Miscellania!

So today's a big day for having things to post about. It's also Christmas. So double nice!

First up are some web sites I've created!

Click images to enter respective sites)

This semester I've been trying to utilize the double-bladed opportunities of the Internet and make some interactive, web-based art. Here are my first two attempts.

These sites are hosted by the domain of FolkRoutes, a newly erected anarchist distribution syndicate. They just launched their website, so they're kind of getting their stuff together. But give them a look. They aim to do some really cool things down the road that I hope to be a part of. (Maybe you can be too?)

More stuff is happening. I've got to talk about Spikedriver, another collective that I'm working a lot with. They're going to be touring with Wood Spider this January. Dammit, I have to talk about that too...

I built a sweet fort today.

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A Rockin' Wood Spider Christmas
Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?2ybxp51krntyms9

There's still some holiday left so before it ends, be sure to listen to this ridiculous jingle that Mike Ditrio and I recorded. It made for a wonderful gift to his mother.

Festive collapse.

Not really into the idea of posing for a cliché family Christmas card, I decided to illustrate one instead. Here's the front of the card that is filling in for a standard tacky CostCo template.
Adapted from a drawing some may remember from last year.

Here's hopin' everyone enjoys their holiday. I'm not really too into the religious or material aspects of December, but I am all about the togetherness and egg nog. So please do your best to indulge in both of those.

(Oh, and I'm done with my fall semester and I've got a bunch of stuff to show for it. So expect me to put some things up.)

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Squirrel Nut Zippers - Christmas Caravan

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?klicdd65bawpzn7

Tags: Swing, Jazz, Christmas

Yes, yes. I can understand that the sound of Christmas music can be blazingly grating to some people's ears, but what if it's swing as all hell? Huh? What about that?
Hey, I'm just trying to make your holiday a little bit sassier, is all.

Oh, Proboscideans!

A promotional brochure I made in Adobe Illustrator. It chronicles the African elephant's bizarre history through six stages of its ancestry. From left to right:

African elephant (Loxodonta africana)
Songhua River Mammoth (Mammathus sungari)
Gomphotherium (Gomphotherium angustidens)
Platybelodon (Platybelodon danovi)
Deinotherium (Deinotherium giganteum)
Moeritherium (Moeritherium lyonsi)

Okay, so Moeritherium isn't a true elephant ancestor. I know but y'all can just shove it. The little thing is just too adorable.

Way way more to come!

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Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Broadcasting From Home

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?7588wme1t83oezx
Tags: jazz, acoustic, chamber music

Been all about this this week. My favorite element about the Penguin Cafe Orchestra is their song titles. It really provides a nice context to every song and influences you to interpret them a certain way. "In the Back of a Taxi" first comes to mind.

Beans taste fine.

"To his horror, when Dendall woke up, he was in pieces."

Here's a hasty scan of the first page I illustrated for Dendall's Story, a children's story by Amelia Horner about a boy whose body parts abandon him because he doesn't eat properly. So Dendall (just a head) goes on a journey to learn about the wonders of eating well.
I have a lot more pages to finish and I need to edit all of them, but yeah, here's another thing I'm working on. Fun!

I'm waist deep in final projects right now, so I don't really have much time for anything. But after the next week or so, I should have all sorts of neat things to show. Hang tight!

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Shel Silverstein - Inside Folk Songs

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?c12bpc18sdsvbs0
Tags: folk, blues, poetry

Welcome to the soundtrack of my last month. This album is required for every young, embittered New Yorker that likes to think they don't blend into the crowd of ironic mustaches and plaid on the L train.

(Not to alienate everyone else, though! Uncle Shelby makes sounds everyone can enjoy!)

Creole Love Call.

A cut & stained paper illustration of Duke Ellington leading The Duke Ellington Orchestra.

So I've been introduced to how freakin' easy it is to make your own nut butter. I am ready to drop my pencil for I have found my true calling.

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Sour Mash Hug Band - Dorsal Fin Dream Stallion

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?bgoccj7nfg8lk1g
Tags: folk, swing, jug, klezmer, world

In the spirit of this week's harvest, here's somethin' with a good jig. It'd work for all you Dandelion Junk Queens fans out there. There's a good range of European folk influence here, so download and get a good ol' West Coast concoction of transcontinental style!

Stumblin'.

A scratchboard illustration for The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Here, we have Jekyll stumbling along a cobblestone street as he struggles against his deep descent into the maddening void of the psychotic Mr. Hyde! Gahhh!

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Man and the Bearded Ladies - Dr. Villagari's Bones

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?6mb29zkahzmbkkz
Tags: western folk, vaudeville, dark folk

You can run into some nice people on this here Internet. And those nice people can make some neat sounds every now and then. Between the accordion, saw, guitar, violin and all the other noises there's a... I dunno. I like it.
Hey, I'm tired. Not every sentence I type is going to be a winner.

World in a moment.

Sorry for the abundance of inactivity. My camera got a little busted and the things I've been working on lately wouldn't be very well accommodated by a scanner. I'll get more new things up soon!

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Matador - The Taking

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?fgp6joz4f3aimre
Tags: acoustic, punk, indie-folk

Imagine if Jeff Mangum went to college in Santa Cruz. Or at least, that's what I get from it.

You're innocent when you...

An alternate cover for Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman done in Adobe Illustrator. It's an awfully good fiction that covers the whimsical, surreal dreams that plagued the exhausted young Einstein during the construction of his Theory of Relativity. Thought food, for sure.

I'm thinkin' of making a transition over to Wordpress. Things just seem so nice over there... I can have tabs. TABS.

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Squinch Owl - Homeward Bound

Download: http://squinchowl.bandcamp.com/album/homeward-bound
Tags: heavy meadow, light brown, blues, folk

That Sofia Albam sure got a set of pipes. Wood Spider may be doing a split with her if both parties can get their stuff together, so yeah, that'd be something to jump up and down about. The download link leads directly to her Bandcamp, on the grounds that she should know how many people are enjoying her sounds! So yeah, download away!

This month, she's touring through New England, so if you're around, you should check her out!

Edit: Turns out the transmission died in the bus Squinch Owl is touring in right now. Although, I should always suggest this, it'd be awfully generous if y'all could donate some amount of dollars or cents for the album download. These kids sure do need it.

Starch! Starch! Starch!

If you just so happen to be around Oberlin, Ohio Friday afternoon, you should go to this bread sale! It's a fundraiser supporting Spikedriver Arts Collective, a newly formed radical arts production/distribution syndicate and artwork will be- bah, it's all on the flier!

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Carolina Chocolate Drops - Genuine Negro Jig (2010)

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?bfgba2ky6ypbfra
Tags: bluegrass, country, roots music

“Tradition is a guide, not a jailer. We play in an older tradition but we are modern musicians.”

Jazz hands.

Here's a sketch of what will soon be a painting which will soon be a part of a series. Oh, Duke Ellington. You sure can play those keys.
More will come.

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The Goddamn Rattlesnake - Get Comfortable

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?33gou623gt219gn
Tags: blues, country, punk

And in a completely inappropriate relation to this post, here's an album of "lonesome, uplifting country ballads and shanty songs". Think Fake Problems when they were all twangy folk and whatnot.
Thank Thunderbolt Jackson for this one, rest that powerful soul.

Paths to Abstraction

While in Sydney, I went to an awesome exhibit at the Art Gallery of New South Wales that chronicled the history and development of abstraction in Modern art around the turn of the 20th century. It put me on a kick of distorted doodles for a week or so. Here's a few.

Gah, I kind of liberally use the phrase" swamped" when it comes to the amount of work I'm doing, but this time, I mean it! I'm working on a children's book, doing a bunch for school, hunting down art modeling jobs and collaborating/organizing in an inspiring art collective. It's all so time-consuming but invigorating! I think a lot of cool work will come from it, so maybe I'll have some things to put up here. I can't feed off of my summer sketchbook forever, afterall.

Oh, and Wood Spider's booking their winter tour too. Who knows cool spaces above Massachussetts in New England?!

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Hail Seizures - For the Ruin

Download: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=GK0C385F
Tags: folk punk, punk

Uploaded per request. New Hail Seizures! Be excited!

Excerpts of summer.

Some potted plants in the studio of Rumple Farm in Petaluma, CA.

A morning watercolor in East LA.

Birthed on a plane over the mighty Pacific.

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Pale Robin - Birth Rights Versus

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?226rqm62i212eco
Tags: anarcho-folk, acoustic punk

A new project featuring Mars and CPN of Blackbird Raum fame. Give it a listen.

Back on Greed Island.

That's right. I've returned from Down Under and my body's all kinds of messed up from all of the irregular sleep, reckless indulgences and extensive, unnatural travel I've put it through. But now I'm solidifying my status as "god damned hipster" by moving into Bushwick and I feel compelled to dust off the ol' blog from a summer of neglect.

I've got lots of stuff to put up! But scanning at FIT is far more of a hassle then it should be, so here's a taste of things to come...

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Coaltown Noir - Ash & Oil

Download: http://www.archive.org/details/CoaltownNoir-AshAndOilEp
Tags: folk, early jazz, punk, blues

Wood Spider met some fine, fine people in Coaltown Noir and may be working with them in the near future. They're passionate enough about their music to give it out for free, so the least you can do is download and enjoy it!

Briefin'.

Heavy apologies for the inactivity, all. Thanks a bunch to those who have kept returning. You're sweet.

Tour went well. Zines were distributed and creative expression was spread like a debilitating virus. It has laid down a foundation for yet another heavily involved project, but on an exponentially larger scale! More news on that will come.

After hopping all around the country on tours and road trips, I find myself in Sydney, Australia, interning at the animation studio, Flying Bark. I'm here until the fall semester rears its ugly head yet again in September but before then, I plan on squeezing all of the life that my hands can wring out of the month of August. Oh, I need a place to live too... (Who needs a house/apartment-mate?!)

Unfortunately, I have no art online to show. A months worth of drawings and paintings were removed from my possession but hey, that is the baggage that comes form touring. I've been feverishly filling up a new book and hopefully I can find some worthy sketches and throw them on here.
I'll find the time to host some music too.

Be well,
Alex

Crawling to a finish.

Here's the design for Wood Spider's tour flier.

Here's an out-of-context illustration of Johnny Appleseed.



I'm waist deep in a thick sludge of work that must be done. However, I've found time to update my blog... So I guess this means it's possible for me to have even more to do...

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Luminescent Orchestrii - Too Hot to Sleep

Download: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=PALS2WOZ
Tags: gypsy, tango, klezmer, punk, world

Another old favorite. They're a bunch of awesome folk musicians/songwriters that are paralyzingly amazing to see live. They managed to incorporate punk influences, but still preserve musical integrity! How? HOW?!

Lots of news.

This is the cover to a project I worked on with two others over the past winter and spring. It's a zine covering sustainability throughout US History and the current importance of saving seeds. All of the illustrations are my doing and I'll post a couple here to give y'all an idea:

This zine is a component of a massive radical project known as The Circuit. The Circuit is a network of creative individuals with the intention of uniting like-minded countercultures with a variety of artistic collaborations that span over several different media and themes, but all connected with one underlying concept.
One of these projects is our zine, Seed Sharers and while I'm touring with Wood Spider this summer, we'll be distributing this zine at each one of our shows, in a distro-like manner.

Also, as a "cell" of The Circuit, we'll be displaying a small collection of the artwork from both our zine and the projects of the many other groups affiliated with us. These works will also be displayed at our shows, making each one of our performances an event of stompy folk music, zine distribution and DIY guerrilla art galleries! Hot damn!
(We don't know any of the other cells or how many of them there are, so what we display is merely the "tip of the iceberg", if you will.)

What follows is the current calendar for our summer tour in June. Things may get added, switched around or (hopefully not) dropped, so if you want to stay updated, it'd be best to consult the band's MySpace.

June 4 - Westerly, RI - New England DIY Fest
June 5 - New York, NY - Silent Barn (EARLY SHOW)
June 6 - Maryland - Pending
June 7 - Washington DC - Pending
June 8 - Virginia - Pending
June 9 - Richmond, VA - The Wingnut
June 10 - Durham, NC - The Factory (618 Foster Street)
June 11 - Pending
June 12 - Pending
June 13 - New Orleans, LA - All Ways Lounge
June 14 - New Orleans, LA - Zeitgeist Multi-Disciplinarian Arts Center
June 15 - Houston, TX - Sedition Book Collective
June 16 - Houston, TX - Super Happy Fun Land
June 17 - Denton, TX - J&J's Old Dirty Basement
June 18 - Conway, AR - La Lucha Space
June 19 - Russelville, AR - The Foxhole
June 20 - Pending
June 21 - Indiana - Pending
June 22 - Columbus, OH - The Boneyard
June 23 - Kent, OH - The House House (Crooked River Collective)
June 24 - Pittsburgh, PA - Project 53
June 25 - Philadelphia, PA - The Fire Pit
June 26 - Philadelphia, PA - Magic City Summer Solstice Festival
June 27 - New York, NY - Yippie Cafe
June 28 - Allston, MA - Islington House Showspace

It'd be awesome if you guys could make it out to these! It's for a good/awesome cause!
And if you're having trouble finding information about some of these shows, shoot me an e-mail at alex@krokus.com. We're playing a few houses, so information on the venue might be scarce.

Also, to you New York folk, go to the show on the 5th at The Silent Barn in Brooklyn! It's a free event on a Saturday afternoon! New Yorkers love free things! Don't try and deny it!
(This isn't to say that a majority of our shows won't be free/donation-based)

I suppose that's all for now. If there's more information to be dispatched, I'll so dispatch it.

GET EXCITED.

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Psalters - The Divine Liturgy of the Wretched Exiles

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?mzzym4mn4wt
Tags: world, folk, christian, tribal, experimental

I listened to this once and fell in heavy, heavy love. This band has a constant revolving door of members and draws influence from a crazy variety of world music. Oh, and they do it well, too! Listen!

BREAD.

This was a flier I designed for a bread sale ("Bake sale" has such a bland connotation these days, don't you think?) that went on at Oberlin College this weekend. Obviously, the sale's rousing success was due to my AWESOME flier design. Obviously.
All of the proceeds are going towards Wood Spider's multimedia summer tour! Get pumped! ...If you're on the East/South Coast, that is.

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Blackbird RAUM - Under the Starling Host

Download: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=W89U0SR0
Tags: gypsy punk, folk punk, riot folk

In honor of bread, I'm hosting Blackbird Raum's most recent album, Under the Starling Host. These people add such a gross amount of musical innovation to the typically repetitive genre they're usually lumped in. They play folk punk in 15/4 for God's sake! 15/4!

Environmental malarkey.

Overcome

I have intentions of touching this up a bit more. When that is, I have no idea, considering I'm kind of busy as hell right now and I'm going to continue to be kind of busy as hell for a while. So here it is!

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Th' Legendary Shack Shakers - Pandelirium

Download: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=SMFDWZSO
Tags: rockabilly, psychobilly, punk, country, blues

An ol' favorite of mine. I'm going to exercise my fondness of hyphenated punk genres and call this "bayou-punk". ...Yeah.

Earth Day acknowledges scavengers.

I wanted to get better at drawing vultures. So I went to the Museum of Natural History to do so. Here are two pencil drawings of white-backed vultures.

The top one is a white-back. The bottom is a lappet-faced vulture. Both are drawn with a Micron. Oooooh!

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The Devil Makes Three - The Devil Makes Three

Download: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=M6KOHCKH
Tags: folk, bluegrass, americana, country

THANKS, FANNY.

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In celebration of Earth Day, here's me giving an exhausted, shirtless, informal lecture about the Irish Potato Famine to a crowd of people.

(My blog just got awful.)

"Know that you're worth 44 cents in my eyes."

Preface: The layout of this post is a little less than beautiful. Blogger's HTML shortcuts don't seem to be present.

Here's some little things.

At the heart of all human expression, there are still the raw veins of science and nature. As indicated by this juniper and accordion.

A drawing done with ink and the key that is profiled. You know me and my love of impractical ink drawings...

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The Bill Murray Experience - T'ain't No Sin

Download: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=JM2H1Z42
Tags: Ragtime blues, early jazz

Sure, their name is kind of stupid but when you see them live, you'll overlook it. They're pretty staggeringly phenomenal. If you're ever in Brooklyn on a Wednesday night, go to Roots 'n' Ruckus at the Jalopy Theater. That seems to be their "place".

On a kick.

A painting that I pretty much just used as an exercise of color application. It's meant to illustrate and accompany a childrens poem about the individuality found in a thumb print...hence why there is that negative space to the right.

A month or two ago, I showed a pencil sketch of this painting, and it kind of evolved into something else. Here I've pit Bill Watterson against the haunting legions of his adoring fans, desperately trying to protect his beloved creation from the sinister hands of mass-marketing.
I don't normally do caricatures, but it was fun. I got to apply some of the things I learned in the previous painting, and I think it paid off.

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I'm glad to note that I've become involved with the Folk Routes Anarchist Networking Distribution Syndicate. You can read up on that...but rest assured that a lot of cool things are going to come out of it. It seems as though I'll be lending my hands both as a visual artist and a member of Wood Spider. So exciting!

Also, there's a lot of other cool, more developed plans happening this summer. I'm sworn to secrecy for now, but all I'll mention is that Wood Spider is going on an extensive tour (For us, that is) and we won't just be bringing instruments with us. That's all I'll dispatch this moment.
(We're going to be taking a very sinuous route from New England to Texas and back. If you're in any of the areas that our MySpace's tour calendar vaguely indicates, come out and see us! Or if you'd want to help us out by suggesting us local bands/musicians that would compliment our sound, e-mail me at alex@krokus.com. It'd be greatly appreciated.)

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Squinch Owl - I Am Always Coming Home EP

Download: http://squinchowl.bandcamp.com/no_js/download_tralbum
Tags: folk, early blues, light brown

Sofia Albam is both a friend of mine and an affiliate to Folk Routes. It's just a three song EP, but her voice is stupid good. Please download it and let your heart be melted.
(That link is taken from her Bandcamp page. If it doesn't work for ya, it should just redirect you to the home page, where you could download it there. Cool?)