Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

my music

Intuition (an Arcati Crisis adventure)

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I listen to and look at my favorite bands and wonder, “how do they do that?”

I don’t mean the rock star posturing or the songwriting. I’ve figured both of those things out, to a degree. They come with practice (in the mirror).

I mean the intuition. The knowing where a song goes, and how to construct the arrangement of thrumming bass and pounding drums that surround the initial guitar or piano that lie in the center.

I’ve always assumed Gina and I have some special magic in that regard in the the peculiar alchemy of our harmony. And, well, we do. It’s the intuition of best friends. We know each other so well that when one of us teaches a new song to the other it’s like we’re adding an extension of our own hands and voice. There is less and less of  us asking “is this part okay?” and more of   “yes, that!”

That hasn’t been our experience with other musicians. That’s not to say we haven’t played with some brilliant people who have made indelible additions to our songs. It’s just that the additions tend to add too much.

(A notable exception being Dante Bucci, who is invariably a perfectly intuitive collaborator in any setting on any instrument. Also, our friend Chaz arranged the definitive percussion for “Apocalyptic Love Song.”)

As a result, I assumed that there were only two kinds of potential bandmates – people who play well because they understand context (the Rolling Stones know each other, Gina understands me, Dante understands us, Chaz knows our influences) or because their bandleader dictated each note to them.

(That latter seems like an ultimate bit of hubris – why invite another player you respect and not trust them to do anything? But musicians can be freaks of control, and we’ve all seen bands run that way, so it’s certainly a valid angle (which is why we don’t (and may never) have a bass player).)

Now I understand that there is a third category – that an intuitive player can find their way inside of a song instead of adding layers to its exterior. Sure, practice helps. But, the intuition is an intangible. It’s either there or not.

Zina is there. Every one of our songs takes three plays. One to hear how we do it. One to try a few things. One with our new drum arrangement. Fin.

That’s not to say that she doesn’t continue to change and adapt her playing, or that we don’t ask for some tweaks here and there. It’s just that she hears it – us, the song, our gestalt with each other – and then she joins it.

I’m amazed every time. Now I understand my favorite bands a little bit better.

Want to hear the new drummed up Arcati Crisis spectacle, complete with rapturous Gina guitar solos? You can attend Dorian’s Parlor on Saturday 3/12, or just catch us at Fergies Pub on Saturday 4/2.

You Sound Like a Vulture (an Arcati Crisis adventure)

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For the past few months Gina and I have been rehearsing with Zina, who is also the drummer in E’s band Filmstar.

It started as a speculative exercise – what would Arcati Crisis sound like with drums? We got our answer pretty quickly, as Zina is a ridiculously fast study. We’re already eight songs into drumming up our repertoire, and last night Zina polished off “Bucket Seat” after only a second rehearsal of it.

“Bucket Seat” has been one of my favorite songs from the moment I finished writing it in 2003. When Gina and I made Arcati Crisis formal in 2007 it was the second new song I brought to her to add to the repertoire, and in minutes she found the off-kilter chords that tangle with my staccato diminished stabs. Now the song sounds nude if I play it solo.

Zina was proving to be equally as intuitive on it. After our first run with Zina we fine-tuned a few spots and ran it twice more. It was solid, and we were playing it at the right tempo, but I felt like it was over too quickly.

I turned to Gina. “I think you need to play a guitar solo out of the fast part after the key change.”

One of my favorite aspects of the drumming process is that rather than constrict arrangements around our guitar playing, drums have opened up more space. Zina’s rhythm takes the burden of the two of us. These are songs we’ve played literal hundreds of times, but we keep finding new spaces inside them.

That said, nothing’s structure has really changed yet. The songs are all the same shapes they’ve always been. We haven’t added any funky breakdowns. Or guitar solos.

“A solo?” Gina asked, a little tentatively.

“Sure. You know, like what you play in the intro. Try it.”

We tried it. Gina stopped after four notes, two of which were pretty cool. “It doesn’t quite fit.”

“Yeah, but if you keep the two that worked, and descend…” I started imitating her guitar with my voice, wailing a solo. “raw wah, whear wheh wah, rah weh wah,” I paused for a breath between phrases, “and then a lower ascending line.” I climbed back up the scale, “until it resolves!” I shouted, wheezing and wailing until I reached a bent note at the top.

I finished my performance and looked at Gina expectantly.

“You sounded like a vulture,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“You want me to play it like that?”

“Well, you know. That’s the general shape of it.”

She regarded me skeptically while Zina looked on from behind the kit, bemused.

“I could draw it for you,” I offered, “like David Bowie did for Mick Ronson on ‘Moonage Daydream.’ I could go get crayons.”

“Oh, sure,” Gina mimed with her hands what I assumed to be an elaborate David Bowie crayon drawing, “that might work. Or we could just try to play it a few times.”

And that was how “Bucket Seat” acquired a guitar solo.

You can stream or download our full-length Live @ Rehearsal, Vol. 4 LP for free. Hear “Bucket Seat” and other rocked up Arcati Crisis songs at Dorian’s Parlor Neo-Victorian ball on Saturday March 12. There will be steampunk costumes. We’re also working on a ninja weeknight gig for February. Stay tuned.

Tattooed Mom’s Bumper Cars and Textual Healing

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Rocking my song from the Textual Healing soundtrack, "End With Me," upstairs at Tattoo Moms in a vintage bumper car. Photo courtesy of the incredible @MikeyIl

A long time ago – like, about half a life – I attended a birthday party upstairs at Tattooed Mom on South Street.

That is the sense-memory that struck me in the face Friday night when I trundled my two amps up the stairs to the Textual Healing book release party and took in the room with its two pool tables. I’ve been to Tattoo Moms several times since then, but that was the only occasion I had ever been upstairs.

Now I have a second indelible memory of Tattoo Moms – me, standing inside one of the vintage bumper cars in the upstairs back room, singing and playing squelchingly distorted acoustic guitar licks from my place in the back seat.

The whole story of Eric Smith and his book is a sort of hazy dream to me. I can’t believe I wrote a song to the first chapter, or sent it to him a minute later, or wrote another one, or then wrote AN ENTIRE BOOK inspired by his manic and infectious “GO ARTS” energy.

That’s why I was so thankful to be playing for him, for his book, and for a room of people I’ve come to really love and cherish – literally too many Twitter folks for me to try to remember and collect their handles into this single post post.

What I do remember is finishing “Curves Sketched In Letters” and starting up my super-secret cover of “Fuck You” and watching the entirety of the room on my right – including Nan, Schmidt, Linzy and Jess, and a slew of other people – sing all of the callbacks every time I stopped for a breath.

The entirely too beautiful Allie with a copy of Textual Healing and author Eric Smith, courtesy of @MikeyIl.

(Also, intriguingly, the couch in front of me bore a girl I’m quite certain I went on a pseudo-date with in high school. I couldn’t tell if she was enjoying me or not, or if she even recognized me. Would someone from that birthday party recognize me now, playing guitar, if they hadn’t seen me in all of those intervening years? I was sorry she left early, as I sorely wanted to see if it was really her (and, if it was, have her experience how hot my wife looked).)

After my brief set half of Venice Sunlight took the stage bumper car to play a few songs acoustic. I had a grand time chatting VS’s Jay and Dave up well into the night about their band and brand new CD, released on Saturday and just-about-free to download.

Otherwise, the weekend was uneventful. I was couch-bound on Saturday with a howling backache (thanks to all the amp-trundling), and Sunday was spent cleaning and rehearsing solo music.

Now for a new week! Rehearsal, Freelance Whales show, Black Swan (!!), rehearsal, night off, and my tenth appearance at the Shubin Theatre Holiday revue – serving as the house-band with Gina. We’ll debut a cover of Counting Crows’ “Long December” in the long, proud tradition of sad Christmas songs as helmed by Judy Garland’s original “(Have Yourself) A Merry Little Christmas.”

Now I’m a bassist

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We just loaded out from my first Philly show as a member of Filmstar.

Bass was played. I did not magically forget how to do it when we got on stage, which was a great relief. I had worries that I was going to look down and suddenly discover the bass was totally alien to me, like I was holding an accordion, or something else arcane that I don’t know how to play.

Bagpipes, possibly.

It’s weird to be sitting on the bottom of the mix. With Gina everything has equal weight – guitar against guitar, vocal against vocal. Either of us can dip out for a second and things stay in motion.

With Filmstar if I stop playing there’s no bottom! The bottom falls out.

Well, after one experience with that early in the set, I learned my lesson pretty quickly.

The other strange thing was being so LOUD. I am not a loudness junky when it comes to music, so I’m not used to the way instruments and amps resonate differently at higher volumes. It kept taking my by surprise.

It was a good set. Fast, a few bumps, but nothing I’m going to hold against myself forever.

So, yeah, now I’m a bassist. Seriously, me as the rhythm section? Where do I come up with these ideas.

Video Demo: “End With Me”

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Last night Gina and I held an epic Arcati Crisis rehearsal with our drummer Zina. We’ve worked our way up to eight drummed up tunes, and now we’re adding other special features like electric guitars and effects pedals.

We’re going to figure out this band thing, one way or another.

Meanwhile, I spent seemingly every free moment of yesterday singing the arpeggio D-F#-A-D-F#-A-D, which spans all the good bits of my singing range. However, on a weird set of vowels the top D can be a bit of a beast to get on top of, and of course I wrote myself just such a troublesome set of sounds when I penned “End With Me” shortly after posting about Eric Smith on Sunday night.

Can bad vowels stop me? Hell no. I mean, have you heard some of the audio on here from ten years ago? Not even bad singing can stop me.

Anyhow, here is a late-night first take on “End With Me,” another song from my soundtrack to Eric’s novel, Textual Healing. This tune has a slew of references to the book, including some specific lines. The recording has plenty of rough edges, but it sounds right, and I’ll take rough and right over mannered and plasticine any day of the week.

(Okay, not really, but let’s just think that for the purposes of this post.)


(Watch the video on Facebook, where I occasionally demo brand new tunes for my likers. Also, you can read the lyrics there.)