This Saturday, I’ll be playing a solo set to kick off J-Rock at SoHo Gallery for Digital Art. While a’tris’ sound is different from much of the music you’ll hear during the evening, I’ve always been influenced by Japanese art and it’s an honor to open an event that will bring some seriously talented Japanese artists to NYC. If you live around the area, I hope you’ll join me in welcoming them. Throughout the night, there will be a fashion show, live music, and animation. You’ll be in for a real treat. Details below. Hope to see you there!
Boy, it’s been a while since I’ve posted a piece in our meet our friends series. I must say that I’m really fortunate to be able to write this one. Over the weekend, I had the great pleasure of meeting The Traveling Troubadors: Ben and Emily Roberts from Carolina’s Story [Official, Myspace], Amy Courts [Official, Myspace], Katy Kinard [Official, Myspace] and Corey Yodee and I’d like to introduce you to them and what they’re doing.
If you’ve been reading the a’tris blogs for a while, the name Amy Courts might ring a bell. Amy participated in a ReverbNation campaign with us a while back and, when I stumbled across her music, I was instantly hooked. Recently Amy took part in another Reverb-backed opportunity and I invited you to help support her in this post. If you didn’t get a chance to check out what she’s doing then, I’d highly recommend you give her an ear now. She’s one of the most talented and just genuinely wonderful people I’ve ever met on a’tris’ journeys; so it’s no surprise that, her friends in The Traveling Troubadours are cut from the same cloth.
I wish you all could have been at The Living Room on Sunday. It was an incredible experience to watch Amy and her friends’ show. The Troubadours play in the round so each artist has her moment to share a solo piece; however, they don’t necessarily all play without accompaniment. At many points during the performance other members of the collective chimed in and their spontaneous moments of musical camaraderie are what really made the show shine. The Traveling Troubadors’ chemistry is fantastic and their super-tight harmonies and warm on-stage banter really made the night a memorable one. Be sure to keep an eye out for these guys. You won’t want to miss what they’re doing. I’ve included a video of Ben and Emily from Carolina Story performing one of their tunes below. I hope you enjoy this clip as much as I do!
This has to be one of the coolest time-lapse videos I’ve seen in a long time. Man, I love NYC. These runners weren’t too far from my apartment. How neat is that?
I just got an e-mail from the awesome people at Anime News Network. While I was at ComicCon, I happened across their booth and could resist taking a picture with their zombie booth babes who were promoting the release of Highschool of the Dead. I can’t say that I’ve watched the anime. But I can say that it was a pleasure being pretend eaten by the their models. If you look past the fake blood and heavy face make-up, they were some pretty fine young cannibals.
P.S. I know that was a pretty corny music reference. But I can never resist citing 80′s British bands
P.S.S. a’tris was just nominated for Somojo’s band and alternative artist of the year awards! I’ll write up a more proper entry about it soon but, in the mean time, if you’d like to go over here and vote to your heart’s content, that would be super awesome!
A while back, I wrote a post about the artwork of Kenzie Allen, a.k.a. Cerena. If you missed it, I’d highly recommend checking it out here. Last week Cerena visited NYC and we had our first tweet up at a Karaoke bar in Manhattan. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this admittedly somewhat geeky term, it means that we met up through Twitter. Makes sense, right? Here are a couple of photos that she took with her awesome Android phone.
This morning, Kenzie wrote a super kind post about us on her tumblr blog which you can check out here. I thought it was only appropriate for me to return the love. If you enjoy graphic art and anime, I’d definitely recommend checking out her work. I’m pretty sure she’s still doing $5 sketches and taking requests for larger commissioned works; but don’t quote me on that. The gal is popular
Are you in the NYC area? Would you like to tweet up? Follow us on Twitter and mention us @atris!
To answer the question I posed in the title of this post, we love them all!
When I signed on Twitter today, I saw this awesome message from our friends @ourstage:
How cool is that? Those guys are the best!
The above picture was taken by our awesome friend, Brooke McGowan
A couple of days ago, I had the chance to catch up with Nate. Our meeting was actually entirely unplanned. Ben was playing a show at The Local, a great bar in NYC, with his jazz trio and I came out to support. I had no idea that Nate had the night off from his tour and was in the area. When I felt a pat on the back, I was totally not expecting him to be there behind me. I was also totally not expecting to discover that the sound guy who was working with Bens’ band was actually an old roommate of mine from college. How crazy is that? This music biz is a small one.
After Ben’s show, Nate and I ducked out to let him schmooze with the crowd and headed off to Café Vivaldi to catch the last half of Neara Russell’s set. Neara is a good friend of Nate’s. He introduced me to her years back and I have been a big fan of her and her work [Official, Myspace] ever since. Needless to say, the show was awesome and we had a blast catching up with Neara afterwards. She had to head back to Boston that night which was a shame (overnighting it to another gig is always a drag) but that gave Nate and I chance to talk about some of his experiences touring with Meat Loaf! I’ll share more about that soon…
If you’re in the NYC area, I would love for you to join me in cheering on the United States’ soccer team as we play Ghana in the round of 16!
This team features the greatest footballer in the United States’ history in Landon Donavon. His 91st-minute goal against Algeria was one of the most inspirational moments I have seen in quite some time. Saturday’s game is lining up to be something to behold. I can’t wait to watch it with you.
At 2:00PM on Saturday, you’ll find me along with possibly hundreds of other soccer fans crammed in to:
The Black Horse Pub
568 5th Ave (at 16th St.)
Brooklyn, NY 11215
(718) 788 1975
Friday evening I met up with Brooke McGowan, a photographer friend of mine, at the Abigail Adams Auditorium in NYC for a fantastic evening of Scottish festivities courtesy of the New York Caledonian Club. The Caledonian Club was established in 1856 and promotes the musical, literary, and social heritage of Scottish culture. I had the pleasure of meeting the Chieftain, George Campbell, at show a week or so ago and he kindly invited me to come as his guest.
For those of you who don’t know, a ceilidh, pronounced, ‘KAY-lee,’ is Gaelic for “a singing, feasting, dancing, rather boisterous good-time!” And I’m not making that up, I took it from the Caledonian Club’s website. That description, by the way, is entirely accurate. After poking around the room with Brooke for a bit and enjoying some fantastic Scottish food, the evening’s events began with a procession of bag pipers followed by a special performance of the famous poet, Robert Burns’, “Address to a Haggis.”
I regret that I misplaced my program because I would love to share with you the name of the actor who brought “Address to a Haggis” to life. It was a marvelous performance. The World Burns Club has a great explanation of the significance of the poem, and also answers such burning questions as: What are the origins of Haggis? Why did Burns Write about it? And, What does the Address really mean? If you’re interested in exploring their site a bit, I think you’ll find it to be pretty entertaining. The best way to experience Haggis though would be to go to one of the Caledonian club, or a similar club’s events. As the actor brought Burn’s poem to life, he raised a knife and stabbed it into the Haggis while uttering this verse:
“His knife see rustic Labour dight,
An’ cut you up wi’ ready sleight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like ony ditch;And then,
O what a glorious sight,Warm-reekin, rich!”
It was pretty dramatic stuff and it really kicked off the night.
The best part of the evening by far, though, was Mike Ogletree‘s performance. Mike made a name for himself by performing with Scottish bands Simple Minds and Fiction Factory. If those bands’ names don’t sound familiar to you, give them a Google and I bet you’ll be familiar with their work. These days, Mike is setting out with his acoustic guitar, on a mission to educate the world about the poet, Burns, his times, and his message. I’ve included one of my favorite videos of his below. If you like what he’s doing, I’d highly recommend checking out his Youtube page.
Mike writes that this song is an homage to the bonnie lassies o’ New York city. The words are Burns, but everything else is Mike. Enjoy!
If my posts appear a bit shorter and less thought out in the coming days, it will probably be because I’ve either A, finally gone mad, or B. packed my things and left for NY. It could also be both.
Nate arrived in Brooklyn a couple of weeks ago and I’m really stoked to see him again. We have some new tunes in our pocket and I’m anxious to test them out on live audiences. If you live around the city that means you!
I’m going to miss Massachusetts; but honestly, I’ve traveled so frequently over the last couple of years that I really haven’t really spent much time there anyway. I just hope I can find a nice coffee shop/bookstore in the city that I can call home. I moved to Virginia to focus on material thinking that the countryside here would provide a relaxing environment for my work. And what happened? We got hit by some of the worst weather in Virginia’s history and I was left snowed in without access to caffeine. Screw that. NYC, here I come!
Hope this finds you feeling healthy!
-Mason
P.S. Kevin from Somojo.net sent me a super kind e-mail today asking me for my thoughts on some ideas he had for the site. How cool is that? As some of you might have seen in my 2009 Year-End Review, I’m a big fan of what he’s doing and am still honored that a’tris was one of the first bands to be featured in his magazine. I’m also pretty stoked that, when I visited his shoutem page today, this is one of the first things that I saw:
It’s nice to feel popular It’s also nice to have the great company of our friends in Spaceship Days and Strobegirl.
Our instruments can’t type so Mason is responsible for most of what you’ll find here. If you like what he’s doing, we hope you’ll take a moment to subscribe by clicking the icon below. If you’re feeling really adventurous, you could even explore our other social networks too. It’s up to you; but we hope you’ll take a moment to get to know us and leave us a comment so we can get to know you.
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