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Archive for the ‘Music’ Category

Comin’ Home/ Michael Mattice

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, tagged , , , , , on June 26, 2013| 4 Comments »

Michael Mattice Comin' Home Cover 2013I was on the road  so I didn’t get a chance to post that a new CD titled Comin’ Home came out  yesterday from my friend, Michael Mattice.  I’ve talked about Mikey here before, most recently in the notes after my recent opening at the Principle Gallery.  I’ve known him since he was a gangly kid of 13 or 14 tagging along with his Dad at events at the gallery.  Even then Mikey gave off a tightly focused vibe, like  he was there  in the physical sense only while his mind was elsewhere, running through an unending set of musical charts that had his full attention.  I recognized his obsessive look that said that he something deeper to express, that it was in him and was eating impatiently at him from the inside.

Mikey had started his musical journey early,  taking up the flute and piano at age 8 , adding  a proficiency at electric and upright bass to his repertoire in his middle school years.  But the guitar always held his deepest fascination.  He studied guitar at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, graduating last year.  After graduation, he toured as guitarist with Jamaican Aria Morgan‘s tour to promote her album, Full Time Love, as well as playing with the progressive metal band Yantra that he had co-founded while still at Berklee.

But time came to begin to get back to that obsessive inner voice which led to the release of his new CD yesterday that features his compositions, voice and playing.  It’s a mix of folk, blues, country and indie rock but it’s all Mikey.  I had followed his work through the years from afar and knew primarily of   his prodigious talents as progressive metal guitarist so when he passed on to me a 3 song preview of the new CD at the gallery, I was expecting work in that genre.  But from the first moments I could tell that I had only seen a small glimpse of his talent in his previous work.  It started with a song, Train Hoppin’, that is drenched in the sound and feel of the early folk blues,  recorded on the same sort of  period recording equipment that Robert Johnson and other early blues pioneers used in the 20’s and 30’s.  It is his homage to the influences that paved the way for his own work, which is shown more fully in the next two songs, Back to You and Window Pane.  These songs feel like his authentic voice  which is exciting, making me eager to hear more from this CD.

Comin’ Home is available now on  iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, Google Play, as well as a number of other online outlets.  You can also order it from his site, Mattice Music.  

Mike will also be doing a special acoustic show promoting the CD at the Principle Gallery on Thursday, July 11, from 6-9 PM.  If you can make it, this  should be a wonderful opportunity to experience his wonderful talent in an intimate setting.  It could be one of those things where you can tell your friends years from now about how lucky you were to see Mike play early in his career.

Just to show off a bit of his talent and dexterity, here’s a clip from his progressive work with Yantra.

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Delivery Day

Posted in Music, Recent Paintings, Video, tagged , , , on May 30, 2013| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- A Solemn Understanding smI’m on the road today, delivering my show to the Principle Gallery which opens next Friday, June 7th,  there in Alexandria,VA.  It’s always a big relief, physically and mentally, to just get the work out of the studio and into the gallery.  Physically, there is suddenly so much more space in the studio, fewer paintings grabbing at my attention.  It just feels airier.  Mentally, it’s much the same, as though the additional space and light  in the studio suddenly opens up  a bit more space in my mind.  I haven’t even left as I write this but already I am eager to be back at work, invigorated by the cleared space.

The painting above is A Solemn Understanding, a 20″ by 24″ canvas  that is part of this show.   It has very gem-like colors as well as a nice dark warmth and richness to it that gives it a sense of deep pondering, as if the secrets of the universe had  just been revealed to the Red Tree.

Well, I have to go but I thought I’d share a song from several years ago (2004 actually)  from Loretta Lynn‘s collaboration with Jack White on her CD, The Van Lear Rose.  This song, Portland, Oregon, always somehow makes it way to my playlist when I make this drive to Virginia.  Enjoy and stop into to see the work at the gallery if you’re in the area.

 

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Mother’s Day

Posted in Influences, Music, Video, tagged , , on May 12, 2013| Leave a Comment »

All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.
-Abraham Lincoln

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My Mom passed away back  in 1995.  It’s hard to believe that it has been so many years now.   A day doesn’t go by that the thought of her doesn’t enter my mind in some way.  A memory of her movement, her voice, her good and bad points– they are all set off by suddenly noticing how deeply they are all ingrained in myself.  When I am walking, I see my mother walking.  When I am angry, I see her anger.  When I am sitting alone, I see her sitting at her kitchen table with a cup of tea and her everpresent  cigarette, wordless and still.

It’s always hard on Mother’s Day, as it probably is for most whose mothers have long passed.  For me , it is often a day filled with regrets for words, both said and unsaid, and actions.  Regrets for not speaking more words of love and appreciation.  Regrets for speaking words as a selfish child that may have unknowingly hurt her.  But, like most days, these regrets fade away and are replaced with only the memory of her– a simple yet complex woman for which I owe that I am or hope to be, as Uncle Abe said.

Happy Mother’s Day.

Here’s Sundown from Gordon Lightfoot.  Mom really  liked this song and Lightfoot’s voice in general.  She also loved  Eddy Arnold‘s voice but that will have to wait until another Mother’s Day..

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Herbert Singleton/ Glad You Dead You Rascal You

Posted in Folk Art, Influences, Music, Outsider Art, Video, tagged , , , , , , on April 30, 2013| 1 Comment »

Singleton Glad You Dead You Rascal YouSome of the first things I ever did artistically as a somewhat mature person were bas-relief  carvings.  In a way, it formed the technique that I adopted as a painter.  I suppose that’s why I am so drawn to carvings when I come across them.  There’s something very appealing to me in the idea of a flat surface that has this raised, tactile surface. Like a painting that is also available in braille.  I can imagine the artist running his hands over the piece as he works, the ridges and valleys sliding gently underneath in a most comforting way.

Smithsonian American Art Museum - Donald W. Reynolds CenterI recently stumbled  across the work of Herbert Singleton ,  a New Orleans folk artist who made wonderful and colorful carvings such as the piece at the top, Glad You Dead You Rascal You, which depicts a New Orleans funeral procession.  Singleton’s life story is similar in may ways with other folk artists– a life filled with missteps and violence, run ins with the law and addictions.  He spent the better part of 14 years in prison and died in 2007 from lung cancer at the age of 62.  But in his short time here, Singleton created a powerful body of  carved work that documented his world and goes well beyond the label of folk art or self-taught art.  It is not benign work .  It often rails against social injustice and hypocrisy with great gusto.

I was first attracted to some of his Voodoo Protection Stumps, such as the one shown just below, which are carved from  half of a log with  multiple colorful faces emerging from one side and the bark remaining on the backside.  There is an immediacy and vibrancy to the images and color that make them really ring out. Singleton’s work is such a great example of   an artist who will not be held captive to their circumstance,   will not succumb to the hardships and obstacles that that they face.  They use their life and whatever means they can muster to express their place in this world.

SingletonVoodooProtectionStump 2

The piece at the top of this post, Glad You Dead You Rascal You, was based on the song You Rascal You made popular by the great  Louis Armstrong in the early 1030’s.  Here ‘s a Betty Boop cartoon from 1932 that features the song in  an interesting mix of cartoon and live action with Armstrong and his band.  Hard to believe this is from before my dad was born on this day back in 1933.  Happy birthday to my old man.

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Soul of a Man

Posted in Music, Photography, Video, tagged , , , , , , on April 27, 2013| 5 Comments »

Frank Hurley- Endurance in the Antarctic- Ghost Ship 1915I came across these photos from the great Frank Hurley when he was part of the fabled Shackleton Expedition (Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition 1914-1917) that tried to cross Antarctica but was trapped  en route in a huge moving ice floe that ultimately crushed and sank their ship, the Endurance.  They  drifted for months and months on ice floes and were in lifeboats in the frigid sea for several days until finally making landfall, nearly 500 days since their voyage began.  This photo shows the Endurance as it is held in the clutches of the Antarctic ice at night.  It’s ghostly image really caught my eye and made me wonder how the members of the expedition might have felt, trapped in a most inhospitable place so far from anyone without any form of communication as you watch your only means of escape slowly be crushed.  

What makes man push to those extremes?

Frank Hurley- Endurance in the Antarctic Night 1915Part of me admires them mightily and makes me wonder if I have ever possessed anything near that drive.  It certainly doesn’t feel like it as I live my relatively safe and comfortable life.  In fact, most of us spend our lives striving to avoid ever being put in harm’s way.  But what drives these others?

I certainly don’t know.  As I said, their exploits fascinate me.  Their actions, which on the surface seem foolhardy for even being considered, take on heroic perspective over time and I suppose that explains my admiration.  I think we all like an epic, almost mythic,  journey.  But I still find myself wishing that I could really get a sense of what they truly felt as they stood in cold silence of the Antarctic night and looked at the frozen bones of their ship.

Perhaps that is just part of the soul of a man.  Here’s a great version of the old Blind Willie Johnson song, Soul of a Man, from David Lindley and Harry Manx.  Great playing on this cut.

Frank Hurley Endurance in the ice 1915 

 

 

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Island of Souls

Posted in At the Movies, Music, Painting, Recent Paintings, Video, tagged , , , , , , , on April 19, 2013| 4 Comments »

GC Myers- Island of Souls  Called Island of Souls, this painting, 16″ by 26″ on paper, uses the isolation of an island as its central theme.  I am not sure if my photography on this particular piece accurately captures the true color and feel of this piece so I may have to re-shoot this.  But this image does get most of what is important so I will get on with it.

The idea of an island has always intrigued me.  I think it comes from the paradox of perception that comes with them.  The isolation offers escape and safe haven from the outer world on one hand but at the same time has a sense of captivity and limitation on the other.  As an artist my working life is spent on such an island, either safely ensconced in the quiet safety of my studio or trapped in a self-made prison, depending on your viewpoint.

A lot of artists have trouble with this isolation but for me it has always been preferable.  I always think of  the film Papillon where inmate Louis Dega, played by Dustin Hoffman, finally accepts and adapts to his fate on Devil’s Island, the penal colony off the coast of French Guiana.  He eventually lives in a little hut away from the others and lives a quiet and simple life until the end of his life there.  I have always thought that , outside it being forced upon him as punishment, it was an existence to which  many  people might aspire, living on a tropical island with little to worry about from the outside world.

Maybe that’s what I see here.  I suppose it could be seen as some sort of a prison with the cluster of huts on a rocky island with a dock and no visible boat.  I tend to see it in more aspirational terms, as a place of peace with a sense of tranquility in the colors of this piece that complements this reading of this picture for me.

One man’s penal colony is another man’s paradise.

Here’s a song of the same name from Sting.  It’s from his 1991 album The Soul Cages and uses the island as a dreamed of place of escape for the boat builders of Newcastle as they toil over the great ships that they will never sail on.

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Higher Ground

Posted in Music, Painting, Recent Paintings, Video, tagged , , , on March 19, 2013| 4 Comments »

I’m so glad that I know more than I knew then

Gonna keep on trying

Till reach my highest ground

GC Myers-Higher Ground

I wrote that when I was visited  last week in my studio by a film crew from WSKG  that they had taped me working on a painting in its early stages.  The painting above is the final version of that piece.  It’s a 20″ by 40″ canvas that I am calling Higher Ground, a title somewhat borrowed from the Stevie Wonder song of the same name quoted above.

This piece has a couple of different elements than most of my work.  For instance, the rocky walls of the canal/river as well as the rocky outcropping of the rise on which the Red Tree stand.  There’s also an orchard in the lower right corner that I use sparingly in these pieces.  I have sometimes said that these paintings are often not really about the Red Tree at all but are more about the mood created by the combinations of color and form.  But the Red Tree is definitely center stage here, everything revolving around and focusing on it.

Higher ground could  represent the safety offered by it  in times of flood or in combat.  For me, I see it as attaining a higher plane of being, or at least aspiring to it as a goal.  Perhaps not the same highest ground that Stevie Wonder is seeking ,  which seems to represent  a  Raptured heaven.  No, I see it more as being free of the the everyday, represented in the anonymous houses below.  To a point that is above hate and anger.  Above envy.  Above spitefulness and deceit.

Above judgement.  I add that because I don’t see the Red Tree as looking down on those house below it here. Rather,  I see it looking upward and outward.  And higher ground affords that better view…

Here’s the song from Stevie Wonder.  Great groove to start a day.

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Celtic Spiral

Posted in Current Events, Favorite Things, Music, Video, tagged , , , , , , on March 17, 2013| 6 Comments »

newgrange-spiral-stoneI was looking for something to use here on the blog as a symbol for Ireland or St. Patrick’s Day.  I didn’t want to go the typical shamrock and leprechaun route. We’ve all seen enough of those.  Instead, I began to focus on their triple spiral symbol, the triskele.  It first showed up on the stones at Newgrange in County Meath,  a large burial mound or temple which dates back over 5000 years, making it older than the pyramids of Egypt.

The elaborately carved stones featured three spirals which meld effortlessly into one another, as though it is a continuum without beginning or end.  Though its origins and meaning are still vague at best, this triple spiral has come down through the ages as being symbolic of the trinity of later Christian believers and even found its way into the form of the ubiquitous shamrock.  I think the mystery and symbology of the triple spiral is fascinating in the way it still resonates in some primal part of us.  It is an elemental symbol, a part of who we are as a people.  And by that, I don’t mean simply the Irish but all people.  Everyone can identify with this symbol of  the unity of time and constant rebirth.

Maybe this unifying aspect is why there is such great appeal of  this day for so many, Irish and non-Irish alike.  I know that while I drink a Guinness or two today, probably dressed in a Kelly green shirt  as I listen to Danny Boy or some other maudlin ballad for the umpteenth time, I will stop for a moment and think of this trinity of spirals and feel a unity with the past.  And the future and the present.

Maybe the song will be Carrickfergus.  Here’s a version from Loudon Wainwright III that I very much like.

 

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I’d Love to Change the World…

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Music, Video, tagged , , on March 8, 2013| 2 Comments »

Alvin-Lee-III heard last night that guitarist Alvin Lee had died, at the age of 68, on Wednesday in Spain  from surgical complications.  I am sure the name doesn’t mean much to a lot of you but to those of you who grew up in the time of Woodstock, his name brings up memories of one of the more memorable  performances from that show.  Lee was the leader of the British band Ten Years After and their frantic version of  I’m Goin’ Home  took off when the documentary and soundtrack of that festival came out soon after.  It was electrifying stuff , then and now, and was one of the definitive moments of that landmark show.  I know that it really stood out for me even with all of the the many other incredible performances.

Unfortunately, he always felt that the attention that the Woodstock performance brought forced them in a different musical direction, more pop and away from the electric blues that he so loved and which their earlier success was built.  It’s one of those instances where success is a double-edged sword.

Lee’s biggest hit here, besides the Woodstock performance, was the 1971 song I’d Love to Change the World, which hit the Top 40 here.  It has a great sound and  in many ways expresses the chaos and uncertainty that marked the late 60’s and early 70’s.  Lee’s playing on this cut is memorable.  Here it is, in memory of Alvin Lee.

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Big Wave Man

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Video, tagged , , , , , , on March 7, 2013| 4 Comments »

Garrett-Mcnamara-100-Foot-Wave-Nazare-PortugalThere was a story on 60 Minutes Sports last night that featured surfer Garrett McNamara‘s ride in late January of a wave outside of a small fishing village in Portugal that may have been 100 feet tall, a world record when and if it is certified by the Guinness people.  McNamara already held the world record for riding the largest wave, a mere 78 footer.  But this is a one of a kind monster.  If you’ve never seen the ocean or seen much more than a small swell, it may be hard to imagine how big a wave we’re talking about here.  It is awe inspiring and to think that someone would look out at this moving mountain of mayhem that is breaking so close to the shore and think that they might want to put themselves out in it seems like madness.

And maybe it is.  But I have to admit to being envious of the guts and ability of the big wave riders, the guys who take on the challenge of these wave behemoths that other world class surfers would run from.  To put yourself at the mercy of nature’s fury  on such a grand scale is truly elemental.  I could sit and watch these guys all day, captivated by the way they dart across the waves.

Here’s a video that I showed about four years ago that feature the penultimate surf song, Pipeline, from the Chantays.  The setting for the video is a bit odd, however.  It’s hard to imagine this music that symbolizes the wildness of the surf culture on The Lawrence Welk Show but   here it is.  It adds to the kitsch factor.

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