Happy Second Anniversary Kinagree Smith

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.

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!

Visit again for more from Kinagree Smith Band House!

Kinagree Smith Band House – Week One by Ira Norman Segall

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.

The 8th annual PFFF and Band house is LIVE!!!!!

Wow, what an INSANE weekend we just had. Saturday, we played the 8^th 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 15^th of October, Kinagree Smith streamed a full band show to the “Merry Pranksters” music sim.

Band house is here, expect great things.

Is it crazy in here or is it just me?

It's been a while since the last update and I apologize for that. While not an excuse, things have been a little Non-Linear here at Kinagree Smith Head Quarters, and it's making my very linear head throb. It's not a case of things going poorly, but nothing is simple anymore.

The Documentary is in progress, it's just not progressing as well as it could. We have always planned on incorporating as much crowd sources footage as we could. While we had hoped for more footage, we are having a bit of a problem getting it all on one hard drive.

We really can't press forward until we have all the footage so it's a bit of a hold up.

A good deal of the footage we have so far is from Ed Feldman, whom just happens to be our Executive producer. For a guy that has spent most of his life in front of the camera he's done an outstanding job getting the shots and making things visually interesting.

In other news..... seem I'm moving again.

Anyone following the “Jack Kinagree Saga: The Philadelphia Years” has probably notice I move a lot. But this time I'm not moving because I had my horse shot out from under me. Seems that Ira and myself are going to move in together and try to do the whole “Band house” thing.

No, Lexie won't be joining us, she still has family that claim her. But she will be hanging out there as often as possible I'm sure.

I'm sure it will be a productive and happy place. Expect great things. Should be moving October 15^th so we got a little time to get everything pointed in the right directions.

Two-fer Tuesday.

People seem to enjoy the “Media Madness”, so here are two nuggets to whet your appetite for more.

First up, a video Clip from the upcoming “2 Big 4 The Internet”. This is a clip from the rehearsal for the big shows. All total we had 6 hours of practice for the Three shows we played. Here are six people crammed in a small, hot room trying to make art.

The Audio clip is from a remote Jam Noma did with the recording from “Hobson's Choice” version of “ This is the place”. Sound brilliant if you ask me.

Media Monday Madness!!!!

Well the great adventure that was the "2 Big 4 the Internet" event is now consigned to history, it's time to record that history and share it with you.

Before I get all "Blah blah blah" about it, let's post some Media (Much more amusing) and we'll deal with the details later.

First off, a Video.




I'm calling this "Lick the Musical Spoon" because it's just a taste of what is in store for you with the completed  Documentary.  I find this video interesting because it is our first play through of the song "Marital Bliss" and it's amazingly tight. You can already sense the musical chemistry in the air.

"Andy Warhol Chic" from G-Town Radio show

We did have the full show posted here a few days ago. But it seems we went way over our Limit with "Sound Cloud" so we had to pull it.


This performance is rough,raw, and real. It also sounds pretty cool to me. I'm amazed how far this collection of musicians get on talent and chemistry.

"Throw away Girl" from our In world show at "Bob's Secret Island".

This show was CRAZY. We not only sent a full band down the series of tubes that make up the internet, but did live video as well. The sound is pretty good.

Well that about covers our Media Monday Madness edition of the blog.

One more from the Vault, "I could get use to you"

One more vintage vid from the formative years (months???) of Kinagree Smith. Here we are playing "I could get use to you" Live at the Green Rock Tavern in Port Richmond.