Kinagree Smith Band House – Week Two; Creative Lab by Ira Norman Segall

 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!

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