...about...

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Phoenix, Arizona, United States
musician...artist...bartender...writer...quasi-academic-freelance-literary-something-or-other...rabble-rouser... beat-builder...connoisseur-of-crazy-critical-theory...etc.

Friday, December 12, 2014

New content!

I have a new video out this week. This one's for the track "Houseful of Cats (...and it's complicated)" from my forthcoming solo-record "Future-Tense.". Check it out!




I've been continuing to add new tracks for streaming and download from that record to my Bandcamp site as well. 



I've also been posting a whole lot of new visual-art content on my Etsy site, including some props and set-pieces built for the new video above... and there's still a little bit of time left to get orders (in most circumstances) delivered by Christmas, but that time is running out... and original art and quirky decor makes phenomenal gifts! 

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Project updates...

Having just returned from a somewhat tumultuous trip back east, I'm sitting at a Phoenix coffeehouse, loving being back in such a vibrant city, and excited for making fun and positive things happen for our future here... so I figured it was a good time for an update.




The Green Sea has changed formats yet again... because... why not? What we've been doing lately is some sort of live-improv noise that usually falls in a somewhat electro-punk-meets-comedy-rock vein. Basically, we've found that we thoroughly enjoy playing extended-sets without content, making absolutely everything up on the spot... which naturally incurs some hilariously unpredictable lyrics and sudden genre-shifts. We now have a site on Bandcamp, where you can stream or download loads of various fun content... We currently have four records up there- our debut EP from 2006, two live-improv mixtape records, and an ongoing collection called "...bits and pieces..." that houses lots of stuff that hasn't shown up or been appropriate for any of the other albums.

You can find all of that here-

https://thegreensea-az.bandcamp.com

We've posted some goofy videos from this phase, too, on my Youtube channel...

Such as these-








I've also begun working on a solo-record... (at the moment it's separate from the electro-jazz album I mentioned in the last post, but time will tell... I've got a few tracks from it up on my personal Bandcamp account since relocating to the desert... This is an indie-rock record at its core. I'm making the dusty, wild-west rock songs that occur to me, without trying to sculpt them into any particular context. This record is a snap-shot into my mind at the moment, as it evolves... It's called "Future Tense." 


Take a listen here- 


More tracks, and some videos, from that will be shortly forthcoming. 



And as always, new original art, prints, customized instruments, stickers, t-shirts, etc. are being added almost daily to the Etsy site where I sell my visual-art work... I've been pretty productive in that regard lately...




...and more is to come soon. 





Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Hello, Phoenix.

It's been a hectic few months so I haven't posted an update here in a while, so I have a lot of catching up to do. (I plan to start frequent updates again, I've just had a whole lot on my plate lately.)

At the beginning of April, my girlfriend Cat and I relocated to Phoenix, Arizona. I had lived in the valley for about 5 years in the past, and absolutely loved it. After about 6 years back in New Hampshire, there were many elements of desert-living that I missed more and more, and was growing increasingly stir-crazy and ready for a change. Sometime around the second blizzard into the winter, we decided it was time to make that change, and started making arrangements. Early in the morning on April Fools Day, we loaded all our combined possessions into a 16-foot box-truck, loaded my little Kia onto a trailer on the back, and began our cross-country drive.

Upon arrival, we moved into half of a split-floorplan house in a nice suburban-ish section of North Central Phoenix called Moon Valley... We both lucked-out on the job-front, and were able to sorta-kinda "transfer" our existing jobs- I'm working behind the bar at a sushi/ Japanese/ nightlife spot in North Scottsdale called Sapporo that happens to be owned by the same company as the bar I worked at in Nashua, and Cat is working for an eye doctor in the Camelback Corridor.

Besides the "how we pay the bills" nuts-and-bolts, we are here primarily in order to advance our "actual" careers as working artists, in a scene and cultural-climate that I have always felt to be more exciting, vibrant, inclusive, and inspiring than that of the Boston area. (no offense to my New England people who are working hard and getting shit done, it's just an entirely different vibe here. I feel like desert cities have a sort of "wild wild west" take on creative endeavors- almost everyone's from somewhere else, so there's always a refreshing sort of "you're doing something interesting? Sweet! How can I help?" vibe that tends to be lacking in older-school, more established communities where everything's about how well you follow certain rules and who you happen to know.)

Despite a VERY busy couple months getting settled in and situated, we're well underway diving headlong into those sorts of goals. Here's a quick run-down of current and future projects in the works-

We've revived The Green Sea, a side-project act that I had maintained for a couple of years before leaving the valley the first time around and continued to collaborate with across the country during the intervening time. This former experimental side-project has now become our primary band- a high-energy, live-show-focused electro-punk trio. I'm on lead vocals and guitar, Wes Hopeless is playing synths, sequencers, and general electronic-wizardry, and Cat is on live electronic-percussion and keytar. We aim to be ready to start playing out with a spastic set of fun new songs by the end of the summer. In the meantime, like us on Facebook and check out some teaser-content that we're dropping a little bit at a time.




Cat and I have also begun work on an additional musical-project, a bar-entertainment cover-duo called Urban Forestry. Check out some basic info on what that's going to entail here.



In the meantime, we've both also been hard at work our various sorts of visual-art contents... check out my Etsy site at LeVautour to peruse some recent works of that sort. 




In writing-news, I have finally almost finished editing the book-project I've been working on writing since I finished grad-school... Look for updates on that soon. 

Thursday, February 20, 2014

New solo-music and art.

I've added a second track to my slowly-evolving first solo-record (tentatively titled {ironically untitled}, without the pretenses of project-title, concept, experimentalism, etc... this one is simply intended to eventually be a stripped-down collection of songs that I would actually want to listen to. As strange as it sounds, with as many records as I've been involved with the release of (8 or so in the past 5 years, I think?) I've never actually done that.




In other news, I have new listings at my Etsy shop... and my "make an offer" liquidation-sale for friends and acquaintances is still underway, so email me if you want to barter or work out alternate delivery before you order.

Monday, January 27, 2014

Updates, art, etc.

A few updates...

My acoustic duo, Old Vine, is working on 3 simultaneous demo-records, and posting new content regularly to our Bandcamp page as they become available. One is our "real" EP, Cavernous Spaces... an album of original-material and original-arrangements of creative covers.


The second is a live-demo of covers from our bar-entertainment set, called Voodoo-Folk Live; B-Sides and Covers.





 The third is a record of oddball remixes of our tracks, called Voodoo-Folk Reconjured!




So... Listen"like", and follow us on Twitter.

We are currently in the process of sculpting our content for two different sorts of sets, both as bar-entertainment, and playing original content in music-venues. We are always for hire, so book us as entertainment for your bar/ event/ party, or to play creative indie-rock shows in your performance-space. Email for details.



I've also re-started an old habit of posting video-demos of new songwriting material to my youtube channel... Here's a brand new one.



In other news, I'm having a sort of "friends and family" liquidation-sale at my Etsy site. If I know you personally, or you're "local" enough to know who I am in any sort of personal way, message me personally before making an offer on any pieces that you might want from my site... I have WAY more of my own material on the walls of my studio than I would like at the moment, so any reasonable offer will be considered.