What I Did at Summer Camp, Week 1

I'm teaching a few days a week at School of Rock's summer program, or Rock Camp. It's also been called Boot Camp, which is an apt analogy since we throw the kids into bands and tell them they have two weeks to write and record a demo track and play a whole show (mostly covers). They're coming in with a huge range of age and experience levels, so a lot of what the kids learn is how to write and perform with whatever strengths or limitations they're handed with their bandmates. Because of this, there are moments in camp that are eerily premonitory of what happens in a real band. I take some wicked pleasure in seeing these kids get the glamour of being in a band knocked out of their heads at such an early age. (It actually makes them better musicians and bandmates.)

I've been mostly teaching and workshopping the bands' songwriting. Two bands were both veering towards 12 bar blues territory, but I was able to gently nudge one of them towards alternative rock, and over the course of the week they've magically turned into a Pavement-esque band. I don't know how that happened but it makes me happy. We have a metal band that does a fine job writing metal but an even better job covering Metallica's "For Whom the Bell Tolls." The veteran campers started working on an epic, Grateful Dead-inspired, three-section jam that the staff has been chipping away so that it comes in under (at least) the 10 minute mark.

I've spent most of my time this week darting in and out of practice rooms that smell like college dorms by day's end, telling the drummers to shut up, and pleading with boys going through puberty to try singing. That's a losing battle since none of them have a real male vocal range yet. Of all the things bombarding the adolescent male ego, I would imagine that showing off your soprano vocal range is around threat level Orange.

The antidote to this entire ego-bruising process was a field trip to Reggie's Rock Club to buy some vinyl and drive down Lake Shore Drive in this school bus. Even I felt bad-ass. I think I need to borrow this bus whenever I feel meek or insecure.

Week 2 is up next, then it's time for the Pitchfork Festival. Rock.

White Rabbits roundup; also, corrupting the youths

I completely forgot to plug Canasta's two dates with White Rabbits on the blog, but the Empty Bottle sold out on Wednesday before we even got on stage, so you wouldn't have gotten in anyways.

If you've seen me at all since our first date with them on Tuesday, I have already pathetically gushed about how fucking awesome this band is. If not, allow me to let someone else do the gushing for me. Here's a review from the Examiner. (Canasta and White Rabbits' touring mates, the Subjects, aren't reviewed here, so you can think whatever you want about our respective sets.) There are some fan photos of us on the Interwebs, too -- check out this one of us from High Noon in Madison and this one of Steve from White Rabbits at the Bottle.

Next week I start corrupting the youths by turning them into real honest-to-god rock bands. I'll be teaching at School of Rock's summer camp program, which brings the phrase "This one time at band camp" to a whole new, edgier level. I will try to keep the blog up to date with this-one-time-at-band-camp stories.

Brace Yourselves for Pride Weekend

Sidetrack has ordered nightly air-drop shipments of Booze Slushie mix directly to their roofdeck should supplies start running low. A reverse curfew will be in effect starting on Friday night mandating that anyone living in Boystown remain outside of their homes after 10pm. Charlie's and Hydrate have ordered sleeping cots for stranded, horny suburbanites who were not able to land a trick by closing time.

If, at some point this weekend, you are not already engulfed in flames (of gay), might I suggest:

• Bombs Away! at Mary's Attic, presented by the Bailiwick. I'm accompanying them on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights this week and again next week on July 2nd. The show's at 7pm and is done by 8:30.
  
• Chicago Gay Men's Chorus has their Pride show running Friday and Saturday this week and next Thursday in the 'burbs.



• This isn't Pride-related at all, it's just really awesome. Canasta is opening for White Rabbits next week not once but twice. We're at High Noon Saloon in Madison on Tues. the 30th and back home at the Empty Bottle on Wed. the 1st. Both shows have a chance of selling out so if you want advance tix, we've got yer links right here. Get a sneak preview by watching the White Rabbits' latest performance on Letterman.
  

Gig Roundup + WBEZ Session Pics on Facebook

Two gigs and a 10 hour recording day in the past two weeks, so lots to read today. A teaser: I'm about to get really snarky.

• Thanks to everyone who came out to the Martyrs' show last Monday. Usually I go for quantity over quality when a venue gives me free drinks, but there was no way I could perform, walk, carry 40 pound pianos, or drive a vehicle with the size of the bar tab I was given. So my new favorite thing at Martyrs' is Cotes du Rhone. I'm afraid it's not very rock 'n roll of me, but I guess it is extremely gay.
  
  
• Milwaukee PrideFest was a reminder of how spoiled musicians are in Chicago when it comes to summer music festivals. Chicago musicians: do not take for granted that our festival organizers usually have their shit together.
  
  It really should have been a red flag when the entertainment coordinator asked me if I was driving to the festival. It was clear when I arrived they still thought I would be -- oh, I don't know -- carrying my two keyboards and amp through the Summerfest grounds on a camel? Or a rickshaw? The closest they would allow my actual car to get to the stage was somewhere in Kenosha. I'll spare you the saga of the entertainment staff haggling with the security staff to get "the big" golf cart.
  
  
• Kyle, Matt, and I went to WBEZ on Saturday with our engineer, Ted Cho, to record all of the grand piano tracks for the new Canasta album. Pictures are up on our Facebook page.
  

New Poster! New MP3! New Furniture!

I'm going to the suburbs today to enjoy/suffer the Baudrillardian self-assembly-fest that is IKEA. In the spirit of new furniture I have tons of new stuff for you:

• New Show Poster from Josh Shalek, who designed The Crater EP's cover. Here's the conversation I had with Josh last night:
  "Josh, should we coordinate our blog posts about my show at Martyrs' on Monday and your poster that advertises that show?"
  "I don't know, I'm pretty busy counting my money and eating truffles."
  
  Josh can provide for you, if you're very lucky, show posters, CD art, and filthy, dirty lies.
  
  
  
  
• New MP3 - Download and Share At Will
  Since the Martyrs' show will feature a lot of new music, you should at least have some of it ahead of time to study and deconstruct. Here's an acoustic home demo I did of one of the newbies, "Resurrection Ship," which is loosely based off of Battlestar Galactica because I am a huge, huge dork. You can hear the folktronified/looped version on Monday.
  
  Resurrection Ship (Acoustic) - Ian Wilson
  

Canasta Studio Pics are Up!

It's moving weekend, so I'm keeping this short so I can start piling up ugly shirts to donate and wrapping various fragile things in newspaper.

Head over to Canasta's Facebook page and check out our pictures from our recording session earlier this month at Wall2Wall Studios. We used no less than seven different keyboard instruments in the studio, most of which were vintage instruments with completely unreplicable sounds: a prepared upright piano (modified with tacks for a very plunky percussive sound), a C3 Hammond organ, a Mellotron, which is this weird little British keyboard that plays 11-second tape loops to produce notes.

You can also see the awesome lighting scheme at Wall2Wall which is second only to the laser light show we were bombarded with at our LaSalle Power Co. show a few weeks ago. (Bombarded.)

I'm this week's guest on the CAU Podcast

I'm the guest on this week's Chicago Acoustic Underground podcast, a live interview/session that I recorded with them back in the fall. I am unusually chatty but somewhat more adept at my mic banter than usually comes across on stage with a beer or two in me. You can also hear live acoustic versions of "Inanimate Objects," "Mies van der Rohe," "The Crater," and "Creative Writing Workshop." There's also a previously unrecorded cut on there, "Sarah," which doesn't get a lot of stage-time in the loop sets nowadays.

Go download the episode for free on CAU's website.

Coming up soon, I'll have an update on the Canasta recording process, including those studio pics from Wall2Wall I promised.