Knight at Krannert

Here's me and flutist William Reger playing an old Only Anything song at a recent event at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts in Champaign-Urbana:

Knight from starmaster on Vimeo.

Resolution #9

It's a new year. It's a new decade. 10 years ago, the Only Anything crew spent New Year's Eve at Mat's house. In 2003/04, we played a reunion show. And while we didn't manage to have everyone together at the same time this new beginning-of-the decade, we did manage to have most of us together at various times over the last several days. A guy couldn't ask for better friends than these and it's been fun to spend some time.

Looking forward, here's what the coming year has to offer in terms of OA projects and off-shoots:

• We will continue to release Jonathan Thwaits solo material as EPs. I believe we have two more--ten more songs. Look for those over the next few months. And please, please vote for your favorite songs when they come up. There is still LOTS of time to vote on the current EP, my favorite so far, "Frame by Frame".
• Several months ago I promised that we would be re-releasing our double-length opus "Spacecapers". Arguably, the band at its best and certainly at its most eclectic. A variety of circumstances have come together requiring a bit of extra work in making this a reality, but I think that it will be worth the wait. With the help of Kelby Thwaits, we will be going back to the original mastered recording on DAT (Digital Audio Tape--the best of the best in 1996) and remastering the tracks for this new release. The mp3 files that I currently possess had a long journey: 5 year old cassette tape, dubbed over to a recordable CD and then ripped to a computer. The remaster will not only have only a single transfer (from DAT into mp3) but will also have been worked over by Kelby mix-magic. So even though the tracks will still sound like they were recorded on a four-track at Sauna Studios, hopefully they will sound less fuzzy and more clean. Be watching for this!
• New music and projects: Jon T. has promised us a new song or two--he played a few for me while we were together. AWESOME!
• I am playing in a new duo called Riverstone. It's me and a friend in Illinois. He plays several flutes--mainly Native American, but some others as well. While this is a bit of a departure from OA, it is definitely a neat project and I'll share some of our work here. We have a gig in just under three weeks. We'll be playing at least one old OA tune ("Autumn") rearranged to fit the new style.
• Finally, I wanted to share a little project I have in mind for the year. Whenever I get together with my father-in-law David, we always play a ton of great old music. I never really know any of it that well, and have to follow his fingers as he plays classic songs that I should have learned years ago. I'd like to work hard to rectify my relatively small reservoir of known-songs. I think that doing so will not just make these and other social guitar gatherings more fun, but they will also help to increase my own musicianship and songwriting abilities. SO! I've set a goal to learn 200 songs this year. (Hey, if Julie What-ever-her-last-name-is can cook 500+ Julia Child recipes in a year, I can learn four songs a week, right?). Don't worry, though, I'll be keeping things simple. I'm going to start with 50 Beatles songs. I'll be blogging about my progress and post youtube videos of some of the songs from time to time.

Since I know you're curious, here are the Beatles tunes: