I'm moving the blog to a new service (to me) called WordPress. I was experimenting with it and it offers some features I haven't been able to access here with Blogger (they may have these features, they're just not obvious to me :)). I don't think I can transfer the archive over so I will keep a link up to this blog so that anyone so inclined may view historical entries.


Please update your bookmarks and join me at:

chriscawthray.wordpress.com

Since INDIEpool has let me down (see my post from a few days ago...) and Steve Coleman is giving away a pile of music on his site, I've reposted a bunch of mp3s for your enjoyment. Now you can get almost all of the fruits of our limitations again at chriscawthray.com. I couldn't put Japan up because I ran out of space and I'd like to keep some videos and other stuff over on the download page.

In other news, I'm going to be pressing a short run of CDs (I know, I know, never say never...) which will be officially cc1003 - limited edition compilation. It's going to be a compilation of both fruits... and winter music. The plan is to use it as a demo to send out for gigs, and to sell a few off the stage during the drumLAB gigs and elsewhere.

And, cc3 may be doing a show or two at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto. Stay tuned for details...

Rob Price and I are putting a band together. Essentially, I'd like to play in New York, but the logistics of bringing my own band from up here in Toronto down to NYC is simply too daunting to be worthwhile at this point. Rob, he a fine guitarist and composer in his own right, and I have struck up a mutual-admiration society of late. I recently proposed that he be the guitarist in my New York trio, and he graciously accepted. I'm more than excited about the possibilities of this, and hope to have some sort of actual action ("actual action", haha) in this regard in 2006.

So, a public thanks to Rob for being so cool; I've plugged his great record, At Sunset before. You gotta get it, you can download it from iTunes or buy it on CD from his website.

INDIEPool is hopeless. I gave them two chances, first with winter music and then with the fruits of our limitations. In the former's case, they managed to get my record to 3 or 4 of the major download retailers (iTunes, MSN Music, Rhapsody and crappy Puretracks), but so slowly that any momentum I had built up with gigs or press was a distant memory by the time it was there for sale. With the latter, apparently it's only up at Puretracks.com, a Canadian PC-users only site that must be minutes from going out of business. I have been waiting since August for them to deliver the record to any e-retailer that matters. So far, no dice. Of course, the letter of agreement between us doesn't specify how long it should take for this to happen, but 5 months is useless to an independent musician or record company.

Thankfully, the fees I paid for their services are too small to warrant trying to get a refund, so I guess a public complaint like this is my only recourse. Thanks for listening...

Catching up....

I've woken up early this morning (in anticipation of the delivery of some furniture to our house; and of course, the 4-hour-maybe-we'll-show-up-maybe-we-won't-but-don't-dare-expect-us-to-phone-you delivery window is for "my convenience") to some sad news that I'm presumably a little late on finding out.

The master guitarist Derek Bailey passed away on Christmas Day. I can't describe his work better than the essay I've linked to, so go check it out. Bailey was a DIY kind of guy, and I have a deep respect for that. He took control of the world of his work, started his own label, and simply, got down to work. The lesson in that for musicians who's muse carries them to the "outside" is simple, yet essential. If I may add one further recording recommendation to the essay's list, it would be David Sylvian's Blemish album featuring DB on many tracks.

Now, about getting down to work. I had a great jam with EdZ and MikeP last week. Very loose, but very fertile. Ed sounds better than ever. A concept I'm pushing for the repertoire that I've built around Ed's playing is that we abandon the seemingly unnecessary layer of "form" for these tunes. Meaning, one of the hurdles in the gigs I've done with EdZ and with either Tim Posgate or Mike Bowell on guitar has been my dictating a song form (meaning ordering the solos, do the intro twice, etc.), which invariably gets misunderstood or forgotten due to the lack of available rehearsal time and the infrequency of our gigs. The result has been that we spend our time onstage caught up in worrying about what is supposed to come next, and forgetting that we are in control of that, and we should really just be letting our ears tell us what the path is through listening to each other onstage. Our hearts and minds should commit to the music and not the formal instructions. I think this concept is compatible with this repertoire because the songs themselves are rather simple in structure, and the structures themselves are easily heard. So, if a member of the group chooses to extend or eliminate sections through the course of their improvisation, we will hear it and go with it. My hope is that playing this way will drive us right into the heart of pieces, and subsequently turn them out for our listeners to hear beneath the surface of the writing.

A tangible effect of this way of playing occured to me last week while we were jamming. Ed played the head (the main melody) of Paper Tiger and then added another 8 bars of improvisation to it, then paused. In the moment, I first thought "oh, Ed is soloing...", but when he stopped playing so soon I realized that the notion of "taking a solo" is less important given the concept I had laid out. Ed stated the melody, made a comment and left Mike and I with a space to respond. In retrospect, it makes so much sense, and from a listener's p.o.v. certainly doesn't seem "avant-garde".

Ok, off to wait for deliveries (I neglected to mention that my new iPod shuffle may be arriving today, if the FedEx tracking info is on-target)...

Hello!

I'm off to Burlington tonight, and I haven't played the drums since last Thursday so I'm quite excited to do some playing. The holiday season has freed up everyone's schedules enought to even allow us to do some jamming tomorrow. EdZ, MikeP and I are getting together, for, wait for it..... fun. :)

Anyway, that's pretty much it for me for 2005. There's lots coming up in the next two months, so please stay tuned and try and be a part of as much of it as you can. Thanks for your continued support my music, Happy New Year!

Head over to drumLAB to check out the posters for the Drum Mondays concert series in February 2006. I'm playing twice (2.6 cc+mo, 2.27 cc3+EZ), but will be there every week as the host, for lack of a better term.

A light week for me musically (the universe has filled up my idle hands with such fun as a natural gas leak in my home and other near-death experiences :)), only two gigs: I'm playing with Paul Fitterer's Solsticks ensemble for the Kensington Festival of Lights parade from 5pm-7pm on Wednesday and then with cc3 in Burlington on Thursday.

If I don't blog before next week, Happy Holidays to all and Merry Christmas to those that celebrate it. (we have a tree and presents under it in my home, but we've edited out out the manger and other exotica, I guess our holiday is better term Santamas, or Clausmas....).