Oddstock Festival, the secret festival with the most talented musicians. Thank you.

Thank you Kait Jaouen, Jeff Goresen, Steve Miller, Suzzi Immarigeon, Daniel, Rich, Jason, Lance, Kristen and so many others for an amazing time at this years 4th Annual Oddstock Festival 2016. 

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Steve Miller  and Jeff Goresen  finally taking a rest. (Director of Venue Logistics and Talent Coordinator, respectively).

So, today is Tuesday, a few days after the end of the 4th year that Oddstock Festival has been running this three day getaway for musicians, artists, campers, and music lovers. Plus they raise money and awareness for MS/Alzheimers!!

 I have had the pleasure of experiencing, in one weekend, what most people don't experience in a years worth of music. My live music experience goes back to the early nineties, this is pre-cell phones with cameras and high speed digital satellite feeds. This was a time when Independent music was strong and being a musician in a New York, allowed me to be part of a scene that had presence, had fans, and had places to perform live. 

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Kait Jaouen, She is the reason this festival runs so smoothly. Director of Events extraordinaire. 

Today, while live music venues are becoming extinct in NYC, and possibly elsewhere. There is still that glimmer of hope, up north, just a little over and hours train ride, in a place, known by musicians, (I actually spoke to one, who I saw back in NYC, who knew exactly what I was talking about, random conversation), This place, Danbury, Connecticut, is by some, a musicians town. If you don't know what that means, then you are not a musician. But, most of you are fans of music, and a musicians town, simply means a place where musicians can create freely and have places to perform, jam with others, and build bonds with music, at the same time, a community alongside their fans. Which just happen to also be filled with musicians. 

Imagine, you get to visit a small city and everyone is literally, part of a modern day family. But, that family consists of artists, musicians, foodies, craft makers, multimedia designers, punk rock philosophers, poets, songwriters, etc. On top of this, they support each other, and have venues and shows, and places to share there creations with each other, and they are super welcoming to visiting musicians and artists from other parts unknown.  My band Strangebird, has been very lucky to have attended and played amongst these talented individuals and bands that always remind me what is really important, music. Plus I get to live out the musician/superhero/fan list in those days. 

Suzzi Immarigeon, the best Stage Manager.  

I'll be writing more in the days to come about some of these bands, I just have to collect some more info, but this year it seems, there were definitely more bands, and you can even here all of us on the radio at WXCI 91.7. it's a college radio station, that really pushes new music, indie music and those classics we love. I happen to hear them on Tunein Radio App. Download if you get a chance, or get over to Spotify, or Soundcloud, or any of those streaming stations to listen to some of these bands!!!.  Here's a few to get you started. For more info about this years Oddstock, click here.

Spectral Fangs

Quiet Giant

Mantyhose

The Red Hots

The Atom Family

Mother Tongue

Three Legged Dog

The Batman

Hey loves. Here's a new vid i made for Strangebird. It's the short version (about 2 1/2 minutes). Still working on the construct of the long version. The song is called The Batman, and it encapsulates the way we perceive images, through film, sound, and media. I don't want to give away any more until after it's been viewed a few times. So here ya go. I used Imovie to make this one and spent the last 10 hours working away at it, with still more to go. I just got excited. The wonderful mix is done by Joey Curry, whom you all know is getting to be a great sound engineer. More to come, as I always say. Leave a comment below or on youtube. Either way, we'll get it. 

This is a vid I made for a new song by Strangbird called The Batman. We do not own any of the images from the films Brazil, or The Dark City. We do, however, own the rights to the Strangebird logo shown throughout.

Oh' Cyan.

maybe it is us, wavy lines.

pushing through sand,

coming up empty,

an ancient shell, 

adrift,

a memory.

1:16am

       "You can't turn around", she said turning her gaze to the back window. "we have to go forward", she hesitated as she finished her sentence,"and on foot".

        The glitter was still there in her shoes, but the red had faded. " I never noticed that before", she thought, as she began to notice all of her surroundings were very different from before the crash.  Where had they landed? Had they been here before? Was she dreaming all of this?  

        Have you ever noticed the sun, when waking  up in a new place, as if from one dream into another? It's as if it was there just for you. The heat that bounces off of it, is different than back home. It's rays, extending, as if by some cuneiformal design, into you. The window drawn with a black marker on your shirt. The rest of you basked in gold. 

        The journey itself must be long and arduous for most of us not to even remember the first few years. Tragic must be the trip into this plain for most to forget where they came from. Is it a dreamworld? Is it another reality? How do we all know we are not all in comas, waiting the nurse to nudge our hands just the right way. Or that loved one to enter that room and by the will of our intestinal destinies, stand up wide eyed and ready for actuality.

          It's is said that on certain roads, there are those that are born of the guitar. The sound it makes when the lights go down, the vibrations of the strings, the rhythm of the player's hands. They enter when the solo comes in. A high piercing, like a whale's howl. Held for only so long as to allow the split in world to occur. I once saw that split in the world. While exploring the desert of the midnight sun, I heard a sound of thunder in the distance. A large boom, then came the cracking sound. I looked off into the wall of night, and through that small split of a slit of a salty vagina, came a train. HIgh as gathering of secretive skyscrapers, huddled in humor. A city on wheels, steel dominion over that moment. I had not even noticed the tracks it ran on until the bullet had passed before me. I even felt it pulling me closer. My feet at the edge of the tracks, my mind at the other edge of fjords of my fontanel. Time, hanging out in one of those cars. Napping away the descent of man. And just like that, Enter quiet. The desert once again only disturbed by that lonely cowl of the coyote.  

         It must be the same for those born this way. Crashing into the sand of that deserted road where they collapse. Sometimes fully clothed and sometimes fully grown. Music, has no beginning, and no end. What you hear is being plucked by those of the duende, from that other place, where lost love lives on. Where souls wander in an out of regret. Tapping their fingers on the edge of the sea of our reality. Standing on the edge of the glass dome we call victory. 

         There are others born of the gun. Out of the barrel of deceit and the steel of disarray. They come shooting out of that hidden cannon deep in the earth where the devil lives. Where the devil plans. Where the devil sits and wait to collect those of the guitar. Here on this plain, these opposing sides, battle through twilight and dusk, until there left none but one standing.

      The duende's  journey is to find the heart for all the others, who battled and lost. His journey is to find her eyes, and to fall deep inside. To find her, who carries the moon as her parasol. The sun as her dress. A poem written in lines by the ancients, that speak of the history of whispers. Her perfume, carried by the winds of Aurora, surround her, and can carry any man to the riddle of his death. 

          His music, can be heard running alongside the face of mountains, where power resides. Hoping to catch her in a trance long enough to persuade her to grant him entrance. If he succeeds, and enters through her eyes, the true journey begins. For he must traverse all in that universe. Come storm like horses, or empty skies like buddha's meditation, he must go on.  He must walk through that valley of shadows, and find the one hidden in caves. The hiding horned one. The hooded man in the gauntlet. There is only one way to escape.

       When there's desert in both directions, follow the wind. Ride the song of the sandstorm, until you find the trumpet player. The door at the other end of the rainbow. The click clacks of the castanets. Carpare's dance.  

       Music, is memory. At key points in everyone's life, there is music, sitting, kicking your ass down the corner, watching you cry in your room, carrying you away, and putting you to sleep. Waking you up in the morning, rushing you off to school. In dark rooms, where Beethoven breaks broken mirrors, putting you to sleep. While Holtz finds time to swing by the planet for a smoke, and nestles music between the keys of a piano. A Shumann being composed of hammers and strings. An entity of pure vibration.

"Where we heading?" Asked her friend, who knew nothing of their predicament as well.

She replied,"Far, far, away from this place". 

1:08 am

What Did it matter? He knew he had finished it. He sat back in his chair and looked at the eyes. Whom looked back at him in the same awe and quiet regard. The only exception being that those eyes looking back at him were dabs of paint. Moments ago, lines. Now covered with thick impasto.                                                  

Two years to the day, that canvas sat in another place. In a closet, another time period. Another one of those lifetimes we left somewhere and forgot for a moment.  Another one of those lifetimes we recollect when we hear that ole Spanish tune on the digital radio. A relic on the dark side of tHe moon. 

The canvas was beating. A throbbing sound; Reznor's hell . Under the right lighting and quiet circumstances the canvas starts to breathe. Almost a tremble, a quiet earthquake. A giant walking the lonely earth at night, picking up the last pieces of the earth  under his feet, until it is all gone. All around him now, the stars and a gentle moon.  

Now the canvas gets closer to him. At Kubrick's tracking pace. A long corridor becomes a slow dance. A madman's retreat Into Magritte's mirror.

       He realized then and there that America was stuck in a surf shop.  And they were just waking up from a long soujourn through Morphine, while the waves crashed on their sea to shining seas. He knew that everyone was  just a bunch of beach bums waiting that next tube.  Maybe it's all just an illusion. Maybe there isn't a tube for you, a touch of destiny, or a book of just faces. Just Another place to store memories. He knew the truth. We weren't just living in the past. We were watching it.

Everything on the digital plane had already happened. Yet, we made sure history repeated itself. What was so important that moments we are living aren't as important as what had already happened? Did we miss something? Does everyone need to go on your journey? 

Man is not content anymore to journey alone, without the watchful eyes of his peers. He is a voyeur without wanting and a vigilante without willing. He has no time for his own pictures in his mind. He needs to watch others movies as they play out. He watches repeats of his former life through costars he never met. A collection of made up lives. Photocopies of theater. Man used to have friends, now he has followings. 

"Only quiet triumphs", he thought. He knew man was more than just of procession of perfectly timed performances. Cue music, cue laughter.  He knew about the types of stereos, that performed without knowing power, lived up to their hype, and saw no trumpet's glory.  Miles away there are these words, traveling further than it's readers. Behind him now, as he had turned away earlier, the canvas looked over his shoulder. 

It's all in the lighting. Color turns to lightning, and hugs it's viewer. Are a million colors possible? Turn the page and all you see are prints. A trip to the Metropolitan. To walk in rooms full of painted pasts.  Actual moments frozen in movement of the brush and the hand that held it. Crowds gathering to catch a glimpse of the moment. That thought. That reflection. those combinations of color and questions. Swords of bristle attacking Quijote's towers.  

Earlier that day a man walked into his studio to see some of the works. He had been there a few days earlier and saw the canvas, as it had looked before the painter had touched it again. It was still partially wrapped in the black garbage bag the painter had painstakingly taped to cover over the old soul of a face that was there, after sitting in that closet those two years. All this while he collected the rest of his memories and took the four winding flights down from that city in the clouds, just south of Potala Palace.  The concrete awaiting his feet, and the blistering sun, awaiting  his back, and their journey onward. 

Days earlier, the man and a lawyer friend stood inside the very same studio to admire the collection adorning the walls. The canvas sat atop an old piano, also bagged with the same care as the canvas, this time a large green garbage bag. Awaiting the day the appraisers would finally come down, throw a number out and exit in an orderly fashion. 

How many lives is that so far? Can you count how many you've had? Are we all cats or burmese pythons? Swallows and sheds, Birds and barns. Eat the rich, feed the poor.

He stands adrift inside the end of the night. Are some born to the endless night? Do they scurry when someone turns on the light?  Maybe Buddha was right. Empty mind. 

Maybe Love is a really, really deep breath. We float like helium balloons, for the lucky ones. Some get stuck to the ceiling. Bobbing up and down in basement birthday parties. Where the cake always has pineapple, and it's made from a box.  If the garage door is open just right, and the north winds are whispering, then some of those other balloons. These also full of helium, just float away. An upward drift, a rider in the storm. Seemingly aimless rising, then just when they are out of the reach of the retina. Pop. little explosion.

At 2:35, that same man walks into the studio, sans lawyer friend, and the painter calls him over. "Take a look." he tells the man as he points at the painting. "What do you think"? This wasn't normal for the painter to do, but the night prior, where he sat, in front of the canvas, and stared, and stared, and picked up the brush, and attacked the oncoming windmill, and sat back covered in sweat. Brows to bone, then as if suddenly awakening from a coma after seven years. A temple bell for a young Ulysses. He saw that break in the fabric, that little tear in the universe where tears turn to hologram, he saw the painting. Titanium in one hand and a palette knife in the other, he layed down the final strokes. A touch of Cadmium yellow here and there. Done. 

The man looked at the canvas and said, " what were you thinking?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all", thought the painter, as a smile came, hung out for a while, and left in another moment.

In front of the yellow line.