Live at Empty Bottle (rerun)

As I was browsing through my DVD collection I noticed an unmarked generic black case. I had to think for a second as to what exactly it was. Riiiight, it was the only existing live video of me performing solo in the last few years. My pal from college John Weaver shot it when I played the Empty Bottle in September of 2006. I remember that show for the reason that it was the first time I was back in Chicago after having moved to Sweden. It had been 10 months since I had seen any of my friends back home.

The performance itself isn't much to look at if you want my opinion. This was post guitar and pre knob-twisting. I sang along to my music and walked around the stage drunk. That was my thing. I don't know if it really worked.

Anyways, I liked how some of the songs sounded at least. I liked the fact that the room was filled with my friends that night. So I dumped the audio and selected 5 of my favorites. I would've put the whole set up but since the audio was coming from a video, a few songs were shot a bit too close to the main speakers and were a bit too fuzzed out to post.

Anyways, I thought I'd share this with you. This is a bit on the lo-fi side, but it is the only documentation of what I was doing live in 2006.

Mike Downey : Live at Empty Bottle, Chicago, Sept. 6, 2006
1. The Team That Never Wins
2. Oh, Randomness
3. You've Your Spymap Out
4. Comforter
5. Families

Download it in this zip file

Beaujolais : Love At Thirty

Joe Ziemba is Beaujolais. This is his debut album entitled Love At Thirty. I received this in the mail today but have been spending quality time with a cd-r of the album for a couple months now. I can't tell you how well-crafted and meaningful this record is.

Joe and I go way back. We went to high school together. Before I even knew him personally I started by watching him play drums in a powerful punky band that was tighter and, well, just plain better than all of the other bands in our high school (and there were surprisingly a ton of them). I was jealous and I was inspired.

Joe and I got to know each other and became quick friends. He got a Tascam 4-track before anyone else I knew. Joe also played guitar, sang and wrote his own songs and would make side project cassettes and pass them around school. This was the first time I realized that you didn't have to have a record label or be famous to put out an album. It pretty much changed the way I think, even to this day.

Before too long I was playing bass in a band with Joe. We started playing his solo songs live and eventually I started bringing in my own songs, which I sang. We recorded these songs on Joe's 4 track and even though I had a 4 track of my own by then, he really taught me how the machine worked. I watched him twist knobs and bounce tracks together. He would give me tapes of his songs and I'd pass him a tape of my songs. There were many hours of discussions about these songs and many more hours of us rehearsing these songs and performing them in front of audiences.

We learned to be musicians together. We experienced the good and bad of it together. We always managed to let the good, no matter what the ratio was to bad, shine through and grow, never seeming to get discouraged.

We then started the band Wolfie together and released a bunch of stuff and toured around. To make a long story short, what I basically did for a good long while was make music with Joe. And more importantly, we grew up and experienced life with each other to lean on.

For some people making music is just something you do for a while, then move on to something else. For Joe it is how he documents his life and deals with it. It's not a novelty and it's not temporary. This album is a document of a dark and promising time. There are really shitty times in life and it's up to an individual's inner strength to move forward and somehow come out a better person in the end. Everyone deals with life in different ways. Love at Thirty is how my good friend Joe does it. And it's quite an amazing thing to observe.

You can preview songs and purchase this album via Parasol.

Speechless

On the morning of July 1st, 2008 in Stockholm, Sweden at precisely 6:38, Nilla gave birth to our daughter Tilda. My life will never be the same after experiencing this. I simply don't have the words to explain what this means to me. The words don't exist.

Kicking Gas for Laughs

Kicking Gas for Laughs : Mike Downey
hrtph003

1. Casper
2. No Prob
3. No Stereo
4. Oils
5. Who's Under the Stairs, Who's Dropping Out and All of That
6. Believer
7. Rescue Rocket
8. Wheel in a White Sky
9. 100 Rooms
10. A Little More Grape Capt. Bragg
11. You Went to War
12. Wait

Download this album for free here (67mb zip file)
In 2006 I was in full recording mode. No job; I didn't have much else to do. This continued through to mid 2007. I amassed a collection of songs so large that I freaked myself out and became overwhelmed. I was used to it taking 3-5 months for a record to come out after it was finished. Not really understanding what my options were at that time I kept these songs under lock and key until earlier this year when I plucked 12 of them out and released them digitally via my own imprint heartphone. This album was called Hold Horses and I see it today as my most accomplished work to date.

I was so satisfied with Hold Horses that I thought it would maintain as my calling card for at least a year until I managed to craft another album's worth of material. Well, seeing what you see above, this wasn't the case. What I didn't consider was this other, admittedly less-planned and not as produced, batch of songs.

I've had a playlist in my iTunes for past couple of months called Kicking Gas for Laughs. This playlist was at one time over 20 songs. Over the past week I slimmed it down and not wanting to break tradition selected my 12 favorites.

So here you have it, for what it's worth, Kicking Gas for Laughs. In my eyes this is a compliment to my latest output and finally represents my music making of the past 2.5 years in full. This was the exhale. I can now take in another deep breath and start the process over again.

Waiting to be outdated

Last night while allen-wrenching the baby crib together m'sweet snapped a photo of me. I was hunched over the work-in-progress in a state of pure focus, caught her out of the corner of my eye and looked up with a smile. Click. I immediately thought that this picture will be seen by our not even born yet child one day. We will say something like, "This was only a couple days before you were born. We were getting ready for your arrival."

Think about pictures of your parents, especially those from before you were born or when you were really little. They are surely laughable. The clothing styles, hairdos, furniture, etc... was at that particular moment in time top of the line, cutting edge. But when we see those pictures it's like we jumped into a pimped De Lorean or dug up a time capsule in the backyard.

I set down the tools and drew my eyes away from the crib and looked around the room. I wondered what the camera had framed. The room is pretty basic. It looks like a baby's room from any decade, maybe even the '70s with our choice of yellows and browns. That doesn't count, not modern enough. The crib, white and classic. That surely won't be it. The PC in the background, if the camera caught it, would definitely be a sign of our times and one day hilarious. And then I realized, it won't be the room's contents that will be funny, it will be me. From my stupid hair to me geeky glasses to whatever happened to be on my 2nd hand tshirt that day. As I change, my appearance changes. I will probably have gray hair one day sooner than I think. My brown locks will be a thing of the past. Maybe I'll get that eye surgery everyone is talking about and my glasses will make for hours of laughter. Maybe I'll get fat and pictures of skinny Mike will be emailed from brother to sister to cousin.

But whatever it is, it's good. It will mean that I have evolved. Like that half built crib I too am a work in progress. It something breaks I hope I can fix it. I have an allen wrench.