Mushroom

Shortly after my last update I went to New York and then Europe with Lenka and Trey Lockerbie to play two festivals, Slottsfjell and Arvika, where we unveiled two new Lenka songs to a bunch of blond nordic folks. They seemed to like the shows, and I think we got 5 out of 6 stars in one of the local papers.

Speaking of Trey Lockerbie, he came by the MSP studios recently to put some finishing touches on the song Solar Flare that he recorded here a few months back and also to put a horn section on another song of his for his upcoming EP.

After returning to the states I began working with The Ventriloquists making a serious push to get the new record into mastering, which looks to be happening in the near future.

The Ventriloquists have also been busy writing and recording new material not to mention I've been working on songs of my own that may or may not end up as Ventriloquists songs down the road.

I am going to be playing with Carina Round on Thursday night at the Hotel Cafe. I've been rehearsing with her for her new EP that is going to be released soon that features contributions from The Double D Horns (aka myself and David Moyer) on a couple of tracks.

Her song Girl and The Ghost (What You Think You Know) (which contains a marching/mariachi brass band at the end courtesy of yours truly) has been getting some airplay on KCRW and we will be playing it and more on Thursday night.

The band is super cool and includes her usual bass player Smudge, Scott Seiver on drums and Nightmare and the Cat (Sam Stewart on guitar, Claire Acey and Django Stewart on vocals), who are opening the show as well.

The aforementioned Double D Horns did a double D doubleheader (DDoubleheader?) performing with Babystone and Connie Price and the Keystones (David played the Keystones whole set, I sat in for a couple of songs) at the Make It Funky festival in Chinatown. Anthony Valdez made a cool video of the day and I cut something together with some of the footage that Edy shot while in the audience during the Babystone set.

I've got a session tomorrow with recording artist Matt Nathanson to put some horns on some new songs for him at EMI studios in Santa Monica. After that it's off to the Hotel Cafe to play with Carina Round and the crew.

7/10/10

I write this as I am preparing to leave for New York to go meet up with Lenka and Trey Lockerbie to rehearse for our upcoming shows in Norway next week. Of course I couldn't be more excited about all of that, especially as Lenka has some new songs for us to get into.

It's been a busy couple of weeks since returning home from the Diane Birch tour and subsequent wedding planning trip with Edy as I've had the opportunity to do some cool recording work with a number of different artists and producers including a session at Deathstar studios with Kim Divine and Bill Lefler, one at Eric Robinson's studio in North Hollywood with singer Brooke Fraser, horns with Dave Ralicke at Julian Raymond and Howard Willing's studio for a band called PT5; horns on a song for producer Josh Rumer at Invengo Records, some library recording at Boomerang for Andrew Dixon, a flugelhorn session for Michael Wysong at Time Release Records in Long Beach, horns for a new Lenka song done here at MSP, not to mention working on a bunch of Ventriloquists stuff here and at Crown City Recording with Jolly, Moyer, Ian and Edy.

Justin Dean has finished his short film titled 16 Seconds and it's now up on youtube. I did the score and also some of the audio post production and our friend Peter Smith did the editing.

I've picked up a couple of albums in the last few days that have really impressed me. Blake Mills' Break Mirrors, North Hills by Dawes and Gorilla Manor by Local Natives have all been in the jukebox as of late and after spending a few days with each I can wholeheartedly recommend that you pick these rekkids up. Good stuff.

I'm particularly impressed with the track Under the Underground on the Blake Mills record. Mindblowing face melting guitar solo at the end of that one, not to mention some of the coolest orchestrations I've heard in an indie rock song in a while, which is saying a lot because indie rockers seem to be all about cool orchestrations these days. Good stuff.

6/23/10

The Diane Birch tour was a blast - we drove all over America playing shows from Los Angeles to Chicago Montreal to New York to Atlanta and more.

AM opened for us going up the west coast and then Matt White, who I opened up for with Lenka a few years ago, took over the slot for most of the rest of the tour. Alex Foote, the guitarist in the band, also performed solo as an opener for a few of the shows.

The band hang was super cool and many good breakfasts were consumed, not in small part due to the expertise of tour manager Tom Pambrun and his knowledge of good breakfast spots in such places as Portland, Toronto and Ogden Utah.

We got a great write up from the Patriot Ledger for our show at the Paradise Lounge in Boston. Other notable venues included the Highline Ballroom in Manhattan, The Crocodile Cafe in Seattle, The Independent in San Francisco and the Aladdin Theater in Portland.

While out on the road I managed to meet up with Sahiaman, the guy who makes the Little Blondie microphones that I (and a lot of other people) like so much.

He was nice enough to give me a prototype of a limited edition wooden blondie he is working on. It's 2 capsules wired in series and it sounds really cool. Apparently lots of cool stuff is in the works and if this mic is any indication, it's all going to be epic.

Bonnaroo was the last stop on the tour and it was a total blast. I got to see some old friends (ran into Stella Mozgawa who was playing with Warpaint) and hear some great bands (I was particularly impressed with Local Natives).

After we got back to the hotel at 1:30 in the morning I helped Diane demo a song for Susan Boyle's upcoming Christmas record.

After an end of tour breakfast at the Cracker Barrel with Jay Foote (bass) and James Williams (drums) I flew back home from Nashville to Los Angeles.

Since returning to LA I've spent a week with Edy scouting locations for our wedding and also managed to head to Crown City Recording for another day of mixing with the Ventriloquists as well as making to Long Beach for a photo shoot with Ian Souter for Chris Schlarb's new solo record.

Jolly came over today and we tracked some bass here at MSP, and then later in the evening I went to Josh Rumer's to record horns for an artist he is producing. Now I'm about to fire up the pro tools and get to mixing the bass we recorded earlier today.

4/26/10

Exciting news. First of all I'm engaged as of yesterday to my longtime girlfriend Edy Pickens. No idea where or when we are actually gonna get married, but either way I'm really fortunate to have found someone who I get along with so well and I look forward to a happy life together.

Also it looks like I'm going to be going out on tour with a phenomenal singer songwriter named Diane Birch starting May 12 and going until we play Bonnaroo on June 10th. The dates are listed on my shows page.

I've been busy recording horns for a number of different artists as well. A band called Cabin John (who met em through Joe Corcoran, who worked on The Show with Lenka and Stuart Brawley) came by the MSP studios recently to get some horns recorded for some tunes they are working on. This was a Double D horn endeavor as was our recent foray into Market Street Studios to lay down another track for Babystone with Novena and Itai.

I've managed to fill up the rest of my time writing and scoring stuff. My longtime friend (and former college roommate) Jonathan Dotan is working for an entertainment company in India and they hired me to score some television advertisements for Pantaloons/Femina/Miss India 2010.

Also my friend Justin Dean is getting very close to finishing the short film/trailer version of 16 Seconds, his most recent film project. I have been working on the score/sound design over here the last couple of nights and look forward to having something up online soon.

The Ventriloquists are still plugging away at our record as well. Me and Jolly went to our friend Josh Rumer's studio, Invengo, to further work on mixes and we hope to have something out on vinyl in the next couple of months.

Finally I produced a song for my friend Trey Lockerbie (who also plays guitar and sings in Lenka's band among other things) called Solar Flare which is floating around the internets and youtube and such. Click the link above to see/hear our work.

*******

4/11/10

Had a session today at the Bank studios with the Double D Horns, Dan Burns and Carina Round for Carina's latest, which looks like it's going to be 5 songs worth of awesome.

First thing we did upon arriving was to stick a microphone into an oil can which we put on a music stand between the ridiculous mics (RCA ribbon, U47) we were recording into. We proceeded to spit out some ear punching Tom Waits meets Masada style madness, some mariachi marching band, and some Men At Work saxophone. Can't wait to hear how it all comes out....

Last night I played at the Hotel Cafe with Graydon for their album release. Dave Ralicke and I made up the horn section on trombone and trumpet respectively and a rollicking good time was had by all, including Erik Kertes on bass who I spent many moons touring with in Lenka's band.

If you've been following this page, you know I recorded horns for their album at Crown City Recording a few months back. Finally got a chance to hear what they did with it and it sounds really awesome.

Speaking of Crown City, the Ventriloquists went by there on Friday to work on some new material. We have been putting a lot of consideration into how best to release the material we have been working on, and I think we've more or less decided to do limited run high end vinyl releases with download cards, so look for something along the lines of a 7" or an EP from us in the next few months. We are stoked to finally be moving into the manufacturing stage with some of these songs and look forward to getting all of them plus a lot of the new stuff we are working on out there to you guys sooner rather than later.

On another unrelated note, my parents got a new dog named Doc and he is awesome. He is a Pembroke Welsh Corgi and comes from the same breeder (and same maternal grandmother) as our previous dog Ginger who passed away in December of 2008.

******
4/3/10

Lots of forks in the fondue pot. See what comes out with the most cheese. Have a couple of projects and tour offers upcoming which sound really cool but are still in development thus I can't share much more info than that.

That said I did another session with Dan Burns and Walter Meego, this time at The Bank studios (aka keyboardist Zac Rae's place). We got down with a Coles 4038 and an API 512 and proceeded to layer in a lovely brass ensemble with trumpets, trombones, euphoniums, flugelhorns and more.

Also did a Double D Horns session with producer Dave Trumfio for an artist he is working with named Naomi Greenwald. Same gear as above, only also added a Wunder CM7gt in as a room mic for fun. Lots of flugelhorn, bass clarinet, euphonium, tenor sax, trumpet, trombone and bari sax. Sweet ass.

The Double D's sat in the other night with The Makers at the Crocker Club, a band featuring our former classmate at UCLA Ben Adamson among other talented folks.

Me and David also spent some time at Crown City working on mixes for the Ventriloquists record. Crown City has recently undergone a massive gear upgrade and we spent much time salivating over the new toys.

Oh yes and speaking of the Ventriloquists, we are playing a free acoustic show in honor of tax day at Angel's in Santa Monica on April 15. We have been writing a fair amount lately and hope to debut some new material.

*****

3/15/10

I have had a super busy last couple of weeks doing session work. scoring, writing, producing, mixing and even playing a few gigs.

As for recording, there are a number of projects in development that I've been putting some time in on.

Jolly came over the other night to engineer a session for Irish artist Paul Melia. We stacked a 9 piece trumpet/flugelhorn section for the ending of one of his songs which I think is going to be released as a single sometime soon. More info on that as it comes.

I traveled to Altadena to do a session for a songwriter named Neil Rutman wherein we made good use of his studio to lay down a wide range of stuff that included on one tune both a 7 piece horn section (3 trumpets, 3 trombones, 1 cornet), a 9 part alto horn section (triples of each part in a 3 part harmony pad), and a trio of cornets, among other things. Cool tunes, fun hang...

I've also been working with David Moyer of the Double D Horns, Novena Carmel and Itai Shapira on a new EP for Babystone. We are really stoked on the new songs and they are starting to shape up real nice like, especially now that we are doing some of the recording at Larry Klein's Market Street Studios which has a microphone collection worthy of much envy.

I also did a brass session for singer/songwriter Tim Meyers, a catchy tune called Lovable Loser with some of that Texas indie rock shuffle vibe. We did it at producer Andrew Dixon's home studio and I think we were able to add a few more hooks to the song in the process of hornicating it.

In addition to all of that, I've been scoring a short film/trailer for a friend of mine, Justin Dean. Justin directed a music video for a song I wrote many moons ago, and he is writing a really cool suspense/action/drama move called 16 Seconds. He has been working with our friend Peter M. Smith of Lasrever on a cut of the trailer, and I've been scoring it as well as doing some sound design and overall audio mixing. I imagine something will be up on youtube soon and I'll post a link.

Oh yeah, and I played a gig last night at Room 5 with Sarah Dashew. Sarah is a talented singer/songwriter and she just put out a record called "Where I Belong" that has my hornprints all over a few tracks. Erik Kertes and Matt Mayhall, both alumni of Lenka's band, handled the bass and drums respectively and a good time was had by all including Sarah's 93 year old grandfather.

*****

2/24/10

Laid down some horns yesterday for a really cool cover of I'm Beginning to See The Light by Sierra Swan that was recorded at Sun Studios in Memphis.

I did not fly to Memphis to record the horns. Instead I drove to North Hollywood, where I recorded them with Sierra and Dan Burns at Kung Fu studios.

I think we laid down some really cool stuff that splits the difference, vibe-wise between Duke and Stax/Volt. Am very excited to hear how this track sounds once Dan and Sierra are done mixing it.

*****

2/21/10

I have been hard at work putting together a new page of music for you guys to listen to on here. I put up my brass recording demo reel for 2010 as well as a new song I'm working on and Figure It Out by The Ventriloquists. Check it out on the audio samples page.

Thanks to everyone who came out to see the Reigning Monarchs, The Insect Surfers and the Damselles at Casey's Pub and The Ventriloquists, Honey Honey and Eric Lilavois at the Dakota Lounge. Both shows were a whole lot of fun and hopefully I'll have some clips on youtube soon for you guys to watch.

Lenka's tour was a blast - we were opening for the Belgian artist Milow all around Germany (Hamburg, Hannover, Muenster, Berlin, Liepzig). We had a weekend off in Berlin wherein I managed to pick up a pretty stellar polar bear hat, which made an appearance on stage last night.

Also the picture above was taken on this tour, by photographer/musician/guitar tech/etc. Lieven Bulckens (who by the way has a band called Kid Fear).

It also looks like we are going to be doing some festivals this summer in Europe too so I'll post more information about that as it becomes available.

I have been doing some fun session work lately, including a really awesome track for Topher Mohr (guitarist for Mayer Hawthorne and the County) called Ruthless, which really sounds cool in that late 70s MJ kind of way. Really excited to hear how this one comes out.

Me and David Moyer (the Double D Horns) recorded at my studio and I'm super happy with the sounds we were able to get (trumpet, flugelhorn, trombone, tenor sax, bari sax and flute). You can hear a clip on the brass demo reel (I think it's the second clip of the reel) on the audio samples page.

Speaking of the Double D Horns, we also did some recording for our friend Simeon Shigg. He is in a band called Hawkins Shigg and Hardy and we put down some really cool horn stuff on a few of their tracks.

And of course the Ventriloquists have been hard at work in the studio (MSP, Crown City, Invengo, etc.) getting Bailout ready for release. We are working on an entire album of course, but we also expect to press up some 7" vinyl with a few songs on it and we are really excited about that as we expect to do that sooner rather than later.

I have a session coming up with producer Dan Burns and artist Sierra Swan that I'm really excited about. I believe they recorded the main tracks at Sun Studios in Memphis and I get the opportunity to drop some MSP hornage into the proceedings.

Also I'm heading down to Long Beach in March to play some more Flugelhorn on Chris Schlarb's upcoming solo record as well as performing live with Sarah Dashew. As always, more info on this stuff will be forthcoming...

*****

1/25/10

First of all, I'm pleased to announce The Ventriloquists have booked their first show of 2010 at the Dakota Lounge in Santa Monica on Saturday February 20th. Our friends Honey Honey are doing the show as well and it's going to be a great night of music.

I'm headed to Germany with Lenka at the end of this month, where we are going to play for a week doing shows opening for the recording artist Milow. We will be joined by Trey Lockerbie on the guitar and vocals and it should be quite a fun week of gigs.

Speaking of fun gigs, I played an awesome one on New Years Eve with The Reigning Monarchs at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. There were a bunch of awesome comedians on the bill including Maria Bamford, Doug Benson, Amy Schumer, Chris Porter, Todd Barry, John Mulaney and of course Greg Behrendt who MC'd the night as well as played with the Monarchs.

The fellow Monarchs consisted of the Double D Horns (myself and David Moyer), Mike Eisenstein on guitar, Dan Petty on bass, Peter Adams on the keys, and Mark Rivers on the drums. Good times. Jolly and the Dizzler were both in attendance from The Ventriloquists and a rollicking good time was had by all.

Shortly thereafter me and David Moyer flew across the country to New York to meet up with Garth, Murph and Chris and head to Connecticut for a 2 day recording session at the home of Josh and Anna Loar. We recorded quite a bit of music and I'm very excited to see what all Josh and Anna come up with after they get a chance to listen through everything. Ceschi even stopped by and made some contributions on guitar, keys and drums.

Our good friend Mike Gorham came by the MSP studios a few days ago and recorded some badass Bb and Piccolo trumpet for the album as well.

Also I want to take a second and reiterate to you all that you should listen to Bill Lefler's mix of the Ventriloquists song Figure It Out, which you can hear by going to www.theventriloquists.com..

Speaking of Ventriloquists mixes, we just sent our song Overpopulation to our friend Mark Curran who does sound engineering for Lenka as well as runs a studio out of Virginia Beach so he could take a crack at mixing it.

We've also been putting in a good amount of time at Crown City in Pasadena finishing up the mixes for a number of other songs on the record.

I also spent some time there with Graydon, a local band that Erik Kertes is playing bass in, recording horns for some of their songs. They are doing a residency at the Hotel Cafe starting Jan. 30; check it out if you get the chance.

I realize that I neglected to mention one of the creative highlights of the last few months, which happened while I was on tour with Lenka in New York in November. I visited my friend Garth MacAleavey at his apartment/studio in Brooklyn and we immediately threw up 3 mics and started recording.

An hour later we had essentially laid the groundwork for a record called "The Hoodwink Ensemble live in Berlyn" that features mostly drums and fluglehorn with some cello and keys thrown in. Not sure when or how we are going to release this, but hopefully we'll be able to get some music online for you soon.

Speaking of online music, the Elevaters have put up the song Lionside up for download on their website. It features me and David Moyer (The Double D Horns) laying down some afro pop hip hop grooves. Dopeness!

Congratulations are in order to Ian Souter who is having some of his work published in a big ol fancy book of erotic photography. We'll give you more info on what it's called and where you can pick it up once it comes out.

Finally I keep neglecting to mention the new Breakestra record Dusk 'Til Dawn, which dropped a few months back. It features the Double D Horns on a track with Chali 2Na and DJ Dusk called"Posed to Be" as well as a good deal of other dope horns from David Moyer, Chris Bautista, and Sheffer Bruton. While your at it check out Moyer and Todd Simon rocking the horns on Mayer Hawthorne's A Strange Arrangement.

*****

12/6/09

So much to report since the last time I updated this site. Since I last checked in at the end of August, I've done a fair bit of touring, a number of recording sessions and even a little bit of writing and scoring.

I played the Bumbershoot and Outside Lands festivals with Lenka in Seattle and San Francisco respectively. Shortly thereafter we left for Europe where we linked up with tour manager Paul Allen and driver Jan Calgar and began a two week trek through Germany, Poland, Switzerland, and Denmark. We then hopped a flight to Asia where we joined the Hennessy Artistry Global Art of Mixing tour. We performed concerts in Taipei, Kaula Lumpur and Hanoi with Paul Freeman, Bryan McFadden and Boys Like Girls. We then flew to Jakarta, where we played a festival which featured a massive battle of the bands with local Indonesian rock groups. After that we flew to London to perform a show there and then returned home to LA.

While at home I had the opportunity to work with a band called Walter Meego in the studio with Dan Burns. Their record sounds like it's going to be super cool.

Mark Jordan, a producer I've worked with for a few years now, called me in to do some horns for an artist he's working with named Allison Gray.

I also had the pleasure of getting to play a number of shows in November with Julian Casablancas and his band during their residency at the Palace Theater downtown as well as gigs at Spaceland and the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco. These shows were loads of fun and his new record, Phrazes for The Young is really awesome.

The band is particularly awesome - Blake Mills and JP Bowersock on guitar, Jeff Kite and Nelson London on keys, Alex Carapetis on drums and Danielle Haim on guitar, drums and a little bit of everything else. Below is a picture taken at the last show of the residency by Kristin Burns.

In addition to all of this, The Ventriloquists have been hard at work on Bailout, our upcoming record which is getting very close to being finished.

Our friend Bill Lefler mixed the song Figure It Out for us, which you can hear on our myspace page at www.myspace.com/theventriloquists. I also put some horns on a track for Lindsey Ray that Bill produced.

We have also been putting in long hours at Crown City Recording in Pasadena with Eric Lilavois and Joe Olendar. In addition to Bailout we have also been working with Eric on his next record, which will feature extensive horn work from the Double Ds and maybe even some vocals from Jolly.

Another friend of ours, Josh Rumer, is hard at work on 4 other songs on our record, and we are going to soon enlist the services of our friend and former bandmate Josh Loar who is currently teaching audio engineering at Yale among other things to do some mixes as well.

A couple of the Ventriloquists are planning to head over to Connecticut to lay down some funk on one of Josh's projects too. Small world: Josh happens to know Ceschi from TOCA. Who would have guessed?

Speaking of TOCA, Tommy V came by the studio a few weeks ago and I put some flugelhorn on a song he is working on. His project sounds like it's going to be cool.

I also played some trumpet and euphonium on a record by a band called Redstone Hall that was being produced by David Cobb. I got to work with David Ralicke on this gig who is a very talented horn player and who also ended up playing trombone on some of the Julian Casablancas gigs. Also a shout out to Sheffer Bruton who played trombone on the rest of them, Nate Walcott who played trumpet on the record and all of the gigs and Lilly Aycud who subbed for me on one of the gigs on trumpet and flugelhorn. Speaking of small world, Lilly and Sheffer were the two horn players I played on the Tonight Show with when I performed with Lenka.

The new Built To Spill record There Is No Enemy that I played on (Dave Trumfio produced at Kingsize Soundlabs) came out on Warner Bros. records. It got a nice review at Pitchfork, in which I was misidentified as a trumpet player who had wandered over from a Calexico recording. FWIW I've never played with Calexico before.

Oh yeah, and I also scored a television commercial for my friends at Lasrever, who did a spot forDirecTV called Year of The Rabbit.

In 2 days I'm off to Asia again for another 2 weeks of touring with Lenka. Then I return home for a few days before heading to San Francisco to play a New Years Eve show with Greg Berhendt and the Reigning Monarchs at the Palace of Fine Arts.

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