms. In fact at one point Davis slides out his floor tom and Brandon grabs a couple of sticks and now there's two drummers just f-ing going OFF! It was madness I tell you! Glorious MADNESS!

After that Brandon jumped down and I jumped up. I grabbed Tetsuo, sans bodily emissions thank goodness, and we started in on the songs Nathan wrote. Nathan put his guitar down and picked up his violin. Davis had the advantage of playing these songs before. Like I said they had a show in Portland, but Davis was up in Seattle so Nathan brought him down to my house in Tacoma on their way to Oregon. We set up in my jam room and worked the songs out. I hope Willow wasn't to bored watching a bunch of musicians going, "ok what's my cue? Do we do melody a and then melody b, or the other way around." Band practice can be real boring for people not in the band. Anyway so yeah, Davis got to get his feet wet with the songs. And on their way back to Seattle they stopped by again. Mel took Willow up to Seattle so she could get everything ready and Nathan, Davis and I hashed out the songs one more time before heading up. Paul Mercer, on the other hand didn't get to have a warm up with us. And looking back, that made everything better. We'd worked it out so Nathan would get a shot at a solo during a song and then Paul would. But Paul would take the song in a direction we weren't entirely expecting which meant we'd have to switch on the fly. It made it much more spontaneous and cool! Nathan and I were beaming at each other afterwards about our mental telepathy powers and how we both knew within moments of each other when to change it up and what to change it up to. That's magic when that happens! There is no better feeling than when a bunch of players get together and communicate with rhythm and tones. Words can be cumbersome, miss understood and overrated. Music is a pure language that speaks on an emotional level, and therefore it ever lie. For me, and I think it's safe to say for everyone else on that stage last night, music is life.

The other cool thing about when I was on stage is Finn Von Claret got to perform as well! She's the new singer/dancer for Abney Park. She cleared some space in front of us and provided interpretive dance. She's a professional dancer and she's fantastic! It amazes me that the act of someone's body moving in rhythm can be so beautiful. The whole night was like that. Just kind of improved, unplanned beauty everywhere you turned. AWESOME!

So after The Ghosts Project and I finished jamming out Nathan's tunes, we decide to get acoustic. The venue had a nice baby grand piano in the room that Jill started playing. Paul and Nathan busted out the acoustic violins and Brandon came back with his cello. I grabbed and acoustic guitar and Magpie joined in with his accordion. I think the only verbal communication between all of us players was "Let's do something in Gminor." And it was off to the races. I started off providing a bit of rhythmic strumming and then I busted into a little G Aeolian noodling with a bit of G harmonic minor neo classical lead shredding. That's because Brandon is a total metal head even if he is a cello player and his lines called for it. But if I decided to pay more attention to Magpie, he was following along in G, but the chords he was playing were major. So I decided to hit it with some tasty B-flat pentatonic blues. That seemed to fit his groove but still kept enough of the Gminor feel to not throw anybody off. I think it was anchored by Jill on the piano because Paul and Nathan were just ripping it up in cool ways. Again, it was the mental telepathy musicians have. It's so hard to explain but somehow, you just know what to do. I remember playing Studio Seven with Abney Park and everyone but me decides to do the song "Kine." I'd never even attempted to play that before and now the music's starting on stage in front of a crowd. I heard it was in G and there was a beat so that's all I needed. I love that feeling of being able to lock in. There's just nothing like playing music.