Tag: that mike

starving for change

The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-sufficient Living in the Heart of the City.

Persistence. It’s important to try. The boxes have been melting away, leaving the clear bones of a more functional home behind, newly blue and shiny red, that will be nice to live in, once we’ve finished sculpting muscle from the remaining meaty mess. I still need to buy brackets for the glass shelves, chemicals to take the tacky glue off the big hall mirror, wall-paper glue and a smoothing brush, put up the shelves and the last mirror, drawer my clean clothes, arrange the hall closet, shelve the still-to-be-mailed packages, rinse the last two batches of the dusty dishes, sort the last pots and pans into under the sink, catalogue what’s being given away and post the list on-line, launder the dish towels, fold them away, organize the bathroom, disinfect the counters and sink, bathe the cats, inventory what’s left, (as I’m sure to miss something), schedule an optometrist appointment, sweep the hall, vacuum, all of which will likely take me until Friday, if I don’t get any help, then take a week off. Finally.

That Mike‘s going to be in town not this weekend, but next weekend, playing the Folk Fest as a featured artist, which will take a bit of the stress away. He might even be coming along to see Crispin Glover with us, (us being, so far, me, Duncan, David, and possibly Lung), which I expect will be oodles of fun. It won’t be until after he’s left that I’m going to tackle the wall-paper that’s going up in the living-room, a vogue knock-off pattern of black and gray flowers on white. I need some time where I’m not concentrating on cleaning, on tidying, on sorting and shelving and assimilation.

Hanging the wall-paper will be an entire day’s work, even if I move all the furniture and wash the wall the night before. I’m not looking forward to it just yet, though I know after a break I will again. The Folk Fest will be a perfect distraction. Already I’ve started figuring an itinerary, planning on who to see and when. Start Saturday with Mike at Stage Five, with Kobo Town and Dubblestandart, move on to Eliza Gilkyson at Stage Three, snack on a delicious picnic, spend some time at the super sekrit backstage hammock, wander, dance, find Mike’s next show, and end the night with the glorious Béla Fleck. Sunday, more of the same, except with Jayme Stone and Mansa Sissoko, Jorane, and my once acquaintance, (friend of Shane and Mike), Michael Franti, who let me stay on his couch once, back in the nineties.

my heart the hunter

Walking across the street in the rain, there’s someone in front of me with a spiderman brand popsicle, the blue eyes two wan gum-balls that look like they were manufactured years before I was born. “Where did he get that?”, I wonder, searching my mind for available corner stores and coming up with nothing. Downtown east side, one block from the epicenter, I try to imagine what it tastes like as I step over a gray man slumped wetly on the sidewalk, dead aside from his lonely muttering.

I have two job interviews today, one with an e-music company I’ve done temp work with, one with Kokoro Dance, a butoh group I deeply admire. I’m looking forward to both of them, as they present vastly different challenges, and can’t help hoping I do well at both. It would be the greatest of blessings to have even one regular job. Living freelance has been hurting, especially considering how much flaky management I’ve had to deal with. I want it to be over with. I’d like a desk again, please and thank you.

In more good news, That Mike called from somewhere between Chicago and Madison yesterday, (on tour with Buckethead again), sounding so sorry he forgot my birthday that the earth might swallow him whole. It blows my mind sometimes, how nice he is. There’s a depth to his sincerity far past anything I can match these days. It seems to go one for miles, far past any horizon, glad for the world without end.

I still need to call him back, actually, him and Adam both, but for that I need a calling card, and for that I need to find out what in sam hill is going on with my bank. I wired money to someone in Alberta, only to find out that it was immediately rescinded, and the ATM wouldn’t let me take out all of my rent. Bah. Trouble. Not everything this weekend was good news. Almost, but not quite.

There’s nothing quite like the magic of Mike Silverman

Personal favourite, occasional light of my life, That 1 Guy, the melodious master of the magic pipe, is still on tour! (Watch some live performances!)

May 24, 2008 – Bella Music Fest – Geneva, MN

May 28, 2008 – The Aquarium (Dempsey’s Upstairs) – Fargo, ND

May 29, 2008 – Teatro Zuccone – Duluth, MN

May 30, 2008 – Riversplash W/ BUCKETHEAD – Milwaukee, WI

May 31, 2008 – Park West W/ BUCKETHEAD – Chicago, IL

June 1, 2008 – Barrymore Theater W/ BUCKETHEAD – Madison, WI

June 2, 2008 – The Picador W/ BUCKETHEAD – Iowa City, IA

June 3, 2008 – The Waiting Room W/ BUCKETHEAD – Omaha, NE

June 4-8, 2008- Wakarusa Festival- Lawrence, KS

June 25-30, 2008- Festival Intl. De Jazz- Montreal, QC

July 5, 2008 – Lakeview Arts and Music Festival – Chicago, IL

July 6-8, 2008 – Cisco Systems Ottawa Bluesfest – Ottawa, ON

July 12-13, 2008 – Blissfest Amphitheater- Cross Village, MI

July 18-20, 2008 – Vancouver Folk Festival- Vancouver, BC

the only theme I could find is black

Sidewalk Psychiatry graffiti.

365 day one hundred & eight: have a nice day

This is a story: ink hair, Queen street, where the roots are, I walked barefoot, crucified by how beautiful he was, how beautiful he could be, I was unknown, achingly young, it was perfect enough for me. Learning the boundaries of narrative, learning the theme and flow of biography. Another: ink hair, on stage in love, wings as wide as geometry, meeting, a lobby, a lost book, a romance of hotel rooms and late night cameras, smoked with his passions, it was more than it seemed to be, and sometimes less. Summaries, diagrams, lists. An old project is percolating in my head with a newer idea, photographs, coloured string.

He doesn’t like it when I chew gum, but he watches me take out my hair pins as if the act carries the same intimacy as removing my clothing.

Being constructed naturally of disciplined angles, his only defense was to move with a maximum of constant, weightless grace.

Chapter headings in the shape of their hands, page count off how much poetry I can wring from their skin. Something is taking shape: ink hair, a familiar bar, an unfamiliar feeling of awe, music parallel to skill, traveling the next day, his unmatchable grin, every day always too far away, a myth, circling the world twice to end everything thirty feet from where it began. If I took a photograph of every one and layered them, there might be details submerged, but perhaps a clarity for all of that. It looks like: ink hair, eyes meeting, singing in the street, a miracle, his poetry, his children later on the phone, impossible, the sweetest thing.

Digital culture-inspired oil paintings.

keep the engine running

1guyporphyre frontyard

photos, unsurprisingly, by lung liu

“This life turned out nothing like I’d planned.” “Why not?” “When I was younger, living in L.A., I only wanted to grow up to be a famous pro-skateboarder. Pretty good at it too, not one of the insane guys, but up there.” “So what happened?” “My father moved us back to San Francisco and I became a musician.”

Saying goodbye, listening to the taste of every word that’s falling from my mouth like a flower petal, pearls spilling on the floor, why doesn’t he hear them? I hope the waiter doesn’t slip. A fortune of curiosity rilling across the floor. Formica table, silver edged, I’ve written about this before. It seems to be a place I say farewell to lovers. Late night, wishing we had picked the music, juke box saviors, noise, funk, tanned in the red light. My taste buds are crying out for the flavour of his sentence structure, how I find myself pronouncing his the word friends. A wild-eyed longing for something new, for all the stories he has to give the world, suffering from never enough. We should have, his future, another time, my past, we could have, but we won’t. Rain check. I want to lick his eyes, tri-coloured, red in the middle like a demon, green edged, the colour of jealousy, getting to fly away and jump away from here, cramped maybe, but I can’t care about that. Amazing. Summertime. Warmth. I’ll see him then, same old city, secrets open, wide, blazing. Press passes. Another stage, another show. Performances on and off, back behind fences, over by a beach, tucked around the lake. Maybe I’ll catch him a rabbit, eight track ears, folding back the soft fur, the sunburned faces of the people in the front row. For once, I don’t mind that I crossed the river. At least he held my hand.

“When I was sixteen, I had a decision land in my lap which would have changed everything. He was very rich, very famous. I see the face of the girl who said yes on magazines.” “I think you made the right choice.” “I think so too, or at least, I like to think so. Sometimes it’s hard to tell, but right now, all of it brought me to being here with you, and I’m okay with that. That feels alright by me.”

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free

On the heels of my time in Seattle, then my time in Whistler, my lover came through town for a weekend. And broke up with me. But it was lovely. My blood is still gently humming contentment from the weekend with the same satisfaction found in tying a good knot. Mike and I had the nicest, kindest, most genial, and convivial split-up I have ever encountered, then spent all of Sunday on The Best Date We Never Had. Seriously. I feel all warm and fuzzy and completely and utterly loved, all the way from the roots of my multi-dyed hair to the very tips of my bare little toes.

Saturday started out badly, we had a worrisome phone-call notable only for the gulf of heart-bruising silence that ran underneath everything we said, but it brightened immeasurably as soon as we met at the club. There’s something baked into his smile which unfailingly cheers me up, like an open door with sunshine on the other side.

The gig was marvelous, everyone had a fantastic time. The albums don’t do him justice, they’re great music, but seeing him live.. it’s an extraordinary, inspiring experience. He twists, dances, and contorts around his instrument, setting a mad pace thick joyful exuberance. I’ve been to his concerts more than anyone else’s and yet I still don’t think I quite have the words to describe what it’s like. There was one boy dancing along at the front so enthusiastically a wind came off his limbs.

Thankfully, it was an early night, with another band playing after, so we got to pack up and go for dinner at a half-way reasonable hour, something which doesn’t happen very often. We went to the best Korean Tapas Fusion place, over on Robson, with James, Lung, Claire, her boyfriend, and my mother, Vicki. Delicious, nutritious, and tremendous fun. We toasted unlikely things, celebrated, and ate the perfect amount of far too much. On the ride back to my place, when it was just the two of us again, we went over the conversation we had neglected before, fitting our words together like the devout gears of a crystal mechanism, casual and insistent, gently examining our language to see where we’d gone and what would happen next. When we got to my place, it was somehow finally okay to go in and sleep alone.

Then all of Sunday, as if to make up for lost potential time, we spent on The Best Date We Never Had. He called when he woke up, drove straight over, graciously crammed into my windowsill with me so Lung could take our portrait, then brought me out to Pnohm Pehn, one of my favourite restaurants, for a few hours of religious experience late afternoon breakfast, then to La Casa Gelati, home to 208 flavours, for double-scoop ice-cream cones. When it was time to scoot over to the gig, we had elbow room enough to sit in the car and talk music before going in and facing set-up, and when it was time to vanish before the show, we settled into a coffee-shop with delicious tea to talk politics and the state of our worlds. (The Cold war, Rush, growing up believing in The Nuke, where we were when the Berlin Wall went down, the natural disasters created by man.)

I took video, That 1 Guy playing the Railway Club, April 5th & 6th: Forgotten Whales, How’s ‘Bout Those Holes in the Moon, Buttmachine, Somewhere Over the Rainbow (on the magic saw), Dig (on the magic boot), Solea (w. a bit of Iron man), The Moon is Disgusting (It’s Made of Cheese), Cameo’s Word Up finale, and one just for me, as I threw panties at the stage in Seattle.

After that we went for late night burger and shakes and the waiter thought we were so cute drinking two strawed from the milkshake that he took our picture. I even got a kiss goodnight at the door. It’s like we should break-up all the time, “I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN, where should we go for dinner?” So though I’m suddenly single, it was done with such grace that I feel completely undamaged. He figured out the magic combination, like how to kiss angels without being scalded.

go out with a bang, but not, but yes, but no, but YES!!


That 1 Guy live at the Railway Club, April 5th, picture by Keith loh

Last night was stellar! I’ve been getting incredible enthusiastic thank-you’s from all the people I convinced to come down. Here’s a sneak peek of some of what you missed, (but wait, there’s more). There’s one more chance, though! Not all hope is lost!

Tonight! One night only! The Railway Club, doors at seven, show at eight!

That 1 Guy as interviewed by Chris Clark for JamBands.com (2008-03-22):

Mike Silverman is a man of many talents. Beginning his career as a classically-trained upright bassist, he has long since become an individual orchestra, performing a multitude of concise and elaborate sounds with two hands and two feet. Based in Berkeley, Silverman is a fixture on the live music circuit. Armed with the magic pipe (you have to see it to understand), That 1 Guy is undoubtedly one of the most unique and innovative musical acts around. Jambands.com had the pleasure with catching up with Silverman the day before his spring tour commenced to discuss all things That 1 Guy.

Tell us a little bit about your musical background. Where did it all start?

My father was a professional jazz bass player in the 60’s-70’s. By the time I was born; he had changed careers and put his upright bass in the closet. When I was old enough to find it, he was about to plant ferns in it out in the back yard as part of the landscaping (true story). I told him that I wanted to play it. He was just happy to see it getting some use. He was also my first teacher. I got into jazz and classical early on, at about 10 years old. Then rock, funk, punk, blues, etc. My dad always told me that if I played bass, I’d always be in demand because “no one played bass, but everyone needs a bass player”. He was right. By the time I learned where a few of the notes were, I was already in 5 bands, and it never really slowed down for years. That is of course until I quit all my bands to play by myself. Then I invented this other instrument out of steel pipes and don’t play bass anymore at all. Boy, that story has a strange ending. What was the question again?

…to read the rest of the article, click here

funkier than a snake’s banana


Boot Playin’
Originally uploaded by peterkelly.

“Hello Friends

Western Canada, I’m talking to you! Coming soon, a few shows in your neck of the woods! Salmon Arm and Vancouver to be more specific.

See here:

April 4, 2008 – Salmar Classic Theatre – Salmon Arm, BC, Canada

April 5, 2008 – The Railway Club – Vancouver, BC, Canada

April 6, 2008 – The Railway Club – Vancouver, BC, Canada
Hope to see you there!

love

that1guy”