Erin Mckeown | the thaw

January 9th, 2010


i was writing about dancing yesterday. it's been on my mind lately, how i use my body to react to music. sometimes i get frustrated that i have an instrument hanging on my neck so often. my favorite moments on stage are ones where i can put down whatever it is i am holding and move unfettered.

i wrapped up cultureweek2010 last night with a night of dancing to new orleans bands. perhaps because the APAP conference is this week, the musical offerings this weekend were vast. a new friend from new orleans was here in town, so i tagged along while she went around visiting her hometown bands.

after an amazing ethiopian dinner at meskerem, we started at sullivan hall. john ellis, paul sanchez, jason marsalis, and christian scott all took the stage in some form or other. there was tuba, trumpet, harmonica, vibes, and more, all mixing it up. it was early in the evening, and the crowd was moving like they needed more drinks. me too. i hadnt been to a club to just dance in awhile. you have to dance to new orleans music, but it took me a second to get going.

by the time we transfered to the bitter end to see rosie ledet, things had changed. i was feeling looser, and so were the hundred plus people packed into that tiny club.
i played at the bitter end once in 1997. i met one of my oldest friends that night, and duncan sheik tried to buy my $5 cassette with a $100 bill. i just gave him the cassette. wonder if he even remembers?

so we danced and danced to rosie as she played traditional zydeco music. more than once, i stopped dancing to think, this reminds me of afrobeat. both musics are primarly for dancing. they have simple forms. percussion and drone are key components. the washboard and the shekere clatter underneath the music and form a constant backbone. and the music just goes and goes. every song must have been at least 6 or 7 minutes. i really have no idea exactly because i danced until i got sweaty, which was a fantastic feeling in the middle of january.

i hate the way my body feels this time of year. and i hate the way my body feels when i dont get to loosen up and let go with music like rosie's. it took me a week, but i eventually warmed up and thawed out.


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Erin Mckeown | just.fucking.dance.

January 8th, 2010


every time i set about writing today, i find myself distracted. i was never the kid who put off writing the paper. i was the cranker who turned it out in one sitting two or three days ahead of time and then coasted into the due date. i dont want to think about my blog as homework, but i am starting to feel that way. i felt the same way the other day when i had to write up a set of comments on net neutrality and my internet usage for the FCC. i kept finding reasons not to write. why? am i really that obstinate these days that any whiff of assignment, even self-imposed, results in intractibility? (by the way, you too can file comments with the FCC. instructions here, due on jan14th)

someone either here or on FB recommended the museum of art and design (thank you!), which has an especially attractive pay-what-you-wish thursday option. i went last night with my friend moose, a gifted producer and composer. we each paid $10 and saw a fabulous exhibit of paper sculpture.



both "paper" and "sculpture" were terms taken loosely by the curators. the show featured so many interpretations of that intersection, it was mind boggling. can you really do that with paper? i kept asking myself over and over. the advent of the laser certainly helped. many of the most detailed sculptures were made using high-tech cutting technology. but as a whole, paper as a material seemed to inspire the very basic aesthetic of accumulation. monstrous stacks were laser cut or lathed; tiny cuts on yards of paper added up to vast scenes; a multitude of quaker oats boxes stretched from floor to ceiling; minuscule paper rolls became a table top size floral mosaic.

here's my favorite, Jane South's Wall:

after grabbing a quick bite in columbus circle with moose, i headed downtown to meet the swede, an old old friend and mentor. the swede has recently been hired to write a broadway musical. what an assignment! i dont even know where you would begin, but if anyone can do it, the swede can.

i feel honored that the swede has shared a little of her process with me, and it's led to some really good conversations on the how and why of musical theater. we were talking last week about how broadway musicals sometimes try to manufacture emotion (or something with the appearance of emotion) via musically complicated songs and flashy stage craft. i've observed that i connect emotionally with music via rhythm. if it doesnt have some type of motion and depth rhythmically, i'm not engaged. this set the swede's mind turning. if this were true for more people than me (which i think it is, whether people are aware of it or not), how can this come to benefit a broadway show?

so the swede is here in NY now doing a version of her own culture week, taking notes on other musicals. she managed to get some tickets to the new musical "Fela!" and invited me to come along. i didnt know too much about the show, but i certainly knew that we'd get plenty of rhythm.

"Fela!" tells the story of the afrobeat pioneer and political agitator fela kuti. it's unusual as modern musicals go- there is no dialogue and there arent any scene changes. all the action takes place on the stage of fela's club "the shrine", and the only spoken words are by fela himself. the music is primarily pre-existing fela songs, with a few new bits thrown in for continuity and plot (warning: this musical has no plot, and i didnt care).

i have always loved afrobeat, specifically the drumming and the horns. you can hear both the influences of afrobeat (funk, jazz, hi-life, cuban) and what it has gone on to influence (modern funk and hip-hop, rock, and beyond). in some ways, afrobeat is a linchpin in 20th century music, everything rotates around it. does anyone agree, disagree?

the music of fela survives broadway-ification surprisingly intact. part of that is because core members of antibalas, the brooklyn based modern afrobeat collective, are the house band. and somehow, the simple explanatory style of fela's music lends itself extraordinarily well to the broad gestures of big-time broadway. broadway composers tie themselves in knots trying and failing to write songs that have as much clarity and emotion as fela's music.

broadway lends itself so well to spectacle because it's the one form that marries dance and song inextricably. most purely musical performance doesnt feature movement and most dance performance either works with musical forms besides song or breaks apart the song form with gestures. it was invigorating to see music that i love simply reacted to. it was not re-contextualized, not broken apart, not re-interpreted. the dancers moved as you would have thought they should, feeding on the inherent elements of the music and amplifying them physically without commenting on them. perhaps that sounds like a missed opportunity, but i think it's actually the more entertaining and emotionally engaging choice. if the music makes you want to dance, then just. fucking. dance.

if you can find a way to see "fela!" you must. it absolutely blew me away- eye candy and ear candy and heart candy.

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Erin Mckeown | elevate, escalate, remember

January 7th, 2010

i got home last night from a friend's birthday party in the far away land of the Upper West Side, and was too tired to type. a contributing factor i am sure was the pounds of italian food i ate at gennaro. squid-blackened risotto, kale salad, truffle salad, more gnocchi, octopus salad, fettuchini bolognase, then mousse, flan, and tiramisu. happy birthday jane!

i finished up "zeitoun" the other night, tearing through the 4th segment of the book like a mad-woman. i needed to know what happened more than i needed to sleep. i love books like that, even though they make my head ache from all that reading and leave me short of breath from all that excitement. i am contemplating a move to new orleans, and a book like "zeitoun" mostly makes me want to live there. i have always wanted to be a part of the type of community that has formed there. although there is a part of me that is consistently horrified by every new story i hear about katrina-related atrocities, i also wonder if an event like the flood has to define a city forever. i suppose like any place, there's gonna be ups and downs, and new orleans just happened to have had a very very famous down. i need to think more on this.

so instead of reading last night, i decided to watch a film. the first one i saw on the shelf was "ladysmith black mambazo: on tip toe". i could do a whole entry on this documentary. maybe i will when i dont have too many other things to get to in this one. like most people, i heard of LBM when i saw them with paul simon on SNL back in 1985. "graceland" had just come out, and paul simon was BIG. i was too young to catch any of the debates swirling around the record (politics, expoitation) and i still havent resolved my feelings on all that (and i have a damn ethnomusicology degree).

what i remembered about that performance then is what also struck me last night watching this film. i am so taken with the substance of joseph shabalala's music- its subjects of god and hope, it's harmonic form, and the choreography. something about the dance language that LBM employs always catches me. i love the synchronicity, i love the small movements in time broken by bigger athletic gestures, the freeze-frame posturing and then the supple way the pose is broken.

the movie traces the history and influences of the isicathamiya style of singing and gives a brief timeline of the group. watching it, i couldnt help but think about another movie, paris is burning, about a similiar way that dance, fashion, and performance competition fufill a distinct social function in a culture. can someone with more time compare and contrast these two films? i know wont get to it until the spring, and i think there's something really rich there.

my big cultureweek2010 adventure yesterday was to go to the guggenheim with my friend Z, a wondrously talented musician, writer, and painter. she's got an eye and a mouth on her, all the better to view and provide running commentary.

the exhibit in the main hall of the guggenheim was a kandinsky retrospective. one of the first artists to be collected by the guggenheims, the show worked its way in a roughly chronological manner as you walked up and up and up toward the top of the rotunda.

i didnt know much about kandinsky, but it didnt matter because i like any experience of visual art. i especially like to see where someone's biography intersects their output. perhaps it is not fair to wonder where someone was living, who they were sleeping with, what they were listening to, what were they were reading might have affected their creativity (god knows i get cranky when people do it to me), but i find myself hungry to have that information as i look at a person's collected work.

i dont have all that much to say about kandinsky's actual art, but that i liked where it arrived by the time he died. as he closed in on his earthly end, he had discovered bio-morphic forms and pastel colors. picture ernst haeckel meeting bed bath and beyond, which is surprisingly engaging.

i'd never been to the guggenheim before and was completely stunned and overwhelmed by the space. i have rarely been in architecture that inspires such a physical reaction (see my entry ages ago on the jewish museum in berlin). but as i walked up and up and up into the museum, my heart raced, my head spun, and my mood shifted from calm and grounded, to ethereal and floating. i almost wanted it to stop because i felt like at any moment i would teeter over and fall... where?

one of the gifts of the space too is looking down through the spiral and catching glimpses of work that you saw a few minutes earlier. the feeling is a physical translation of memory. with distance, you see something differently. with distance, you can see a lot of things at once. because of the spiral, you walk a few more feet and look again, and some things that were near are now further, and vice versa. here's a pic i took from the top before the security guard made me stop.



speaking of memory, my favorite piece of art in the whole museum (and perhaps my favorite thing i have experienced all week) was anish kapoor's installation "memory". i wish i had written down my thoughts on seeing it before i watched this little movie about it, because the curator and the artist of course explain it more eloquently than i can, but i will say the following:

i was struck by the size of the object, and its relatively organic feel despite being made of giant steel plates bolted together. it was as though a big construction crane had laid a quivering steel egg in the too small room at the museum.

Z and i approached it from the outside on two different sides before we saw what the artist called the "aperature". approaching it, from a room filled with picasso and gaugin, i thought it was a modern rothko-type painting- a giant 2-D canvas that explored the color black. but as i got closer, i realized i was looking into a giant void, and that void was the interior of the sculpture. i took my glasses off, as if that would help; i stepped closer and further, nothing helped me make sense of what i was seeing. slowly, as my eyes got used to the darkness i could begin to discern the curved steel walls receding into an interior that was too big and too far away for definition.

thank you Art for the way you can disorient and dislodge my day-to-day.

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Erin Mckeown | intermission

January 5th, 2010


i spent the day stuck in front of my computer and on the phone dealing with Real Life. no worries, after a day of nose to the digital grindstone, i think i got done almost everything i needed.

i did go out to dinner in manhatten at frankies 17. there is one in brooklyn too. amazing italian food. we had beets and meatballs with raisins and tiramisu and cheesecake.

i was joined by my friend, the irish director jimmy fay. he's got a new sam shepard play opening at the atlantic next week. i'm not going to get to see it until later in its run, but it promises to be, as they say, a corker. jimmy is one of the smartest, deepest guys i know, and that's from only hearing about half of what comes out in his crooked irishman's accent. imagine if i understood everything he said.

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Erin Mckeown | translations from the good book

January 4th, 2010

i woke up today feeling hungover and tired from all the stuff i have been pouring into my days. besides my cultural diet, i am also gorging on old friends and long catch-ups. so i took today easy, kind of.

when my friend c.Love and i had coffee this morning, i asked her if she was doing anything interesting tonight.

"yes, trans, dolly, gospel."

that's really all i heard, because i got so excited by what she was describing.

"stop," i said."i want to be surprised."

so i ended up tonight at joe's pub in manhatten seeing an incredible transwoman perform the gospel-oriented repertoire of dolly parton, complete with 7 piece band and choir.

it's so rare that i see something i knew nothing about ahead of time, and i think it's a major contributor to being blown away. i dare say, that only the first time or the hundreth time you see a performer, it has the potential for real transcendance.

our lady J got me tonight. she re-arranged and re-contextualized songs like "the grass is blue", "traveling", "two doors down", "9-5", "the seeker", "i will always love you", combining hits and more obscure tracks, switching between secular and non-secular music. not only was she a killer piano player and arranger, she had 4 costume changes! i was taking notes.

listening to song after song, i was also struck by the depth of the writing. that was the real brilliance of the show for me and what makes dolly parton such a rich vein to mine for comment. not only does she write with humor and flair and craft, she also writes from a deeply spiritual place that anyone can connect to. it's tempting to love dolly parton ironically, for her exagerated appearance, for her gaudy production values, for all her shiny country sheen, but that's all sequins to make people buy things. only later do we consumers realize there is the heart of a true artist beating underneath the costume.

it's really important to me that we make a space in our culture for people who don't fit in narrow boxes, who would rather make their own categories. people like dolly parton. or our lady j. and that's how i think of myself, for sure. the category of erin. i am especially attracted to those who push at the gender spectrum, who shade it with finer and finer grades. when you combine that with good old fashioned show biz, then i'm a goner.

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Erin Mckeown | the spirituality of subtraction

January 4th, 2010



what happens when we take things away? i've been thinking a lot about that recently. perhaps part of it is because of the new year, and many resolutions involve giving something up. but i am thinking of subtraction as something even more fundamental and lasting than a new years diet. what happens when we abstain? what happens when we set limits for ourselves around consumption and accumulation?

i dont drink, smoke, or take drugs anymore. the subtraction of these items from my life has been miraculous. everything has shifted for me- my relationships to people, places, and things especially food, sex, and god. i am closer, clearer, and more present for all three. it's been a beautiful and i hope permanent shift.

i have always been a house purger. every once in awhile, i comb through my place and get rid of things. mostly clothes and shoes i no longer wear. but also music and books. i try to keep only what i need. i have three plates, a few glasses, 2 pots, and just enough cutlery. i find that when i want something i used to have or i need, i like looking at why i wanted it in the first place.

some of my subtractions are temporary. i like to give up meat every once in awhile. it gives my wallet a break and my intestines too. i feel lighter somehow. and then when i pick the meat back up, i feel my muscles rejoice at the new fuel. i also like to fast. i usually do a seasonal cleanse of some sort. it's great for me to think about my relationship with food and get a big old re-set by shifting that around regularly.

i saw two shows yesterday that seemed to fit in with my current thoughts on subtraction. the first was "wishful drinking", carrie fisher's one woman broadway show about her life. based on her memoir of the same name (which i listened to in the van on tour), she hilariously recounts her family history, her mental illness, and her addiction and recovery. i always find it inspiring when people share their addiction memories, though it's a very fine line to walk between engaging and off-putting. the writing in "wishful drinking" is so bulletproof and flawless, that it makes the very question of "is this naval-gazing self-centered bull?" completely irrelevent. see it or read it, now.

one of the things that carrie fisher regularly subtracts from herself is her memory. as a treatment for bi-polar disorder, she undergoes ECT, a modern version of shock therapy. one consequence is she often loses her short term memory (about 4 months of it). as she says, anything important that happened in the last 4 months will probably happen in the next 4 months too. for her, the trade-off is worth it.

i like this idea. i hold on to too much in my brain that i dont need. i am wondering how i can let go of more that i hold on to. in the same way i like to change my perspective on food or material posessions by subtraction, what can i let go of emotionally to live more in the moment? that's the question, right?

there is a song by one of my favorite bands, the bad plus, called "silence is the question". in my current thinking about subtraction, silence is the answer too. the space between notes, the quiet parts of the day. what happens when we remove the clatter?

after carrie fisher, i went to see the bad plus at the village vanguard. i'd never been to this historic club, as much as i have heard and loved plenty of recordings made there. i went with another musician, and we sat right up close, about 3 feet from the drum kit.

the bad plus- pianist ethan iverson, bassist reid anderson, and drummer dave king- create by deconstruction. or really, thats too kind a word. they create by exploding songs and letting the pieces fall where they may. sometimes the deconstruction is so sly that you guffaw out loud when you realize what they've done. other times, its so raw and volatile that you can only sit back and be overwhelmed by it.

the set last night was a mix a cheek and bombast, though leaning more heavily toward physical cascades of overlapping explosions. this most obviously manifests itself in the drumming of dave king, who gave a virtual clinic on the dissolution of beats and drum kits as we know them. however, occasionally, and for me, most importantly, silence became the question, and the trio deconstructed by placing big hunks of silence where there once was chaos. in those spaces, where king makes his kit sound like it is coming through your next-door-neighbors wall, where reid simply breathes and occasionaly plays a note, and iverson goes two finger, there is that shift of perspective that leads me to clarity. i feel the fast, the abstinence, and the clearing of my memory.

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Erin Mckeown | time waits for no woman

January 2nd, 2010

i couldnt sleep last night. not because of being in a new place, or even the clatter of the F tracks outside my window, no, i couldnt sleep because i was reading "zeitoun" until the wee hours. I Could Not Put It Down. a gift, that book is. i mean, we all know whats gonna happen. a hurricane is coming, then a devastating flood. so what could be the hook? real lives painted in hyper color. i wish someone could take my day to day and go beyond reporting to commentating, contextualizing, and in short, elevating to literature, the daily sentences of life.

it made sense then to start my day at the strand in manhatten. as i was wandering about, i spotted a celebrity or two, including gretchen phillips, the punk-rock queere-core legende. after perusing the stacks a little more ( i bought nothing, she art books and the autobiography of helen keller), we decided to get some lunch.

a short hop away was souen, macrobiotic and beautiful asian food. i'd been there before, but didnt realize until i walked in the door and saw the split level layout. i love their grain coffee, a chicory and root combo that lives somewhere between coffee and tea. it reminded me of the tea that the spaceship heart of gold tries to make for arthur dent in the hitchhikers guide. something "very like" coffee, but not quite.



i ordered "boxB" which was full of rice balls, pickles, seaweed, and salmon in ginger. i forgot to take a picture i was so hungry. halfway through, i remembered i was trying to blog about my week. document, erin, document!

thus here is a picture of gretchen with two important pieces of trash we spotted. there is a pun in here somewhere. how about a newyorker style caption contest?



i was hoping to walk the highline, the new elevated park that just opened above 10th ave. but if you were in NYC today, you know that would have been downright stupid. it's so cold here, it's dangerous. mind you, not chicagojanuarycold (which is the coldest i have ever experienced, colder than my alaskan trips), but very very close. fuck you windy cold air.

back in brooklyn, i ate dinner with my friend dame-o at flatbush farm. is this a relation of the farm on adderly? dam-o and i shared a salad with bacon then the ricotta gnocchi. my mom is straight up italian (parents born in italy) so i grew up knowing the proper way to say "gnocchi". it's not quite a silent "g", it's like youre still thinking of the "g" but dont need to say it.

i could have eaten myself silly and sat at the bar all night, but dam-o and i had other plans. we headed down flatbush to BAM to see my friend todd sickafoose's band. todd names his band based on his current album, so tonight, it was "tiny resistors".

i've known todd for a long time, and played with him alot. he's been a big part of my creative process- somehow being around and part of the writing of some of my best music. he plays on "sing you sinners", "lafayette", and he produced my sideproject, "emma". we also see eachother alot because he's been ani difranco's right-hand guy for years now.

the show was free and in the upstairs BAM Cafe space. i'd been to another show there a couple years ago, and the room was just as gorgeous as i remembered. an open industrial space, it's made more cozy by metal arches lined with thousands of tiny lights. the effect is something like a giant tin can with pinholes, or more elegantly, like a million little stars twinkling overhead.

todd always plays with an 8 piece ensemble. my brother erik deutsch was on the piano, and my good friend adam levy played guitar. last time i saw adam was on my tour with jill sobule. adam showed up just in time at our chicago show to jump onstage and kill on "survivor".

my favorite thing about todd's music is that it is open. i never think of form when i listen. i am not hearing a "head" or an "A section" or a "B section", i am simply hearing a sound that gets thinner or fatter, louder or softer, subdivided or elongated, depending. there is plenty of room for players to put their own personality into it, but no one voice ever dominates.

tonight, todd's music felt brawny to me. i heard something muscular and fierce in it that i have never heard before. like a big timber being heaved onto strong, thick shoulders and carried easily. i knew all the songs, but never felt like i had heard them before. it was entirely fresh to my ears. i closed my eyes a few times and thought of what i would play if i could join them. but, mostly i just swayed in my seat and took it all in.



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Erin Mckeown | culture week 2010

January 1st, 2010


for my vacation this year, i didnt choose to go to an island, someplace sunny, or even someplace warm. i chose instead to come to brooklyn for a week and pack in as much music, theater, art, and food as possible.

i have a friend who lives in carrol gardens. she has a fabulous little apartment not far from the F Train, where i've often stayed when i come to town. she's currently in africa, doing amazing political and activist type things, and she offered me her keys in exchange for watering her plants. i think i got the better end of the deal.

my plan is to be here for 8 nights and to pack every day with as much as i can hear, taste, and see. i regularly spend long stretches in brooklyn, but this time i am consciously setting out to overstimulate myself before i have to get back to work.

so, day one, i drove in and started out easy with an evening showing of guy ritchie's sherlock holmes. it's been awhile since i have been to a rock 'em sock 'em blockbusta. what a pleasure to turn off my mind and watch things explode. there was enough of a plot to hang some great fights on and plenty of eye candy (hello jude, and hello production designer) to satisfy me. sequel please. by the way, i dont know why but i am rooting for guy ritchie. was he done wrong by madge?

ok, how about some restaurant recommendations. i need an interesting dinner spot near BAM and a good sunday morning brunch spot (not too pricey) in midtown. also, what art should i see? anything special going on this week? hook me up!

PS: book for the week is zeitoun by dave eggers


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Erin Mckeown | top 11 moments of 2009

December 24th, 2009

in an effort to clear my decks and raise a metaphorical glass to the 365 days gone by, here's my listy of mem'ries from 09. by the way, i didn't think twice at the approach, but, um, the decade is over. wierd.

Andrew Bird @ Carnegie Hall sometimes you are just rooting for people. i have been an andrew bird fan since i was 19 and got turned onto him the summer i lived in chicago. in the intervening years, i have followed every note of every song, marveled at his evolution, and cheered every time more people found him. i wont claim any close friendship, but we are friendly, and it was pure joy to see a friend step onto the stage at carnegie and belong. more than belong, he molded that historic room to his singular vision. bravo!



angels@mariners, april, safeco field, seattle WA + mets@nationals, june, nationals park, DC you all know by now that i'm a sucker for beisbol. combine it with work, and i am a happy kitten. i got to two games this year while i was on tour, a low total for me, but at least they were in new parks, and i had great seats. at safeco, i munched on the garlic fries and walked the gorgeous open concourse that wraps the whole field. in DC, a light rainstorm let me sit first row, behind third base, for the whole game. david wright tossed me a foul ball at the end of an inning. i think he thought i was 12. oops, i dropped it.
read this cool blog on baseball camera-angles

beantown swing orchestra this year, my good friend sam got married. as part of his wedding, he wanted his musical friends to sing with a real, live, big band. turns out, the band he found, boston's 18-piece beantown swing orchestra, were big fans of mine. in the months leading up to the wedding, they let me sing with them a few times. i learned about 20 charts, and i learned that singing with a big band is like singing strapped to the front of a runaway 18-wheeler. something about the work of 3 set nights, of playing for dances and weddings, made me feel like i was running on the orpheum circuit, circa 1927. i felt like a trouper and i loved it.

New Orleans Artist Retreat with ATC/FMC in may, i got to spend three days in new orleans at an activism workshop. i met a slew of other amazing artists and got to see parts of new orleans i hadnt been to before. for me, that i got asked to be part of a group like that was a vote of confidence for my own nascent activist work. in short, i always wanted to, but didnt know how. air traffic control and future of music coalition have gave me the tools and then some.

Among The Oak and Ash Tour for three weeks in june, i got to be a bass player. that's it. nothing else. my friends garrison and josh invited me to fill in for a tour in their new band. their music is a beautiful mix of traditional apppalachian and modern punk rock. on paper, hmm, sounds clunky. in the air and on stage, it trancends categorization.

Cabin Fever Three, In the River of all the cabin fever episodes, this one was my favorite. perhaps it was the sheer impossibility of shooting a live web episode in 2 feet of flowing water. perhaps it was the long list of cool special guests. perhaps it was my neighbors gathering on the banks to cheer us on. perhaps it was getting to play songs about water in the water. perhaps it was getting baptised in the waters of the internets at the end. i dare say it was the proudest moment of my career.

Hike in Capital Reef National Park, Torrey UT i didnt get to do as much hiking/outdoor exploring as i would have liked this summer, but i was able to fit a little jaunt in the morning before my set at the Red Rock Women's Fest. gorgeous rocks, open space, and solitude. i do love this country.


Nature Camp Adult Session
through an old friend, i got to go back to my childhood summer camp and teach stringband in the adult session. i was in charge of the bass, mandolin, and guitar players. teaching music to non-musicians, or rather musicians who dont play anymore, was a challenge and a good reminder how blessed i am to be able to spend all my time making art. plus it was a trip to go back to summer camp and not have any rules.

Shoot for OUT Magazine 100
sometimes i get itchy about exclusively gay stuff. part of it is my pathologically fierce notion of "don't fence me in". perhaps its my growing attachment to a "queer" identity- as opposed to lesbian, bi, or straight but not narrow. in the end, i said yes to this honor, and got to spend an afternoon being fussed over by gay men and photographed by the lovely jason bell. i love how the picture came out, and i am proud to be included in such a diverse portfolio. they named me "the cool" girl. let me tell you, that was the furthest thing from who i was in highschool.




Ellnora Guitar Festival
my friend natalia zukerman and i got invited to be part of this fantastic weekend in champaign-urbana IL. as far as bang for the buck and diversity, this is the best guitar festival i've ever been to. there's a big tent called guitar, and i really liked all the people who fit under it.

FMC Conf / Lobby Day on Capitol Hill
as an extension of my new orleans time, i got to participate in the future of music policy conference. three days with smarty smarty people talking about more than theoretical mumbo jumbo. these are people who think about how to make the world better, then do it. one thing i have learned about activist work, narrow your focus and then concentrate. for me, that's led me to the question: how do we make the cultural job of Artist as viable and liveable as any other vocation? all my work is under the umbrella of answering that question!

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Erin Mckeown | fresh tracks

November 28th, 2009

isn't this new music world overwhelming? there is so much to listen to! as a rule, i don't read music magazines or look at taste-maker blogs. for me, they're a recipe for a disasterous bout of jealousy. since i work in the music industry, i prefer to hear about new music from non-industry types.

ahem erin, you say, you've painted yourself into a metaphorical corner.

ok, ok, so i don't really know how i find out about music, but like everyone else, at any given time there are a few records that are spinning heavily in my subconscious. for the final episode in this week's series, i'll share with you what i like these days.

"gospel legends" / "goodbye babylon" box set:
a month or so ago, i had an afternoon alone in a hotel room. as i was switching channels, i became mesmerized by an info-mercial for a compilation called "gospel legends". recorded live, it is a document of the convergence of 30+ contemporary gospel artists backed by a full-on choir and house-band. i ordered it on the spot, and i've been loving it alot lately. which also reminds me of another favorite gospel collection of mine: goodbye babylon. this 6 disc set collects obscure performances by both white and black gospel artists from the 20s and 30s. it's scratchy but more punk rock than any music being made today.

"erik deutsch's hush money":
full disclosure, erik deutsch is a close friend and one of my favorite musicians. he's made a name for himself with charlie hunter, norah jones, and a whole fistful of other talented people. his playing is bright and shiny without ever being cloying or cheesy. his usual band includes piano, bass, drums, guitar, oboe and saxophone. his newest, "hush money" adds a little grit, grime, and groove to his clear sound. my favorite song is called "dirty osso bucco". enough said. http://www.hammerandstring.com

"ocote soul sounds / coconut rock":
ocote is one of the many irons in the fire of musician martin perna. he's best known as one of the founders of antibalas, the seminal brooklyn afrobeat band, but his talent can't be contained in just one group. this record has all my favorite things: warmth, groove, and space sounds. check out "the revolt of the cockroach people".

"heartless bastards / the mountain":
a few years ago, i was setting up for soundcheck at one of my favorite venues, the tractor tavern in seattle. the soundguy had a record on that caught my ear. it was the heartless bastards first release, "stairs and elevators". i've been a big fan ever since. the first time i saw them live, i was worried that they couldn't match the energy and heft of their albums, but match it they did. the fact that they didn't excede their recorded sound is more a tribute to the brilliance of their records than a slam on their live show prow-ess. their newest, "the mountain", continues to scale the rock everest.

"regina spektor / far":
i don't have a lot to say about regina except that she is brilliant, and i love her. and the more i listen to "laughing with", the more i hear. did i already say, brilliant!

so, philadelphia, i'll see you tomorrow night at world cafe live. my friend jill sobule and i are gonna make you a show, and we've got a band to back us up. thanks for reading this week, and see you soon!

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