12.29.2014

92 Too Many?


Tad and I have completed a double album of 92 tiny songs.  We designed a cover and wrote some listening tips and are packaging it all up.  

Adam, the first recipient of the tiny songs album, cornered me at a Packer party to say that he likes it, but, as with all this stuff I make, it’s not commercially viable.  He assumes what we all assume these days, that success equals commercial viability and mass recognition. 

Here’s a little story:  A local musician hit stardom, touring with a very popular singer.  He started a wonderful little music festival that is a tremendous success.  So, moving into its third year, one hears grumblings about this man who has brought a new vibrancy to the community, jealousies wrapped up as some kind of truth.  I say congratulations to those of us who have managed to not get famous, to not be recognized on the street.  What a drain that must be, to be constantly approached and asked to give your time, to be scorned because of your hard work, to inevitably become disappointing. 

Music is sound patterns.  We grow comfortable with certain patterns, and the more repetitions, the more memories we attach to them.  Familiar patterns sound “correct” and unfamiliar patterns sound “incorrect.”  Often because of our discomfort with “incorrect”, we reject new patterns without taking the time to notice what they have to offer.

I am interested in the “incorrect” and so it doesn’t surprise me that what I do has not made me money or fame, nor do I think it ever will.  So I find no problem in continuing to make the music and art that I want to make rather than the music and art that others believe I should be making, even though Adam will laugh at me for saying it.



tad neuhaus, guitar
joanna dane, vocals

For your very own tiny songs double album, please send a self-addressed stamped envelop to: 

Joanna Dane 
℅ The 602 Club
602 N. Lawe Street
Appleton, WI  54911




12.27.2014

The Dells





The signs said No Trespassing.


But that just seemed silly,


so I trespassed.





12.20.2014

Don't Get Cocky Ice Farmer!



You were proud that your ice was finer than McKee's.
Then the weather got warm and the hose was left on 
and a puddle formed that caused a creek 
and fissions while refreezing,
unskateable.
And McKee's? 
Fast and smooth as glass.


OMatty, one of the rink's guest maintenance officers giving himself a Buddhist pep talk.



12.16.2014

Sounds of Summer 2014, A


(listen)





I will make mud
I will make mud
While the grass is growing
I will make mud
I will make mud
While the grass is growing
I can make mud
I can make mud
Where the grass is growing
I can make mud
I can make mud

Where's somemoremud Mama?
What's that?
Where's some more mud?
You need some more mud?
Yeah.
You can get mud by the back of the garage.
By the back of the garage?
In the back of the garage, yeah.
I will come out with a pocket of mud
a pocket of mud a pocket of mud
I will come out with a pocket of mud
a pocket . . .

Doing a video!

No I'm not.

A pocket of mud.  See Mama? Look it.

It's audio which means it's just sound.
But I hate sound I only like with no sound that's why I don't want a video.
Hey, what do you think this is?  These are, we planted these last year
I think these are like our garlics that are growing again.  Look at that we're gonna have these really nice garlics that's awesome
O.K. But I don't like garlic that much
that much that much

Where is the strawberries that we were growing
growing
I thought we were growing strawberries

Wa!

While the grass is growing

growing

While the grass is growing growing growing growing growing growing!

Mama I don't want it

Whoa.  I must put a little seed in there.
I wanna bury a seed
I wanna















12.13.2014

Dear Frank Rippl





You asked if kids play in the sandbox anymore.  Judging by this one, right on your own block, I'd say yes!  Thank you for the inspiring lecture on improvisation.  You expressed so succinctly, so many thoughts that have been flying around in my head.  I particularly like how you describe improv as the original music.  

Who was the first person to blow through a reed and make a song?  Who was the first to accidentally cover a hole and play a new note?  Why have we moved so far from improvisation as a serious form of study (serious in all its humor and surprise) that people fail to grasp that one practices it just as we practice classical music?  Is our ability to improvise (or not) cultural or inherited through the genes? Why are we encouraged to play with paint freely, the way we play in a sandbox, but with music we are presented very early on with strict rules?  Is our insistence that learning how to play classical (white, European) music as the best foundation for a musical education, a racist construct or a truism or just what we've learned to say?  What about the improvisational acrobatics that is classical East Indian music?  Would those musicians benefit from learning the rigidity of our classical music first?

I used this photograph to illustrate a post awhile back, trying to show how strange it would be to introduce playing in the sandbox the same way we introduce music.  My mom for one, thought it was about how to play in the sandbox.  So maybe this proves the woman's point who said these tendencies are tired to general dispositions.

Here's a link to the post:



Frank Rippl at All Saints
Improvising on the pipe organ
and discussing improv techniques at the piano




What I played on our out of tune piano when I came home:





12.11.2014

I Was Wrong


Feeling Blue?






a tiny song:

tad neuhaus, guitar
joanna dane, vocals




Listen and visit the Feeling Blue? gallery at The 602.



12.07.2014

Save the Date for A.D.C.P.!



Art Day, City Park


SUNRISE TO SUNSET

Saturday, May 30th, 2015

CITY PARK
APPLETON, WI

celebrating neighborhood, creativity, collaboration

***












Be Present.  

Get to Know Your Neighbors.

Participate.





12.05.2014

Strange Porch Blues - Weird






Weird turned the perfectly good station wagon her parents gave her into a car-thedral complete with flying buttresses and catacombs.  Weird collects hair and finger nails and lint.  Weird carries an old banjo everywhere she goes even though she doesn't know how to tune it.  Weird has three pet squirrels.