It's happening! Tomorrow, Sunday April 5th at Cornelia St Cafe, sets at 8:30 and 10pm. We will be celebrating the release of our new album, "Drifter". We've been working diligently and are so excited to share the music with you! We'll be playing selections from the album and a lot of new material as well. We hope you can join us!
I was recently invited to be a guest on the Wing Walker Music Podcast, which you can now listen to at their website. Drew Williams and I discussed my musical background, and some of my current bands and recordings. I hope you'll give it a listen, it was really fun to do this kind of informal interview with Drew.
Also featured on the Wing Walker website is a series they call the "Wildcard", where a band or musician pick out a few albums that they've been listening to recently. Drew asked each member of Old Time Musketry to participate, and the results are quite interesting! Check it out here.
This week Hearing Things kicks off our tour with 2 shows in NYC and then we hit the road opening for Will Butler of Arcade Fire! We've been rehearsing regularly since the fall and the music is really getting exciting! It's hard to categorize, so you'll just have to come out and hear things for yourself. (Get it?).
The first show is TONIGHT March 14th at Nublu in Manhattan. We go on at 10:30pm.
We also have a 45rpm record available only at the shows!
Hearing Things is:
Matt Bauder - Tenor Saxophone
JP Schlegelmilch - Electric Organ
Vinnie Sperrazza - Drums
Here's the complete dates of the tour!
Sat 3/14 @ NuBlu
62 Avenue C
New York, NY 10009
10:30pm
Fri 3/20 @ Bar Lunatico
486 Halsey St
Brooklyn, NY 11233
8pm
Sun 3/22
Pittsburgh, PA
Howler's Coyote Cafe
Wed 3/25
Lafayette, IN
The Spot Tavern
Opening for Will Butler:
Mon 3/23 - Chicago, IL, The Hideout
Tues 3/24 - Bloomington, IN, The Bishop
Thu 3/26 - Grand Rapids, MI, Calvin College
Fri 3/27 - Toronto, ON, The Horseshoe Tavern
Sat 3/28 & Sun 3/29 - Montreal, QC, Bar Le Ritz
I'm very excited to announce the upcoming release of Old Time Musketry's long-awaited second album, "Drifter" on NCM East Records! We recorded it back in December 2013 and are finally ready to share it with you all. I'm very proud of how it came out, and it features some amazing playing from everyone in the band: Adam Schneit - Saxophone and Clarinet JP Schlegelmilch - Piano and Accordion Phil Rowan - Bass Max Goldman - Drums and melodica The official release date is March 31st, but we'll be celebrating with a performance at the Cornelia Street Cafe on Sunday, April 5th at 8:30 PM. We hope you can join us if you're in town! We'll be playing two sets, $10 cover / $10 minimum. www.corneliastreetcafe.com If you live out of town or can't make it to the show, the album should be available on March 31st at the NCM East site, CD Baby, Amazon, Itunes, Bandcamp, and many more. Currently, you can pre-order a digital download of the album at Bandcamp and Amazon: oldtimemusketry.bandcamp.com/releases Thanks so much for your support and we hope to see you on the 5th! Love, OTM (Phil, Max, Adam, & JP) www.oldtimemusketry.com www.ncmeast.com
For the past several years I usually allot some time each winter to immerse myself in Schubert's song cycle Winterreise (Winter's Journey), a collection of 24 songs that tell the story of a rejected lover who wanders out of his village into a bleak winter landscape. This winter had almost passed by, Schubert-free, until I began reading a new book by the tenor Ian Bostridge which explores the themes of each song in the cycle. I've been listening to the songs daily and playing the score at my piano, occasionally belting out some fake German words or nonsense syllables for the vocal melody. I'm realizing that I haven't even scratched the frozen surface of this haunting work.
It's been a frigid winter in the Northeast, apparently one of the coldest and snowiest in the past 150 years. But the unsettling larger picture shows the trends of global warming continuing, with January 2015 being the 4th warmest recorded January in history, and the 347th straight month of above normal warmth.
The thing I needed to really connect with the spirit of Winterreise was a trip outside of my urban Brooklyn environment. My wife and I took a drive to her hometown in the Hudson Valley and were transfixed by the austere beauty of winter in the country. We looked at the frozen Hudson river, with strange shapes of ice strewn over it almost resembling the ruins of some past civilization. We saw fields and farm lands covered with untouched white snow, and some with paths of footprints from previous Winter Journeys. One could easily imagine the protagonist from Wintereise wandering forlornly through these lands.
I was especially captivated by a willow tree by the river, which instantly reminded me of the linden tree in one of Schubert's most famous songs, "Der Lindenbaum". In the song the wanderer passes by a linden tree which brings sweet nostalgic feelings and memories:
At the well before the gate
There stands a linden tree;
I dreamt in its shade
So many a sweet dream
I cut into its bark
So many a word of love;
In happiness and sadness it drew
Me back to it again and again
In his book Ian Bostridge explores the sinister double meaning of the tree, which also represents the romantic era's obsession with death. The attraction that the wanderer feels for the tree could also mean the solace of death's embrace and rest for his tormented soul:
And its branches rustled
As if it were calling out to me:
Come here to me, old chap,
Here you find your rest.
The chapter on "Der Lindenbaum" in Bostridge's book also makes connections to Thomas Mann's novel The Magic Mountain (another great winter companion):
"The chapter itself is called "Snow", and it creates, suggests, hints at a parallel between the predicament of the wanderer in Wintereise, compelled by his own nature to wander through a winter landscape, and that of Mann's protagonist, tubercular sufferer, who has sunk into the comfortable but deathly embrace of the snowbound sanatorium where most of the story plays out. In "Snow," Castorp escapes from his confinement, venturing outside, and gets lost in so doing he confronts ultimate questions. Reading "Snow" is, if nothing more, a good imaginative and mental workout for singing, or experiencing, Winterreise. "
Finding these kinds of connections in great works of art is one of the most fantastic things in life for me. Bostridge continues:
"There are many more detailed parallels. The relationship between this winter landscape and the confronting of existential questions, to start with: snowy blankness, "white whirling nothing," "white darkness" as a blank screen upon which the ultimate can be projected and grappled with in a sort of ironic, almost jocular, tone which the two works share."
Bostridge made a collection of music videos to accompany Winterreise which have a borderline goth quality that makes them feel oddly contemporary. Here is "Der Lindenbaum:"
I really enjoyed reading this Pitchfork review of the latest Led Zeppelin reissues, which include my two favorites, Houses of the Holy and Physical Graffiti. It's interesting how Pitchfork now has reviews of classic albums of the 60's and 70's along with their taste-making commentary on current musical trends. It's cool to get a contemporary perspective of these iconic records, and I found these reviews particularly well-written and insightful.
Mark Richardson's essay on the Zeppelin reissues reserves the highest praise for Physical Graffiti, comparing it to the Beatles' famous double LP:
"It's Led Zeppelin's White Album, the one they made when they were at their creative peak and had a million ideas, but were also under a tremendous amount of strain and saw the end starting to come into focus."
I hadn't thought about about Physical Graffiti in this way before, and it gave me a new appreciation for the sprawl of this record. Although it's hard for me to pick a favorite between Physical Graffiti and Houses of the Holy, I like thinking about the different approaches to making albums that these two represent. One is the no-filler, carefully considered masterpiece, the other a kind of outpouring of musical ideas.
This sent me to Richardson's Pitchfork review of the White Album, which was even better. He mentions how the phrase "It's like their White Album" has entered the lexicon of music fans:
"To use the expression is to conjure a familiar cluster of associations: The work in question is large and sprawling, overflowing with ideas but also with indulgences, and filled with a hugely variable array of material, some of which might sound great one day and silly the next. A band's White Album is also most likely assembled under a time of great stress, often resulting in an artistic peak but one that nonetheless scatters clues to its creator's eventual demise."
Richardson lists some other records that fit the description of a "White Album": Prince's Sign o' the Times, Hüsker Dü's Zen Arcade, the Clash's Sandinista!, and Pavement's Wowee Zowee. But I searched my record collection in vain for "White Album" candidates, I think they must be an exceedingly rare species.
I'm playing tonight in Williamsburg with my esteemed colleagues Kenny Warren and Dustin Carlson. I've assembled a special new set up for this performance: turntable, sampler, a stack of mostly classical LP's, and accordion. What will happen????
Curriculum plays at 9pm, they know all the good tunes. We go on at 10pm. This is part of the new A.E. Randolph music series at Rye Restaurant.
