Denton, 3.12.2025

What a difference three weeks can make. Last time we were in li'l d for Joan of Bark Presents, temperatures were in the 20s. Last night, they were hovering in the 70s, comfortable enough that the back doors to the Rubber Room could be left open to provide ventilation and more seating for the decent-sized (30-plus) crowd. I bogarted a couple of minutes to present an Asian Media Crew shirt to honorary member Larry Hill (aka Animals Mistaken for Monsters), who does yeoman work shooting video of the music scene in Denton and Dallas (we haven't seen him in Fort Worth yet, but that's a temporary condition), and make a brief pitch about the Ides of Trump postcard campaign (wherein folks are encouraged to write postcards telling our wannabe "emperor" what they think of his rule, and mail them on the date Julius Caesar was assassinated).

Singer-songwriter Grae Gonzalez led off with a caveat that "one of these things is not like the others," but their engaging set won over the hardened experimental music cognoscenti as well as friends and family members who'd come out to support Grae. Self-accompanying on baritone uke, Grae sang a selection of witty, conversational self-penned numbers from their upcoming EP (recorded by estimable engineer Michael Briggs), interspersing the songs with self-deprecating stories. In a month when I've been fixated on songs and singers (most recently: Patti Smith), I couldn't help but be impressed by Grae's compositions -- rooted in classic Tin Pan Alley style (including one dedicated to their partner Aaron Gonzalez, who had to miss the gig due to his grandmother's passing in Missouri), and the full, rich, friendly and inviting voice in which they were rendered. Grae's cover of Paul Simon's "The Boxer" only missed the ABC Sports Olympic theme viola solo; maybe next time they can whistle it?

Veteran improvisers Kristina Smith and Will Frenkel are longtime friends but had never collaborated before this evening. They took their time creating a spacious, minimalist soundscape in which every gesture from Smith's amplified and electronically treated voice, her accordion and bass guitar, Frenkel's cello and what looked like a video game controller, resonated deeply. When they finished their set, it seemed to have passed in an instant. 

 

Photo by Taylor Collins.

Cereboso is the solo performing rubric of the aforementioned electronic musician/audio engineer Michael Briggs (Lorelei K). Originally scheduled to perform in a duo with Aaron Gonzalez, he replanned his set as a solo venture when Aaron was called away by the passing of his grandmother. Briggs brought extra speakers along to the Rubber Room, striving to create a surround sound type ambience, and when it was time, he used only his voice and software to create his trademark dark, juddering blast of noise, like icebergs colliding or tectonic plates shifting. An immersive experience, but of brief enough duration not to overwhelm the uninitiated.

To close the show, nothing says "Fight the Power" quite like a Black trans noise guitarist, and Angel wasted no time in getting down to it, following a brief dedication to Grae Gonzalez, unleashing a torrent of distortion and feedback, using a violently percussive right hand attack, and occasionally coaxing atonal moans from mercilessly stretched strings. It was a sonic exorcism and the perfect palate cleanser to send us back into the cool night air. Angel also has a duo project, Rrose Selavies, with vocalist Arturo Velazquez. Their Justin Lemons-recorded self-titled debut is available digitally and on cassette via Bandcamp. Keiji Haino would understand. 

Next Joan of Bark Presents is scheduled for April 30. Don't you dare miss it.

Things we like: Extended Guitar Trio, Ava Mendoza, MSSV

Guitars, guitars, guitars. So many styles, approaches, players. So many records. In a perfect universe (which we all know doesn't exist), I would have pubbed this before last Friday (which was Bandcamp Friday). Oh well. Better late than never. Here are three I dig...

New Yorker Nick Didkovsky's axe has made its mark in hard rock, metal, RIO-esque prog, and computer-aided modern compositions. He's the only musician I'm aware of who's played with Alice Cooper, Fred Frith, and Hugh Hopper, but he's also played free improv in outfits like Zinc Nine Psychedelic and Eris 136199. Last October, he traveled to Germany to perform in the Extended Guitar Trio with longtime collaborators Erhard Hirt and Hans Tammen. The results have been released, digitally and on CD, as MUNSTER 02 OCT 24. The four pieces collected here require multiple attentive listens to hear all that's happening. In these three-way conversations, the corporeality of fingers on strings collides with the sci-fi futurism of electronic sounds that are barely recognizable as guitar, all rendered in extreme close-up fidelity. (This would be a good one to listen to through headphones.)

Speaking of Frith familiars, Ava Mendoza studied with the ex-Henry Cow composer and master improviser at Mills College, and participated in a performance of his Gravity album that's YouTube available. Since then, she's performed with the likes of William Parker, William Hooker, and Bill Orcutt, and led her own groups (Unnatural Ways, Mendoza Hoff Revels), but my favorite Ava is solo Ava (dig her New Spells from 2021 on Relative Pitch). Now she's got a new solo disc, The Circular Train, on Orcutt's Palilalia label. I've always dug the rock grit in Mendoza's tone, and here her electronically juiced modal explorations, haunting/haunted vocals, and root source-rich song forms come together in a way that really signifies (imagine a Latina amalgam of Richard Thompson and Old Neil with a soupcon of punk rage and you're in the neighborhood). Plus she caps it off with a gorgeously tough-as-nails instrumental version of Lead Belly's "Irene, Goodnight" that's worth the price of admission all by itself. For now, this is where I'll go when I want to hear Mendoza at her finest.

 

Punk eminence Mike Watt has always had good taste in guitar players, from d. boon and Ed Crawford to Nels Cline (whom I heard for the first time on the first two Watt solo discs), Joe Baiza, and a couple of Stooges. His current trio, MSSV, finds him in harness with his Porno For Pyros/Banyan bandmate Stephen Perkins on drums and Knoxville-based jazzer Mike Baggetta on guitar. Punk-jazz has really come to the fore in the last couple of years, what with the aforementioned Mendoza Hoff Revels and the Messthetics with James Brandon Lewis treading the boards, and MSSV's third album, On and On, shows them to be masters of the art. Baggetta sings at least as well as Ed Crawford, but his playing is a real revelation -- from the same post-Hendrix/Sharrock school of skronk as, say, Epitaph era Wayne Kramer, but with even more freewheeling melodic imagination, textural variety, and sonic daring. I've been listening to the digital version, but am awaiting the LP, which features additional improv interludes. Can't wait to hear these cats at The Wild Detectives on March 22 (on a bill with Austin's THC Trio and my favorite band of the moment, Trio Glossia, augmented for the occasion by my favorite guitarist, Gregg Prickett).

Sylvie Courvoisier and Mary Halvorson's "Bone Bells"

My greatest missed concert regret of last year was not getting to see the estimable guitarist Mary Halvorson with Myra Melford's Fire & Water Quintet, who played Houston and Austin but nowhere in North Texas, I was told, for want of a suitable venue with a grand piano. Sigh. As much as I dig Halvorson's own records, some of her freshest playing comes in settings where she's a side musician or collaborator -- not the least of which are the albums she's made in tandem with the Swiss composer-pianist Sylvie Courvoisier. On Bone Bells, out March 14 on Pyroclastic, the two musicians alternate compositions, going shot for shot with tunes that highlight each other's strengths. 

Halvorson's title track opens the album with an off-kilter moodiness that recalls (to these feedback-scorched ears) the piano intro from Lou Reed's Berlin. The guitarist's trademark wobbly pitch-shifting interrupts her otherwise crystalline melodic lines, while Courvoisier plays with the time on her chordal exposition of the theme. Halvorson's "Folded Secret" has a pointillistic theme, essayed by Courvoisier on prepared piano before she takes off in solo flight, scattering cascades of notes, followed by the composer's own tortuously twisting extemporization. The guitarist's "Beclouded" evokes an airy atmosphere over a slightly ominous ostinato, while her "Float Queens" features rolling unison lines that give way to ever more freewheeling improv episodes. 

Courvoisier's "Esmeralda," inspired by a sculpture by Dutch artist Cornelis Zitman, juxtaposes turbulence with spacious intervals that give Halvorson room to employ electronics and extended techniques. The pianist's "Nag's Head Valse," named for a British pub the duo frequented on tour, contains some finely wrought, freely improvised dialogue in between the slightly askew dance sections. With a title that refers to both a Monty Python sketch and a work by Swiss sculptor Sophie Bouvier Auslander, Courvoisier's "Silly Walks" is the most abstract composition here, while her "Cristellina e Lontano" ends the album on a somber and somewhat disquieting note. A meeting of musical minds that's well worth revisiting.

Fort Worth, 3.8.2025

Last year was notable for me in that I got to see my favorite guitarist, Oak Cliff denizen Gregg Prickett, more times than in the preceding decade (half a dozen, in various contexts). We're trying to beat that record this year. So I was thrilled to hear he was bringing a trio with his Monks of Saturnalia bandmates Drew Phelps (bass) and Alan Green (drums) to the Grackle Art Gallery under the rubric Habu Habu, which up to now had been reserved for Gregg's solo outings. 

Gregg's an endlessly inventive improviser who combines classically trained dexterity and an edgy imagination with mastery of electronics and extended techniques to create sonic environments that can shift and morph on a dime in the moment. Drew Phelps, a veteran of innumerable jazz, western swing, and country gigs, is his ideal collaborator, and their duo improvisations have been a joy to listen to the last couple of years. 

When I commented to Gregg that I like to watch the action when he tries to surprise Drew with unexpected chords, he said, "I have to be careful what I throw at these guys, because they  both know a lot more than I do!" At one point, Drew took off like a man possessed, first pizzicato, then arco -- a stunning moment.

Alan Green is a brilliant addition to this musical conversation. A master percussionist who's played with Dennis Gonzalez and Marchel Ivery, and learned from Sun Ra and the Art Ensemble of Chicago, he's an adept listener and fast thinker with a light touch and an innovative approach to rhythm and texture. As a unit, the three musicians constantly challenge each other, and are as likely to push against pulse and groove as they are to go with it. 

Their interaction has caused Gregg to reevaluate his approach to writing for the Monks of Saturnalia; he now says that going forward, he wants to make their compositional process more interactive. While Gregg says it remains a challenge to get all five Monks (tonight's trio plus reedmen Steve Brown and Nathan Collins) in the same room, I look forward to hearing the results of their further exploration. And Gregg will be augmenting Trio Glossia when they open for Mike Watt's current band MSSV at The Wild Detectives on March 22.

Arlington, 3.7.2025

A kind of rock and roll circle of life was achieved last night at Growl, where the debut of Werewolf Victim Revival (like Creedence Clearwater but with more blood?) was also the last-ever show by C.I.

Instrumental math rockers C.I. are folding the tent because guitarist Peter Hawkinson's decamping for Indiana. His bandmates -- guitarist Ben Schulz, bassist Bob Nash, and drummer Andrew Tipps -- still play together in their up-till-now instrumental death metal outfit Caddis (with guitarist-composer Nathan Morris), who just added Sean Vargas (Blood of the Sun) on vocals and are finishing an album. On this all-ages occasion, they had children (Ben's girlfriend's) distributing glow stick bracelets to the fans, and the musicians spoke onstage more than I've ever heard any of them. 

Their powerful music proves that complexity and heaviness can compliment each other. The string players intertwined singing lines, punctuated with crunching chords, and Tipps kept up a fast and furious pace behind the traps. Two of the songs were ones that had never been performed live before -- a slow, moody one and a fast one -- proving that these guys never ran out of ideas, they just ran out of time. Safe travels to Peter, and looking forward to hearing Caddis bring it to the stage when the record is done.

Werewolf Victim Revival (hereafter to be referred to as WVR) included a couple of familiar faces. I once played a single gig with drummer Brent Miller (Spitfire) in a band called Kamandi at what was then 6th Street Live, way back in 2006. That night was memorable for the hail of broken drumsticks (Brent was facing and sharing a kick drum with Clay Stinnett on that occasion) and the animalistic noises audience members near the stage were making. And guitarist Pat Flynn -- playing an acrylic EGC baritone -- used to play bass in Tame Tame & Quiet, a band that I was quite impressed with when Stoogeaphilia played shows with them a decade or so ago. Tempus fugit.

Their new outfit is a pummeling power trio fronted by bassist-vocalist Joel Murray, who performs with great animation and has a bass sound like an army of Chris Squires on human growth hormone. You could feel his every pick attack in your solar plexus, in a good way. A reminder that as much as you might enjoy records and videos, there is no substitute for being in the room where your clothes can be moved by air from speaker cones and drum heads. I look forward to seeing these guys again. 

In between, two-piece Death Sweats played some simple, direct jams, with the guitarist using some kind of Local H bass-in-the-box wizardry to fill out the sound. On the way out, I ran into ex-Tame Tame & Quiet frontman Aaron Bartz, Fort Worth indie rock eminence Randy Brown, and Lisa Umbarger, who was always my favorite member of the Toadies. Nice to see folks about the age I was when I stopped playing gigs still out digging the rock on a temperate night in March.

Dallas, 3.1.2025

 

After seeing Denton rockers Smothered playing one of my favorite records of this young year (their newie Dirty Laundry) front-to-back at Rubber Gloves a couple of weeks ago, my buddy Mike and I trekked over to one of our favorite Dallas listening rooms, the Cedars' Full City Rooster, to hear my favorite band of the moment, Trio Glossia, play the release show for their stunning self-titled debut, which dropped on Sonic Transmissions February 7, more or less in album order (they switched the order of "Shedding Tongues" and first single "Nerdy Dirty Talk" on the fly for maximum impact).

We've been following Trio Glossia since their second show, at Molten Plains Fest in December 2023, and it's been a pleasure watching their compositions and interaction develop and evolve in performance. Every new viewing brings a deeper, more refined level of communication between the musicians, enabling them to take the music to new places that surprise even them in the moment, bringing their listeners greater catharsis. 

So there was a surprisingly comedic element to Joshua Canate's performance during "Cikatiedid," when he turned over his snare drum and dumped his sticks and percussion implements over it (one is reminded of stories of the early Bob Dylan and his comical onstage awkwardness), and when he later complained of audience members throwing sticks at him ("You started it," said leader-vibraphonist-drummer Stefan Gonzalez). Or when Canate introduced the set closer "All Blowed Out" (a digital-only afterthought to the album) by saying "We're almost out of free jazz hell" (earlier, Gonzalez had noted the dual titular significance of Canate's composition "For a Fee" -- both a tribute to New York improv eminence Joe McPhee and notice that "we don't play free jazz"). At one point during the aforementioned "Cikatiedid," the two percussionists shared Gonzalez's vibraphone, sounding at times like the two hands of a piano player.

Gonzalez brought even more of his trademark intensity to the table than usual. We'd last seen him in a percussion trio at last month's Joan of Bark Presents show at Rubber Gloves, where he seemed, if not subdued, at least more intentionally spare and light than we're used to hearing him. At Full City, he brought tremendous physicality and force to his performances both on vibes -- the Oak Cliff hard bop of "Ode to Swamp Thing," the '60s Blue Note impressionism of "Dream Travelers" (dedicated to his father, the late polymath Dennis Gonzalez), and the album climaxing tour de force "Shedding Tongues" -- and behind the trap set. On "For A Fee," the sheer brutality of the leader's Elvin Jones groove threatened to overpower Canate's full-throated, multiphonic-rich '60s energy music tenor. And the vibe seemed contagious, with Canate slamming the skins harder than his usual propulsive glide. 

The anchor of this active three-way conversation is bassist Matthew Frerck, a consummate virtuoso, master of pizzicato and arco attacks, fast walks and "outside" explorations, extended techniques and solid swing. Frerck also excels as a composer, having provided two of the album's highlights: album and set opener "Arcane's Dance" and a particular favorite of mine, the Henry Threadgill-inspired second single "Zoomorphology" with its insane stops and starts. 

Trio Glossia will be at The Wild Detectives on March 22, augmented by guitarist extraordinaire Gregg Prickett (who will also appear with his own trio in Fort Worth at the Grackle Art Gallery on March 8). They'll be on a bill topped by esteemed punk rock elder Mike Watt in the ensemble MSSV, with Austin ensemble THC Trio added to sweeten the pot. Don't you dare miss it.

Denton, 2.19.2025

The second Joan of Bark Presents event at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios fell on a night even colder than the Smothered show the previous weekend -- after which that band had to bail from a previously booked show because all the members were sick; hope they're all recovered in time to play their She-Rock 2025 date at Gloves on March 1. Temperatures in the teens meant that there was practically nothing on the road between Fort Worth and Denton, so we had time to kill after picking up Larry the Animals Mistaken for Monsters video guy. (Larry's videos from Joan of Bark events, combined with Stephen Lucas' audio recordings, now have a YouTube channel of their own. Check it!)

Ogonosu is the performing alias of Dentonite Taylor Collins, whose performance at Fort Worth's Grackle Art Gallery a couple of months ago I missed -- my loss. On this occasion, Collins started out with an acoustic piano sound, playing an elegiac etude that gradually, organically, began to morph into synthesized sound, achieved a peak of intensity, then morphed back. Later, Collins said that he'd included more tension in the piece than usual because "people seem to like that" -- perhaps, I suggested, a reflection of the times in which we live. It was a centering, meditative set, and a good entree into the evening. 

When we saw Houston's El Mantis at New Media Contemporary in Dallas back in May, they'd just gone from a trio to a quintet, and their performance was a little tentative. (Their double live CD is a worthy document of this transition.) Now, with a few more months of playing together under their belts, and with Aubrey Seaton's always on-point sound mix, they sounded much more cohesive, and were able to play with abandon. 

Their unlikely mix of influences -- psychedelic rock, salsa, free jazz -- is seamless and stirring, like Meridian Brothers on acid, or "Latin rock" that's closer to Afro-Caribbean roots, with Sonny Sharrock rather than Carlos Santana as a sonic signifier. Drummer-leader Angel Garcia mixes up a heady brew of rhythms and vocalizes operatically, while Mark Medina adds folkloric textures on flute and percussion. Andrew Martinez (Ak'Chamel) also sings and provides the melodic/harmonic framework, switching between hollowbody Gretsch and electric standup bass, abetted by Jeremy Nuncio on keys. Danny Kamins on alto blows pure '60s fire music, channeling the spirits of Trane, Pharaoh, Ayler and Dolphy while remaining resolutely his own guy. He says that El Mantis' set was basically their new album, which is already in the can. Can't wait to hear. Till then there's this. 

Closing set was by an all-star percussion trio comprising Ellie Alonzo (Sunbuzzed), Chelsey Danielle (Helium Queens, Pearl Earl), and Stefan Gonzalez (Trio Glossia, FireLife Trio). Alonzo applied electronic treatments to a floor tom and small instruments. Danielle effectively fronted the band, freestyling verse like a beatnik poet while playing bongos, a cymbal, and small instruments including finger cymbals and a kalimba. Gonzalez played a full kit, employing a lighter attack than usual and listening attentively to the other musicians. "I'm walking and moving to the beat of my own drum," Danielle chanted, later asking, "Did the beat guide you home? Are you alright? Am I alright? Are we alright? Do we have a democracy?" A closing catharsis for an exceptionally well paced evening of expression. Next Joan of Bark Presents is March 12. Don't you dare miss it.