added 11/19 - Audio section updated (finally) with tracks from Rentintwain and As Promised.

Featured audio: (click 'mp3' to download, or 'stream' for popup player - make sure your browser will allow popups from this site. Longer tunes may take a few minutes to appear, depending on your connection): Danza del Campo stream (2008, from As Promised ) Heatsink stream (2008, from Rentintwain ) Notre Dame de Courtaud stream (2008, w/ Chinapainting, from Night Blooming Cereus ) The Prodigal Sound stream / mp3 (2007, acoustic atonal piece for Glenn Branca's Lost Chord contest) The ten October dates were uniformly excellent, probably the best tour I've had in terms of musical payoff vs. dead time. Highlights of the improv shows were the Norcal Noisefest, my duo set with Matt Davignon in Oakland, and the Chinapainting set at Pharaoh's Den in Riverside, maybe the best reception we've ever had. The two vocal shows were also great, in part because the caliber of my co-performers was so high AND the fact that I count them among my friends. Annie's Social Club in San Francisco is an excellent venue and I think it's going to become more important in the city. Pi flew up from LA just for the gig, and it's always a treat to play with my pal Julie Zielinski. In LA, my round robin set at Genghis Cohen with Toddy Ivy and Susan D worked really well, though being my first time in an arrangement like that. It's a little stressful, I have to say, to follow two supremely talented women again and again and again, but it was such a nice room that I managed to mellow out and just enjoy it. Now, it's time to sock in for the winter to compose and record. I have the next instrumental guitar record in the works, with pretty much all of the tunes ready to go. Looks like it'll be a wee bit more minimalist and experimental than "As Promised", overall. I'm also putting a lot of time into writing lyrics; I have umpteen projects in the works for my words, most of them featuring other people doing the singing. The first one to be recorded will be with me on vocals, but with a real band this time including Julie Zielinski backing me up. I appear on a new release called Abstractions & Associations from Krispen Hartung, an Idaho-based modernist free jazz mastermind. I'm on three of the four tracks, each of them recorded as part of the 3rd Annual Boise Experimental Music Festival. I took part over the Net, with me sitting at home in Oaxaca and Brian Good at his home in Ohio, improvising along with Krispen and Brian McFadin who appeared live at the event in Boise. It's very free, outside stuff, and I think some amazing things happened along the way. We've had a lot of very nice reactions so far. There are free mp3's and a link to buy on Krispen's site.