kickstarter and cobbler

My musically inclined friend Juliana, who also blogs at write.play.repeat. and Bear & Honey's Clueless To-Do List, is working on 2 new albums! They're going to be seasonally themed sorts of things, which -- I tell you in case you're unaware that Juliana is an incarnate of Mama Nature via a) the 80s and b) the Internet -- is highly appropriate.


She's using the faboo Kickstarter.com to raise funds, and you should toss monies her way 'cause I really want to hear what she's working on. Erm. And for other, less monkey-serving purposes as well (I guess), like "advancing the arts" or "I want advance-release copies of the albums and/or an in-home concert for myself." You can sample and purchase her previous EP and LP on CD Baby (I particularly recommend "Rattlesnake" from How to Take the Fall), though donating 25 bux on Kickstarter will earn you both of those AND both of the new albums once she's all funded and finished. Just sayin'.


In baking news, I've been making all the cobbler lately -- cherry, blackberry, and peach in just the past two weeks. I think the peach was the most successful -- I grated a maybe 1/4 tsp of nutmeg over the peaches and added maybe 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract while they were mascerating, and yeah. Heavenly.


I've been using a bottom crust from smittenkitchen's apple tart and a biscuit topping (with hard-boiled egg yolks instead of raw!) from her rhubarb cobbler. My only advice if you try this is to prepare a LOT of fruit -- ~3 quarts of cherries, blackberries, or other things that come in quarts, or at least 10 peaches or other pieces of single-serving fruit. Just mascerate whatever fruit you're using in 1/2 to 1 cup of sugar (depending on the natural sweetness of the fruit) while your crust & biscuits are chilling, then assemble, bake, and feel like a rockstar.

event: A Fight to the Death CD release

Very occasionally I put down my Rock Band mic for long enough to go watch people play actual instruments. Instruments that in no way remind me of Simon. You look dubious about the wisdom inherent in this, and dudes, I know. It has to be worthwhile.

This show will be worthwhile.

Thanks largely to their roaringly successful Kickstarter campaign (small thanks, I have garnered, are also due to whisky & beer), my A Fight to the Death-shaped friends are throwing a release party for their new album, Gesture of a Gentleman, at the Star Bar on Saturday, May 15th. Adron is slated to open with a set starting at 9:00, which in bandtime means that probably they'll go on around 10:00 and AFTTD will start somewhere near 11:30.



AFTTD is what you get when you give high-functioning geeks who like folk & jazz a slap upside the head with a Tesla coil made by gypsies. You can preview/download some of their songs if you don't believe me.

For those who've never been to Star Bar, it's a dive with lane bumpers: small, smoky, and noisy, with stiff drinks, cheap PBR tall-boys, a fairly clean ladies' room, and decent temperature control upstairs. Behold their Elvis shrine while you're waiting for the band to start, step out onto their porch downstairs for fresh air without having to put down your drink, and if their photobooth is working, make yourself a souvenir film strip to cherish/angst about later. If you're offended by paying for parking, find a spot on the street in the residential area behind the bar (I can always find one on Euclid Terrace) and walk a couple blocks.

Come say hi if you see me there!

Finch & Knave, live on stage 5-14-10

ATTN: People of Atlanta:

If you've been wondering whether this Adam P. Knave cat who I keep talking about working with actually exists in three full dimensions, here's your opportunity to find out! In an exclusive, one-night-only engagement, Mr. Knave will be performing readings of his works and other verbal shenanigans on stage at Java Monkey, the independently owned café and beer bar nestled snug against the social spine of Decatur. He'll be accompanied by one Juliana Finch, who will delight the assembly via her wit and vocal works, being armed only with her vim, verve, and an acoustic guitar.

These wonders, having been Christianed "Forgive Us Our Bus Passes", will begin at 8 o'clock in the evening of Friday, the 14th of May, in this year of minor miracles, 2010! The show is free and open to the public, limited only by the local capacity laws. Come one, come all!

A Fight to the Death Recording Studio

So I've got this friend George Wallace. I know him through Phil -- he was one of Phil's roommates. George is one of those maddeningly intelligent people who genuinely enjoys reading Thomas Pynchon novels and can, without particularly exerting himself, play your guitar way better than you can.

It would be more than a little tragic if George weren't in a band, but luckily for all of us, he's in A Fight to the Death, which is in fact a band. Specifically, they're an Atlanta-based band who wear classy suits and think you'll like some accordion, ukulele, banjo, keyboard, and pedal steel with your rock'n'roll. Guys, I am here to tell you that, even accounting for your individualized taste in music, A Fight to the Death is totally correct in this opinion.

Now, it's possible that I'm biased because Mark, CJ, Nathan, Daniel, and George are all awesome guys who are my friends on Facebook and sometimes even in three dimensions, or because they've occasionally used their band tab to keep me in the concert-venue lifestyle to which I have become accustomed (ie, full of whisky&cokes), or because George always says nice things about my snickerdoodles. But mostly they just rock out. Allow me to demonstrate via the use of a bullet list and several Internet hyperlinks.


Audio & video evidence of rocking out (which is important for a music band, am i rite?):

• Download & listen to one of my favorite songs from their LP, "Killdear".


• Preview every song on their LP on cdbaby.com, and maybe pay special attention to "My Name" if you like pretty, moody, heavy songs that remind you of thunderstorms and "What a Great Idea" if you like dancing in your living room and/or breaking up with people.


• Watch a video of "This Fear Is Irrational", which provides evidence that at least some members of the band were probably gypsies at some point, recorded live for haveyouheard.net.


• Watch a recorded-live-from-Corndogorama video of a song, "Echoes", from their upcoming album.

Pictorial evidence of rocking out, captured by Kevin Griggs and with quasi-interactive mouse-over captions by me:





I told you, classy suits.

Now, If you've enjoyed these examples of rocking and are aurally hungry for more, you could purchase their current CD, and/or you could come out to one of their upcoming shows, and/or you could fund the creation of their new album in return for logical & badass thank-you gifts such as a download/physical copy of the currently hypothetical album once it's finished, behind-the-scenes footage of the recording process, previews of new songs, a cover song of your choice performed at a show, or even a private performance from the band (which sounds dirty to me but probably won't be unless you provide them with a great deal of alcohol, and maybe some fancy pasties to match their ties).

They're using Kickstarter.com as a home-base for their fundraiser, and it seems like a pretty hip site! As of right now they're only four hundred and sixty American-Earth dollars away from reaching their goal of $2,000, and they only have 11 more days to raise it! And I want to hear their new album soon, so you should really drop them a couple bucks if a couple bucks is something you've got sitting around.

following up

So that Zombie Symposium I went to last weekend was pretty awesome! I snapped a few pictures with my phone's camera (which you can follow the adventures of at Twitpic/grammarmonkey):






The intrepid panel: Stan Woodard, Diane Diakite, Andrea Wood, and Laszlo Xalieri.




Stan was the panel leader. Diane's discussion was about Haitian and West African religious beliefs about and social purposes for zombification (fascinating stuff, I really hope she publishes a book about this). Andrea covered the American pop culturization of these zombie traditions through a mixing of sensationalized Caribbean travel brochures and Western stories of the undead in Hollywood, and Laszlo talked about natural occurrences of zombification in insects, network technology, business, and etc. (if you buy him coffee or beer, he'll be glad to expound on these further). I missed the films & boozin' legs of the day 'cause I had some serious sitting around on my butt to do that evening.

a song each day

I've never been much of a music person -- not the way some people are. I mean, I own maybe 40-some CDs, and possibly a couple hundred extra songs on mp3. I enjoy going to concerts and hearing new things! I think singing is approximately the most fun thing ever, even though my talent there hovers somewhere amidst tolerable, trainable, and oh-god-aim-for-the-head. But instrumentally speaking, I've never played anything other than nursery rhymes on one of those white plastic recorders in elementary school, and one half of "Chopsticks" at a go on my grandparents' Lowrey electronic organ (possibly with the Polka accompaniment going 'cause I thought it was hilarious). My brain is just way, way more skewed towards written communication than auditory. And I'm kinda a spaz, coordinationally.

It's possible that I've got an inflated sense of being an oddity in this 'cause I can't seem to date anyone who plays fewer than 5 instruments, and 'cause I have a few friends who are aiming towards making a professional career out of playing music. One of these, a Mr. CJ Bargamian, is working on the sort of personal project that completely blows my non-auditory mind: A Song Each Day. As the name might imply, he's writing and recording a new song every day -- for 30 days.

As someone who's never had music in her head that didn't come from somewhere else, this is more or less incomprehensible -- but as a creator, it's fascinating. I'm possibly obsessed with other people's creative processes, and CJ's been blogging along with the project, explaining bits about where his concepts come from and how he develops them into finished pieces. The resulting music sounds understandably unpolished but is even more interesting for being a bit raw, because while not every song is to my taste, all of them contain little pieces and iterations of the songwriter that I've either heard before or hope I'll hear explored more fully in the future.

I think that every songwriter should do this. Erm, not just for my entertainment (DANCE, MONKEYS) -- well okay largely for my entertainment. But also to promote cross-media creative understanding and community motivation towards discussion and productivity?

DANCE, MONKEYS, YESSS.

CJ is on day 17 today -- you can go through the library of songs past (my favorites so far are from days 2, 3, 6, 8, and 14, for varying musical/entertainment reasons), or tune in each day for a new one! If you listen in, let him know what you think. And hey, if you'd like to hear some of his more polished & collaborative pieces, check out A Fight To The Death – on hiatus right now while its drummer, the fabulous and fresh-scented Mark Carbone, mends a few bicycle-broken bones, but coming back to Atlanta-area stages within the next couple weeks. Along with Mark & CJ, George Wallace, Nathan Green, and Daniel Winn produce what I can completely objectively say is the best gypsy-lounge-Americana rock I've heard in our fair city.