Biagio and the Argonauts, Coty Hogue with Kat Bula - Honey Moon - May 12, 2012

Biagio and the Argonauts, Coty Hogue with Kat Bula - Honey Moon

Saturday, May 12, 2012


Sitting outside on the patio of the Honey Moon listening to the plaintive Appalachian styled melodies of Coty Hogue and Kat Bula drift out into the darkening sky. Echoes of the Carter Family and Gillian Welch but unique and distinctive in their own right. Coty and Kat’s harmonies seem of reach deep down into the brain and stir up ancient memories. Family and blood, broken covenants and lonely dreams. The musicanship is excellent, sparse and evocative. Each song seemed to reach a place of haunting beauty before, stilling the capacity crowd into a hushed reverence. Coty was due to record a live album the next night in Seattle. If it turned out anything close to her performance at the Honey Moon, it should be a gem.

After a brief break, Biagio and the Argonauts (Biagio Biondolillo, Anna Arvan, Rabia Magnusson and Kat Bula) assembled their chairs and various instruments. Biagio’s entertained the crowd with surreal banter and puns. “We are Puddle of Mead!” They started off with “Born to Fall Apart” immediately charming the crowd with engaging melody and sweet harmonies. Having recently recorded a full length album (due out soon), they demonstrated an easy familiarity and humor with each other. Biagio is a talented guitarist and singer. At times, I was reminded of Poi Dog Pondering. “Big Money” stood out as one of the biggest crowd pleasers. They finished out the sweet and lovely evening with “Nothing Here” - an evocative and poignant tune. It was another beautiful night at the Honey Moon.



http://biagioandtheargonauts.bandcamp.com/

http://www.cotyhogue.com/home

http://thimblevsneedle.fourfour.com/

Falling Up Stairs - Redlight - May 11, 2012

Falling Up Stairs - Redlight

Friday May 11, 2012


It all begins with beautiful feedback that evolves into a screaming sax solo. Standing room crowd, so much so that it is impossible to tell where the crowd ends and Falling Up Stairs begins. Ryan, Edwin, Brendan and Jonathan suddenly are the ones with instruments. After the squelch of pure and ominous noise, the crowd steps back. These are strange musical keys, whistled tunes of serial killers doing their dark work, Chinese butchers carving the bone with swift strokes. It is all about the slow build right now. A train is coming from far away. The percussion creates a throbbing beat of metal running over the rails. The intimacy of the Redlight leads you to believe that you are sitting in a friend’s living room. But then the music spirals into sublime spaces of complex alienation. The intimate space is suddenly too intimate, inside your skull like a snake of many diamonds, uncurling with each new riff. The crowd is thoroughly entranced, letting the skull snakes unfurl with abandon.

The second piece is heavy funk. Discordant works of music hewn out of some weird firmament. Quick time and mood changes. Imagine John Coltrane as a paranoid schizophrenic on LSD. Absolutely beautiful. Awkward and wonderfully difficult confrontational music. Raw and uncontained. At times, reminiscent of the Dirty Three with all the shifts and changes.

 The last piece starts with the tribal throb of drums with enormous, monstrous and wicked, sax riffs peeling off into the night like dark genies freed from the interior of the instrument. These are occult intensities, weird and uncanny and amazing to experience. The crowd is twisted into musical ecstasy. Rare to witness and be a part of. All together beautiful and strange.


https://www.facebook.com/pages/Falling-Up-Stairs/185651601468287

12 Questions from What's Up Magazine: Scot Casey - May 2012

12 Questions from What's Up Magazine: Scot Casey

May 2012


Tell us a lot about yourself? What’s your background?

Don’t figure there is a whole lot to tell. Born in Austin, Texas. 1962. Raised around a blink and you miss it place called Little Hope, intersection of Farm Roads 154 and 312. Spent a fair number of years learning to fish on Caddo Lake and Boney Sands before I headed back to Austin to spend about 10 years studying osteological legerdemain and epistemological cetology at the University. Worked for many years in bookstores, Europa, Desert Books, Apollinaire’s, before finally trying to own one called FringeWare – which ended up being a beautiful work of performance art, a Temporary Autonomous Zone that lasted for 3 years before flaming out. I then headed out to the Chama River Canyon in New Mexico and spent six months or so at a Monastery arguing with God and contemplating the mystery of the Bone. Deciding I wasn’t yet suited to be a monk I wandered back to Austin and got a job at the legendary Hole in the Wall, becoming involved in the local music scene. Then, burned out from all the cocaine and tequila, I moved a block up the street to work as a bartender at the Texas Showdown. When the Showdown closed, I found myself at loose ends and, after a time living in bad houses on the wrong side of town, decided it might be time to make a move before I ended up either in jail or dead.

What three words do you think best describes your personality? Why?

I am often accused of being humorous, funny in my tastes like cannibals eating a clown, so I imagine that might be apt. Then there are those that just seem to find me a bit peculiar, something like a skull in the rose garden. Mostly I think I am a fairly affable individual who doesn’t have to work too hard to feel friendly towards most of the other beings in the world. So there: humorous, peculiar and friendly.

What is the biggest difference between playing music now and playing music 25
years ago?

Here’s how I see it: when I was younger and playing open mikes in Austin and small clubs in Dallas, I would see these guys about my age wearing broken fedoras and tattered jackets, shoes that had no shine, and they would stand on stage and try to act like old blues men or ex-junky jazz musicians. Weary with the world and their voices false with pretended roughness. And they would try so hard to not be trying so hard. But it was inauthentic. Too clean. As obvious as a sheep in wolves clothing. I never wanted that. Never wanted to fake having lived any sort of hard life with music. 25 years later, after having lived up and lived down, I understand that playing music is one of the crucial things that make my life worth living. 25 years ago, music was a hobby, something I did to pass the time. These days, music is like breathing or the pulse of blood over my bones. I am with the German that said, without music, life would be a mistake.

What is the oddest job you’ve ever held? How long did you hold it and why?

I have had a lot of odd jobs. Pulled weeds in the desert for monks. Managed a book festival for Laura Bush. Taught high school students about suicide. But the one that seems to surprise most people is that I was a high school football coach for seven years. I played the game all my life. Used to love it. Now I couldn’t tell you who won the Super Bowl.

What initially brought you to Bellingham? Why have you stayed?

I was burned out and a few feet off of rock bottom in Austin when my sister, who had moved up here years before, offered me a room in her basement to stay in for free. I came up here to finish the biography of Charles “Bonesy” Jones – which I wanted to write in scrimshaw on a whale’s skull. After several months of inquiries, I realized it would take more time than I thought to find the right skull, so I started looking for a job. To my great fortune, I was hired at the Black Drop Coffeehouse. Within a year, there was an opportunity to become an owner – which I jumped at. Everything has been golden since. Never found a place with nicer people who, mostly, seem to tolerate my periodic performances and enjoy the coffee I make for them.

Would you rather have the ability to speak to animals or to trees?

Animals all the way. Trees would be too strange. Being able to talk to a dog would be endless laughter. And being able to talk to a whale or an elephant seems like it would be a very holy thing – also with a lot of laughter.

When was the last time you drew a picture? What was it of?

A few weeks ago, I drew a portrait of a model posing at Modsock during Art Walk. I drew her “inner self,” which was, of course, a skeleton with a radiant skull mediating upon the broken bone of being. I think it is still up on the wall over there.

What part of the United States would you most like to visit and why?

Chama River Valley. New Mexico. Home of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert. Crucible of the Penitientes. Burial place of Charles “Bonesy” Jones. I consider it my spiritual home in the sense that everything I know about God and the Devil was uncovered there.

What musician, living, would you most like to share a sandwich with?

If I could share a corned beef sandwich on rye with Leonard Cohen, I’d feel pretty good about that.

You recently turned 50, what was the first thought that popped into your head when
you woke up? What was the last one?

More like an explosion of first thoughts: that I was a lucky man, that everything was so beautiful, that I was the happiest man alive, that I just wanted to laugh until my skull caught fire.

Last thought: pray that my bones might still be able to dance tomorrow.

If given the opportunity, would you be mayor of Bellingham? If so, what laws would
you immediately pass?

Mayor? Sure. Be happy to. Three laws: 

1. No development around lakes, watersheds or areas of natural beauty.
2. No businesses of any kind that produce, import or export anything that is toxic to the environment.
3. No bad coffee.

What’s next for Scot Casey?

At the end of June, I have a show at the Honey Moon that pairs music with an 8 course dinner plus mead drinks. I expect there will be several dishes that feature bones: BBQ ribs, turkey legs and such. I am also working with Honeybee Press to get a small letterpress chapbook out something later in the summer. Also, what I initially came up here for: to finish the biography about the beautiful life and violent death of Charles “Bonesy” Jones – and to continue to work with the Jones estate to publish his artwork. And always, always, to help to keep the Black Drop shining bright and beautiful.

House Of Tarab with Ruby, Anyelle & Delilah – The Blue Horse – Sunday, April 22, 2012

House Of Tarab with Ruby, Anyelle & Delilah – The Blue Horse

Sunday, April 22, 2012


The House of Tarab from Seattle line the small stage at the Blue Horse filling the room with evocative Arabic music. There is a full house. The music continues to build as Delilah, the first dancer, begins with a beautiful traditional style, a golden sash wound round her, smiling the entire time. Dancing as seduction, ritualized prayer movements. Like watching a bird or a flower slowly blooming. Then the ache of David McGrath’s breathy Nai flute, Erik Brown’s slow tabla drum, Andy Zadrozny’s soft bass, followed by more revelations in the dance. By the time the band begins the third song with percussive whomps and snakelike riffs on the Nai, the crowd is clapping and hollering out encouraging ululations. The band is chanting hypnotically. The dancer is burning like a star at the still point.

The next piece begins with Tracy Helming’s violin opening up the soul slowly over a winding drone. The dancer a curving odalisque. The crowd frozen like statues, the dancer moving under the tent of the sky, under ancient evening light.  The dancer rolling up against the rhythm like waves licking the sides of a boat, hands stretched up to the heavens and fluttering down like birds, like rain, like falling stars.

Next up is Anyelle from Bellingham. Enters with hand cymbals and a huge smile. Moving sinuous and slower, arching up and back. The hand cymbals accenting the music, now full of eastern echoes and sighs, hands clicking though the air with mysterious percussive sound. Twirling now with a blue scarf, a turning blue sky wave contained in the soft choral intonations of the band. At times the dancer slows down within the music, moving slow motion and slower as the music burns around them, a flame of movement frozen within the center of the fire.

Next piece is a beautiful Oud solo by Stephen Elaimy. A haunting sound, the eastern tunings, amazing playing. It is as if the player is moving the dancer through the scales, plucking the strings to move her arms, legs, head through an intimate musical relationship. Beautiful and strangely poignant. Then, tabla drum rolls and trills and cries from the crowd as the dancer floats across the floor in a rhythmic series of shivers, curves and shimmies. The drums rolling out soft thunder as the dancer pops like lightning.

The last dancer is Ruby. Enters with spins and cymbals. Fiery red with swirling hair. Exuding exotic sensuality. The music with beautiful time signature breaks. Ruby’s hand cymbals working like chains. There is a sense of something dangerous on the floor. Dancing with blood, Kali Ma moving amidst the bones, dancing the skin off the skeleton, turning like a dervish, like a wheel of desire, waves of blood spilling off the dress and splattering the mesmerized crowd, snake like formulations entrancing, hypnotizing, voluptuous turns with a diaphanous red scarf like a mist of blood. Sublime musical intonations from the band, monk-like chanting, the scarves now like razors cutting through the air, the room bathed in red, forms catching the light and turning it down into deep sensual shadow movements amidst the soft carnal music.  There are hieroglyphs of desire and beauty in the air.

House of Tarab - Arabic Musical Ensemble

The New Monkey Knife Fight Improvisatory Struggle - Redlight - Monday, April 2, 2012

The New Monkey Knife Fight Improvisatory Struggle – Redlight

Monday, April 2, 2012

Wander into the Redlight for the intriguingly named New Monkey Knife Fight Improvisatory Struggle. Gathered into the corner are Lyman Lipke on bass, Josh Cook on tenor sax, Blake Angelos on piano and Julian McDonough on drums. Julian thanks the capacity crowd for coming out to hear jazz on a Monday night and says “this is not your ordinary wedding set jazz. You might not like it. That's ok. We love you.” 

They kick everything off with Brandford Marsalis’ Impaler. Walking bass, rolling sax. Starts off swinging like a beautiful gate, getting louder, perfectly rough around the edges like a Zen rock garden. Josh’s sax arpeggios rolling off each other, stacking up within the music, dropping into Blake’s piano solos, burning up the keys. Lyman’s bass and Julian’s drums steady as a clock at this point, fast and with sharp attack. Julian looks happy as the sound gets more aggressive, drumming with obvious joy. 

This music is exceptional, like nothing you have heard in Bellingham, intricately structured Jazz played with tremendous talent and passion. By the time they get to another Marsalis piece called Wolverine, there is a sense that the band getting to know the ground: comfortably walking around, talking to each other, stepping away from the center, Julian breaks into a solo. There is a blue electric energy pulsing in the room. Lightning barely contained. You feel the ground has cracks it. Volcanic. 

By the time the group breaks into a George Garzone song, what is most evident is how much joy and sheer delight they have with their relationship to the challenging and difficult – but beautiful – music. When someone in the crowd yells out "knife fight" and the band erupts into a sudden musical chaos followed by a swinging elevator ride on LSD version of The Girl From Ipanema. Halfway through that someone else yells out another knife fight and more chaos, followed by a smoking version of Satin Doll. Thus the mystery is revealed behind The New Monkey Knife Fight Improvisatory Struggle.

The next piece is Brandford Marsalis Jabberwocky. Josh’s Sax kicks the bed off the frame. The music driven by an eccentric pulse, staccato riffs knifing through the room, Julian’s drums working through difficult sentences with odd punctuation. The group fills in exclamations and interrogatives that are seemingly misplaced, commas and dashes, then run ons and every participle is dangling and ing ing is going on and on in a beautiful spasm of the sheer joy of unbounded music. The meaning is between thought and expressions, always somewhere beyond, always elusive but tied down to the mast of an occult melodic structure known perhaps only to the musician, evocations of the sublime. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful.

Into the second set. Humpty Dumpty. Josh’s sax is on fire. Molten. There is a synchronistic synergy between drum and bass. Blake’s piano is rolling down the scales like a pachinko ball, always bouncing into the unexpected, attacking the complicated piano structures with a sweet nonchalance. Breaking into a Julian solo with uncanny syncopation, erupting into virtuoso displays of rhythm before they all come back around into the "normal.” 

Segue into the Thelonious Monk standard Well You Needn’t.  An amazing bass solo by Lyman. Beautiful. Hands hitting the strings like swallows over a telephone line. Flutterings and snaps. Then Julian with the mallets on the drums. Just perfect. The essence of musical wit: brief like a broken haiku. Each player seems to be positing musical questions to the others, riddles, weird musical propositions, inside jokes.

Outside of the Blue Horse, it has been hard to discover great jazz, challenging jazz; true to its roots in that it is improvisational, spontaneous, alive, cut loose; but this is it. Here’s to hoping the Redlight keeps up The New Monkey Knife Fight Improvisatory Struggle every Monday night. 

The Librarians with Jan Peters at the Honey Moon - March 31, 2012

The Librarians with Jan Peters at the Honey Moon 

Saturday, March 31, 2012


You can never go wrong with The Librarians. Anytime I have ever seen them, they are always laid-back, relaxed and beautiful performances. Always intimate and always engaging. The show in the warm presence of the Honey Moon on the sweet new sound system was no exception.

Carly James' voice sounded like a relaxed Neko Case. Hypnotic. A voice you hear as you wake up from a dream and try to figure which reality it was from. Kevin's guitar playing framed and accented perfectly, purring like a cat under the covers. Ivy's percussion was right on, perfect volume for the room and turned throughout the music like pebbles in a Zen rock garden. Sitting in on keyboards was the always excellent Jan Peters, who traded off solos and filled in the spaces with grace and charm.

But the night belonged to Joel Ricci. His muffled trumpet was full of a mournful and sublime sound that worked its way through every song with pure grace. Simultaneously reminiscent of Miles Davis and Calexico. During the convivial drinking song about Route 66, he walked out into the crowd, toasting with one hand, playing trumpet with the other. Another great show by one of Bellingham's best bands.

Havilah Rand and The Ames at the Redlight – Saturday, March 31st, 2012

Havilah Rand From the soundtrack of the movie "Leading Ladies"

Havilah Rand  and The Ames at the Redlight

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Havilah Rand, briefly returned from Texas via Thailand, stands in the red-toned atmosphere of the Redlight surrounded by a standing room only crowd. The first song opens with Blake Angelos’ plaintive piano. Then Havilah’s smoky honeyed voice is there like an old friend, comforting and beautiful. Behind her, her longtime accompanist on guitar, Phil Sottile seems to spin evocative threads of musical meaning out of the tapestry of time. She tells us that most of these songs are new, composed on her travels, but like all good music, they have a quality of always having been a part of her sets. They sound right and true, centered and connected. With the song, “The Rest of Your Life,” there seems to be more sensuality to her voice, a depth of experience that I haven’t heard before. Her guitar playing, overlooked at times because of the strength of her voice, is exceptional. 

She follows with the songs, “Peil” and one called either “Six Petals” or “Lies.” Both are extraordinary and fresh, performed with easy talent. After the forth song, there is a sort of new vulnerability, an openness, something unidentifiable in her singing, some artifact of travel, of being unhoused, extraterritorial. It creates a strangeness in the music that instantly locks the listener in, that resonates with authenticity and lived experience. “Bengalese Butterflies” sounds perfect – especially Phil and Blake shining in between Havilah’s singing. On “Spider,” Phil’s playing is particularly haunting and evocative. 

Setting down her guitar for the last song, she simply stands there and sings. With talent. With grace. Smiling. Her voice full of freedom.  

http://www.havilahmusic.com/

Year of the Rat by The Ames live at The Jet 1/4/13 from Lively Sound on Vimeo.

Next up are The Ames, a three-piece with Michael Lanz on drums, Dan Swan on bass and Sam Carlton holding down principal vocals, piano, banjo, harmonica and kazoo. They start off with a song called “Scratch the Night:” a percussive piano driven piece with drums and bass underneath. Sam Carlton’s voice moves easily around early Tom Waits, Britt Daniels from Spoon and aspects of Jeff Tweedy. But it is unique and interesting, dynamic unto itself, engaging. Everyone seems to get on the same pony with the song, “So Many Ways I Can Make Your Skin Bleed.” After that, no one in the crowd was going to leave until the band stopped playing. 

“Rusty LaRue” demonstrated a fine sense of narrative songwriting and you had to imagine Fred Snodgrass smiling. Then Sam shifted from piano to banjo, picking the strings with a unique skill that made it sound as if a guitar was playing underneath the voice of the banjo, making the instrument do things it doesn’t normally do. Aspects of Bela Fleck. Nice. 

The second half of the set was marked by a sort of gypsy style klezmer kazoo song, waking up the midnight crowd. Then the song, “Fish Out of Water.” A lamp in the window behind the drums and beautiful beautiful playing in silhouette. A lonely song aching with nostalgia. And as with all good music, you didn’t want any of it to ever end.

http://theames.bandcamp.com/