Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    

TNP did a fine set at the Fillmore last night, opening for Blondie.  Forty-
five minutes isn't enough, but it was a treat anyway.  Surprise highlight:
"Ken," which had the entire place riveted.
  

    
It was an excellent set. It was great to hear the full band. I wish the
audience behind me was as riveted as I was, but what are you gonna do?

I hadn't thought before what crowd pleasers songs like "Is This the
Single?" and "Ken" would be. Oh, and great closer: "Tell Me Something
good" as a country-blues shuffle.

Really well done, thanks again.
  

    
mmmmmmmm stew as rufus w/out chakkra kahn...
  

    

Stew and Heidi are at the Knitting Factory in NYC this Wednesday 11/20.
  

    
<<my whole family (a sondheim/G&S type, a They Might be Giants/rugrats
type and a reel big fish/sublime type) smiles and sings along.>>

thanks for passing that along. as i get older i realize more and more
how much hipster pop music is based on strict cliques and camps and
demographics. Therefore, its the biggest compliment possible for
someone to tell me that the whole household enjoys it. 

<<you should be the new top fourty.>>

that will never happen. but i'm happy being a part of any individual's
top forty.

<<when do we get the rodewald record? will it resemble NDP in any
way?>>

can't say exactly when it'll come out but definitely by mid next year.

i doubt that it will resemble NDP. Believe it or not, despite her mild
disposition, Rodewald is a real rocker. Therefore we will no doubt be
fighting about the presence of electric guitars. Hopefully we'll reach
a compromise point -- i'd like to get some pure acoustic guitar & voice
type takes from her...something with an old Electra Records-weird-folk
type vibe to it... Maybe a stray reverbed harpsichord or something.
I'd also like to get her to venture back into "Watering Hole"
territory. But ultimately it'll be her monster.
  

    
hey,
just wanted to say that from our vantage point The Fillmore show was
easily one of the best times we've ever had on stage. The crowd
energized us in a way I thought only home town crowds could. I've had
many great live experiences with my solo work on the road but TNP
obviously hasnt been outta town nearly as much. So it was extra special
for all of us to be so warmly recieved by a San Francisco crowd.

Alot of LA bands have felt that the Bay Area is often a bit slow to
love any upstart band from LA. When TNP first used to play SF the
constant comment was always "I can't believe you guys are from LA."

Anyway, speaking of SF, the STEW thing is playing the MAKEOUT ROOM on
tuesday dec 3rd w/ our dear friend Kelly Stoltz. We are also playing
the Palms Playhouse in Winters CA on the 4th with our chum Dan Bern. 
And then we play the Knitting Factory in LA on the 6th w/ Mr. Bern.
Then we play @ Hollywood Alley in Mesa Ariz. with my fave band Fatigo
on dec 7th.

And if that aint enough The Negro Problem will be doing its Christmas
set this Sunday dec 1st at the Derby in Los Feliz, CA.
  

    
Elektra weird folk!
Tim Buckleyesque perhaps?

If she's a rocker, I can imagine that she's more Patti Smith than Joan Jett,
no?

More like Watering Hole would be greatly welcomed here.

Saw a poster of you in Smith's Olde Bar in Atlanta and wondered why I wasn't
there when you played then.

come back!
  

    
I definitely relate to that Elektra vibe... this interview with Bruce 
Langhorne gives a sense of that:
http://www.richieunterberger.com/langhorne2.html

I always thought some of those Fred Neil recordings caught the ethos:
http://www.fredneil.com/
  

    
<<The dirt, the imprecision, and the beer>>  

for a minute there i thought you reviewing one of my shows.

<<Elektra weird folk! Tim Buckleyesque perhaps?>>

I dont really have any particular artist(s) in mind when I reference
Elektra. its more a general vibe i get from some of the
records...sometimes sweet, sometimes sinister, alot of those records
just sound like a Moment...a genuine, scary or pretty moment. Thats
what I'm after.

<<Saw a poster of you in Smith's Olde Bar in Atlanta and wondered why
I wasn't there when you played then.>>

That was a trippy gig. We got the most hilarious tour artifact ever
from that gig. There was a menu with all the dinner specials on it and
right after it said "STEW UPSTAIRS." 
  

    
!!!
  

    

Congratulations to Mr. Stew, whose brilliant album "The Naked Dutch Painter"
is named the #1 album of the year in the current issue of Entertainment
Weekly, in pop music critic Tom Sinclair's 2002 Top Ten.

(It's #1 on my Top Ten, too)
  

    
Applause!
  

    
Wonderful!
  

    
Wow!
  

    
And he's live here in Berlin -- for free -- tomorrow night at 9 at
Jarman, Bergstr. 25. 
  

    
Congrats!!
  

    
Ed, hope you're going (and can post a review)...
  

    

That's not incredible, it's just incredible to get the recognition when you
deserve it.
  

    
Jeez, <jonl>, it's my corner bar, I set it up, sent 23 e-mails to
everyone in town I could think of...yeah, I think I'll go. 

Will post a review (and maybe pix) tomorrow. Or, in case of terrible
hangover, Sunday.
  

    
Review of the great informal show at Jarman last night in the Music
conf. Let me know if I should double-post it over here. Daniel Jarman
on Stew: "Yer man. He's good." 

Yup. 
  

    
Post it here, please, 'cause the off-WELL readers can't see the one in the
music conf.
  

    
Yessir!

What a great show! Stew has plenty of friends and family here, and
they outnumbered the number of friends of mine who showed, so there
was
an easy intimacy to the performance. He had a couple of acoustic
guitars he'd borrowed from friends, one steel string, one gut-string,
and a notebook with some new songs propped up before him. He didn't
even sit in the window, as people usually do at Jarman, but just sat
at
a table where he could be seen by most of the folks who showed. On the
downside, his voice was still recovering from a cold, and he warned us
that at some point he was just going to have to stop. (He also told me
he was going to request that people not smoke, at least down front by
him, but he didn't and except for me nobody even thought not to:
typical). He prefaced the show by saying that he was doing it because
I
was such a selfish bastard I wanted to see him perform and knew it'd
be a while before I'd be around anywhere he was playing in a normal
concert situtation. Damn straight! 

Anyway, the set-list was:

* Kingdom of Drink -- new song, written this week
* Ken (he gave a long explanation of who Ken is, at the end of which a
friend of mine pointed out that Daniel has a Ken doll affixed to the
men's room door)
* Club Girl's Terrain -- another unrecorded song, in which he said we
would not find ourselves, but perhaps we'd recognize someone very,
very
close to us...
* Naked Dutch Painter -- with what seemed to be an impromptu ending
* Bijou
* It's Christmas Again -- from the Christmas bootleg
* Giselle
* Doubting Uncle Tom -- a request from one of his friends. Stew
explained that the genesis of the song came in the early '80s when he
was working on Wall Street "moving boxes from one place to another"
and
he saw one lone black stockbroker ("of course, they're everywhere
now") and, having a fever at the time, he began to wonder what this
guy's dreams were like.
* You Can Sleep On Our Couch As Long As You Want To -- a nice ironic
dedication to the legions of Europeans who apparently pass through the
Stew household
* Re-Hab -- prefaced by another lengthy introduction in which he
explained what rehab was for the assembled Germans. He also had us all
sing along on the chorus. 

He also, somewhere in there, explained that about 87% of what he was
saying and singing was supposed to be funny, so it was okay to laugh.
This is something I always find I have to do: explain to Germans what
a
joke is. After which, they do enjoy it. 

His voice having given out at last, he ended the performance and
announced that he had "real CDs, not record company CDs, which means I
make the money" for sale, paper-wrapped things labelled Muddy
Sweetboot. I'll get one before he leaves town on the 1st, but I'm
pinching pennies at the moment, so I can't report on the contents
there. He sat around, talking to  one and all for another 90 minutes,
talking about the perception of America in Europe and what it's like
back home, musing on maybe leaving the country again, and, of course,
answering the question "if your music is so good and these tunes are
so
catchy, why aren't you played on the radio?" 

Finally, the Germans started to leave, the folks who were driving him
left to go to a nearby club (across the street from my house, but it's
way too hip for me to go into, White Trash Fast Food), and he got
ready
to leave. "This was wonderful," he said several times. "This isn't the
kind of thing I usually do." And he was gone. 

We'll probably hang some more before he leaves; ain't much to do
around here during the next couple of weeks, but my pals Fuzzy Love
are
doing a number of shows (www.schmalzwald.com) so we'll likely show up
at one or more of those. 
  

    
Agggh. Formatting! 
  

    
Oh, and for the very obsessive, some nice pix of Jarman, Daniel
(Jarman)'s collections, Daniel's bald head, and various other stuff at
(www.jarman-bar.de). It's all in German, but if you click the
Veranstaltungen button, you may still get to see the concert
announcement. 
  

    
Thank you very much for posting that review, captward.