Gavra Lynn's Downtown Peoria Gallery

 I attended an art and music showcase at Gavra Lynn’s gallery down on Jefferson across from the Civic Center (the storefront that says "Art Show"). The gallery is a great spot to see work by local artists and hear some local musicians; from time to time Gavra has even hosted some local filmmaker’s events.

The gallery is quite large and there are paintings and sculptures all over the place. To keep the gallery running, Gavra hosts benefit events and invites musicians to play and even show their own art work. The admission fee is usually not required but is encouraged as a donation. While the crowd size varied throughout the night there were usually about fifteen people wandering about and eventually settling to hear the next music set. Overall, Gavra had invited ten bands to play over the course of seven hours and the genres involved varied from folk and progressive rock to experimental.

If you weren’t listening to music you were either chatting about the artists or grabbing a beer or some wine from the mini-kitchen. The evening was great but I only watched a handful of bands, I did not plan on attending for all seven hours. I was there to play a quick set with my band and then hang out for a bit to chat with friends. I haven’t really been to this kind of event in the past, but I have seen galleries and concerts. One series of paintings by Anthony Couri has caught my eye every time I have visited Gavra’s gallery.

Anthony has created some interesting works using merlot and cigarette ashes as his media. The red splashes of wine almost look like accidental spills and the black ash marks contrast with the white paper (or canvas) he uses. The pieces almost seem as if the fallout from a late night party has found its way on to an open sketch book sitting on a coffee table. Most of the shapes seem random and organic so it’s quite pleasing to the eye, any tension may be derived from the overall appearance of a spill or a mess needing to be cleaned up. Anthony was present at the event to play some music as well.

Unfortunately I only caught the tail end of Anthony’s music set. His band Gypsy Gypsy Gypsy is labeled “Psychedelic, Trance, Visual” and I could certainly tell this was an appropriate assignment. Anthony sat surrounded by percussion instruments ranging from a small hand drum to a rather small gong cymbal. It was a very trippy mix of shimmering chimes and gong howls all sitting nicely with an electric bass guitar drone. If you’re expecting some catchy hooks or pop lyrics, look elsewhere, this music was truly psychedelic with no discernible structure. It was a nice display of the genre and it would have been very enjoyable to anyone who is into that sort of thing.

Gavra and her gallery are a breath of fresh air for Peoria, and the community she has created is unique. It’s about time downtown Peoria has a nightlife other than a bar. I would suggest a visit to anyone who hasn’t been down there yet.

Production Notes - The Aposematics - Hands On - Stop Motion - A Blue Civilian Production

The latest release from The Aposematics and Blue Civilian Productions is the 2:40 stop motion video set to the tune of "Hands On". Weighing in at about 1,200 still shots after editing, I ended up cutting out about 300 photos. The majority of the video was shot sequentially, making most of the editing easier.

After experimenting with a little bit of stop motion I decided to shoot a full music video. We shot the stills exclusively on Lori's Nikon D40 with an attached SB-400 Speedlight. Unfortunately, continuous shooting ate up the flash's batteries quickly and caused darker frames to litter the video. External static umbrella lighting was used when necessary. A laminated sticker and dry erase marker were used for the doll's face and Hershey's dark chocolate syrup was used to simulate what little blood is present in the film. The stop motion action shots of Ken and Dan playing bass and drums were shot in the Morton building we use as a practice space (partially). The higher angles were achieved by attaching the Nikon to a tripod and triggering the shutter with a remote. Lori cleverly thought up the paper hearts and confetti for her kill scene finale. Some thought went into picking colors that would show up appropriately in black and white. Ken, being the “man behind the curtain” was potentially the hardest message to get across, but we easily conveyed the idea by transposing the last bit of paper hearts over the blank monitor, and then again by cutting back to the doll with a similar facial expression.

All of the images were resized, cropped, auto-adjusted, and converted to grayscale with Adobe Photoshop batching. The images were then imported into Adobe Premiere Pro at 2 frames per still at 24fps. My ramshackle attempt at stop motion ran too quickly and was a little confusing at 2 frames per still. I eventually extended the stills to 3 frames per second; this effectively slowed down the action but made the video a bit choppy. The graphics were then added at the final stage and everything was nested and exported out at 720p.

Overall, this shoot was an incredible learning experience and required more precise edits than the other Aposematics videos. I really loved putting this video together, but it will take much more than just a whim for me to attempt another stop motion film anytime soon. I only have the utmost respect for the real kings and queens of stop motion. I have no doubt their patience is greater than mine.

One Year Ago Today in Burbank

"We didn't call him Eno, we called him Brian" said Jerden. I had just asked THE Dave Jerden what it was like working with Brian Eno. Dave was rough around the edges, quick phrased, and he had a harsh voice, so he didn't waste it on words. "They ripped off an African soul musician on that album, completely ripped him off", Dave balked about Talking Heads' fourth studio album "Remain In Light". Apparently Dave was wary to admit how groundbreaking David Byrne and Brian Eno's creation really was. I could have disagreed, but obviously Dave knew way more about it than I did. I actually didn't like the album the first time I heard it, but it grew on me, and before I knew it, it was my favorite Talking Heads album. There I was sitting in Burbank and right before my eyes was the man who engineered and mixed that very album. He was tall, grey haired, and the whole time I was there he was wearing his black leather jacket and often sitting out under the gazebo with a cigarette. I remember him saying that "things are different now", which I suppose he couldn't be more right. I can't really give the guy any justice in a blog post, the man has worked with more influential artists than I have fingers and toes. Either way, here was a man that had a direct influence on my musical teens and twenties. At this point I couldn't even imagine the headache of mixing "Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)", I'd only wish to have the caffeine and the patience to deal with that much content.

Lori and I saw little of Dave while we were in Burbank, but when he was there he made quick decisions and was gone in a flash. Our final day in the studio was made up of mostly vocals and that was the day Dave sat down and worked with Bryan to comp out several of my vocal tracks. It's a brave new world when someone like Dave is talking out the lyrics you wrote and saying which parts of which take should go in the final mix. I remember many times during our few days in California looking at Lori with that "Holy Crappuccino, I can't believe this is happening" look.

When it came to the nitty gritty Bryan Carlstrom was the workhorse. Bryan was either sitting at the studio's gorgeous giant analog console, tapping on his iPhone, clicking at Pro Tools, adjusting a mic here and there, or puffing at a cigar out under the gazebo(actually Bryan's right-hand man John Nuss was the one making mic adjustments and fixing cord issues most of the time). Bryan seemed the more personable man between him and Dave. Bryan waxed philosophical about his days at Capitol Records, when reverb was made with speakers in empty concrete bunkers in a basement on Hollywood & Vine. These had in turn become the smoking dens for many an artist once digital reverb came along. I also remember a mention of the maintenance elevator that went to a secret floor where the booze was kept. The illustrious red light on the top of the Capitol Records building that flashed ever so steadily in the California midnights was actually Morse code for something or other (a certain vulgar phrase about a particular studio manager comes to mind).

Bryan, who was from the Midwest, just happened to be the pioneer of Pro Tools. He singlehandedly had a stress attack, an epiphany, and then re-routed a few wires to make the first hit album using Pro Tools, turning it into an industry standard. He has worked with just about any hit '90s act you can think of, and, to me, seemed full of steam to keep working for another ten decades, if it was at all possible.

The one wish I have now, a full year later, is that I could have heard what Lori and I created in the midst of such genius. Unfortunately, Konami created a sub-par game, and had an even more sub-par development department. The game had already flopped by the time we hit the tarmac at LAX. Our song never saw the light of day. I still feel, however, that this was my greatest musical achievement, I came, I saw, I conquered. Here's to the future!

For more information on this event please see the following posts:

Day 1 - Chasing The Sun

Day 2 - Into The Studio

Day 3 - The Work (The Fun)

American English - September 11th, 2009, Peoria, IL - Summer Serenade Concert

Lori and I headed to Lakeview Museum this last Friday night to check out American English. We both got some great footage and photos. They play Peoria at least once or twice every year, and they're definitely worth seeing. If you like the Beatles, you'll love the American English experience!

Becoming a Gearhead

I finally have everything I need at my fingertips. I've been twiddling with recording gear for about twelve years. It all started with a crappy logitech long neck computer microphone, a little program called DDClip Pro, and a lot of Mountain Dew. Needless to say I recorded a lot of crappy sounding stuff back then. Of course I moved on over the years to the "hotshit" Radioshack mixer(an endearing term coined by the publisher of the linked image) paired with the low quality super omnidirectional Radioshack microphone (there was nothing super about it). I recorded the second Warpharin album "Simple as It Seems" with all of those along with a cheap Radioshack keyboard all by my lonesome in a little apartment just outside of Chicago about 9 years ago. The first Warpharin album (the name escapes me at the moment) was recorded multi tracking with a karaoke machine lovingly called the Flubmaster 5000.

I've had my work cut out for me trying to make shit sound a little less like shit over the years. I often wonder how I made things sound better than they really were through digital effects and cramming signals through compressor plug-ins on slow Windows based machines. Some of the songs I put out simply because of the immense amount of time I spent cleaning them up and tweaking every last little thing I could to get it to sound just a little bit better. Running quiet four A.M. out of tune acoustic guitar recordings through noise reduction plug-ins three times over and then wondering why it sounded so damn crappy (but better than it did originally). Micing blown speaker keyboards with twelve dollar generic Wal-Mart computer microphones because I didn't have a headphone adapter to plug the keyboard directly into a slower than mud PC. And likewise with table top tape recorders because I couldn't put a cassette tape directly into a computer. Splicing wires together with scotch tape because I couldn't afford to by the right cord for the job.

I wonder why I did it really. My budget for recording wasn't enough to buy the real necessities, let alone anything worth it's weight in salt. No one in their right mind would waste as much time as I did trying to rig things up and expect any real good sounding results. But I did it anyway, because I'm insane. I'm addicted to it. I've had a real romance with recording music. I'm extremely close to it. It is my pet.

Fast forward to present day and things couldn't be easier. Everything is digital these days. I was wrestling with digital recording before it was even close to being cool. Alas, I have everything I need, quick, simple, astoundingly good sound quality without a lot of work. I've been so caught up with getting the songs recorded that I forgot to actually write the songs. Now is the time. Now I need to write the songs because the sound quality won't fail me... I just hope there's still some music left in my head...

The vocal booth: (w/ MXL990)


The vocal booth with my Roland JC-120:


The M-Audio Axiom 61, Mackie Onyx 1220, and the slower than mud Windows based PC:


Our (Lori and I) guitar collection (Squier, Daisy Rock - Rock Candy, Regent, Fender Stratocaster):


Vintage and Newer Amplifier Medley (the Fender is my brother's)
Crate BT100, Fender Concert, Roland JC-120:


My pedal board (Ernie Ball Volume, Electro-Harmonix Memory Man w/Hazarai and Electro-Harmonix Big Muff, Boss DS-1)


Finally, some time to think: