Did everyone properly indulge this holiday season? Anyone got any funny airport stories to tell? I’m seriously considering writing a collection of short non-fictional tales, recounting my greatest airport misadventures. And believe me, I have many. Good ones.. ..in that they’re really horrifying. “I swear to GOD, I’m a cook! That bag was meant to be checked! Yes, yes it IS a big knife..” And so on.
Fortunately, my travel woes were not quite as severe this go-round, but were still far from pleasant. My inner John Candy was having a very bad day at Austin Bergstrom Intl Airport, trust me. But, I made it back to the frozen hills of Iowa for a relaxing two week stint with the deer and the turkeys and the possums. Also, there were wild farm cats, one of which is deaf as a post, matted fur, snorts, wheezes, and somehow still beautiful. She does not respond to “Scruffy.”
On this particular trip I got reacquainted with an old friend, hot chocolate. Staring out the windows at a frosty hill, watching the wind blowing the quarter-sized flakes sideways, and remembering when I had the cold-tolerance to take a wild dive down our enormous hill. This was also before the thought could form that I could warm myself with booze after such a chilly (and potentially dangerous) adventure. This is also comically related to a thought I had recently regarding a rollerskating party I attended; “I haven’t skated since I started drinking. Crap…”
So with those arbitrary chestnuts, I shall bait you with a thought –
Homemade Marshmallows.
Think about that. Think of the possibilities. I’ll be rejoining the ever-growing cast of Jrm Says.. to demonstrate the wonders and mysteries of hot cocoa, marshmallows, and what booze can do for your inner child. Till then, keep warm, because it seems to be DAMN cold everywhere at the moment. Granted, Austin’s 28 degrees is “cute” after coming back from -33 degrees in Iowa, cold is cold and it’s relative. Just don’t bring up my farming Iowan heritage when you hear me inventing new profanity upwind of you..
New gigs popping up on the calendar and using the kitchen to keep the lab heated. Many updates to come soon.
Wow, where did the last couple months go? Honestly, last I recall, it was ACL fest, then a blur of Halloween, my birthday, some other stuff, and now here we are, nearing the end of 2009.. I feel like it’s been a while and we need to catch up.
So I needed a break from the intensity of single-handedly producing an internet short series loosely based on food.. Sometimes the best perspective adjustment is to completely step away from your work, or “take a bath” as we all learned from the movie “Pi.” So I did. I collected some feedback, did some smiling and nodding, and a couple times found myself plain blurting out, “Um, you know, there’s a whole NETWORK devoted to the kind of food programming you want, why don’t you just watch that instead and let ME direct my show? Theeenks…” I’d say we’re ready to bring you something new. Michael has buried himself in the world of amateur electrical engineering and will likely lace up a roasted bird with UV LEDS and a dual 386 amplifier circuit, but hey, it’d make a great Instructable.
That’s all, really, for now. Just wanted you to know I didn’t forget about y’all or pack it in and call it quits, I just needed a break and some new inspiration. So if you see hints of the movies Chopper or Bronson in the directorial stylings, there’s a reason for that…
Happy holidays all yous. Check the gigs calendar for some end-of-the-year blowout gigs, and I’ll keep you posted on the next episode of Jrm Says..
That’s right, chitlins. I’ve teamed up with Quinn of Quinnstorm.com, and together we are trudging full-force into the trenches of this year’s Austin City Limits Festival. Well, I’ll mostly be running the camera and audio as we chase down rockstars and guzzle all the free booze a benevolent god can bestow upon us. Also there will be golf cart rides.
I’m rather excited to take this giant leap into semi-professional cameraman status. I’m also very happy to be teaming up with Quinn, who I edited a few episodes of Quinnstorm (Heartless Bastards, Passion Pit) for not too long ago. So I’m hip to his jib, I like his swagger, and I predict we’re going to have a rather good time this weekend, despite the threat of rain.
What is especially intriguing about this whole adventure is the fact that I will be on as about the “opposite” side of the fence at this festival as I could possibly be. I mean, I can never be stripped of my musicianship and see music ever as just a “fan,” but I’m eager to see how the bands treat “the help.” As someone who’s played almost every major US festival in the last couple years with What Made Milwaukee Famous, I know how it can be to get shuffled around at breakneck speeds, trying to make every single interview and signing when all you REALLY want to do is go see goddamn Queens Of The Stone Age. “I can HEAR them. They’re right THERE! Are we done here yet? Piss!” So yeah, maybe I’ll get a little randy and let Michael out of the box on one of these days. Maybe even bring some tasty treats to lure Karen O into my cave with? M’yess.. Methinks so.
So here we go kiddos. ACL 2009 is upon us. Let’s all do an UN-raindance and play nice. I’ll be watching you. And wtf, come on up and say hi.. Maybe I’ll feed you.
Do bands hibernate? Most probably should. A solid stint of solitary study would behoove the majority of what seems to fight for the popular vote these days.. Ask me what I’m listening to at any given moment, and nine times out of ten, it’ll be something from before you were born. There was a time when no genre was prefaced with “a thinking man’s..” The musicians I love and return to time after time are almost all dead. Granted, not all of them died of natural causes, if such a thing exists for musicians, but I’m straying here.. Point is, more than half the music we have access to is complete mindless garbage, robbed from the graves of the pioneers who actually took the time to do things like, oh I don’t know, PRACTICE, research, take chances, test their audience, and ultimately GIVE themselves to thousands of strangers in the face of imminent criticism, crucifixion, and the fickle, shared, single-celled mind of the drooling masses.
TONIGHT, my friends, fellow musicians, dudes-in-bands, and fans of real music in general, What Made Milwaukee Famous will celebrate the end of the “What Doesn’t Kill Us” album cycle at Antone’s here in Austin Texas. It’s been three very long years of touring for this band in support of both Barsuk releases, and now that we’re not staring down the barrel of 250 shows a year, we’ve got some time to sit down and think about what the next album means for us, and how three years of road-dogged living has changed both us and our sound.
TONIGHT we’ll be taking the stage around 11pm and we will be joined by Josh King of The Lemurs on keys and Kelly Doyle on guitar, who you’ve maybe seen with WMMF side project The Motts. Mr Doyle is quickly becoming my favorite guitarist to play with in over 20 years, and might just be my favorite guitarist to listen to. This guy makes me laugh and cry, often while I’m trying to back his ass on a solo, which makes my already grotesque stage faces even more amusing, I’m sure. I dunno. You tell me. Come out tonight and hear us one last time before we go into hibernation and see what the dream machine conjures up for the next album. We’ve got new tunes in their infancy we’d like to share with our hometown crowd, old favorites, and probably a LOT of Firefly to drink..
There’s a certain magic that happens just before sunrise. My rural/farming upbringing had me seeing many a sunrise from the hilltop second-story window that was at the head of my bed. And in those days, when I saw the sunrise it meant one of two things; either I was about to go “into town” for band practice before school (M-F for most of my jr high and high school career), which was great, or, I was about to get up and get “swinehandled” by a rough cast of hogs for the day (weekends), and this rarely put me in a mood fit for any type of conversation. I believe it was this “not a morning person” characteristic that actually helped me learn to deal with pigs and quickly learn to love them as animals, even more than dogs. Anyway, back to the magic..
So I hear the usual lady who delivers the papers to my building outside my window, huffing and grunting as she lobs her bounty onto the second and third floor units above me, counting how many times she misses and has to re-chuck each paper that’s fallen to the sidewalk and hopefully not on my basil. I briefly ponder stepping outside just to witness this frequently botched routine, but decide that setting up a camera to capture the moment on film is far less awkward for everyone involved. In theory. In practice, it’s something else entirely. And these are precisely the things your brain starts stirring up when you’ve been staring at a computer screen for hours and hours (and I’m not going to shock you with actual numbers here, just trust me, it’s obscene) and dealing with the glorious highs of discovering a new combination of video filters or how to extract a character from your favorite childhood video game, to the ego-crushing and self-doubting lows of software crashes after hours of unsaved work (Command-S stands for “stupid, stupid, stupid!”), discovering complete groups of shots are unusable, or just general “Why the hell are you doing this? Why? Explain it to yourself like a child and tell me if it makes sense. Please.” And it’s in these very cycles of dementia that Patton Oswalt explains best here, where you either push through it or you let it eat you. I don’t know about you, but being eaten by anything is pretty high on my list of “Ways To NOT Go Out.”
So I dealt with it, and I explained to myself why I was doing this. Why I was keeping us (oh boy) awake and subjecting us to such lengths of finger-f*cking pixels into place? It’s not like anyone’s paying me to do this. And it was as soon as I realized that that I knew I was doing it for the right reason; because it’s fun. It’s a creative medium I never thought I would dip a toe in, much less start entertaining teasing the sharks and foraging for scallops. So why not? Why not go all-out and do it exactly the way I see it in my head? Where is it going? Is there a goal? Well I suppose so, I mean it’d be great if someone at Adult Swim or any one of my various heroes in the entertainment world got a kick out of it. For the time being it’s purely a labor of love, and to quote Doug Stanhope, “Did you work hard this week? Yeah, don’t do that. I mean, if it’s a labor of love, like, you’re learning to play the sitar, or you’re trying to find my prostate when we’re on ecstacy, then yeah. Dig in. Root around!“ And this little piggy is laughing harder than anyone at this latest piece of work. I’m going to guess that there’s over 200hrs of serious labor in this one, which I titled “Bruch You!” out of finally reaching my limit with my mispronounced last name, hoping to set that whole thing a little straighter, but then it started to mean something else after I’d come to terms with the whole process of what it takes to make something like this all on your own. You’re getting me at my most naked. Literally.
So with a grand goodbye to Summer, I present Jrm Says.. “Bruch You!” In the break between episodes, I’ve got a busy September on the books, musically-speaking, so be sure to check the calendar for dates with Dertybird (CD release!), Becca Garcia, What Made Milwaukee Famous, and a new top secret project that’s been in the works for a few weeks now as we prepare for our first gig, so stay tuned for that one for sure. Also, September is the birth month of two of my favorite ladies on this planet, who actually happen to share first AND middle names. Love to you both. I’m glad you was borned.
Have a great weekend and keep the feedback coming. I’ll keep the feedbag full.
