God it felt good to play out! For my first gig in more than a year, Outer Roominations couldn’t have been better; beautiful location, relaxed environment with cool people, and a great event that brought artists together to create installations and performance spaces in natural settings along an art walk that threaded through the forested bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean near Lolita. It was a total gas!
I played as part of Medicine Baul, as a solo performer, and as part of the improvised accompaniment to the dance/movement/performance art ensemble: Feral Feral. Medicine Baul played long sets on all three days, I played solo sets on Saturday and Sunday, and with Feral Feral on Sunday and Monday, so I got to play a lot, and enjoyed camping-out there all weekend. For Medicine Baul, it was the first time we had gotten together in about 16 months. For me, it was a chance to unleash a sound that I’ve been waiting over a year to debut in front of a live audience, and an opportunity to play as part of an avant-garde improvisational ensemble, in real time, in the real world, with real people. Like I said, it was an amazing event. I even managed to record a little of it.
My solo performance on Saturday the 29th, although far from flawless, still shows the power and originality of my live sound. When I have the opportunity to play my didgeridoo and effects rig through an adequate sound system, it sounds like nothing you’ve ever heard before, but it totally fucking rocks! If you don’t believe me, just listen!
I haven’t played out for a while, but this coming Monday, January 11, I will perform, live at Synapsis in Eureka. I’m really excited about this gig because I will perform with some of my favorite local musicians: Medicine Baul, who I have written about here before, Ensemble Economique, and Cybernator 3. Ensemble Economique is Brian Pyle’s solo music project. Brian was a former member of The Starving Weirdos, he also produced a record for a great local band called White Manna, and hosts one of my favorite radio shows, Los Ensemble Economique on KHSU (Tues. 10pm-1am) I’m not familiar with Cybernator 3, but I’m sure they’ve never heard of me either. This should be an amazing evening of very original music. I hope I see you there.
It’s been a very busy week of radio work for me, so I don’t have much of an essay for you, but I strongly encourage you to listen to my latest radio show featuring a really great band from Arcata called Medicine Baul.
This will be the official debut of my new music-themed public affairs radio show called The Adventurous Ear. The show will highlight music of exceptional originality, and focus primarily on musicians in our local area and region. The Adventurous Ear will air on KMUD on Thursday, March 26 at 5pm, and on the fourth Thursday of every other month, alternating in that time-slot with my other public affairs show, which I co-produce with my partner Amy Gustin, called Wildlife Matters.
You may recall that I wrote this review of Medicine Baul’s performance at Jambalaya last year. If you haven’t heard Medicine Baul before, you’ll get a chance to hear their music and listen to them talk about how and why they make it. Every Medicine Baul performance sounds different because the band composes their music on the spot at each venue. I recorded their performance at Synapsis in Eureka, CA on Dec. 13 2014, and interviewed them after their performance at Siren’s Song on the previous Nov. 3.
Besides creating amazing music, I found the members of Medicine Baul I talked to, Willoughby Arevalo, Ishan Vernallis, Vinny DeVaney, and Laura Corsiglia, all to be articulate, interesting and thoughtful people. From talking to them, it is clear that they each bring a highly evolved sense of intent and purpose to their work, but they don’t compete with each other for control. Instead, they value each other and honor the moment in a spontaneous collaborative effort. As a result, the music is bigger than all of them, and encompasses the audience as well. To fully appreciate their music, you have to be there to share it with them as they create it.
Still, I think you’ll enjoy this episode of The Adventurous Ear. You’ll hear a range of sounds from Medicine Baul’s 75+ minute set, interspersed with snippets of interview. In one half-hour show, I offer listeners a pretty good introduction to the band and their approach to music. I hope you’ll tune in.
All Photos in this essay by Bob Doran, some, like this one are stills from his video Medicine Baul Live at Bummer Fest 2012. Other pics from his Medicine Baul photo album on facebook
Amazing! Astounding! Wonderful! Wow! Wow! Wow! If you read this column regularly, you know that I’m a cynical old coot who loves to make fun of people. Not today (sorry to disappoint you). Today I feel rejuvenated, recharged and re-energized, because last night I experienced Medicine Baul live at Jambalaya in Arcata.
Medicine Baul played inspiring, original music. When I say “original” music, I don’t just mean that they write their own songs, I mean that they don’t do anything normal. Medicine Baul didn’t even play anything you could call a song. Instead, we heard one continuous, collaborative, improvised composition that spanned the duration of their set.
They had some normal instruments, like a concert bass drum, a trombone and a hammered dulcimer, but Medicine Baul didn’t play anything normal on them. They had some decidedly abnormal instruments, like a homemade, cello-sized, one string instrument, a mouth harp and an electric hurdy-gurdy. They didn’t do anything normal with those instruments either. They hit things. They plucked strings. They held twisted brass tubes and other strange devices to their lips, and they fiddled with many contraptions too small to see clearly from the audience. They produced a great variety of weird noises.
At the center of all of this instrumental madness, one tall slender dark-haired woman of artistic demeanor, not brassy, not seductive, but serious, concentrated, reserved, but with a playful glint in her eye, stood alone in front of the microphone at center stage in a long striped indigo dress. Her vocalizations, sometimes soaring and melodic, other times dark and guttural contained no discernible lyrics. Flanked stage left by by a man wearing coveralls, knee-pads and a hardhat, crouching low to the floor amid a pile of instruments, and on stage right by a seated man wearing a red flannel union suit playing what looked like a hillbilly cello, Medicine Baul looked positively surreal.
Projected on a screen behind Medicine Baul as they played, scenes from documentary films, probably made in the 1970s by the look of the film, depicted life in remote tribal villages. The images began with people navigating white-water rapids in dugout canoes while standing up, each using a single pole to steer and control their tiny boats. The music began as a low murmur, crescendoed to a mighty din, climaxed in a cathartic release of energy and concluded as peacefully as it began. Medicine Baul both defied and exceeded expectations with their spontaneous composition.
Medicine Baul has at least six members. I find it hard to count higher than that, but there were a lot of people up on that rather cramped stage, and they all had something to do, pretty much all the time. Clearly, they all listen to each other. I don’t think anyone would say, of Medicine Baul, that they were fantastically talented players, because none of them were show-offs, and they did not play music for show-offs. Instead I will say say that Medicine Baul is made of fantastically talented listeners, and that together they compose brilliant original music.
You really should experience them for yourself. You will have a chance to do that on November 3. Medicine Baul will perform in Eureka on Monday, November 3, at Siren’s Song, along with Willoughby, starting at 8:00pm. We’ve already planned our next Eureka trip around it, and so should you.
We have an obscene amount of music shows here in Humboldt County, and most of them them are more party than concert and involve music drawn from well-trodden, commercially proven, genres. That doesn’t interest me. I want to hear something original, and I like it that much more when the artists have the guts to challenge the audience’s expectations rather than pander to them. That’s what makes music interesting. That’s what makes music powerful, and that’s what keeps music alive.
Art matters! Parties, not so much. We need original art now, more than ever, because at the core of our current cultural collapse lies a colossal failure of imagination. It’s going to take a lot of imagination to reinvent the future. Original art is to imagination what business is to money. An abundance of art promotes a wealth of imagination. Medicine Baul is a perfect example of what I mean by “original,” and listening to them could change the way you think about music.
Like You've Got Something Better To Do 