Tag Archives: music

Two Sisters and a Show, The Felice Brothers, Jim Thorpe, PA

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Last time I posted about The Felice Brothers it was to express disappointment I wouldn’t be able to see them again anytime soon. However, things change and last week we made it to the show at the Mauch Chunk Opera House. I have to give thanks to a great  friend (you know who you are, Renee) who had been to Jim Thorpe a few times and encouraged me to make the trek there. In the end my sister and I found our way there for another Two Sisters and a Show 24 hour trip/town exploration/manic dancing good time last Friday. Consensus all the way around was this was an extraordinary night and I’m so glad we didn’t miss it. Here’s a little photo essay thanks to Adrienne’s powerful new fun toy: her DSL camera. All of these images were taken by the two of us, enjoy, feel free to share (and if you do please credit Two Sisters and A Show!)

I won’t mention the little side adventure that found me back in Jim Thorpe two days later after a tire blew out on the highway on the way back home from Philadelphia to Cleveland…needless to say, I’m home and still reveling in the good times, and in the end the tire adventure will become just a footnote. Did I say I was posting photos? Here’s a few for now, but a proper post is coming down the line with a link to flickr images, so check back. Much love to everyone we met in Jim Thorpe, if you’re reading this thanks for making a great trip even greater. I don’t think we’ve ever visited a town where we’ve made so many friends in such a short amount of time.

As for The Felice Brothers live, you’ll read about them all over the place in days to come, I still maintain you have to see them for yourself, words and photos capture but a fraction of their contagious energy.

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Monday Musical and Artful Treats

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Hello there keyboard, nice to see you again today! I think I’ll spend today’s post sharing a backlog of some finds that perhaps will brighten up and inspire someone’s day. I’m going to share these willy nilly in no category or chronological order so have fun having a poke through these.

The Penny Black Remedy
Back in January, The Penny Black Remedy were in the studio at Total Rock Radio’s Anarchy on the Airwaves over in London to do an acoustic set, and the program unfurled as one of the most enjoyable and funniest interviews I’ve tuned into. Truly. It’s worth listening for some great insight into the band both mentally and musically, and you can listen here via the Anarchy on the Airwaves: The Penny Black Remedy podcast.

kudu-lah critters
Just last week on a jaunt through the streets of New York City (a 16+ mile excursion on foot over two days from Chelsea to SoHo, to the East Village, and from Madison Square Park to Central Park and everything in between), with no real destinations but rather full exploration in mind, we stumbled upon an artist market in Madison Square Park. Twice. On the second jaunt through the market I ended up standing next to a booth that was the home of the crazy fun kudu-lah critters (which are on the loose in the streets of New York City). I subsequently ended up bringing home a mason jarred Maverick Snail, a little guy who speaks to me on many levels, from his nomadic tendencies all the way down to his chuck taylors. Thanks to kudu-lah creator Kenneth for allowing a photo to be taken for the blog so I could share his work here, you need to have a look at what he’s up to! Maverick Snail, by the way, now happily lives at the top of my desk hutch in the engine room/office of Tulip Tree Studios!

Kudu-lah critters can also be found at the shop here!

 

The art of Ian Felice
Continuing on in the world of visual treats, I was delighted and also totally blown away to recently discover the artwork of Felice Brother, Ian Felice. Not only is he an amazingly gifted songwriter, but his paintings, some of which are up for sale, are just as inspired and beautiful. You can check out his work here. I’d post an image link from here, but I think it’s better viewed when you see the body of his work together to get the full scope of feeling his work emits. And then there’s the music of The Felice Brothers here. A whole wonderful world of images and sound are contained within those two links.

Photography from Argentina
From a totally different realm altogether (not music, not art, but perhaps we’ll classify it as earth art), blog friend, collaborator and Mondo Instante co-creator Mecha who resides in Argentina, has been posting images of the ashes of the volcanic plume from the Peyehuen Volcano erupting in Chile. The image of the car is one she shared on our Mondo Instante page on Facebook, and is a photo she took of an Argentine vehicle covered in Chilean volcano ashes. The other is the clouded sky where she lives. She also reports that school has been closed where she is as a safety measure. Hopefully she will continue to photo document through the whole process (and stay safe as well!). Thanks for the window into South America Mecha!

I’ll leave it at that for today, a handful of some great stuff for to be plundered. As for me, I’m breaking out the ink pens again today, so much inspiration abounds!

Musical Heads of the world, unite! (New project announcement)

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Back in the early ’90′s while in college (hey! stop calculating.), I spent some of my electives on a world music course. It focused specifically on the music of Africa, India and Asia. Twice a week we’d sit in an auditorium and the instructor would parade out exotic looking instruments—tablas, zithers, djembe, mbiras and the like—for us to touch, hear and even play if we wanted, as he spoke to us of the rich cultural and musical history behind the instruments. At the end of the semester we each went home with a mix tape of related music that the professor created for us, which still resides somewhere in my stash of cherished cassette tapes. It was easily one of my favorite classes and in the end cemented an already whetted appetite for the music of other cultures. Flash forward to today and you’ll spot a continuity in a lot of my musical preferences—artists in the decidedly non-western genres, as well as in the artists and musicians who embrace/incorporate and/or celebrate “world” music (I use quotation marks here as there has long been a debate on using this term to describe anything other than western music as “world” music, as this implies a very narrow viewpoint that everything besides rock and pop is “world” and something other than what is “standard” or the norm). At the top of my list of preferences of those who celebrate(d) the vast spectrum of musical styles of our planet is of course Joe Strummer, king of musical heads (a term he used often), whose passion and embrace of “all things rap and ting”  ultimately resulted in his peerless and genre-boundless London Calling BBC radio program.

For a while I tossed around the idea of starting a series here on the blog, perhaps a weekly feature on various genres of music around the world (a la Marianne’s Multi Kulti Pandora’s Vase, with an expanded range of genres and styles), but then I got to thinking that maybe it could become a great catalyst for another ongoing project that interested readers could get involved in the fun as well.

If you’ve made it this far into my post and I’m still holding your interest, you’re probably a great candidate for such an undertaking. It’s a project we’ll refer to henceforth as Musical Heads (big hat tip there as I cannot think of anything else more appropriate to call it than that) and it will work like this.

GUIDELINES:

Topic Selection
Select a specific region and/or genre of music or artist that you are passionate about that you’d like to explore and learn even more about. Something decidedly non-western or mainstream.

YES to broad topics such as “West African,” or “South American” or as refined as “Nigerian,” “cumbia,” “soca,”  “bhangra” (etc. etc.)  I’ll also welcome specific genres within western culture (blues, zydeco, ska, reggae, punk). Classical is also ok. You can also choose a single artist if you wish.

NO to mainstream pop or rock, and no top 40 please.

Before you begin, either leave a comment here on the blog, or send me an email at the usual shan at tuliptreestudios dot com to let me know what genre/topic you are proposing so we can avoid any overlap, I’d like each topic to be unique.

Project Details
Once you have selected your topic, poke around, do some research, turn up some interesting information and background on your topic to share with everyone. Within your guest post include the following:

1) A few to several paragraphs of information and background on your genre/topic
2) Links to outside sources so that those who are interested can explore further
3) Two to five links to song clips (Youtube or Soundcloud) that will be included in the post

and here’s the biggie…

4) Create something in response to/inspired by your choice—a sketch or drawing, a photograph, written words (thoughts, poem or musings), sculpture, collage whatever, something visual of your creation we can include in the post.

Deadline
I’d like to keep this open ended, especially considering the size of the project and the probability of it needing lots of time for you to prepare. It will be an ongoing project that I will continue you to roll out the posts as they come in. For now, to light a fire under your pants (not in your underpants) I’ll say “end of August” for the first wave.

P=ce³
As mentioned previously, and since this is a very involved project that will demand time from you, I would love to offer everyone who actually makes it through and submits to this project a little something in return. My little cheesy make believe scientific formula, P=ce³ is my short hand for the Perpetual Creative Energy component of the blog in which I either find donations or will provide myself, artwork, music (cds and other goodies from bands the blog champions), books and other items of interest to give in an effort to perpetuate the spewing forth of creative effort. (In short, I’m basically bribing you to play along with me!)

Right now I’m in the process of gathering items and I can say that I will be offering at least one copy of The Rough Guide World Music series (book) and have a possible donation from a friend in a rather good band that I love very much, and I will also be offering up one of my giclee prints. That’s three items so far. I’ll post them up as they come in (if you have anything to donate to this please get in touch!).

As for who gets what, I’ll work that out as we go, but I will say those who respond earliest to say they are participating will get dibs on first choices.

So . . . is there anyone out there willing to participate? I hope so. I will be doing at least one post if not more, hope you’ll jump in and share some of your unique musical passions. Let the game begin!