Fest Up!
Writing now from lovely Estoril outside Lisbon..what a crazy week, playing two more or less consecutive festivals on 2 different continents..feelin' good, feelin' happy (feelin' bout half past dead, too :-)...but that will change after I get some shut-eye)...
Highlight was Thursday night's Blues em Coimbra Festival, where I had a superb gig playing before before 500 wildly enthusiastic folks, mainly students (medieval Coimbra is a student town), performing both solo and with Portuguese instrumental dudes Dead Combo. (Check out this article about the appearance Portugal's national newspaper Publico.)
But my gig performing live with "The Golem" silent film in Toronto as part of Canadian Music Week 2008 last week was no slouch either--it was chosen as a Top Pick of the Festival by the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper (see the article here).
And playing as part of the Guitar Hero panel there, in the company my pals Prof. Sandy Pearlman (Blue Oyster Cult and Clash producer) and Prof. Dav Levitin (author of "This is Your Brain on Music") was Big Fun for sure...
Traveling to and fro though was the only major snafu...major blizzards in the northeast forced the cancellation of my flight from NY to Toronto, and I barely managed to squeeze standby on to another plane, which did deliver me to Toronto just in time for a meet and greet at the fabulous Royal York Hotel, where I started running into old friends from the music wars, including the French Music Export Office's Robert Singerman, Dan the Man Seligman and his entourage from Pop Montreal, Razor and Tie's Michael Caplan (whom I first met working part-time at Cutler's Record Store in New Haven when I was at Yale--he was working in the singles dept.), and Erik Gilbert, major domo of my new digital distributor IODA...I have to say that Neill Dixon and Verle Mobbs of CMW did an outstanding job putting together such a hugely expansive enterprise, it was all thoroughly organized and the CMW staff were really on their toes alert and competent and super friendly...it was a real pleasure to be taking part in it all...outside the snow fell steadily but inside all was buzzing and thriving...
My gig at the Royal Theater went off like a dream, I was working with a new color tinted (not colorized) "restored" print of the film and had quite a reception from the crowd, which included Sandy Pearlman (who reminded me in the Q and A afterwards that we had spent a fascinating afternoon many years ago at the Jewish Museum in NYC perusing their "Golem--Man, Myth and Magic" exhibition), McGill University Schulich School of Music Dean Don McLean, and Dan Seligman and his parents...afterwards while I was loading out of the theater with my gear and about to hop into my ride I heard a voice yoo-hooing me which turned out to belong to none other than legendary outre Canadian chanteuse Mary Margaret O'Hara, who was out on the avenue taking a stroll with her brother Marcus, Mary recorded the vocal on my song "Poison Tree" many years ago and some other tunes as mine as well (we were introduced by Kip Hanrahan on his "Darn It!" album project putting the words of the late Canadian poet Paul Haines to music), she looked great as we hugged over a snow bank (haven't laid eyes on her since Nick Cave's Meltdown Festival in 2000 at Royal Festival Hall in London, where we both played as part of a Tribute to Harry Smith, curated by Hal Willner), Mary has a truly amazing voice, and a spellbinding presence...and we have to stop meeting like this :-)
Later that night I joined Sandy and Don for a great feast in the hotel and I was seated next a guy who looked vaguely familiar to me although I couldn't quite place him, he was intense, super articulate, funny, and very engagee as the French say, in a very Left way, an Obama guy to boot :-)...turns out it was John Nichols, the guy who had moderated that very instructive and eye-opening panel on impeachment with Naomi Wolf and Amy Goodman at the Culture Project a few months back, which I described in this here blog, John is a writer for one of my favorite periodicals, The Nation, and he really is quite a phenomenal ball of passionate energy and intelligence that doesn't quit, an old friend of Sandy's...and Sandy Pearlman--what can I say? Certainly one of the most brilliant minds (the truth is) Out There, Sandy put together a penetrating panel examining at the Guitar Hero and Rock Star gaming phenomenon, and got me to play a fantasia on "Don't Fear the Reaper" live in real time vs. a charming girl from the Gaming Company operating the plastic guitar whatzit which triggered the original song artifact itself (turns out Buck Dharma's famous Reaper solo was pieced together out of 36 separate takes, so saith Dan Levitin)...I had to cut out directly upon the panel conclusion to run to the airport so as not to miss my plane back to NYC, only to find that yet another blizzard had started up...and so we were delayed an endless 3 hours on the ground while the airport engineers repeatedly sprayed the entire plane with orange gunk to de-ice the wings and engines...airborne at last, I was home for about a half day before it was time to trek out to the airport again...
and then it was another 3 hour delay on the tarmac, this time due to who knows, the weather was okay in NYC...finally we were aloft and had quite the bumpy 6 and a half hour ride to Lisbon, thank God for the refuge of my iPod Nano, a great way to seal out the world in times of stressful situations beyond one's control...big favorites this flight were pre-1968 Stones (the British version of "Aftermath", particularly), Nino Rota's soundtrack to "Fellini's Casanova", and gossamer pre-war Shanghainese symphonic pop fantasies from Chow Hsuan and Bai Kwong...yeah!
I was met at Lisbon airport by Teresa Santos, a very savvy and cool woman who runs the Coimbra em Blues Festival with my pal Paulo Furtado, a/k/a the Legendary Tiger Man...we drove a couple hours north to Coimbra and I apent the next day or so soaking up the good vibes there--what an elegant and fascinating city, medieval architecture, Roman ruins nearby, really beautiful cliffs overlooking the river below...I was treated to a 4 star hotel and copious amounts of delicious food courtesy of the Hotel Flur de Coimbra, whose chef served up a different fantastic Portuguese delicacy daily (their motto in English, as printed on the menu, is "Slow Food Spirit")...
On Tuesday, Dead Combo (To Trips and Pedro Gonscalves) arrived from Lisboa and we began to reharse our set...having never played together before it all came together surprisingly well, and quickly too, we hunkered down in a rehearsal room in the beautiful old Teatro de Gil Vicento, where this festival has been featured for the last 5 years running, and over the next 2 days worked up beautiful new bluesy versions of some of their music (exotic spaghetti western meets fado confections) and some of mine ("Hugh's Graveyard Stomp", for one--featured by the way in a very moody, ambient treatment by UK electronica whizzes the Dark Poets on our new album "Beyond the Pale", out this week on Some Bizarre Records...and also a new one of mine, "Suspiria"--a tribute to Italian horror cinema giallo maestro Dario Argento)...To, who has an incredible touch on fingerpicked semi-acoustic guitar, moved over to small percussion, rattles, and echoey harmonica on this one as fed through a variety of fx boxes..and Pedro held down the deep bottom end with bowed upright bass that made your solar plexus, nay your entire being, hum along in sympathetic vibration...
The gig was amazing. Dead Combo began wih a couple numbers from their forthcoming new albhum and then I joined them for a third on my National steel. We then went through a mix of originals and covers of "Grace" and "Mojo Pin"--all to thunderous ovations from the crowd, who were quite animated and vocal in their exhortations.. and then I did a solo set of blues on my steel which ratcheted things up even more tightly wound...then To and Pedro came back out and we finished with a space jam at the end of "Grace" which left the crowd screaming for more..we closed with "Hugh's Graveyard Stomp" as an encore...and then I chnaged my sweat drenched clothes and went out to shake hands with all these buzzing students, mucho autographs and cd transactions ensued, it was a GREAT NIGHT, indeed! Thank you Paulo Furtado, curator of Blues em Coimbra festival for the last 5 years, who has brought such diverse and excellent artists as Little Axe, Heavy Trash, T-Model Ford et al to Coimbra over the years, for bringing me to Coimbra, and for giving me such big props in the press (he was quoted as saying I was one of the best guitarists of the last 40 years...jeez!) I only wish Paulo would have sit in and jammed on our set (folks, this guy is amazing!! Try and catch his one man band The Legendary Tiger Man any way you can...)
I regret I couldnt stay for the rest of the Coimbra Blues festival, I especially wanted to see Afrosippi, an Afro/blues fusion group from the Delta, with whom I hung out with a bit in the run-up to the gig...but I had promised my friend Rui Silva, the Portuguese music journalist, that I would be in Lisbon on Saturday to play at his book release party for his new book about The Doors, which he's worked on over the last 7 years...
And so last night I performed live at the giant ultra moderne FNAC store in the giant ultra-moderne Colombo mall of Lisboa, alongside Darryl Read, a UK poet and rocker who,s just released a new poetry and music album with Ray Manzarek, and Rui, a very sweet and charming young guy who has produced this amazing tome on The Doors, a real labor of love, chockablock with rare photos and interviews, "Contigo Torno-Me Real" (You Make Me Real), Edicoes Afrontamento...it's a book the size of the bloody Manhattan Phone Directory, handsomely illustrated and bound, I'll post a link to it here soon and maybe reproduce some pages--a must-have for any fan of one of the greatest bands of all time.
While Rui read, I played a solo guitar fantasia on the music of The Doors, summoning the spirit of Jim, Ray, Robbie and John, centering around "The End", "End of the Night", "You're Lost Little Girl", "Love Me Two Times"...I love this music...then Darryl and I rocked out on "Roadhouse Blues" and "Five to One"...and the large Saturday night crowd in the FNAC, who'd been gathering around me and listening avidly as I set up and improvised for an hour or so before the start of the actual presentation, began lining up for autographs...
My old friend Shu Guerra is summoning me now to go to dinner for my last night in Portugal, have to dash...
Love
xxGary
Highlight was Thursday night's Blues em Coimbra Festival, where I had a superb gig playing before before 500 wildly enthusiastic folks, mainly students (medieval Coimbra is a student town), performing both solo and with Portuguese instrumental dudes Dead Combo. (Check out this article about the appearance Portugal's national newspaper Publico.)
But my gig performing live with "The Golem" silent film in Toronto as part of Canadian Music Week 2008 last week was no slouch either--it was chosen as a Top Pick of the Festival by the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper (see the article here).
And playing as part of the Guitar Hero panel there, in the company my pals Prof. Sandy Pearlman (Blue Oyster Cult and Clash producer) and Prof. Dav Levitin (author of "This is Your Brain on Music") was Big Fun for sure...
Traveling to and fro though was the only major snafu...major blizzards in the northeast forced the cancellation of my flight from NY to Toronto, and I barely managed to squeeze standby on to another plane, which did deliver me to Toronto just in time for a meet and greet at the fabulous Royal York Hotel, where I started running into old friends from the music wars, including the French Music Export Office's Robert Singerman, Dan the Man Seligman and his entourage from Pop Montreal, Razor and Tie's Michael Caplan (whom I first met working part-time at Cutler's Record Store in New Haven when I was at Yale--he was working in the singles dept.), and Erik Gilbert, major domo of my new digital distributor IODA...I have to say that Neill Dixon and Verle Mobbs of CMW did an outstanding job putting together such a hugely expansive enterprise, it was all thoroughly organized and the CMW staff were really on their toes alert and competent and super friendly...it was a real pleasure to be taking part in it all...outside the snow fell steadily but inside all was buzzing and thriving...
My gig at the Royal Theater went off like a dream, I was working with a new color tinted (not colorized) "restored" print of the film and had quite a reception from the crowd, which included Sandy Pearlman (who reminded me in the Q and A afterwards that we had spent a fascinating afternoon many years ago at the Jewish Museum in NYC perusing their "Golem--Man, Myth and Magic" exhibition), McGill University Schulich School of Music Dean Don McLean, and Dan Seligman and his parents...afterwards while I was loading out of the theater with my gear and about to hop into my ride I heard a voice yoo-hooing me which turned out to belong to none other than legendary outre Canadian chanteuse Mary Margaret O'Hara, who was out on the avenue taking a stroll with her brother Marcus, Mary recorded the vocal on my song "Poison Tree" many years ago and some other tunes as mine as well (we were introduced by Kip Hanrahan on his "Darn It!" album project putting the words of the late Canadian poet Paul Haines to music), she looked great as we hugged over a snow bank (haven't laid eyes on her since Nick Cave's Meltdown Festival in 2000 at Royal Festival Hall in London, where we both played as part of a Tribute to Harry Smith, curated by Hal Willner), Mary has a truly amazing voice, and a spellbinding presence...and we have to stop meeting like this :-)
Later that night I joined Sandy and Don for a great feast in the hotel and I was seated next a guy who looked vaguely familiar to me although I couldn't quite place him, he was intense, super articulate, funny, and very engagee as the French say, in a very Left way, an Obama guy to boot :-)...turns out it was John Nichols, the guy who had moderated that very instructive and eye-opening panel on impeachment with Naomi Wolf and Amy Goodman at the Culture Project a few months back, which I described in this here blog, John is a writer for one of my favorite periodicals, The Nation, and he really is quite a phenomenal ball of passionate energy and intelligence that doesn't quit, an old friend of Sandy's...and Sandy Pearlman--what can I say? Certainly one of the most brilliant minds (the truth is) Out There, Sandy put together a penetrating panel examining at the Guitar Hero and Rock Star gaming phenomenon, and got me to play a fantasia on "Don't Fear the Reaper" live in real time vs. a charming girl from the Gaming Company operating the plastic guitar whatzit which triggered the original song artifact itself (turns out Buck Dharma's famous Reaper solo was pieced together out of 36 separate takes, so saith Dan Levitin)...I had to cut out directly upon the panel conclusion to run to the airport so as not to miss my plane back to NYC, only to find that yet another blizzard had started up...and so we were delayed an endless 3 hours on the ground while the airport engineers repeatedly sprayed the entire plane with orange gunk to de-ice the wings and engines...airborne at last, I was home for about a half day before it was time to trek out to the airport again...
and then it was another 3 hour delay on the tarmac, this time due to who knows, the weather was okay in NYC...finally we were aloft and had quite the bumpy 6 and a half hour ride to Lisbon, thank God for the refuge of my iPod Nano, a great way to seal out the world in times of stressful situations beyond one's control...big favorites this flight were pre-1968 Stones (the British version of "Aftermath", particularly), Nino Rota's soundtrack to "Fellini's Casanova", and gossamer pre-war Shanghainese symphonic pop fantasies from Chow Hsuan and Bai Kwong...yeah!
I was met at Lisbon airport by Teresa Santos, a very savvy and cool woman who runs the Coimbra em Blues Festival with my pal Paulo Furtado, a/k/a the Legendary Tiger Man...we drove a couple hours north to Coimbra and I apent the next day or so soaking up the good vibes there--what an elegant and fascinating city, medieval architecture, Roman ruins nearby, really beautiful cliffs overlooking the river below...I was treated to a 4 star hotel and copious amounts of delicious food courtesy of the Hotel Flur de Coimbra, whose chef served up a different fantastic Portuguese delicacy daily (their motto in English, as printed on the menu, is "Slow Food Spirit")...
On Tuesday, Dead Combo (To Trips and Pedro Gonscalves) arrived from Lisboa and we began to reharse our set...having never played together before it all came together surprisingly well, and quickly too, we hunkered down in a rehearsal room in the beautiful old Teatro de Gil Vicento, where this festival has been featured for the last 5 years running, and over the next 2 days worked up beautiful new bluesy versions of some of their music (exotic spaghetti western meets fado confections) and some of mine ("Hugh's Graveyard Stomp", for one--featured by the way in a very moody, ambient treatment by UK electronica whizzes the Dark Poets on our new album "Beyond the Pale", out this week on Some Bizarre Records...and also a new one of mine, "Suspiria"--a tribute to Italian horror cinema giallo maestro Dario Argento)...To, who has an incredible touch on fingerpicked semi-acoustic guitar, moved over to small percussion, rattles, and echoey harmonica on this one as fed through a variety of fx boxes..and Pedro held down the deep bottom end with bowed upright bass that made your solar plexus, nay your entire being, hum along in sympathetic vibration...
The gig was amazing. Dead Combo began wih a couple numbers from their forthcoming new albhum and then I joined them for a third on my National steel. We then went through a mix of originals and covers of "Grace" and "Mojo Pin"--all to thunderous ovations from the crowd, who were quite animated and vocal in their exhortations.. and then I did a solo set of blues on my steel which ratcheted things up even more tightly wound...then To and Pedro came back out and we finished with a space jam at the end of "Grace" which left the crowd screaming for more..we closed with "Hugh's Graveyard Stomp" as an encore...and then I chnaged my sweat drenched clothes and went out to shake hands with all these buzzing students, mucho autographs and cd transactions ensued, it was a GREAT NIGHT, indeed! Thank you Paulo Furtado, curator of Blues em Coimbra festival for the last 5 years, who has brought such diverse and excellent artists as Little Axe, Heavy Trash, T-Model Ford et al to Coimbra over the years, for bringing me to Coimbra, and for giving me such big props in the press (he was quoted as saying I was one of the best guitarists of the last 40 years...jeez!) I only wish Paulo would have sit in and jammed on our set (folks, this guy is amazing!! Try and catch his one man band The Legendary Tiger Man any way you can...)
I regret I couldnt stay for the rest of the Coimbra Blues festival, I especially wanted to see Afrosippi, an Afro/blues fusion group from the Delta, with whom I hung out with a bit in the run-up to the gig...but I had promised my friend Rui Silva, the Portuguese music journalist, that I would be in Lisbon on Saturday to play at his book release party for his new book about The Doors, which he's worked on over the last 7 years...
And so last night I performed live at the giant ultra moderne FNAC store in the giant ultra-moderne Colombo mall of Lisboa, alongside Darryl Read, a UK poet and rocker who,s just released a new poetry and music album with Ray Manzarek, and Rui, a very sweet and charming young guy who has produced this amazing tome on The Doors, a real labor of love, chockablock with rare photos and interviews, "Contigo Torno-Me Real" (You Make Me Real), Edicoes Afrontamento...it's a book the size of the bloody Manhattan Phone Directory, handsomely illustrated and bound, I'll post a link to it here soon and maybe reproduce some pages--a must-have for any fan of one of the greatest bands of all time.
While Rui read, I played a solo guitar fantasia on the music of The Doors, summoning the spirit of Jim, Ray, Robbie and John, centering around "The End", "End of the Night", "You're Lost Little Girl", "Love Me Two Times"...I love this music...then Darryl and I rocked out on "Roadhouse Blues" and "Five to One"...and the large Saturday night crowd in the FNAC, who'd been gathering around me and listening avidly as I set up and improvised for an hour or so before the start of the actual presentation, began lining up for autographs...
My old friend Shu Guerra is summoning me now to go to dinner for my last night in Portugal, have to dash...
Love
xxGary
posted by Gary Lucas at 12:02 PM
3 comments
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3 Comments:
A chance meeting with Mary Margaret O'Hara! You certainly lead a charmed life, even with the airport hassles...
New album? Du tell.
Oops, mea culpa, a more careful re-reading reveals, not your new album but Dead Combo's!
I have a bunch of new recordings just out actually, Schlep--including Wild Rumpus (me and DJ Cosmo)'s new twelve inch single "Purple Somersault" (in stores now, you can also get it on iTunes) and a new album with UK electronic duo The Dark Poets on Some Bizarre entitled "Gary Lucas Vs. The Dark Poets--Beyond The Pale" released March 23rd...and several albums in various stages of completion, including a Gods and Monsters live DVD "One Man's Meat" with my supergroup which includes Jerry Harrison, Billy Ficca, Ernie Brooks, Jason Candler and Joe Hendel...and a studio album "The Ordeal of Civility", produced by Jerry Harrison...also a new Fast 'N Bulbous album we're recording next month here in NYC...and a new album with lute master Jozef Van Wissem...so I've been a busy boy, y'know?
all the best
Gary
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