To some people it's Halloween, but if
you are familiar with the lore of Kinagree Smith you know it all
started with an impromptu Jam on October 31, 2010.
Since that history making moment, Lexie
and I have had many madcap adventures, like joining up with Ira
Norman Segall.
While we aren't rich or famous yet, we
sure are having an interesting time. Heck, we've managed to survive
the worst hurricane in a century to reach this mile stone.
While I could drone on retrospectively,
I'll save that for next year. You've been warned.
Things are already shaking out and tweeking in as goes the physical layout here. There’s still much to be done but the space is informing me as to what it wants to be so it works best for our shows and also for not our shows. In my case particularly, I have so much stuff, and much of it is large; gong-racks, singing bowl set, wood-block set, more hand drums and frame-drums than you can imagine. I need space for it all so I can have all my fragrances and textures close to me to make immediate choices in the moment of a musical phrase. It’s not like just grabbing a guitar and I’m done – it takes up a huge amount of space and I don’t even have room to keep it ALL up and immediately available. My father once said of my playing drums that I should play piccolo, it’s easier to carry - there was some logic in that.
Having Jack’s energy here has been an absolute joy for me. He’s such a peaceful being with such a huge and wonderful heart (hating to do any myth/image-breaking here). And when Lexie’s here it’s just “us”; the three of us, beloved friends and cherished band-mates. It just really seems correct. Jack seems very content here and that makes me very happy. There’s still a ton of stuff in boxes on my bedroom floor to find a home for, the kitchen needs more tweeking in. I just can’t do much on school-nights, need to save it for the weekend – it’ll be another month of these couple-of-tasks here-and-there weekends while still allowing enough brain-stop time for recharging from the work-week.
In the category of a wow and wonderful occurrence, I played with Steve Kuzmicki Thursday night. We played “electric”, which for us means Steve plays electric guitar and I, full western drums-and-cymbals kit (+ a few things). Jack meandered down to the studio after a while with apparent piqued interest. Once we took 10, Jack eagerly grabbed the bass guitar, I shook a few webs from the bass stack and a new trio was born. Jack was so excited and so delighted, it was a joy to witness, no less participate in. Then, an extremely cool thing occurred when I switched to Balinese gamelan and a new FLAVOR was born. Wow, was THAT beyond interesting; Gamelan, electric guitar and bass – YEA! I so need to be stretched and challenged all the time when I play and so light up with fresh and unique exploration. I so exist in the stimulation, the danger of improve and exploration that this just lights me up and gets me absolutely crazy. See! It gets me to a place where I violate the writer’s rule of not using the same words in the same or adjacent sentences!
The laboratory that is band house is already proving totally stimulating!
Visit again for more from Kinagree Smith Band House!
As if it hasn’t already been apparent, my beloved friend and band-mate Jack has moved into my house (now our house). And as inseparability goes, Lexie is almost always here in the evenings as well. This has created a community that can only best be described as Band House.
A remarkable amount of planning and work to prepare, now behind us is giving way to an atmosphere of creativity and comradery. I gotta say that the convenience of the streaming studio now here is beyond wonderful for me and many of the toys I have including room-acoustics treatment are proving very useful tools in creating the sonic Kinagree Smith product.
Having been in recluse/hermit energy for many years, this has been something of a stretch for me, although each day has gotten easier for me in accommodating and adjusting and in fact, it is proving not to be quite the level of upheaval that I’d anticipated. This feels like the natural progress both for my personal growth and moving forward as well as for the energy that is Kinagree Smith and the various side-projects that want to happen around it. I’m still watching it within myself, but it really feels correct thus far. On the other hand, it really is only week one. You could still read about it in the papers; “Percussionist kills guitar-player from same band.” On yet another hand, we’re not 20 years old any more either and we bring some more life experience here to Band House.
Please check back often in the days and the weeks come for continuing Band House updates.
Wow, what an INSANE weekend we just
had. Saturday, we played the 8th Annual “Post Festival
Feaster's Fest”, and shortly after playing our history making set,
headed out to move operations to “Band House”.
Our set at PFFF was late due to the
event starting late. More late then normal. Seems there was a HUGE
traffic incident on the Schuylkill River road and this really put a
Kink in the hose of musical fun. When a few people showed up and we
got the PA working. Chris sent us up. While the crowd was small the
musical performance was HUGE and we even got some of it on video.
We did get to meet one of our
supporters from “The Grid”. Her name is Sandra and she is from
Delaware. Sandra even bought a Copy of our “Wartzinall” CD. This
came in handy because we needed to buy some gas for the car to
expedite the Move to “Band House”.
The Band House “Pre-Move”.
Before we could move in my stuff and
set up the “Music Room” we had to move a good deal of very heavy
stuff around. Lexie's Son and a few of his teenage band mate helped
us, or I don't think it would have happened at all. By the end of the
night... there was a little Damage, but nobody went to the emergency
room and everything was where we wanted it. After the work, the boys
went down to the basement and made much happy noise with the various
musical toys we have down there.
Sunday I started tearing up my room to
pack stuff up. I really move way too often. But I'm rather sure this
will be home for a long time now.
Once again Lexie's Teenage son, Blake
helped us with the moving. Much thanks and mad props to Blake.
Once we got all the stuff in I had to
scramble to get it set up for a show I had at 1 am. I did make the
show and “Band House” is now operational.
On Monday the 15th of
October, Kinagree Smith streamed a full band show to the “Merry
Pranksters” music sim.
To some people it's Halloween, but if
you are familiar with the lore of Kinagree Smith you know it all
started with an impromptu Jam on October 31, 2010.
