Endless Night v3.0

Well, its 9ish in the morning, and I’ve been up all nite working on various things. While I take a break, I feel I should update you on what’s been happening!

Here’s a (not so) brief update on what the hell we’ve been up to!

I am proud to announce that we just finished a live record for the mighty Earl Greyhound, which we recorded in two nights @ The Calhoun School on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It was in their great auditorium that a wonderful stage was set and a very attentive crowd witnessed one night of electric EG and one night of acoustic EG. A good chunk of the material was new, and I will tell you that they are spreading their wings wide and writing some interesting songs….maybe not quite what you’d expect if you only know their electric material, but Matt and Kamara play around NYC in various groups and solo doing acoustic numbers quite often, playing much more folk singer/songwriter oriented jams. They are a very versatile bunch, and if you’re a fan you’ll most certainly enjoy that some of that is seeping into the Earl G. I spent a couple of days in April with them in a Conn. house recording demos for their new record which they’ll be recording in LA in December, and I must say that the new material holds up quite well to their previous efforts. There are full on rockers in “Oye Vaya” and “Sea of Japan” giving you that trademark EG rock sparkle, and others like “Shotgun” and “Holy Immortality” which are very moody and brooding, stretching their sonic spectrum.

The live album selection, however, is comprised entirely of their acoustic evening, which for a good portion features Matt on a beautiful Steinway grand piano. If you catch them on tour you can purchase one of these bad boys, freshly burned from Matt’s laptop….hot off the presses!

In other news, Jenda Wight’s record is being finalized for mixing and an early 2008 release…we’ll keep you posted, some very exciting things happening!

We’re also nearing the completion of Anna Marie Ayers record, which we’ve been working on since the end of summer. Nick is waist deep in string arrangements and preparing scores for some string player(s) to come in and lively up Miss Ayers beautiful songs.

While we’re on the subject of strings, our friend (and first call session violinist) Caleb Burhans was just featured in the NY Times in a 4 page article, showcasing an extremely talented musician and the many sides of his madness. He played all the strings on Jenda’s upcoming record, and plays in many ensembles, my favourite being ITSNOTYOUITSME, a two piece group which includes Grey McMurray, from Bermuda.

Thanks to all who came out to see us play in the freezing cold @ the NYC Marathon. We played a couple of sets, digging into some older material and dusted off a few covers, while barely being able to feel our fingers. Good times! Nova Clutch has a wealth of new material we’re going to start digging into (and eventually recording)….but for now, you’ll have to catch these new nuggets live. Our next gig is @ Mercury Lounge December 18th w/The Dirty Pearls….its a fundraiser for Toys for Tots sponsored by The Village Voice. Its sure to be a pretty raucous evening…we’ll keep you posted when we know more.

We’ve also been frantically rehearsing two sets of music for our friend Gif, who is putting on a hip hop/musical sort of fiasco at BAM Cafe on Nov. 14th. It will feature myself, Nick, and Scott as the 3 piece backup band, along with vocalists, percussion, and saxophone. Gif will be performing as an MC and giving monologues in a two set, one night only performance. And its free! I’ve been playing a ton of keyboards for this one, so its been extra challenging as I haven’t played the keys this much in a good long while. Starting to get the swing of it again. I’m going to bring out the Fender Rhodes for that gig, which is a pain in the ass, but SO much more fun to play than a damn midi controller. That show is on November 14th. Check www.bam.org for details

But I will say, none of that even comes close to being as important as today’s landmark election. I won’t get deep into a political diatribe here, but I will express my excitement in Obama’s very spirited and well run campaign. He has made believers out of many doubters (and many Clinton supporters), and my heart tells me that his is the man that can at least get many of the things wrong with this country back on track. Charisma goes a LONG way when you’re in the public eye, and he’s got it for miles. But charisma won’t bring on change, big ideas will….and he has plenty of those he’s been fighting for.

We can only hope for the best in all of this. Godspeed Obama!

And for the final night of CMJ, I played a gig with Jenda Wight upstairs @ Pianos in the LES. This was a more broke down than usual gig, playing just with guitar and drums. I cranked up the reverb and let the guitars sail behind Miss Wight while she belted like only she can. We played to what seemed like a very distracted crowd, but as it turned out, everyone was very much in tune with the music we were making and spent the rest of the evening sharing drinks with many new friends. After a little while, we all wandered over to The Living Room’s Googie’s Lounge and watched a great singer/songwriter from the UK named Saul Ashby. His sound is contemporary, but most certainly his voice is from another generation, very much akin to a Cat Stevens, and even very early Marc Bolan.

From there I took a ride upto the China Club where the Greek pop singer Annet Artani was performing her debut american single, which isn’t released yet. She sang and looked fabulous, and was joined on stage by Jamie Drastik. At that point, after a few drinks uptown, it was time for sleep. MUCH needed sleep.

It was a pleasure to spend some time with so many great people, play for hundreds of people who truly love music, and to hear some amazing performers. This is the first CMJ I have participated in, even though I’ve been in NYC for 8 years now, and I couldn’t be happier with how it went. Looking forward to what’s ahead!

This was truly one of the best shows I’ve ever played in my life….maybe the best. But getting up to the point where we played was a test in patience, and physical strength.

First, I should tell you that we were also helping put on this show by running and setting up the sound in conjunction with our friends @ Symmetry Sound. The way the day was supposed to go was that we were going to go there, utilize the sound system that was there, augment it with our own stage monitors, and rock the night away. This is not what happened.

In the morning, we were informed that the sound system in the space was insufficient for band rocking, so the Hall procured one for us. There was a catch of course, and that catch was that this sound system would need to be carried up a couple of very large flights of stairs. Along with all of our gear. The OTHER catch was that instead of getting in at 1pm to setup the show, we’d be getting in at 8pm because they had double booked the room and Teen Vogue’s fashion show was using the room as a “changing room.” I’m going to leave that alone.

SO, needless to say our schedule was slightly pushed back. Doors were supposed to open when we were allowed to get into the place to start setting up! There was some confusion about how people were gonna get in, etc etc etc. All the while we’re running around like crazy people trying to setup a sound system. After solving a myriad of sound problems, I finally got 5 minutes to find a corner of the space and warmup for 10 minutes. For almost all of those 10 minutes I was hassled by the guy from webster hall….I got changed, sang my do re mi’s and then went up on stage.

For the next 30 minutes we played almost nonstop, and cut out any jams that we had planned. Bloody Social had a time constraint and had to be on ASAP. The room was filled all the way to the back, somewhere to the tune of 600+ people. By the time we got most of the way through our set is when I realized how much fun I was having and that things were going great! During Grenade Pin, I had my first true vision of what playing in a rock band is supposed to be like. There were cameras, there were people jumping up and down, it was loud, sweaty, and drunk!

Everything about the set was a success, and we’d like to thank the many people who came down to show their support and rock with us!

The rest of the evening was filled with whiskey and plenty of great bands! Bloody Social brought their heavy rock to the place, and kept the party going…but then The London Souls, who just might be my fav live band in the world right now, killed it yet again, and closing with a ripping version of Lucille. The rest of the night gets blurrier to me, as the whiskey kept flowing! It was awash with familiar faces and wonderful new friends. Most certainly the most fun I’ve had playing a gig in a long time.

Thanks again to everyone who came out, and a big thanks to Dave Delzio and Matthew Morgan from Afropunk for planning a spectacular evening, despite the logistics.

Resting for Friday. WEBSTER HALL awaits!

CMJ Night #2 began early @ BLVD on the Bowery, rocking with some good friends and making some new ones, then heading to 205 where things got crazy. Shortly after arriving, Mr. Funkadelic himself George Clinton decides to make an appearance, definitely setting the mood for debauchery! The place got packed real quick, and stayed that way all nite. There were a couple bands on Atlantic Records (if I recall), and one of them played drums and sang, the other played keyboards and sang. Both were two pieces, and both were great! My memory doesn’t serve me very well as to who they were! After that, it was back to the studio for a rehearsal with Jenda Wight, preparing for our showcase on Saturday @ Pianos Upstairs. And then maybe some rest for once!

I was called upon yesterday to run sound for The London Souls & The So So Glos (which I had done previously at the market hotel a couple months back) for the Green Owl Records Showcase at the new and very cool Santo’s Party House. If you haven’t heard of this place, its really pretty amazing. Great room, great sound system, good vibes. Both bands played very very well, the Souls even covering “Its a Long Way To the Top (If You Wanna Rock and Roll) coming out of a jam. I was running sound on a crazy new digital Soundcraft live board. Its all touch screen and crazy looking, a bit like driving a starship at first, but then it all gets familiar once you get a couple of the menus. It was especially fun to run sound for the Souls because I’m in the midst of finishing up their debut record, and seeing them play live makes coming back to the studio recordings a challenge, because you want to capture that live energy. This is a young band, but they are very much a mature and fine tuned boogie machine. If you haven’t heard them yet, drop by their myspace and give a listen http://www.myspace.com/thelondonsouls They are bringing to blues/boogie based rock something that hasn’t been felt by me in a very long time, and what they do, they do very very well. Check them out if you haven’t already.

Nova Clutch is also gearing up for Friday, to do damage to Webster Hall. That info can be found on our myspace http://www.myspace.com/novaclutch

I highly suggest you come to that show

More tomorrow!

We’ve been extremely busy here at Casa Nova Studios, and there are a couple of shows we are doing for CMJ we’d like to make you aware of!

Nova Clutch will be playing its first ever CMJ showcase @ Webster Hall next Friday Night, October 24th. We’ll be joined by friends The London Souls, along with Bloody Social and other guests…for updated info, please visit:

www.myspace.com/novaclutch

Jenda Wight will also be having her first ever CMJ showcase at Pianos, Saturday October 25th. For more info, please visit:

www.myspace.com/jendawight

More to come! This is just the beginning of a flood of wonderful news.

As of Sept 30th, I have lived in this strange and twisted city of NYC for 8 years exactly. When I moved here, I was 19 years old, barely a clue about what I wanted or needed in life…but I knew I needed change. Drastic change. The kind of change that compels you to just drop everything and do something else entirely, whether that mean you move to a new city, or just cut ties with the old you and become the new one.

The old me died when I bought a highly cliché greyhound bus ticket, and took a fateful 25 hour bus ride to Port Authority, unable to rest my mind for even one moment, both excited and scared about what I was doing and what could come. That part hasn’t changed really. At this hour 8 years ago, I would be combing through a copy of the Village Voice, sitting on my friend Sarah’s couch @ NYU, looking desperately for an apartment anywhere. I slept on that couch for two weeks, going to school every afternoon, and looking for a place morning and night. I failed miserably at the apartment search, and after two weeks, thought I just might have to go back home to Iowa because I couldn’t find a damn thing. One of my new classmates at engineering school offered up an empty living room floor for a couple hundred dollars a month, and I jumped on the opportunity. This opportunity happened to be an almost two hour commute from 40th st and 8th ave, far north into the Bronx, but fuck it…what else did I have? So I met him at his mother’s building on 79th, and before trekking up to the Bronx to my new home, got to see my first New York rooftop and got to see the staggering view from way up high. We went to the Bronx, and I promptly took solace in my new wooden floor, which for the first few days, along with my denim jacket, would be my only comfort. I had barely a dollar to my name. I didn’t have any walls for privacy. I didn’t have anything except a guitar, a suitcase, and whatever I fit into my backpack. But I was here! And I was DEFINITELY alone.

The days were filled with engineering knowledge, trial and error, and the nights with fear, uncertainty, and regret. As with any major change, the first part of it will always be spent analyzing just what it is you’re changing. I did plenty of that. Plenty of walking around alone in my new city, learning the streets and searching for new friends, although I would not find any for some time. Which is just as well, I was here to learn and figure myself out at the moment. If there’s one thing I did know then and have learned since, is that the nighttime will always be a lonely time without someone at your side.

After 6 months on the living room floor, I graduated to an actual bedroom as one of the guys moved out. This bedroom was huge! But all that room was filled with a dark loneliness. I had left behind both love and friends in Iowa, and at nite when the only noises I could hear were the 5 train running by my window in the distance, this loneliness would eat me alive. Would I ever find this sort of love again, could I ever enjoy life and be as comfortable in a crazy city which is designed to destroy you? Ironically, these are still questions I ask myself today. I’m not even sure I have better answers than before, either. The only way I ever got by was by listening to and writing music. At that time in my life, there was Radiohead (who had just released their freaky Kid A), and lots of John Coltrane and Miles Davis (preferably live and together) and Jeff Buckley. Lots of times, I would take one song that was affecting me and just put it on repeat, sometimes for days and weeks, like some sort of drone in mood. One particular song, John Coltrane’s version of Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye, is what sent me into a nostalgic mood today. When I moved into my new room, it was spring time, and I would open the windows and could hear the trains running by once every little while, with this sweet song playing over and over, almost lulling me to tears because it was so beautiful and so melancholy at the same time, and I couldn’t figure out whether I was elated to be in New York, alone and on the mission, or heartbroken and alone.

As its 5 am now, I guess I’m kind of feeling the same a little bit. Wondering what went wrong…wondering what’s going right. I’m not sure if you ever really get to know which is which. I know at this point I’ve accomplished a lot more in my life..hell, a good chunk of things I set out to do in NYC I have accomplished, but I definitely don’t know a whole lot more about what love and companionship are supposed to be and why. It always seems hit or miss; one moment its amazing and you’re high on life, the next, you’re trying to sort through some craziness. Maybe that’s just the pace that I live my life at, and maybe that’s just love in general. I’m sure I’ll write something about it if I were to ever figure it out.

In the meantime, I’d just like to send love and good karma to the people who have helped me and loved me on this journey. After 8 years, I can truly say its just beginning. I just hope I can be as brave as I was when I was 19.

Even if you’re not in school, the spiritual ending of summer has always been when you start school back up. But I’ll tell you, being an adult, the summer isn’t nearly as awesome. I think it gets less awesome too. Maybe that’s just global warming or something. Regardless, its never as exciting as having 3 months off to do absolutely whatever the hell you want. Those days, my friends, were blessings you didn’t realize were blessings.

This summer has been a tough one, filled with many hardships, heartbreaks, and just as many victories, but I can’t help but feel a little nostalgic for the times when I could just take a drive and listen to music and enjoy a cool evening, without all of the things that weigh heavy on me now. The pressures of running my own business, balancing my personal life with the ever quickening pace of my professional life, and the flood of creativity I try to harness from myself gets rather maddening, and sometimes its just best to stop everything and breathe. Not that I’m very good at that, but I’m trying.

There are so many wonderful things and people in my life right now I’d hate to sound like I’m complaining, because I’m certainly not. But everything good or bad can eventually overwhelm your senses and mind. Right now I’m on overload, giving all I’ve got to everything I have, hoping that it all matters to someone. I know everything works out in the end but when it isn’t worked out yet, there is a lot to think about. Off to the slumber now.

i’m going slightly mad lately. I guess this is what happens when you are hell bent on defeating the evil that holds you back, but I can’t help think I’m missing sometimes. I work oh so very hard for an easier life, and I know it will come…but there are some days when I feel that this world will keep me from it for a reason. As if I am here to fight forever, one small battle after another, test after test. Most days I feel like I’m winning, but then sometimes the sweet precious things slip through my fingers and I wonder if all the battles I’ve won will ever amount to anything.

Everyday something breaks that needs fixing, or a misunderstanding causes heartache on both sides, I have to wonder just a little bit if any of it is worth it. Can you truly find a place in this life that is yours? And furthermore, can you find it with another soul and share it with them when life does everything in its power to make that impossible? If your battles are bigger than you could ever hope to be, do you ever get to stop fighting? How long can you fight before you become a crippled solider of life? Lately I feel like I’m on top of the world and underneath the boot of the doorman of the next level…like every time I get a little bit ahead, its thrown in my face like napalm, mentally negating what I thought I’d gained.

Today I spent a good 13 hours repairing a computer which I recently repaired. Assuming the worst, I guessed that the computer was fried, showing symptoms of a computer totally on the way out. A month ago I had done the same thing, trying to save ourselves thousands of dollars and trying not to fall behind in the immense amount of music we’re currently creating. While I have continued to win the battle against unspent dollars, my patience in troubleshooting has cost me days of my life quite literally burning hours staring into a metal box, prodding, unplugging, and replugging, hoping for a different outcome. There is a list of three zillion things I’d rather be doing than fixing computers, but you see, we have this music making mission, and well, we NEEEED the computers! NEED. Much like a druggie gives in to his addiction, I must constantly surrender to the needs of these computers (and technology, for that matter), as they are the tool that allows me to push my life forward and do the thing I love most. I just can’t help feeling like I lose a little bit of my soul every time I have to fight these stupid battles, reading manuals and troubleshooting insane things. I guess what I’m realizing is that I don’t have a choice, but it burns me to not have a choice.

Is it a curse or a blessing to be ambitious? I have hardly slowed my pace of creativity and growth since I realized my mission when I was 14 years old. And I’m not saying that I am burnt out, far from it. I am most certainly a very resilient person, and even more patient yet. But sometimes I just wish I was dumb and simple, not pushing towards anything, not dreaming the biggest dream possible. Maybe once I could just wake up, and truly do nothing for a whole day without the guilt eating me alive. Maybe once I could rest instead of optimizing, breathe instead of learn more and more and more.

I guess maybe I’m just tired. Blessed, thankful, and tired. There are so many horrible things coming to light every day, and it weighs heavy on the heart and mind, but at 6 am I am truly thankful for those around me that I spend my time, and those that I love dearly that get very little of my time, much to my dismay. I guess my true battle in this life is for balance…and right now, I’m not winning, but at least I’m moving ahead. I can only hope the rest works itself out.

May the record show that if the battles end today, I can say I have fought for the right reasons. And off I go to the half sleep.