A few gigs this week that I'm sure you would enjoy:

First, Open Interest, my quartet, will play at A Bravo in Belleview, WI, (slightly south of Green Bay) on Thursday, August 14 at 7 pm.  As I've said before, it's a REALLY good Italian restaurant.  And the music will be a-mighty good!

Second, I play solo at Gallery 42 in Door County on Saturday, Aug 16 from 1-4pm.  I'll be playing a bunch of my wierd electronic gizmos.  It's been a lot of fun for me to experiment with new gear and gadgets lately, and listeners seem to enjoy it.  There is NO COVER for this event, plus there's free drinks and you get to watch the wonderful Tim Nyberg paint.  So shut the hell up and come listen.

It's finally starting to look like a busy summer.  I have a number of open-to-the-public type shows that you may want to check out.  If you have the GUTS.

I'll be playing solo at Stumpjack Coffee in Two Rivers and at Gallery 42 in Door County.  I'm excited about these gigs, as I'll be using some new instruments and gizmos I bought recently.

My band, Open Interest, will be playing a few shows at A Bravo, which is one hell of a great Italian restaurant.  Our big show will be August 24, when we play at ArtStreet in Green Bay.  We don't get to play a lot of outdoor festival-type shows, so we'll be sure to frighten everybody away with our best stuff.

Lastly, my brother and I, a.k.a. Pick & Squeeze, will rock the Two Rivers Farmer's Market on Aug. 2 at 10 am.  (NOT PM!!)  I think we should do our cover of System of a Down's "Violent Pornography."

Everybody everybody everybody livin' now.....

I haven't posted any blogs in a long time.  This is a good thing, because I used to blog way too much.

For some reason, though, I do feel the need to put something new here.  Not sure why; I suspect it will go unread.  Best of all, I can't think of much to write about.

Well, here's something.  I had a great rehearsal tonight for a gig coming up at the Fox Note jazz club on July 5th with the Steve Johnson Quartet.  Steve's a wicked awesome tenor player and killer composer.  I've played with him quite a bit, but I never played his tunes before.  They're terriffic!  Also playing were John Gibson on bass and Jason Kruk on drums.  A really good band -- I hope we get more gigs.

Also, I just bought an Magnus Electric Chord Organ, ca. 1955, for $20 at St. Vinnie's.  It rules!  It has a 2-octave keyboard and 6 (SIX!!) major chord buttons.  It has an electric fan inside that blows air through platic reeds.  It sounds just like an accordion, so I'm planning to use it on a few "Pick and Squeeze" tunes.

Ummm... what else?  Oh, yeah.  Buy my CD.  And come to my gigs.  You wankers.

I recently added a new song to my profile, and this one is yours if you want it.

The scoop regarding this tune is that it is the opening theme of a short animated film that a friend and I are working on.  The name of the film is "Mission: Attack!" and will hopefully be the first episode in a series concerning the adventures of several neurotic third-graders who save the planet from hostile aliens.

My collaborator, Jeff, is writing and producing this project.  I will be doing the music and much of the animation.  The tentative release date is September 5, 2008.  To see the teaser-trailer, click here.

PS:  Those of you who've known me for quite a while may recognize the theme music as a re-construction of something I composed when I lived in Boston...

In Brad Bird's film, The Iron Giant, set in the paraniod commie-fearing America of the 1950's, a character is seen reading a newspaper.  The headline on the front page is "Catastrophe Imminent as Disaster Looms!"

Brad Bird is, in my opinion, the Hiyao Miyazaki of American animators.  But I digress.

My performance schedule includes a few imminent catastrophes of which you may want to take note.

On October 27th, I'll be playing at Gallery 42 in Door County, Wisconsin.  The deal here is that I improvise while brilliant visual artist Tim Nyberg paints.  And Rome burns.  Or something.

Tim has a ton of musical friends & family who participate in these events, and they're always a total blast.  However, when I've performed with him, attandance has been pretty slim.  Go figure.  So mark your calendar and tell a friend!  There's even free Goldfish crackers!

On November 16th, Stumpjack Coffee Co. in T'Rivers, WI, will host an even more dangerous stunt.  Joining me in a trio will be Chicago bassist Jason Roebke and insane Cellist Matt Turner.  Both are monster musicians, in every sense.

The best part is that I've played many times with Jason and many times with Matt, and Matt and Jason have played together quite a few times.  But this will be the first time all three of us have ever played together!!  Not even rehearsals, baby!  So drink some coffee and prepare to duck and cover!

Despite the title, this blog entry is not about those pills they're always trying to sell me in my email.

Rather, it's about a gig I had this past weekend, with bassist Jason Roebke and sax-o-flutist John Salerno.  John's playing tends to be rather "in," whereas Jason plays pretty "out."  In fact, I think this was Jason's first straight-ahead gig in quite some time.  As for me, I always relish an opportunity to lean toward tonal obliteration, but I've had a blast these last few years exploring the "post-bop" language.

For me, this gig was a great experience.  We were keeping the form together, for the most part, but things were getting really stretched.  Jason was awesome -- not a lot of walking quarter note lines!  But not free, either.  Just keeping things on the edge, you know.  I had to stay really focused just to keep up.  A couple times I told him to start the tune by himself, and he would just tear it up from the git-go.  It was great.

John was also trying lots of new things.  For instance, he would usually only hint at the melody, and go right into these solos that were really spacey and subtle.  John's one of the best bebop guys I know -- really dense a lot of the time, really clear, harmonically .  So it was really great hearing him strrrrretch.

As for me, I had a ball figuring out how to fit into this scheme.  I tried to stay "inside," but kind of ambiguous.  I'd play the kind of lines I normally do, but it wouldn't really fit.  So I'd have to come up with something else.  Sometimes I'd get lost, or just play stuff that wasn't working, but then I'd finally find the the right words.  Normally, a situation like this would be frustrating, but it wasn't.  It was totally exhillerating.  And exhausting!

I think it worked partly because Jason is one of those rare guys who wants to be creative and interesting, but doesn't stop listening.  In fact I could hear him trying to complement my solos, despite being so busy.

Anyway, I hope we can do it again soon.

The "Art/Music Jam" at Gellery 42 in Door County was killer.  There are pictures from the event in my "photos."

Tim did some beautiful painting.  I'll let you know when they become available for online viewing.

I just added two events to my "upcoming shows" list.  While doing so, MySpace alerted me that Port Washington, Juddville, and Sister Bay "do not appear to be real cities," and that they "may not show up in searches."

Brother and sisters, I assure you that these ARE real cities.  Maybe MySpace is so naive as to think "real cities" are only places with skycrapers, gang wars, and unreliable sewage facilities.  However, I have been to all of these places and I can tell you that they are very real.  I didn't even have to go through some sort of Einstein-Rosen wormhole to get there.

So don't let these allegations of cities existing outside of conventional reality dissuade you from coming to my shows.  Or, for that matter, from buying my CD's.

This Friday, April 13 (spooky!), my band, Open Interest, will be playing at A's Dockside in De Pere (for those of you not from around here, that's basically Green Bay, off to the side a little).

It will be a good show, although our singer, Dino Billotti, will probably not be joining us.  He got really sick!  He was in the hospital for a few days with an ulcer and pancreatitis (I had pancreatitis once.  It feels like hara-kiri).  So I don't know if he'll be up to singing.  Everyone loves Dino -- get better, ya lousy prick!!

The good news is that we kick all kinds of butt as a quartet.  The line-up will be me on keys (possibly including a "vintage" Juno-60 synth), John "The Bastard" Salerno on saxomorophone, Craig "Mister" Hanke on bass, and Terry "Pillow Pants" Iattoni on drumophones.

We will do lots of new arrangements and originals, many of which don't suck.  Be sure to catch this gig, because lately we have been getting fewer gigs than, like, my mom.

"Papanca" is the Sanskrit word for "Blogging."

I've decided that it's time to start working on another CD.  I think my last one turned out pretty well because I didn't start it with any preconception of what I wanted to do.  Stuff just sort of fell together.  The flower grew itself.

I can't do that this time -- I've gotten so much feedback (well, for me it felt like a lot), that I'm actually thinking about what people would say about this as I'm doing it.  This will undoubtedly change my process.

The one thing that kind of bugged me about the response to "Plastic Machine Music" is that people went on and on about how FUNNY it was.  Oh, it's just so FUNNY!

I didn't think it was that funny.  I mean, there were supposed to be surprises, but I didn't want anyone to spit out their coffee from laughing so hard.

How am I funny?  Do I amuse you?  Am I a clown to you?

So expect the next CD to be dry and very serious.

Actually, the sound I'm envisioning is WAY more "noise."  Less actual pitches.  There'll be more melodies, but they'll be skronkier.  I'm going to shoot for a lot of dynamic contrast, with some very quiet moments containing pitchless sounds.

With any luck, this CD will sell even worse than the last one!

However, I'm also planning to do a "spiritual" CD with R&B singer Dave Guisti of Ball in the House.  So, you know.  You gotaa find a balance.