Bubbles of cassava

I tried to explain what tapioca was to someone who's never heard of it or tasted it before. Is tapioca an American thing? It was nearly impossible to explain because I realized I had no idea where it came from or really what it was. Were they air bubbles? Were they cooked up using different ingredients? These little weird things that I found in my pudding as a youth had officially come back to make my wheels start turning. And after serious review of my mental space I decided I had no clue at all where tapioca comes from or how it is made.

From Wikipedia:
Tapioca is an essentially flavourless starchy ingredient, or fecula, produced from treated and dried cassava (manioc) root and used in cooking. It is similar to sago. It is processed into either fine dried flakes, or more commonly, small hard white spheres or "pearls" that are soaked before use. These spheres are a common ingredient in Southeast Asian desserts, in puddings such as tapioca pudding, and in drinks such as bubble tea where they provide a chewy contrast to the sweetness of the drink. Cassava flour (tapioca flour) is commonly used as a food thickener, and is also used as a binder in pharmaceutical tablets.

Comes from a root! I'm still weird about the whole thing. Tastes good though. So, at Jewel yesterday I purchased some tapioca pudding and ate some today under a tree in the garden of the oldest house in Chicago. A fine way to top off a lunch.

Tapioca is also used in bubble tea, which in my humble opinion sounds fucking NICE.

Today your love, tomorrow the world.

Killer

It felt really good to get out of the city this weekend. I realized how long it had been since I'd been gone for more than just an afternoon. This weekend of shows came at a perfect time; things had been getting a tad claustrophobic around here. Fresh air awaited. We loaded up the car and headed down to Indianapolis as I was set to play as part of the Midwest Music Summit.

Note: My car usually sits in a state of hibernation, except for the occasional jaunt to the suburbs or to the Jewel when I really need to stock up. My car has no stereo/radio or air conditioning. This wasn't the coldest weekend of the summer either.

But we're troopers. And we're tough. And we know what good conversation is and how to create it. So, we got over it, as we had no other choice. We bounced into Indianapolis and met up with all-around amazing guy Jason Pierce. Jason helps run one of the best record stores I've ever been in, Luna Music and is in charge of their in-house label Recordhead. We did some dinner and met up with Luna/Recordhead Major Honcho Todd Robinson. Todd and I got dorky and talked about Tobin Sprout 7"s ,Todd's 20+ years in the business of selling and releasing music and why it makes total sense to turn the phone's ringer off when you get home. I was schooled by his knowledge. It was super cool to catch up with these guys whom I hadn't seen for a couple years. And yes, we are all very pretty.

Oh, and I can't forget to mention...it was very fabulous running into some old friends that I'd toured with years ago. I shared the bill with Columbus, Ohio's finest Tiara. And, was super excited when I was approached by Aaron and Dan from The Buddyrevelles! They were in town playing in Sunday Runners. It's like 1999 all over again. Where's my Chevy conversion van and where's the next show?!

We kicked it at Jason's apartment and the next day we were off to North Manchester, Indiana. Where? Never heard of it? Me either! Population just over 6,000, Northern-Central Indiana. A few years ago some local kids applied for a $30,000 grant, got it, and opened an all ages live music club in an old Firehouse. The shows are free and the bands get paid with money that the volunteers have collected through fund raising. I have never experienced a better-organized Do It Yourself venue. They took care of and fed all of the bands (whom were all on tour) and the kids danced (not to my set, that might be hard). It was a really empowering night and proved youth in small-town Midwestern America (in the heart of a conservative state, mind you) can pull together and make something really fucking cool a reality. Thanks Jabin!

Now picture me, I was young today

I'm taking a week off from posting my own songs, spotlight on someone else today...

This is a public service announcement. I feel that it is my duty to spill my guts, regularly, about a band from Chicago I used to love called Number One Cup. They never fit into the "Chicago Sound" of the 90's. They opened for tons of other cool bands but never really got their moment to shine on their own, that's if you ask me. They were a pop band that rocked out. They wrote catchy songs that were "indie rock" and wonderful. This music highlights a certain time in my life, so this is all very selfish. But I want to share. The drummer and one of the band's three vocalists, Michael Lenzi, is one of the few local musicians I have kept up with, and it's been for over ten years now.

I really wouldn't have a reason to be talking about this band if I didn't just go to Michael Lenzi's website and realize that he's not only put up every Resplendent and Fire Show release (two projects which he fronted) as MP3s for free download (I posted about this months ago), but he has also put up every Number One Cup album as well! Albums are available in their entirety here. For your enjoyment, I've created the perfect Number One Cup mix. In typical Mike Downey mix fashion it's been narrowed down to twelve songs. Yes, they are in an order. Own it!

What Does It Mean?

Lustrous Poppies

Malcolm's X-Ray Picnic

Vintage Male Singer

Pocket

Flickers and Flames

Divebomb

Not Quite Reading

Apple Cider

Ease Back Down

Astronaut

Unison Bends

For serious...

Revue

Hello. How are you? Are you fine? I think I'm good. Let's go...Saturday we got up early, well, early for a Saturday and cruised over to Union Park to get our tickets for that day's Intonation Festival. Glad we did, the line was already pretty long when we got there...and this was about three hours before the first band even went on. Anyways, got the tickets to avoid an even longer line later and headed back home to prep for the lengthy day ahead.

I spent most of my time at Intonation sprawled on a bed sheet just inside the main entrance between the ticket booth and the toilets. I could hear everything; I couldn't see anything. I was close to a beer vendor and the free-flowing water station. We did move our lazy asses and walked around eventually to all of the various shops and stuffs. Nilla bought a canvas bag from a reputable Chicago designer and we spent the rest of the money on 312 beer.

Oh, the music. Well, I enjoyed parts of everything I saw except for The Go Team. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to put an exclamation point somewhere in their name. I really don't care to minimize this browser and open another to Google their name. They should've left Scary Spice at home, spent the money on a three-piece horn section and continued on instrumentally like I'd originally heard them.

I was excited to see Four Tet. Four Tet pissed off some people, amazed others. I was very impressed and satisfied. Sure, it would've made more sense to see a Four Tet set in a dark club in Berlin, but I'll take what I can get. I don't have any problem whatsoever with one guy onstage with an array of computers and processors. It's just that, to some, it looks "easy". Like he's up there "just pushing buttons." If it's so easy, let's see you do it. And, let's see you do it well in front of, oh, about 15,000 people, in the heat. His album 'Rounds' is one of my recent favorite listens.

A.C. Newman sounded the prettiest and Magnolia Electric Co. played perfect Saturday afternoon outside with a beer in your hand music. All in all it was a well-spent afternoon. Didn't make it out Sunday. I was sprawled on the same bed sheet in another park in another section of the city. We watched softball, juggling, bikinis and a balsa wood airplane, then finished the day with ziti and wine.

Tonight is a svenska lesson courtesy of Dungen. Ta Det Lugnt = Take It Easy.

I'm right for the first time

Another day, another dolla', another song you'll forget about by tamarra...


rats were comrades - mp3

Songs, right now, seem so disposable. They're all little moments in time, corners of our (songwriters) brains that, for better or worse, make it out to the public realm. There's no quality control. You've got enough gigabytes (or jigawatts, depending on your operating system) to soak up and archive these sounds, the music is shared, fuck... it's free, so take it. It's all too easy! And I love it.

Bob Pollard famously said that he can sit on the toilet and write five songs, and three of them would be good. You either run with the pack that believes in that philosophy or you don't. The writing process can be fast. Sometimes it drags and gnaws at you where each line of lyrics takes a day to write. A month later you've got a pretty average song that you killed yourself over. But, at least you completed it. This is the key: completion. Finish what you started. I've struggled with this concept in all areas of my life. But I'm working to get better. I've been seeing progress.

Joe Ziemba showed me how to operate a 4-track recorder in 1995. That was ten years ago. Once I started recording songs, I couldn't stop, so you do the math. It has probably been one of the most fabulous realizations ever for me, the fact that I can be so self-sufficient. It really works with my personality of only involving the bare minimum of variables in a process. And cutting the fat off has been a key strategy of mine, specifically over the past two years.

Take my songs with a grain of salt. Put it in your iTunes and let it live with the others. Hopefully, it'll come up on random right between Devin Davis and The Like Young. And for three minutes I'll be bouncing around your room, or your head. And if you picture me singing this song, imagine me with long-stemmed flowers hanging out of my back pocket and a can of spray-paint in my hand, walking down Ashland late in the afternoon when it's barely raining, right in that perfect hour when the sky gets tired before the evening sets in, it's all so dramatic, isn't it?

A Fixie!?

Well here goes my rule about not talking about people at work...

The girl at work who kept telling me that she wanted a "bike to ride by the lake with one of those comfy cushy seats" did NOT just pull up on a brand new fixed-gear Fuji Track bike. NO FUCKING WAY. She did have a front brake on it though, so that makes some sense. But nothing else does at all.

In other news: hell just froze, Switzerland declared war on Canada and I remembered how to play 'Stairway'.

I am not mad at her for purchasing this bike. I think it rules. Out of character, yes. Just took me by suprise. It's sort of like if your Mom rolled up in a dune buggy when you expected her to drive a Corolla.

Talk about Tuesday

I usually don't talk about work here. Well, my rule is that I won't talk about anyone in particular at work, good or bad. I don't know if anyone here reads my blog...but God, I hope not. I want to keep work and personal life as separate as possible. Don't look at my screen, I'm not blogging! What's a blog? Anyways, this has to do with what I learned today, at work.

First, before I get started, I got a flat tire on my way to work, walked my bike too many blocks to work, still got to work by 9:00. Then, walked too far to the bike shop on my lunch break, grabbed lunch and still made it back in my allotted half hour. Damn, I'm good/fast/tight.

Ok, at work, I'm working a contract job where I do fact checking and general cataloging of oral histories (interviews of prominent African Americans.) While doing this fact checking I google just about anything you could imagine. Any proper name, date or geographic location that is mentioned, I verify. I have to admit that my googling adventures can sometimes take me down paths I didn't actually intend to go down. Like today, I needed to get the date of the Jonestown Massacre. Easy, Wikipedia set me up with that (1978, if you care). Then I started to realize that I knew basically nothing about this event except that a guy named Jones supposedly brainwashed his followers into drinking some not-so-nice Kool Aid and ended up killing them. I didn't know where this happened (uh Jonestown is in Idaho, right?) or anything surrounding these events. So, I read more. Turns out, there are plenty of conspiracy theories (not hard to believe) and all sorts of weirdo side plots (a Congressman and others getting shot and killed on the tarmac after visiting Jonestown, prior to the mass suicide). Here's the link.

After that I read about the Exxon Valdez oil spill, another historic catastrophe I of course heard about, but didn't really know any specifics.

Curiosity got the best of me today. I think I will randomly hit up Wikipedia on a more regular basis and fill up my brain. Note to self: on the sprawling bookshelf you intend to have one day, make sure there is a full set of encyclopedias, low to the ground, so the kids can easily reach.

Other stuff I want to know more about: DNA, monkeys or other animals that have been sent to space, Tibet, socialism, velodromes and Chinese propaganda posters.

Now they're feeding me the seeds

Friday night was a lovely dinner at Handlebar and then a waste of time at a convenient drinking establishment. I can't say I enjoy randomly turning up at Club Foot any more. I'd rather be ignored by people I don't know than by those once close to me. See how it works? You had me, and then you lost me. I'm not going to just hang out and watch your hair grow. It's all quite boring.

On Sunday Nilla and I made the hour trek to New Lenox, Illinois, the town where I grew up and where my parents reside. I go back there about once every two months. I wanted to take her there to see the house I grew up in and the old haunts and halls I once monitored.

Before the sightseeing we had lunch with my parents. I can't say either of us were really nervous, but the anticipation of finally unveiling the girl I've been flying around the Western Hemisphere to meet up with for the past year and a half was all a bit much. Finally, we pranced through the front door and into the kitchen where my parents were waiting. Nilla brought them a nice hardcover picture book that highlighted some of Sweden's natural beauty. She handed over the book and got a couple hugs, immediately accepted. After our little meeting I remember a lot of guacamole and lime-flavored tortilla chips and putting the lime in the beer.

Twenty thousand questions later (all answered in cautious English), we were in the car and cruising the streets of New Lenox. The cornfields looked uncomfortable. The stalks were drying up and craved water in need of easing down towards the dirt to relax and grow. Into Country View we drove, down Jackson Branch Dr., parked in front of the house I lived in from two years old until thirteen. The driveway looked small, the yard was overgrown and the same landscaping was still there, basically unchanged since I left the house fifteen years ago. I wanted to jump out and run around but I wouldn't have come back. I surely would have fallen into the crocodile pit in Brian Kaplinski's backyard. Pitfall!

We bounced over the Jackson Branch Creek Bridge and through the rest of the neighborhood. Having seen enough I headed us towards the high school. It was fucking huge. They've added a whole other gymnasium and what looks like new halls/wings. Lincoln-Way Central High School is reaching convention center sized proportions. I bet the glass blowing wing is even bigger than the piglet dissection wing. Go figure!

Back into the city and comfortable. Chicago takes it down a notch on Sunday evening. It was quiet and calm, not unlike where we just came from. I have yet to make a real connection of my life here and my life there. They are nearly complete opposites. I guess what I learned and experienced in the small towns of my life is foundation to build on while up here; fat to live off of when the seeds don't come up.

the way they spread us out

phonio - mp3

SORRY, took this song down - md 7/26/05

Here you have it, song ten out of twelve off "Adventure, Bless and Don't Be Sorry." All these songs are unmastered, sorry if the volume levels from tune to tune are different. Sorry if this one isn't as good as the last one, or reverse that, maybe you like this one better. This one is about a houseguest. This one is about the morning. This one's about dancing in the winter, bare foot.

Me, I like reading Jack Kerouac and listening to Jawbreaker sing about Oakland.

Me, I don't care about baseball anymore, for real this time. I'm currently looking for a Swedish football team to support. I can't take this anymore. I'm at a breaking point in my life-long support of the Cubs. I think I'll swing my efforts over here. Why not.

The antithesis of good

When life is going along all snazzy and beautiful-like it's easy to get caught up in your day-to-day local surroundings and sort of space out on what's going on in the rest of the world. And then it's hard to neglect a text message at 6AM from across the globe telling you that certain people are ok, "if you heard what happened in London yet." I know someone else there that's important to me and my family and I'm in the process of finding out if she's ok and a bit worried because she commutes to work every morning. Fingers crossed, holding my thumbs.

It's hard to imagine why anyone would want to hurt innocent people. I will never understand their philosophies as to why it seems right to them. There are certain parts of the world that think incredibly different than we do. I have little faith that they can change us, or that we could change them. This is how the world works. This reality makes me sick to my stomach. To each their own is a wonderful way to look at life and to be accepting is a true and solid trait that I strive to maintain on a daily basis. But, people setting off bombs with the strict purpose of killing people simply because of their geographic location is the most sickening way of thinking I've ever come across in my entire life.

I practice pacifism. But I'll defend myself when necesary. It sucks when you don't even get the chance, shot in the back; someone was on their way to their pointless job while their lover slept in. Everyone misses you now.

Sky Station

Fully recovered from the holiday weekend and back on track. And by back on track I mean I'm once again in tour-booking mode. It's great to be back in the mix after so long of not being involved with it. I'm not going to say it's easy or even that fun. Having a booking agent was nice; it was a load off my shoulders. But now, I feel like I'm getting back to basics. I'm talking to clubs, I'm talking to people about playing in their living room and I've gotten back in touch with people I haven't heard from or talked to in months/years. It's all quite wonderful. The longest tour I booked was a three-week jaunt for Wolfie. This tour should match that. If you live in the Midwest, South or East Coast and have any ideas for me I'd love to hear from you. I think I've got most of my bases covered but additional help and advice is always great. I'll be gone October 1st through the 20th, at least.

Oh, and thanks to My Pilot Light (check back soon, site is being relaunced) for posting these photos from a recent show.

Sunday night the plans to take in the Ukrainian Village fireworks were spoiled by the rain, err, mostly our laziness. However, at sundown Nilla and I walked down my street into what sounded like a war zone. I was out of town last 4th, so I missed my neighborhood's celebratory ways. Scene: small Mexican kids armed with the world's most unreliable fireworks, unsupervised. Safe! Standing on Augusta we saw and heard every sort of truckstop firework known to man. We even saw some professional-looking displays in the distance. America, the beautiful.

Fight over the phone or put on my makeup

less car - mp3

It started out about the beautiful statement of deeming youself "one less car" and then, by songs end, was flirting with all the times I've been hit on by boys. Really, it's about Chicago and the social climate that surrounds me. Do with it what you want; I use it like medicine.