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After what seems like the longest, coldest, wettest winter I can remember since moving to Austin over a decade ago, the sun is finally starting to break through.  The familiar smell of a freshly-cut lawn wafts through the open windows, coaxing me out of the blanket pile faster than a carafe of French press coffee.  Just south of my cave, SXSW rages into the weekend.  I’ll make a couple contributions to this year’s festival with a performance tonight (Friday March 19th) with local composer Graham Reynolds and his DUKE! project, playing some of the rowdiest renditions Mr. Ellington may never hear.  10:30 at The Elephant Room.  Then tomorrow night (Saturday March 20th) I’ll be bringing the heat with Dertybird, 11pm at Club One 2 One, with Noble Dog, making it a night of greasy Southern rock and whiskey-soaked good times.

In other news, I dove head-first into the world of microelectronics a few months back, and now that I’ve gotten familiar with a multimeter, reading schematics/datasheets, and have successfully built, repaired, and/or modified a mess of electronic orphans, either donated or thrifted, I can confidently present to you my three most-recent creations in the circuit-bending realm.

Much like the creation of music, or food, there are parallel universes existing within the circuitry of electronics.  Reed Ghazala, the father of circuit-bending, is quickly becoming another of my heroes.  A muse tickled my brain with the book “Handmade Electronic Music” back in November, and with the recent acquisition of Ghazala’s book “Circuit-Bending,” I’ve been focused mainly on taking kids’ toys (from thrift stores, not from actual children) and turning them into bizarre noisemakers by rewiring their innards.  Sometimes they die on the operating table, but even then, I’ve only spent two bucks and I’ll likely pull all the jacks, knobs, and misc guts to be used for the next 6 volt cadaver.  Check out NoysToise to see what can be done if you REALLY know what you’re doing.  His pieces are jaw-dropping fountains of bubbly audio champagne.  But before you watch his stuff, watch mine.  If you watch his first, mine will seem, well, like what they are..  Crude, sorta-silly, slightly-creepy mutants.  But they’re made with love, and mere mile posts in my quest for new knowledge.  And trust me, I’m learning quickly.  Just wait.  For now, take a gander at my newly-created Ecclectronica playlist at YouTube.   If you’re this flavor of nerd as well, you’ll be pickled tink to know that bending guru Eric Archer himself has opened Switched On in downtown east Austin.  I’ve yet to make it to the newly-opened shop, but then again, I’m almost afraid.  My place already looks like..  hell.  Nah, it’s badass.  Seriously.

And finally (big update, y’all, sorry) as some of you may already know, I was summoned by Bobby Flay’s casting agent a few weeks back, encouraging me to re-submit something for this season of Bobby Flay’s “Grill It!”  So I’ll be putting the finishing touches on Jrm Says.. “Grill It!” over the next day or so.  It’s a quickie, a gimmie, cheap, inventive, flirtatious, healthy, and most of all, memorable.  “Honey Peanut Chipotle Pork Ribs w/Fried Mustard Green Potato Pancakes.” I’ll be sounding the alarm when it’s ready for launch.  I need all of you, your parents, your children, your children’s children, your postal carrier, your acupuncturist, everyone, to watch this episode, rate it, comment, all of that.  Especially those of you who’ve been begging me to audition for Hell’s Kitchen or go to a Food Network casting for years now.  I’m going for it.  I need you.  Let’s see if I can get a toe in this door..  Why not?

So until then, have a great weekend.  All you SXSWesterners, rock out, be safe, and make sure you pick up after yourselves.  Be nice to my city, yo.  We bite.

Cheers,
Jrm
(NOT Jonathan Rhys Meyers)

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.

Cheers,
Jrm

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..

H0 x3
Jrm

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..

Showtime: 11pm

Doors: 8pm

Openers :  9pm – Quiet Company / The Laughing

Tickets HERE!