December 2005 Archives
EDIT FEB 2007:
the site in the post below is now long long gone!
for information on Honey Owens and/or Valet,
check out the valet myspace
or the yarnlazer valet page
or the kranky page on valet
Valet's Blood is Clean comes out in April 2007 on Kranky. (previously issued in an edition of 100 on yarnlazer.com.
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Original Post:
honey just finished making her first website
check it out at http://www.yarnlazer.com/honeyowens
congratulations, baby, it looks great!
well honey and i just got back from tour/xmas vacation last night. it was a time and a time and a time and a time. yeah......let me show you these pictures i merely linked to before, for all those lazy folks who did not click. also, a few comments and a general, vague, lazy blow-by-blow.
we started off on a cold portland moring, went to the rental place and got a rugged, blue, sweet smelling subaru outback, piled in the gear, piled in the GOD boys (thats Brian Eubanks and Lief Sundstrom, for those who don't know) and hit the motherfucking road - with two bags of clothes strapped to the rack.
View this clip on Vimeo
ok so we drove down I5, cut over at grants pass and drove the rest of the way through redwoods hidden by deep, dense dark patches of mist and fog until we finally reached SAMOA. Samoa is a little village on the coast of california near arcada. thats in humbolt county (where the weed comes from). the "venue" was actually a huge house a few blocks from the ocean. we could hear the waves from thei back deck. old cypress trees loomed over us like enormous bonsai. the dudes who set up the show and their girlfriends and other friends made the Jyrk troupe a HUGE, delicious sushi dinner. sweet potato tempura sushi, eel, all sorts of good shit. we played in this huge barren living room with a nice warm fire going in the fireplace. friendly stoney humbolt surfer types popped in and out as the show mellowly rolled into the night...
the hosts were the righteous local quintet STARVING WEIRDOS who laid down an organic neo-finnish/thuja/jomf/nnck/vibracathedral guitar on guitar rubbing and singing bowls and low drone vibe that was as good if not better than all those bands i just prattled off. their set was entitled "axis of evil". i was amazed that such a small, remote town could be hiding such a beautifully sophisticated ensemble. look for new material from the starving weirdos on Jyrk and Root strata imprints
check the vibe shot
that night was our first time seeing eva inca ore with her touring partner karl bauer, aka axolotl. the CDrs i've heard of his are all good, especially the new one he gave me, and it was great to finally meet him and feel his vibe, even if the entire time we hung out he was sick sick sick. karl's someone that both honey and i really would love to play music with some day. his vibe is pure and natural and un-self-consious. blending seamlessly with eva's ever developing foggy blur of reverb cloaked, line6 layered vocal chanting.
GOD played an amazing stoned-out mass of minimal sine wave differences, resonant cymbal feedback and internal circuit burnout that completely fucking floored me. so much more acute and severely focused since the last time I'd seen them. both brian and lief seemed to ride the brink of un-controllablity with a sense of intuition eloquent adaptability that perhaps only comes from years of playing improv. check back later for a picture of this set.
honey and i played a weird set. i couldnt hear anything honey did and after driving all day i was sort of out of it. it was our first real show for a long time. our last few performances in portland had in art setting and much more ambient/conceptually based, so it was hard for me to get back into the swing of making improv music as a performance piece on its own. much different than being in the white rainbow sound installation head-space that i had been dwelling in almost exclusively for moths prior to the tour.
then yellow swans topped the evening off with their forceful waves of soft focus pinknoise. what i like about these dudes is that its the most un-harsh "harsh power noise" or whatever that i've ever heard. their tones are not some mindless torture demonstration or naive bullshit festival. i hear things in their music. tunnels of sound open up for me in ways that i don't get from wolf eyes or black dice or the million other cdr and tape noise projects out there that people talk about. the swans actual rock, the swans actually get psychedelic, the swans use electronics to make actually engaging soundscapes. the samoa show, as my re-introduction to them was nothing less than completely insipred, inspiring and impressive. fuck yeah. i love these dudes.
after the show we put all the gear in a corner of the big living room, set up camp and all fell asleep with the fire still going in the fireplace. mmmmmmmmmm
yoyoyoyoyoyyoyoyyo
two shows in the next few somethings with PLANTS our good friends and fellow travelers into the realms of drone, string, sing, boy meets girl - boy and girl start psychedelic folk band vibes. yes yes yes you come!
sat jan 28
at gallery 1412 in seattle
bonus
world
plants
na
fri, feb 12
towne lounge
plants
world
oaxacan
YUME BITSU
is pronounced
"you may beat sue"
and is spelled
yume bitsu
ok
thanks
http://www.bloodteam.com/eclipse/eclipsebooking/jackieomotherfucker.html
http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=3662
ps
not actually mad
more soon
love and holiday stuffs
adam
we just got to adam's house in monterey and we're here chillin with the parents vibe. tour went really well as far as the playing tho some of the attendence was not as hot as i expected. eva played with us twice and we get along vocally very well. it was fun. i left my charger at home unfortunately so i will be email-bound for one more week.. met some noizers and also some hippy trippers who gave us free weed and sushi!! spent one day chilling deep with kyle field at his new pad in the sunset of sf. we walked the two blocks to the beach, got juice shakes (mine had hemp milk) at the kind juice bar, ate sushi then went to the hemlock where kyle and jake longstreth joined us for an incredible version of world that ended in stand-up comedy btw me and kyle. it was so not funny that it became hysterical. we finally met axolotl and we heart him, he and eva play well together. his name is carl. we almost killed him because he was sick with what adam calls 'kennel cough' (which is what you get on tour) and we gave him too much grapeseed extract.. he missed the last part of the jamboree unfortunately.. right now i'm listening to brian's rap song off one of the states rights records comps - so awesome. waiting to go to the aquarium. they had to let the shark go because she kept eating the other fish. sound familiar? they replaced her with penquins which is hardly exciting but the jelly fish are still there, glowing in the dark, psychically running things. i love you guys sorry for the group email. happy holidays!!!!!!!!! honey
post script from adam: I'm going to post some cool photos from tour and a full road report tour wrap-up soon. right now you can go to my flickr account to view some photos.
and one more thing: the penguins at the aquarium are going to fucking RULE. honey just doesn't know yet.
love
adam
thanks for all the input dudes
its all done now. phew. yeah option 4 was my original one, well actually the old old original was going to be like number 1, but then we broke open the whole concept of the rainbow discs, i took it too deep and went all the way to 4. now i am paring it back to #3. i felt all of your comments and input. thank you so much. also thanks to those who gave input via ichat and phone.
i basically stared at this all day. whenever im about to leave for a while i cant do anything the day before. i just get short circuit in my head. my back is sore and i'd done nothing. have yet to leave the house except to get some pizza and once with honey to go pick up the records she dropped off at mississippi to sell yesterday . it was there that we ran into mariella from K and her husband and rett too. i guess they won blazers tickets at some industry party earlier in the week so tonight they came down to see the blazers vs the rockets. when we got home mike mcgonigal was waiting for us on the porch. he dropped off a few yetis for friends we are going to see on our trip and a few to try to sell at shows. so if you are reading this from out of town: I WILL HAVE THE BRAND NEW YETI FOR SALE ON THIS SHORT TOUR
for those who forgot, here is our tour schedule:
JYRK JAMBOREE TOUR
World w/ D Yellow Swans, Inca Ore, God, Axolotl
DEC 12 - Samoa CA @ somewhere i dont know
DEC 13 - Sacramento - (Fools Foundation 1025 19th street)
DEC 14 - SF (Hemlock)
DEC 15 - LA (The Smell)
DEC 16 - SD (Che Cafe)
DEC 17 - Oakland (Grandma's House)
we still have lots of laundry to do before we go to sleep and then its gonna be an early morning picking up the rental car (fingers crossed it goes all right) and then we have to book down the 5 and 101 all day to get to samoa, which is supposedly near arcada. deeper vibes.
well if i dont post again, take care. i will try and post from the road, but im not bringin my computer as my screen is still BUSTED so its pointless. we'll take lots of pictures and get them up hopefully before christmas
if not then merry christmas and all that shit
love
adam
this is what i have to work on and finish today
the above chart represents all the different options for the disc artwork for the white rainbow box set, from left to right they get more complicated and busy. i guess i would like some sort of outside opinion on this design matter. let me know what option you like the best and remember it is for all 6 discs, with the color change being the differences in the discs (along with the track names)
yeahhhhh
got to get this done by the end of the day so it can go to the pressing plant
at 1130 last night honey was just falling asleep. she was dissapointed in te fact that her keyboard she just bought is still broken. she had borrowed our house mate joe's laptop to record some music, but the the keyboard started acting up. she was a little bummed out. i had the great idea to get some donuts. she was already half asleep so she told me that she would eat one if i went out and got them. so i hopped in the car and went downtown and double parked and ran into voodoo donuts got 2 glazed old fashions one blueberry and one apple fritter and some milk. the dude was being sort of short with me which threw me off a bit. whatever. i raced back home and brought the donuts upstairs and we finally watched the finale of curb your enthusiasm at around 12am. it was really funny. then we went to bed. we both woke up around 9 o'clock and she once again went to work with ruth and i sort of dozed for a while, did my morning web surfing, had a nice little chat with ritchey about heavy metal. then i went to the corner store, got some orange juice and got to work on this cd artwork final fainal final finalizing
other things that need to be done before we leave tomorrow morning:
make a white rainbow cdr for tour?
make a world cdr for tour?
LAUNDRY
get some more world cds to sell
deposit my pay check
give my car to steve?
pack
yeahh
apparently, according to steve, what i am doing is called "live blogging". huh. ok
well since we last check in...
honey got a phone call from a close friend that needed to talk asap, and seeing that steve had just invited me to "pop in" to get that elusive Curb finale, we decided i was to be dropped off. steve answered the door wearing a cool dude hat (remember crazy hat lary...yeah) that said "pizza delivery dude" in white on a neon background. so cool. willow had just finished writing her christmas cards and putting them into envelopes. i didnt communicate this with her at the time, but i was internally quite surprised and impressed that she was actually sending christmas cards. made me feel like a spoiled old scrooge. steve was watching a funny brat pack film about prohibition, with sinatra and the other dudes singing lots of cool songs. it kinda just played on in the background. steve was working on a top 100 songs of 2005 list that i guess he's going to "podcast". hope that isnt a spoiler. then steve got a phone call. it was krystal, who said she had something for him. not to long thereafter she showed up with her beau to hand off a new nintendo DS game to steve. he wrote her a check. a few jokes about krystal being a black market and or avon style seller of video games ensued. meanwhile i was becoming more and more entranced with steves hand held gaming device. i poked at it curiously for a while, put it down and joined in the conversation, but in the end i was hooked by mariokart. there is something about repetative driving games that just hooks me. ever since i was a kid and had the arati 800.. i never actually graduated up to a nintendo or sega due to my grades not being good enough for my parents to ever warrant the gift..back in the day i would play pole position over and over again. so i got in this zone with the mariokart solo race setting. my favorite becaome the rainbow track in the stars. one false move and you fell into the ether of the universe. i got pretty good, pretty deep. wanted to best my time. steve and willow made fun of my grunting, but i was oblivious.
and then at the pinnacle of my obsessive gaming the battery ran out. krystal had left, the movie was over and steve and willow were discussing their plans to go see the new sarah silverman movie. i stepped outside and called honey to pick me up. not a minute after willow and steve piled into jona's car to go to the film, honey drove up and we drove home. after a brief visit to the bathroom i came upstairs and wrote this
love
adam
today was pretty mellow, although i drank WAY too much coffee and had a hard time typing for a while. got in good ichat conversations with zach reno about gear. guitar pedals versus VSTs. he showed me the new bozz loop station that is only available in japan at the moment. looks crazy. usb, stereo in and out, about 5 pedals, eird knobs. also discussed the gigadelay. he's really into Boss pedals. interesting that he is coming from computers and going towards pedals while i went the opposite way. effects pedals are more tactile, analog, viceral, while with a computer, as zach put it you "play with your eyes more than your hands and ears" which is totally true. wish i had a pedal board that was all knobs and pedals hooked via midi or usb to my computer to run vst effects chains. my pedals are worth more than my computer or my car. its just crazy. the other conversation was with steve schroeder, wherein we discussed what each of us had done last night. he went to a show at valentines i did not know about. readers of this blog already know what i did last night...anyway i had to get off line to chill from the coffee overload, but not before steve hooked me up with the last episode of curb season 5. sweet. it just finished downloading at around 530 so after this post honey and i are going to watch it.
honey went out, as you know, to the bins and to do her work with ruth. telephone discussions about the upcomng tour and getting ruth on our family phone plan were had. she got home at around 4 o'clock, and let me finish the second half of her new seasons steak sandwhich, the first food i ate of the day. we planned to go get some more food and at around 430 we got in the car and drove the few blocks down to mississippi to the new taco joint por que no? (sp?). my quesadilla with chick was great. the chicken was wet and juicy and tasted like it had been steeping in good broth al day. their home made chips are also good. discussion around favorite hot sauces ensued. honey like chalula and i really have no preference. i guess i just like them all...anyway, then we went down the street to mississippi records to try and sell some records but eric the owner was not in. honey left the records behind the counter while i checked out the cool bent keyboards and vintage record players. noticed a pile of yeti magazines which made me proud of my good friend mike.
we hustled back into the car as the sky grew dark and drove the few blocks home, came upstairs and wrote this entry
love
adam
UPDATE 545 PM
the transfer of the curb season five finale had fatal errors in the last few seconds, and is now nowhere to be found on my computer. this is very frustrating obviously. kinda ruins our plans for the next half hour. we'll see what happens, i guess. shit.
i just got this story forwarded to me. its about the ArthurBall happening in LA feb 24 thru 26 2006. there is gonna be a white rainbow healing center at the party...looks like its gonna be a pretty cool festival. sun city girls films! whoo hoo
http://www.calendarlive.com/music/cl-ca-popeye11dec11,0,3212171.story?coll=cl-suncal
POP EYE
ArthurBall to follow ArthurFest
By Steve Hochman
Special to The Times
December 11, 2005
THE outsiders are moving indoors.
ArthurFest, in its mostly alfresco inaugural edition Labor Day weekend on the grounds of the Barnsdall Art Park, showcased leading artists in a variety of underground, avant-garde and outsider movements, with Yoko Ono and Sonic Youth topping the bill. Now it has spawned a winter edition. Dubbed ArthurBall, the event will take place Feb. 24 to 26 in a series of venues along several blocks of Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park.
Among those being booked are Queens of the Stone Age leader Josh Homme (who will team with longtime collaborator Chris Goss for a special project), weird-folk harpist Joanna Newsom and ArthurFest returnees Josephine Foster and Brightblack Morning Light. More acts, from headliners to cult favorites, are being secured, and the event will also include film, spoken word and art installations.
The Echo club will be the central venue, with nearby Taix restaurant, Jensen Recreation Center and perhaps other shops and galleries being used as well. Attendees will be allowed to stroll from spot to spot.
ArthurBall will be smaller than ArthurFest (which drew more than 4,000 people in its two days), but the philosophy is the same. Both draw on the aesthetic of Arthur magazine, which is co-presenting the weekend with Spaceland Productions.
"We're just trying to find people who love what they do and who are good at it," says Arthur founder-editor Jay Babcock. "And we're asking, expecting the audience to be curious or open enough to at least check them out."
Babcock says ticket sales and feedback far exceeded his expectations at ArthurFest, not just for such better-known acts as Ono, Sleater-Kinney, Devendra Banhart and Spoon, but also for a wide-ranging roster of cult figures and newcomers including Japanese noise manipulator Merzbow and neo-folkie Marissa Nadler. Plans for a 2006 ArthurFest are already being made, again on Labor Day weekend, but at a new site, as Babcock says it's already outgrown Barnsdall's Hollywood hilltop. A film from the 2005 festival is being edited by director Lance Bangs, who shot all 42 acts that performed.
"We wanted to do another kind of event, something with a lower ticket price, something that ranged more outside of music with films and spoken word," Babcock says of the February plans. "It will be really fun — people walking around. All the venues are indoors, but you'll be able to walk outdoors, go from one venue to the next. We might use more spaces. And there are restaurants all along there people can check out. We might even run a shuttle bus if we end up using more places farther away."
Among the other confirmed acts at this point are rock band Pearls and Brass, avant-jazz ensemble Unknown Instructors (featuring Mike Watt, George Hurley and Joe Baiza), French-Swedish neo-folk duo Mi & L'au, veteran piano man Biff Rose and Tarantula A.D. Also on board are the Legs & Pants Dans Theatre, ethnomusical films from the Sublime Frequencies team and a "vibrational healing" installation by White Rainbow.
"It will be the mix of people you would expect from reading our magazine and coming to ArthurFest," Babcock says. "You have to stretch your mind in order for it to grow."
as we drove to roux on killingsworth and interstate honey read to me from Camus' The Stranger. I had her start on page 100. The guy was in prison with a window that looked out onto the ocean and his girlfriend comes to visit him and as Honey was reading it to me i drove and we both got swept up into the world of the words and as i arrived at the restaurant i had a classic displaced mind feeling.
honey got a roast beef sandwich from their deli while i delivered the wone. we had some chips. with my help, she ate the whole thing by the time we got home. i laid down for a while and i think we watched a few episodes of curb your enthusiasm. also, i started reading The Bell Jar, which honey had found at the bins and left on top of a big pile of picture books in the living room. i dont think i ever read it high school, but it seems like that kind of book. in fact i think this particular copy comes from a high school library. at around 7 i got our of bed and we went down to the warehouse and i dropped off the remain checks i had and the hand truck and an empty box and a box of wine that was supposed to go to fred myers but didn't. i stole a bottle of wine from the warehouse as my "chrismas bonus" and we went over to the oak street building to drop off our application and say hi to curtis laurel and fox. i think its going to be amazing to live in the buildiing. the space seems perfect for me and honey. it is going to be some work to get it feeling right and looking good. paint the floor, create a private bed zone, create a recording zone, get a fridge, haul in the oven, make a lliving room vibe place, get shelving and storage, secure the front door, clean the windows and seal them for the winter, find curtians, make tables, tear out the shower and put in a clawfoot...the list goes on and on. we opened the bottle of wine and shared it between the four of us while fox ran around being and extremely cute little man. laurel gave us chocolate that i think gave me a slight tummy ache, but we had a fine fine time with them. so nice to spend some time with another mellow couple with no plans for friday night except the supper chill. as we drove home i wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed. and so i did. but not for long, as there was a party across the street at our friend amy's house and honey went to go pick up ruth and we all went over there at around 11. i made myself a white russian in homage to the Dude. the house was brick a brack kitche central, in a good way. if felt cozy. amy just got her daughter a dog from the pound. her name is hope and shes a nine year old australian shepard mix of some sort. just a sweet old dude. i talked to this dude named david about german synth music and wernor herzog and the later, a bit more drunkenly about kyle and rob's version of fleetwood mac's "Dreams" and about the new devendra record...luckily for him he got swept away by his friends. i would have ended up talking his ear off all night about nerdy music stuff. at some time around 1am we walked back across the street and crawled into bed. honey got up at 800 this morning got dressed and went to the bins with ruth, who stayed at amy's house just so it would be easy for them to meet up this morning. being the first day in a long while that honey could take the car, i think she is going to work all day today.
i woke up around 12pm feeling relaxed and ready for my winter vacation. i checked my email at 1230 and then i decided to write this
ive decided to write in this blog as many times a day as possible and write what has happened so far that day, until the end of the year. im sure it will get sporadic as i go on tour, and perhaps at my parents home i will be preoccupied with christmas. so maybe this will only last until tomorrow night. a banal document of events and mild musings. for no good reason. not even proof reading it or anything. just posting.
love
adam
just ate a spicey chicken wendy's
for breakfast a taste of a 1963 port...holy fuck like butterfly liquified viscous perfume like an old man after a year at sea. jesus. so good. the bottle was dusty and crusty, and they had to drill a hole in the cork to get it to pour the sweet nectar.
bright and cold like mountain weather and all the stupid cars and trucks rolling around xmas bustle and sunshine the traffic just killed
home for a mnute
chapped lips
trained my sub, sent her off with 8 cases for 4 places. handed off the clip board and the hand truck. ahhhhhh. release.
starting to feel like vacation. i guess that is a perk of actually working is when you dont it really feels sweet. yeah, well fuck it.
back to the warehouse pick up a few more boxes, rip some light toolin', rave mp on blast and its all done with for a spell
sore sore sore
windy
chapped lips
cold hands
last day of work ffor two weeks
training my sub
gotta run
ttyl
adam
WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 7TH, 2005
7:00 PM
Take it EZ (local animation/video)
(music with/for Zach Reno)
@ The Guild Theater
ALL AGES
$3