fruits is up at Puretracks. Can iTunes be far behind? (yes I bet they can...). I'm going to be taking the free version off the site very soon, so don't delay if you haven't downloaded it yet.

I guess this is a re-blog or something. I recently discovered the music of guitarist Rob Price, based in NYC and through listening to his music, and finding his website, struck up an email dialogue with him. I noticed on his website today that he made very kind mention of me and my music. I've been enjoying his very cool record "At Sunset" (available on iTunes, that's where I found it) in private, and I have been remiss in not mentioning it more in public. The record features the fantastic Joey Baron, it's a very very fine work.

I had a dream last night that I was playing a double-drum gig with Paul Motian. He was guesting with my band (I am not sure who was in the band), but most of the dream involved me coordinating the cartage of his drums and during the lengthy process (this kind of stuff always takes a long time in dreams, doesn't it?) I kept seeing Paul walking on the street with what appeared to be his "posse".

Hey, good news! Chip Yarwood's band (including me) will perform again at the Gladstone Hotel on Friday December 2 in the Melody Bar @ the Gladstone. We're doing one set at around 7pm for the grand-opening party for the hotel.

I just picked up a pre-mastered copy of a record I played percussion on over numerous sessions between 2003 and now. I was curious to hear what the finished product might be, and lo and behold it turns out I'm on a smooth jazz record! :):)

Yep, this stuff is pretty smooth. There's some fantastic playing from all involved, but man, oh man, the quiet storm is rolling in on a few tunes. Who knows, it might just be a hit! It'd be a great band to play live with, in fact, most of the band is in the Kevin Cooke band, a blues big band that gigs intermittently.

This record, as yet untitled, is going to be released under the sax player Mike Skinner's name, but includes, on various tracks (and I'm probably leaving some people out):

kevin cooke: bass, mike skinner: saxes, david monis: drums, michael monis: guitar, myself: percussion, martin aucoin: keyboards

I'll post an mp3 when I can. The copy I was given was one single 55 minute track on a CD so I'll have to do some cut and paste.

HBS had a great gig last night. The band sounded very very good (having Lester McLean is great because he's a fine alto saxophonist, so the band sounds that much bigger with him), and the audience was very much into what we were doing. It was a private party, and our hosts easily rank amongst the best clients I've ever had the pleasure of working for. For all I know that may have been the last HBS gig, we have nothing on the horizon, and I'm keen to book more cc3 than HBS. But, if offers come in and I can get last night's lineup, I don't see why I wouldn't pursue them.

And, now for an installment of my very intermittent listening list. These days, I tend to buy my music from iTunes, and only buy DVDs in material form. It saves space, and the music is much more affordable ($9.99 for a download album as opposed to $20 for a CD). Here's what I've iTuned lately:

Wilco - Kicking Television (live in Chicago): this band only gets better. Wilco leader Jeff Tweedy seems to serve the music above the band (the lineup seems to be in a steady, slow flux). The band has two musicians equally versed in "rawk" and the avant-garde in Glenn Kotche (drums) and Nels Cline (guitar). It shows, in the most wonderful way.

Bill Frisell - Further East, Further West: I bought the first installment of this a few months back on CD (because they were charging the same amount for the download and the CD for some reason). This second installment is download only and is frankly a helluva lot more interesting than the first. In truth, the last few Frisell albums have been boring for me. It's dissappointing that they would decide to release the much better collection as a hush-hush download only release.

About to go pack up for a private party gig tonight in Burlington with HBS. Lester McLean is singing lead tonight, which is a rare treat for HBS. The clients for this private party specifically asked for Lester and I was lucky enough to get him for this gig. The rest of band is me, Mike Bowell, and Mike Pelletier.

Tomorrow is a rare day-off for me this month, and then another busy week. cc3 has picked up an extra gig this week playing at an Acura dealership for a car launch, and FYI Dave Patterson will be back with cc3 on 12/1 subbing for Eric Boucher who will be away in NYC for a theatre gig.

My good friend Altaf Vellani has returned to Toronto from living in Germany for the last 4 years. It's great to hang with him and he's a fine drummer. He has a new book/CD coming out and we're talking about doing a drumLAB clinic in conjunction with its release in March 06.

The optical drive on my iBook has died, but I have 20 days left on my Apple warranty, so I'm crossing my e-fingers. I'm going to try and stay online (by resurrecting an original iMac sitting here in my office), but if I'm not around, this is why. Having said that, my blogging has been rather sparse of late anyway.

The tap dance project has finished, for now. The performance went reasonably well (there were some timing issues with the vocalist, due I suspect to a lack of rehearsal for us as a group...), and I think the piece was successful in getting its point across. I like the piece more now that I've performed it, actually. The "big picture" is clearer. The next step is to do a studio recording of the music so that the company may incorporate the piece into their repertoire (and not have to pay for musicians to perform it every time). We'll hopefully get to that in December.

A perk of the show on Friday night for me was being asked to perform with another tap artist in an impromptu jam. The dancer, Van Porter, had been flown in as the "headliner" for the show. There was some sort of mix-up with his music or musician (I really didn't ask...) so I was asked to perform with him. We spend about 20 minutes working up a "show", and I played a single conga while he tapped. It was all improvised, but we did some trading, and had worked out an ending. It was cool, the audience loved it too. I hope I'll work with him again.

Ok, this week I am doing dance classes at three three-letter places: ESA, TDT (@ PDT), and PSB. cc3 hits on Thursday and Hot Buttered Soul plays its first gig in a while Saturday night. It's also going to be HBS' last gig for a while. I've stopped booking work for the band, after a frustrating summer of trying to maintain a level of professionalism in the face of some members that felt more comfortable showing up whenever they wanted, both at the gig in general and during the songs! Too much hassle for not enough danger pay. cc3 is far more agreeable to me. Never say never, though. We'll see....

drumLAB is getting set to launch via it's first email mail-out. Stay tuned.

Tonight is the performance I am doing with Paula Skimin's tap dance company, Turn on The Tap. The show is at Mississauga's Living Arts Centre and a link to info about it is here.

I have to do a tech rehearsal in the afternoon which I am dreading because tech rehearsals for a show like this (many artists doing single pieces) translates into hurry up and wait. I see a lot of sitting around doing nothing in my immediate future. The tech is at 2:20pm, and the show is at 8pm. I am really hoping to be able to go home in between these two events. Pray for me. :):):):)

Last night's cc3 hit was fun. The music shows up on a pretty regular basis now with this band, there's always some great moments. We did a nice version of "hope song", my ballad from Winter Music, Eric and Mike have really taken that tune somewhere.

I've got a busy week (and November is turning out to be a busy month), so I apologize for the scarcity of posts. I'm scrambling to get the music finished for Paula Skimin's dance piece, which we perform on November 11 in Mississauga at the Living Arts Centre. I am actually hoping to finish it later tonight, we rehearse Friday and Sunday.

cc3 hits twice this week, our regular (we're going to put last week's mess behind us, thank you) in Burlington and a private function for the Society of Travel and Incentive Executives (or something like that) at the swanky Carlu club in Toronto on Saturday night.

I'm also playing dance classes at Ryerson University this week, where I am somewhat of an exotic animal it seems; they're quite appreciative of my playing. It's nice. The studios there sound good too, and they're stocked with Yamaha Clavinova keyboards, which are surprisingly cool sounding.

drumLAB is still working. Private lessons is an area that is taking off slowly, but I'm excited about the first clinic/workshop, but can't say much until it is confirmed. Also, I want to start a thing called Drum Mondays, where drumLAB will curate a weekly concert of a group led by a drummer. I want to do it at least once a month, and also sit in with other groups.

stay tuned!

Hey, much to my surprise "paper tiger" got some airplay on 10/19 on Mike Hansen's fine "whynotjazz" radio show here in Toronto. He even mentioned the website on-air. Thanks!

He does a great show 7am-11am Wednesdays, but you can listen to archived mp3s of each show at this site.

For the first time ever, cc3 failed to make our gig tonight. We commute about 40km down the main highway out of Toronto to get to the gig, and while traffic is never good, we all get there. Tonight we didn't. So I had to decided to cancel the night when I was there by myself more than 30mins past downbeat. I can't remember the last time this has happened to me, if ever. I've got to gigs to find out the bar had cancelled us, but I've never had to cancel out on a client.

Anyway, it sucks. I feel bad for all involved, including myself. To those that came out this week, while I am sure you would have enjoyed 3 hours of solo drums :), please accept my apologies on behalf of Eric and Mike that we couldn't bring the music like we always do.

See you next week.

Page 162 of the new Modern Drummer magazine (12/05 issue) mentions my latest release, the fruits of our limitations. Download it here. I'd love to sell it to you, but iTunes is dragging its digital butt about uploading it, so it's free for the taking here at my site.

You can see some photos of my new Tempus drum kit @ chriscawthray.com. For those gearheads out there, here's what's in the photos:

TEMPUS drums:

7x12 tom (blue)
10x15 floor tom (orange)
11x22 bass drum (gold)

SONOR drums:
6.5x14 ferro-manganese Phonic snare drum

PAISTE cymbals:

14" Alpha custom hats (SoundEdge TOP, Power BOTTOM)
16" Alpha crystal crash
18" Innovations crash/ride

hardware:

SONOR Designer Series hihat and bass drum pedals, + a vario clamp (for tom)
SONOR Phonic tom arm
Pearl and Yamaha cymbal stands
Pearl snare stand
Gibraltar flloor tom legs, tom suspension mount, bass drum spurs

I'm typing this post from onstage @ the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto. The building has WiFi, and I'm running some Reason files from behind the kit tonight. It's definitely a luxury to have WiFi onstage. I feel like I'm in Peter Gabriel's band or something. :):)

Come down tonight, if only for the WiFi! The music's gonna be great too. Here's the link with all the info.

Tonight is Chip Yarwood's CD release gig for his really really excellent record, one fork. It's like Dylan's "Time Out of Mind", but with a worldbeat sensibility. I like it a lot, and I'm so glad to be playing this music live. We're rocking out on a few things that are somewhat more ambient on the disc. Also, tonight will be my first time playing my new Tempus drums. I'll take some pictures once they're set up at the gig. So far I've been tuning and tweaking them in my basement and am really impressed with the bass drum. I don't think I have the right drumhead combo for the toms (I have a 2ply coated head on the 15" floor tom and it seems to be choking the drum a bit). The shells are so thin, perhaps they need thinner heads to really sing. No worries, they may open up beautifully in the brick/wood room at the Gladstone.

Anyway, if you're in Toronto, come down to the Gladstone Hotel tonight (Queen/Dufferin), first set is at 9pm, cover is only $5, or $10 and you get the CD too.

see you there,

I'm getting things going on drumLAB. It's going to be a "nomadic" drum school, running at various (temporarily rented) locations. I'm working on bringing up a VERY COOL artist for a clinic. Stay tuned...

cc3 hits tonight, and my new Tempus drums should be here tomorrow (I missed the FedEx guy today).

Great gig last night. A small but appreciate audience came out, and the venue and its staff treated us very well. It was a real treat to be able to play with Ed and Mike, each of them so generous to my songs and my ideas in their own way. I'll try and post a video clip later this week from the gig.

I'm starting to get a clearer picture of how to make this project work. For instance, the club normally provides a sound tech for all gigs. The tech last night was a very capable and helpful guy, and by all reports the gig sounded good. But, his fee squeezes the venue's margin to make any money. We don't need a PA to do this music, so Ken from PJC and I already decided that when we return we'll do it without a sound tech. As such, a small but appreciate audience (that is also thirsty and hungry) can make it a great night for all involved.

There were so many great moments last night where Ed was playing completely off-mic and filling the room with his tone. The soundman told me he could have turned the PA off at times and no one would have noticed. I take that as a compliment. I read in a great Bill Frisell Trio interview in DownBeat years ago that they used to set-up onstage so they could hear each other, and then let the soundcrew do whatever they want. They didn't worry about monitors or anything.

Anyway, we'll be back at Pepperjack's in a few months I hope.

The rest of this month starts to splinter into different foci:

-Completing the tap dance piece with Paula Skimin (we perform Nov. 11 at the Living Arts Centre in Mississauga, ON)
-rehearsing and performing Chip Yarwood's CD release (Oct 25 @ The Gladstone Hotel, Toronto)
-attempting to get a new workshop/performing initiative off the ground, drumLAB

Plus, of course, dance classes @ ESA and PSB and the cc3 hit @ Canyon Creek.

Check back later for the video from last night...

MikeB, EdZ and I rehearsed this afternoon, and we're all feeling great about tomorrow's show at the fruits of our limitations but also manages to bring out other shades of the material. Mike and I go way back musically and personally, so it's a good fit. I think Mike's digging it too.

Now it's your turn to dig it! See you at the show, 8pm start time.

On a whim I went and checked out the Juno Award submission regulations. The Junos, as some may know, are the Canadian recording industry awards. Anyway, it would be neat (and not much more than that, just neat, maybe neato), if "the fruits of our limitations" got nominated. What category? I guess some sort of Jazz.

Anyway, I'm too futuristic for the Junos. They don't accept download-only releases for submission. More specifically, they only accept submissions on CDs, and the CDs must be manufactured, not burned promo copies. So, I'm out of the running.

My opinion is that digital is here to stay, and physical CDs are a waste of valuable resources to the independent artist like me. I want to make the music and get it in your ears, I don't need unrecyclable plastic discs and cases to do that anymore.

The Junos still do.