In addition to whatever awesome slice(s) of storytellery I recite that night, several other authors will be trying to best me with their own. These include such characters as Phil Jourdan (author of Praise of Motherhood), and locals Caleb J Ross (I Didn’t Mean to be Kevin), Brandon Tietz (Out of Touch), Hampton Stevens (The Atlantic, Playboy), and Hollie Hayes.

Warming up your heart-cockles before all this literary lechery will be my acoustic duo, Winebox, performing singer-songwriter, rock, and pop music. This will likely be our first public show under that moniker, so Shannon and I are super excited about that. Maybe we’ll even bust out an ’80s tune or two in honor of ole Q-Bert up there.

It will be an evening of lies, fantasies, death, and a few laughs. Maybe some stories mixed in there as well. I realize the music starts pretty early for a weeknight, but I talked to your boss, and s/he said you could totally skip out early. Me, I’m taking the day off and making a long weekend out of the Memorial Day holiday. Why not do the same?

Click the image above to embiggen the flyer.


$@!# Authors Say (Facebook event page)
Thursday, May 24, 2012
5:00 – 7 pm   Winebox
7:00 – 9 pm   author readings

Czar Bar
1531 Grand Blvd.
Kansas City, MO 64108



View Larger Map

Some of you remember my former band, Molly’s Crush: a regional ’80s tribute act (in which I was the guitarist) with Shannon Lipps on the mic. Winebox reunites the two of us musically. As exciting as the ‘Crush era was, we said the next time we convened, we wanted to strip things down, simplify, and frankly … just play the kind of music we wanted to hear ourselves.

The result is a mix of our favorite tunes from the last 30-odd years, much of it singer-songwriter material—and all of it soulful—with classic/modern rock, torch songs, and some jangly stuff. It’s acoustic, after all. Shannon handles the vocals and percussion, and I’ll be on guitar, piano, and harmonies. Listen for us to rock some originals in the same musical vein as well, with backing band tracks recorded in my home studio for a fuller sound.

Visit our official Winebox page on Facebook for the show calendar, pics, videos, etc. And of course, please “like” us, so we can keep you in the loop about news and events. Meanwhile, here are some brand new demos to tide you over, plus a few promo shots. If you lose track of this post, you can always find the same info up there under the Music menu. We’ll probably start off with some smaller shows and shared bills in late April or early May here in Kansas City, and we can’t wait to see everyone out there soon!

  Press Kit

Barton Hollow (The Civil Wars)
In Your Eyes (Peter Gabriel)
Shadowboxer (Fiona Apple)
Toasted (Last Call)
Stale Air

To coincide with today’s release of Warmed and Bound: A Velvet Anthology, I created this promo. It’s composed of imagery inspired by stories in the collection, including original music from me. The intent is to evoke a feeling, a mood—ominous, violent, and redemptive—rather than paint specific settings or characterizations. Multi-plane animation (a.k.a. “2.5-D”) was used to breathe life into what are predominately still photos. I’m so proud to have a story included alongside so many talented and respected authors in what has to be one of the year’s best.

The paperback is available through Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com (both at $9.09 for a limited time), and Powell’s.com, with e-books coming very soon.

UPDATE: On its release day, the paperback was BN.com’s #4 best seller, trending #1 in hottest movers! (Click to embiggen.)

Van Buren
Steamland Cleaver
The Get-Down’s Syndrome
Egregious Philbin
BarbraStreiszende Neubauten
Broughammer
Asperger In Paradise
Afraid of Canadians
The Mars Travolta
The Dixie Chicks With Dicks
Sweaty Jeeves
The Honeymoon Stitches
Crucifiction
Steely Flan
Harry and the Andersons
Tienanmen Squaredance
Assassinine
Lithp
Citronella Holocaust
ASCII/DC
Autistic License
Banjovi
Preparation Heche
Nutbutter
See Thomas Howl
The Jodie Sweetining
Our Band Name is a Complete Sentence.
Fillet Show
Joe Buck Yourself
Fudge Duckling
Goodcop, Buttercup
Testiclops
Bruised Cockles
The Beef Wellingtones
The Ump-Teens
Chuck Chuck Bo-Buck and the Banana-Fanna Four
The Illegitimate Resentments
Purgatori Spelling
Squirrel Practice
Jefferson Slaveship
Snot Faucet
The Soggy Tacos

What makes this effort particularly amusing is that, because of Ben’s trademark irreverence and wit, these allegedly-bad songs actually fit nicely into the Folds oeuvre. Yes, the lyrics are frattishly narrow-minded, but taking on moronic points of view is a technique he often employs anyway. This of course begs the question: if the artist performed and recorded the music, how can it be fake? And if Weird Al parodies himself in the woods, does anyone hear it?

Remember that we’re engaging multiple senses here, and the ears are half the experience. Music is the most effective manipulator of emotion. Just as with voice tone, notes and rhythm tell us how to interpret what the eyes see. Don’t believe me? Watch 2001: A Space Odyssey on mute. You’ll be asleep before the bone hits the ionosphere. Without that two-note ostinato of approaching doom, Jaws would just be some plastic fin ambling through water. If you take the Tchaikovsky out of Romeo & Juliet, you’re left with two horny teens in a staring contest. You may have no rational love for Bon Jovi, but if they were the soundtrack to your teen fumblings with bra clasps, it creates a Pavlovian response later. This is why advertisers pay a fortune to license those memories – er, songs. Instant emotion by association.

Music can also be used to opposite effect, whether it’s to lull us or invert expectations. Taxi Driver is one of my favorite themes, a romantic sax melody that rings in stark contrast to the scum-infested city that Travis Bickle describes. Or Poltergeist, the childlike, playful melody becomes ethereal and haunting only because of the images on screen. Notice how the best films leave breathing room for the music instead of cramming it into whatever silent nooks and crannies remain. Shots are extended beyond their natural-paced dialogue so that a musical cue can feed us subtext, or even replace what dialogue could never say.

Another contributor is point of view. Part of Spielberg’s appeal is that he uses the child’s perspective with his camera. Their whole world is tilted up, adult heads are cut off. The children are not looked down upon as they are in the vision of grown-up filmmakers. It hearkens to a time of innocence and wonder, and it’s fun for the viewer to feel that way again for a couple of hours. A more literal form of this is the subjective camera, putting us in their shoes. In The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the viewer experiences what it’s like to be bed-ridden in paralysis with only one working (and often teary) eye, while all the world seems to happen just outside our limited view. Or in Being John Malkovich, where we have full use of his limbs and uh, other appendages. (The puppetry and portal aspects of that film are rare examples of effective lo-fi fantasy.)

Generally-speaking, the wider the lens, the closer we are to the human field of vision. It requires a lot more imagination, effort, and cash to fill that kind of frame, and films that make us feel immersed in these new worlds are more fantastical. Epic films with huge production design budgets have a greater chance at getting all the details right. On Battlestar Galactica, the entire set is camera-ready, so they can just point and shoot anything. We’re there. Whereas on something like Clerks, if they panned too far to the left, the illusion of a funeral home held together with popsicle sticks and duct tape may well collapse. A set that “breathes” goes a long way toward selling us.

Location-wise, the further it is from our own existence, the more we’re asked to suspend our disbelief, and hopefully be even more invested in the fantasy. The Fountain completely transported me, whereas Donnie Darko‘s world felt superimposed over my own own living room. There’s merit in each method, but I’m more likely to accept Hugh Jackman flying through the air than Jake Gyllenhaal. But there’s a line. Speed Racer may as well be a video game I’m so detached, yet Sin City felt like there was a handjob waiting for me in the alley. And they both used completely CGI environments. Setting a movie in space or underwater or in a castle or an insect colony prepares us for a magical event because we’re forced to cling to the “realities” presented to us rather than to our experiences and whatever filters life has processed them though. A whole post about location here.

Then of course there’s the stuff that actually happens. Plot, I believe they call it. Do the characters have powers? Better yet, everyone but the main character, perhaps? Are the stakes higher than just individual consequence? Does the resolution require them to perform some task they never thought they had within themselves? Self-sacrifice? Do they see the world in a new light as a result? Bigger than plot, there’s of course theme, which I’ve posted about before. As with metaphors, the best ones rely on universals, whether it’s honor versus love, redemption, individual versus institution, etc., and these will help lend your work a timeless quality, as will avoiding plot points based on specific dated technologies or pop-culture happenings. Such elements can still be used, it’s just best to relegate them to set dressing rather than motivation.

So . . . now you’ve just gotta put all that stuff in one script. Hey, good luck with that.

The Ovaricles
Fraüstein
Jihspot
Alanaldanon
Darth Brooks
Marilyn Hanson
Phil Leisho & The Informant
Acoustocalypse
Cochlea Tease
Narcoplasty
Minstrel Cycle
Grudgefuck
The A-Holes
Robin Peter to PayPal
The Ghetto Libretto
Bedside Manor
Ton Def
Testicle & Receptacle
Clitastrophe
The Douchebags
Freak Quincy
Braillehouse Rock
Jack & Coke & Jill
TazeBro
Homosome
Chronic Fatigue
Suffer the Fluffer
Tickling Uvulas
Sadojo
Her & That Other Guy
Kleenex Dreams
Symphyllis
The Navajomos
Incontinental
Obscene Jester

Yesterday, I got this Pro Tools virtual instrument AIR plug-in called Strike, and I think it will change my life. It’s basically a software drum sample player, but it slaughters anything else in its class. I can change the virtual placement of the mics, the room tone, the tuning – every musical or technical parameter you can think of – all at individual instrument level. In real time. On a visual, user-friendly interface. I used to program the MIDI patterns and then just lay the whole kit down as a stereo pair because I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of individual track recording. But this allows you to mix the entire kit at the instrument level, with effects/processing on each, sort of a self-contained submix.

I feel like an engineer with an assistant every time I tweak a parameter to bring up the overheads or dial in more of the snare bottom. And a producer when I twist the knob to play ahead of or behind the beat, or turn up the complexity. And a drummer when I randomize the velocity or strike position.

Every pattern for the selected kit loads into RAM all at once, so I can “perform” the full range of patterns, fills, etc. on the fly from my synth in real time, simplify or complexify it, or augment it by playing along on another zone of the keyboard. Oh, and they sound effing incredible. I’m stoked about being able to record my songs much faster now.