My Latest Favorite Band

Sufjan Stevens helped make banjos cool again. My new favorite band DeVotchKa is in the process of putting the tuba back onto the rock and roll stage for the first time since John Philip Sousa. I really love the sound they create with its tinge of Eastern Europe and gypsy swing.  The swells of sound and passion help pick me up and carry me to God's bosom.

The Wealthy Orphans are making good progress with their new recording project.  We have all seven tracks recorded with just a few extra parts to add from our guest musicians, including trumpet, fiddle and cello. DeVotchKa has been an inspiration to this project though the tuba is still waiting in the wings.

Bad Heart Bull Comes To GR

(This image is his drawing remembering the capture of Crazy Horse who was Bad Heart Bulls Friend.)

Amos Bad Heart Bull (ca. 1868-1913) was a noted Oglala Lakota artist in a style which adapted traditional Native American pictography to a new European style medium known as Ledger Art for the accountants ledger books they were originally done in. He also fulfilled the role as tribal historian for the Oglala as his father Bad Heart Bull (Tȟatȟáŋka Čhaŋtéšiča) was before him.

Bad Heart Bull (Inspired by the wonderful Oglala Lakota artist) is also a band based in Columbus Ohio currently on tour and coming to Grand Rapids to do a show with the Wealthy Orphans Friday January 20th at the DAAC on S. Division Street in the Heartside Neighborhood. The evening begins with a puppet show and finishes with an original dance number by Marlee Grace to our new song Judgement Day. Below is a sample of her work.

Do your self a favor and get this on your calendar and then put notes in key places so you don't forget. Then get inviting all your friends. You don't want to miss this night!

Side Projects Are Good

The Author Austin Kleon makes ten points in his new book titled Steal Like An Artist. # 5 is side projects and hobbies are good. Woody Allen has been in a jazz band for years. Steven King is in a rock band and Julian Schnabel started messing around with film making back in the 90s. Reading this recently came as a great comfort to me because I am a side project kinda guy who sometimes thinks I would make more head way if I just stuck to making visual art but I can't. I keep getting distracted by cool stuff like urban farming, film making and lately music. 

My friends and I have a band called Wealthy Orphans. This side project is getting more fun and more serious every day. We are working on a new recording project in collaboration with The Soil and the Sun. We are also setting up some pretty cool events for this winter. The next one is at the DAAC Jan 20th with Bad Heart Bull out of Columbus Ohio. She is playing feminist Americana roots music and travels with a small puppet theater.Marlee Grace Parrot will be performing along with us on our final number called Judgment Day an original dance performance.The doors open at 9:00, tickets are $7 at the door.

The Soil & The Sun Shoot The Moon

The Soil & The Sun, a band based here in Grand Rapids, is creating truly original music. Their approach is not unlike classical symphonic music with its carefully worked out ebbs and flows, themes introduced, reintroduced and developed.  Each piece has a well defined trajectory and yet with all this careful construction there is an almost frightening unbridled passion trying to burst the seams that has it's roots in Christian mysticism.

It is inspiring to watch this young band develope it's very unique profile and sound right here in Grand Rapids much the way Sufan Stevens did back in the mid 90s.  I have a good feeling about this band and believe they are well on their way to scale some serious mountian ranges of new musical landscape where the air gets extremly thin and only the strong survive.

Butcher The Last Chicken

photo by Pearl Beerhorst

The other day a friend from the neighborhood called up and told me that all his chickens had been killed by a racoon except for one.  He explained how they didn't want to winter over just one chicken and asked if we would want to either add it to our hen house or butcher it for one of our meals. (They are vegetarians and could apparently not bring themselves to pass the bird into the great beyond with their own hands.)

He came by with the bird and the next morning I butchered it on the stump shown in the picture above. What is interesting to me is that I had written the song Judgement day just a few weeks before my friend told me about their mishap with the racoon.  This recent event reminds me that music prepares me for where life wants to take me next.

 Judgement Day  (go here to listen)      

                                   
For every bell that is ringing, for every saw that cuts the wood                                                  
There’s a girl some where crying, and a boy that’s misunderstood
Now there’s a sink full of dishes, and a kite full of wind
I pound another nail in the cross, every time I sin

    
Chorus

     I stacked the wood pile, I spread the straw
     I butchered our last chicken  
     Pulled the dead tooth from my jaw

Like a song that’s been forgotten, like a key that’s been lost
Every single flower died, in last night’s hard frost
So stack up all your kisses, and melt away like a bar of soap
Baby you’ll know where to find me, right at the end of my rope

Chorus

Yes this ship it is sinking, and the sky is caving in
But our hearts go right on beating while the snow is blowing in
Grab your winter coat and throw your o’l dice away
Cause the storm clouds are gathering, it looks like judgement day

Chorus

Now I am crying, ‘cause I know I am lost
My heart’s black as a crow, and I know how much my sin cost
So make me a bed of oak leaves, that I can sink down in
My heart is the cushion, and  you are my pin