UM story in, cheerleading

Did a great interview with Jake Cinninger from Umphrey's McGee last week, actually one of the few jam scene's veteran bands I find consistently interesting, probably due to their shameless progrock indulgences.

They're doing a show at the Rocks, twin bill with Galactic and the Wailers supporting.

Piece went ok.

In other news, David tells me that the Weekly wants to "concentrate on local bands in the next few months", and I didn't really ask for clarification. It DID strike me as consistent with a comment he made a few months ago, that the paper valued my presence since I was one of their few local writers...so I've been a litle hung up on this notion that they keep me around to cheerlead the local bands, and have their outside writers cover the other stuff.

I can't say I'm altogether comfortable with either an unnaturally sharp focus on local musicians, or with me being pigeon-holed as their "guy on the local beat", something I've never really wanted to do, and doubt I'd be very good at anyway. I have covered locally-oriented stuff the last month or so; Otis Taylor, who lives here but doesn't play here much, and the Sonic Bloom Festival, focusing on Jamie Janover.

My complaints about "we cover local music" are fairly simple; 1) being local doesn't mean you're any good 2) being local shouldn't trigger press coverage, being good should and 3) extraordinary focus on local subject matter for its own sake, in my view, only serves to amplify Boulder's runaway narcissism and render the paper little more than a mirror for it.

From my perspective, I really don't think people "support local music" just for the sake of doing so, and never really have. Club goers with limited discretionary spending will pay for something they like.

We'll see where this leads, but for now I'm laying low.

Writing back

The Weekly is going to do a piece on the merger of the Fox and Boulder theaters this week. I told David I'd contribute a little something.

The good news is that my old pal Cheryl Ligouri is taking the new company over. The bad news? Well, I'm not sure. I've always felt Boulder was best served by two competing high-profile venues, but business is business and I suspect at the end of the day it won't matter much in terms of quality of talent.

Also have some pieces coming up for July.

Little concerned that we appear to have no investigations on deck. Hopefully that will change soon.

Weekend wrapping up

Weather turned cold and rainy this weekend, so we decided to bag rafting and did a ton of cemeteries in El Paso county instead.


I was impressed by the poverty out there - house after house boarded up, junked out spreads with rusted old trailers on them, practically deserted little farm towns. Surprising and a bit distressing.

Well...back

The trip is done, we've been back a week. A few notes.

1) Flows - my obsessive concern about flow, heightened to an absurd crescendo shortly before we left by an absurdly low NOAA forecast, turned out to be (thankfully) unwarranted. I did get stuck, but it was on the first day, downstream from Butler while we were still in cattle country, and it was on a lowly shoal on river left. The flow dramatically spiked (as Ryan Christenson from BuRec indicated) about the third day out there, and when we hit Gov't, it was flowing about 2400-2600.Easy drop into two waves on the left - lasted all of 4 seconds.

2) Weather - Excessive wind, the first three days. I couldn't safely keep a fire burning the third night. The first few miles after Mexican Hat were a struggle - massive upstream blasting out of Pontiac Wash, then downstream for a few miles. Then hard upstream again, then some down. We got a little on Day 4, but it eventually stopped and we had a nice fire. Day 5 and 6 were essentially windless...but 100 degrees.

3) Camping:
Big Stick - the ranger asked us not to take a large site, but the trwo or three she recoemmended were all taken. We took it anyway.
Pouroff - a nice pre-MH site, river right. Only two decent tent pads, but located just downstream from a beaver lodge. Sharon got great pics.
Mile 42.3 - Navajo side, a sandy and fairly broad campsite, good landing but little shade. We considered laying over there, but I felt a little uncomfortable, largely due to wind, with a commitment to do almost 24 miles in one day to last campsite. It was the right decision.
Mile 54.7 - Navajo side, awesome spot. Sandy and easy landing, tent spots high on a sandy terrace above the beach, plent of room for fire/chairs/kitch at water's edge. Early shade in afternoon, late shade in morning.
Slickhorn A - Never been before; a very nice spot. Four or five decent pads, probably first Slickhorn in shade in afternoon, nice view. Would happily take this one again.

4) Equipment - Broke a tent pole first evening setting up. Annoying but we rigged it and it worked. Sharon left the silverware at home accidently, we borrowed from another party. Platform cracked, working now on a solution to that one. No issues otherwise.

5) Misc - We took about 1400 pictures. The flats had plenty of water, saw a few sandbars but didn't hit a single one. Stayed way right most of the way down. Trimble is gone. Actually saw 4ft Rapid for the first time - water was lowish early in the trip. Ran Ross too far left. 8 Foot jogged right at the top, straightforward center-left run, big rock/hole near bottom in center. Ledge was a few strokes, no big deal. Not a drop of rain. Beaver, bighorn, cattle, horses, toad, deer, herron and usual lizards.

Excellent trip, wasted after the driving but already looking fwd to next year's.

Guitarists aplenty

Caught a couple of shows recently that I wanted to scribble a few notes about.

Larry Carlton and Robben Ford swung through for a one nighter at the Boulder Theater a couple of week back, a show I previewed for the paper.

Apart from their respective resumes, which aren't bad, the two guitarists have a pretty lengthy history playing together, and the quartet show at BT didn't disappoint. Swinging between gritty blues stomps and fusiony light jazz, Carlton the technician and Ford the blues gut-buster have a seamless alchemy between each other - both capable of sheer flamethrowing chops, impromptu nuance and impeccable taste, I generally found that Ford was the better player that night; his playing was looser and seemingly more effortless.

Carlton, who we reviewed in these pages last August when he led a trio through here, just seemed tight, a little over-considered and never really managed to find his swing. Most working guitarists would cut off a foot to have Larry Carlton's off-night, of course, and overall the show (featuring Travis Carlton on bass and Gary Novak on drums, fresh off a recent project with Ford) was very good. Perfect venue for them, too.

Pat Metheny brought his Orchestrion project to the Paramount a week or so ago. We previewed this one as well (via email interview, not my favorite format, but it worked out pretty well), and were intently curious what the thing would really be like. Metheny has always staged terrific large format shows, so he had a pretty high bar to clear.

The Orchestrion, briefly, is a series of instruments activated through his guitar and controlled by solenoid and midi-type technology, built somewhat around, and designed similarly to, a Yamaha Disklavier. In essence, and this is a pretty significant over-simplification, Metheny orchesrates everything through his pick and strings. Most of the rig is percussion - there are vibes, bass, guitar-bot as well, but the vast majority of the machinery is percussion - a resonance, we thought, from the heavily Brazilian-influenced Metheny Band stuff of the last decade or so.

Without too many details, we thought the project and the show was about 80% successful - he played the entire album composed and produced with this rig, and a did few other impromptu things as well (even reaching for his guitar synth for a number or two). The response dynamics were impeccable; Metheny has obviously figured out how to make this stage-consuming contraption work, as well as building enough space for himself to both execute on his long-format compositional inclinations, and, happily, solo his ass off. Never a joyless perfomer, Metheny nonetheless also seemed to be having a hell of a lot of fun with this thing. (We won't describe it detail, but leave it to say that once the entire thing rig is revealed, it's almost breathtaking contraption to witness...) As far as his playing, I can't say I ever heard him play better.

One the downside, there were times when I did feel as the pieces, generally densely written and heavily composed, came across a bit sterile and two dimensional. I generally prefer his earlier band material, more jazz and less salsa/shaker percussiony, so I found the pieces' busyness a bit much at times. And..I really did miss hearing an actual piano solo, a side effect of too many Metheny band shows with Lyle Mays, I guess.

But I will say that I do think this an intriguing and genuinely musical experiment on Metheny's part, and I applaud its ambition and sucess. I won't say this was my favorite of a dozen or so shows I've seen, but it was excellent and provocative nonetheless, and if you get a chance to see it...do.

Vacation before the vacation

As I posted a few weeks back, I was really getting wrapped around the axle between work, getting ready for the trip and the writing thing. Not entirely sure what it was; a bit of exhaustion, periodic bouts of self-doubt lingering from The Event (yes, six years ago), a very tough winter at work.

Whatever the cause(s), I made a few adjustments. The SJ trip promises to be a chilly scrape, so we moved the launch date back to May 26 - something of a gamble, since the snowpack in the Animas basin isn't that great this year - in the hopes that the temperature would be warmer and the water a bit more generous. So far, weather appears to be cooperating; end of this week will really tell the tale.

I also sent a note off to Dave at BW, letting him I was really strung out and basically needed the month of May off to get my shit together, a request he obliged with the added encouragement of pitches for June, which I'll fulfill this coming week.

So, getting a little extra sleep, trying to stay fit and getting my head straight for the SJ trip. Work is still worrisome, but not letting it get to me. And rafting season is right around the corner.

Done

The Face story is basically finished and MJ is happy, and the Otis story is off to Dave at BW.

This week - evidence review for the DFM, an update or two to SBP, Pat Metheny Wed night and watching the River Flow.