Things are tough all over the place. The economy sucks and one of the ways it keeps sucking worse and worse is the rising cost of health insurance. It’s squeezing working people everywhere. A couple weeks ago I got a packet in the mail from the company that handles my company’s HR concerns informing me that the insurance company our plans were through was getting out of the business entirely and we had to pick a new plan from the new provider. Every comparable plan on the list both cost more in premiums and had higher deductibles and copays, so we’re paying more on both ends.

But today I’m reminded that I’m lucky to even be able to complain about that. Craig Schumacher, owner-operator-engineer of Waveland Studios, where he engineered the 2nd Why Make Clocks album Midwestern Film, and has worked with tons of musicians beloved by myself and many others, has a cancer situation:

Craig Schumacher is a wonderful engineer and needs some help. He is the owner/operator of WaveLab Studios in Tucson where, among many others, he has recorded; Neko Case, Calexico, DeVotchKa, Animal Collective and Iron and Wine.

Earlier this year Craig was diagnosed with head and neck cancer. His doctors believe that with the proper treatments (which have already begun), he stands a good chance of beating this. The bad news is that the treatments are painful and costly. The out-of-pocket expenses will be enormous, not to mention the fact that there will be periods in which Craig will not be able to work.

Last year, Craig’s wife Karen was diagnosed with breast cancer. Following treatment she is currently cancer-free. Needless to say, these back-to-back cancer diagnoses have been tough on them, emotionally and financially.

Now, I don’t know what his exact coverage situation is but I do know from being around musicians and also having grown up in a small-business family that usually for people who make their living in music it’s not good. Musicians and people who run recording studios, labels, etc., along with other self-employed people and small-business owners, instead of being able to get in on a big company plan, have to buy their insurance as individuals. If you think your plan’s expensive, that shit is fucking inhuman and still leaves you paying a ton more out-of-pocket. I’ve looked into it. And musicians, by and large, apart from the mega-famous ones, tend to make pretty crap money, but still too much to qualify for Medicaid and the like. So a lot of them can’t afford insurance at all and just do without and pray that shit doesn’t go bad. Then, for the unlucky, it does, and it’s a mess. Me? I’m just a weekender who pussed out of trying to make a living in music and became a computer programmer instead. Guys like Craig Schumacher who have the dedication to stick it out and devote themselves full-time to making the world a more beautiful sounding place, are straight up heroes as far as I’m concerned.

I’ve never met the man himself, but his talents are readily apparent from the records I’ve heard that he’s had a hand in, including Midwestern Film, which Dan raves about having worked with him on, and any friend of Dan’s is a friend of mine.

Here’s what Dan had to say on Facebook earlier:

Please take a minute to visit this page to help out our friend Craig Schumacher.

Long story short, Craig Schumacher is an all around great guy, a phenomenal engineer that has definitely left an imprint on modern music whether it be through the fantastic records he’s recorded and they way they sound or his numerous contributions to Tape Op magazine over the years.
Among numerous others, Craig has worked with:

• Neko Case
• Iron and Wine
• Calexico
• Giant Sand/Howe Gelb
• Richard Buckner
• The Jayhawks

On a more personal note for me, he recorded/mixed most of Why Make Clocks 2nd album, “Midwestern Film”, and the time we spent working with him, is still one of the best times in my life.

Please go here and chip in what you can to help the man out. Every bit helps. I don’t have a lot but I’m going to send in something.

I love reading a good interview with a musician that actually has some good ideas and philosophies about music, art, what-have-you, instead of just talking about the mundane aspects of their current work. A recent couple interviews with Dylan Carlson of Earth have been especially thoughtful and I thought I’d share a couple of my favorite bits from this Q & A from Alarm Magazine that was posted to Facebook the other day:

on talent and authenticity:

We have all these myths and representations of music and art, like it’s something for other people to do rather than for everybody. Like the Amadeus myth that there are just born these phenomenal musicians, and the rest of us can only mash our teeth and plot to murder them because they’ve been given this gift that we don’t have. I absolutely abhor that whole myth.

The reason Mozart was Mozart was because his dad started training him when he was four. The reason Jimi Hendrix was a great guitarist was because he played guitar 18 hours a day. They put in the work; that’s why they were good. Everyone wants to go out and be on American Idol and be a star and believe there are people that are somehow just naturally gifted, but that’s bullshit. Ultimately, if you want to do music, and you put in the work, you’ll do something worthwhile.

on the meditative aspect of Earth’s music:

I remember a brief time when I was homeless, and the most frustrating thing of that whole experience was that there was just no place that you were allowed to be, where you didn’t have to be buying something, or paying for something.

There are no more places in the world for people to just be; you have to be doing something or spending money or being involved in an exchange. It’s really frustrating. In the old days in England, before the Enclosure Act, there used to be a thing called “the commons,” which no one was allowed to own, and anyone could use it, or they could just leave it alone [laughs]. That whole concept is gone

on whether bands need to tour more to stay “financially solvent:”

My hope is that live music will become more important, like it used to be, but the economics of that don’t always work out. Back when music was big live, there was no TV, no radio; we didn’t have 24 hours of Internet porn [laughs], so we’ve got competition now.

I definitely think people seem more excited about live music than they used to be, and they want to see bands that can actually play their instruments as opposed to backing tracks and dance routines, and that kind of spectacle.

I’m not sure where I stand on that last one, I mean, I love live music, but when you live outside the small few major urban centers of the country, the bigger or even mid-level bands aren’t coming to play where you can easily get to. I hear of so many bands I really want to see just passing by (or even right through) Des Moines or even all of Iowa like we don’t matter. So to be a music fan out here, you kinda have to be a bit of a record nerd, or else stick pretty heavily to your regional acts. Also it’s hard to say how the profitability of touring will hold up against the continuing rising cost of fuel. But it’s definitely all worth thinking about.

Around this time last year when I saw Druids selling their excellent Pray For Water EP on cassette at the Gross Domestic Product festival, I still thought the touted “comeback” of the cassette format was just kind of a gimmick. And it is, I suppose. But there being no dominant physical format these days, it does seem like there is certain music that cassette just seems right for. And not only have I found myself digging up some obscure gems from my vast cassette collection lately, I’ve also found that I’m acquiring a startling amount of new music on cassette as well. Here are a few:

The aforementioned Druids- Pray For Water (Ea, Lord Of The Tapes). I think this can also be found on download and CD-R and I think I heard some whisperings about a vinyl version being in the works once. This Iowa doom metal duo sounds epic even on the short fast songs (three of the seven tracks are under two minutes, although one of them is the first of a two-part suite). The longest, “Noise Forest: Ablaze” turns out to be an instrumental built around a Rhodes keyboard or maybe a Wurlitzer, that alternates between post-rock sounding sections and louder heavy parts. I probably can’t do justice in words to how heavy and awesome these guys are and this tape leaves me wanting more every time. They’re playing at Vaudeville Mews the early show this Saturday with In The Face Of War and some other hardcore stuff; Omens, another band with Druids guitarist/vocalist Luke Rauch in it, plays there in the early show March 25 with The Great Sabatini as the headliner and Fetal Pig (which I play bass in, for any of you that are new here) opening. Both are all-ages and get rolling about 5pm.

Pony Time – Pony Time Can Drink 100 Wine Coolers (Dont Stop Believin’ Records). Here’s another two-piece band, but this one from Seattle and doing a kind of sunny-yet-skewed indie pop. My old friend and former Exit Drills / Page 5 Girl bandmate Stacy Peck plays the drums and another guy named Luke (Beetham) plays a chunky-twangy overdriven bass guitar and sings. The vocals have a high-pitched chorusing on them that adds to the weird factor and makes the lyrics hard to make out at times, but the tunes are infectious. Two Billy Childish covers close out the album, and I wouldn’t even have known they weren’t originals if I hadn’t checked the liner notes, because they fit right in to their style. Download code included with tape.

You Are Home – Glacier Grains and Cage (Workerbee Records). Released both at the same time, and I ordered them both at the same time, entries 01 and 03 in Matthew Dake’s noisy, experimental, instrumental solo project’s so-named “Electronic EP Series” (I guess 02 isn’t out yet?). It seems odd to release music this synthesizer-driven on cassette. With both you get intriguing assemblages of loopy mechanized bleepy-bloopy sounds. Reminds me a bit of the early Cabaret Voltaire stuff like what’s on 1974-76.

One of my favorite things in the format is lo-fi cassette compilations. Several have found their way to me lately and I’ve heard some wonderful stuff on them. I’m beginning to think the lo-fi cassette compilation is really an indie/experimental analogue to the hip-hop mixtape.

One was included by Workerbee in the package when my order of the You Are Home tapes arrived, and seems to be an intriguing concept, the “split compilation” — one side from Workerbee and the other from Series Two Records. Series Two’s side is packed with lo-fi pop, folky and shoegazing sounds, while Workerbee’s covers those areas plus some experimental noises and some really great 60s-inspired trashy garage rock. Especially memorable tracks for me come from And Oh So Slowly He Turned, Electric Needle Room (the biographical “James Madison,” almost a lost Schoolhouse Rock song), Flannel, Mike Downey, Shannon and the Clams (awesome spooky-chick 60s rock!), Setting Sun, BAMBRA, Murzik, and The Skeptics.

Rot Box (Unread Records) was of interest for me because it has Samuel Locke-Ward, Ed Gray, and Simon Joyner on it — three midwest songwriters I like a lot and think people ought to know about. Each of them have especially excellent songs on here, and have released cassette albums on this same label as well (including Sam’s legendary Boombox By Bedside) — in fact, pretty much everybody on this comp has. I’d say Sam, Simon, and Ed have probably the best stuff on here, but I could be biased. Woods is on here too, I just don’t remember much about their song right now. Just from those names you probably know to expect lo-fi folk with some experimental twists. I also particularly remember and enjoy Caleb Fraid and Franklin Bruno’s songs. Unread has a pretty extensive catalog worth reading through, you’ll probably find some stuff you want.

I Think I Might Be Autistic (Chthonic Records) also features Sam and Ed (working with Coyote Blood both here and on Rot Box). Sam’s track here has really distorted vocals and while still pretty cool, melodically a slower cousin of “For One Cigarette,” it doesn’t shine quite as brightly for me as his Rot Box track “He’s An Evil Preacher” (possibly one of his best songs ever!). The mix of styles is broader on this than on Rot Box and maybe prevents the compilation from hanging together as a mix, but it has some killer moments. Erik Sahd’s “You Gotta Keep Tryin’” is a big favorite for me on this, a delightful electro-pop tune that gets me laughing and reminds me of Devo, Gary Numan, a little bit of Wire, and The Bassturd. Joe Brook’s “Righteous Man” is a gorgeous folk/country song that I think Why Make Clocks (which I also play bass in) should cover sometime. Gladhands’s “Refrigerator Mother” has “I think I might be autistic” as a line in the lyrics, it’s a feedback-drenched casio-rock number that sounds like it has the guy from Bush on lead vocals, I like it pretty well. Ben Trickey’s “Tangle” is another really nice folk/country tune, and there are some interesting noise pieces too. This label also just put out Sam’s split 7″ EP with Toby Goodshank (The Moldy Peaches) so you know they’re cool.

Different Paths (Greentape 57). No contact info in this one, but a Google search unearthed this. I just got this the other night when I was in Decorah to play at the Elks Lodge with Igloo Martian, Talking Computron, The Ring Toss Twins (aka Moldavite aka circuit-benders Pelzwik and Dinger — check out getlofi.com) and Seeded Plain. The only artist on this I’ve ever heard of before is Office Park, and their track is a droney one rather than a songy one so you don’t get to hear any of Ember’s beautiful voice, but it’s still pretty nifty. The rest is mostly boombox folk, some with banjo, and a couple loopy noise pieces thrown in.

Oh, by the way, that Decorah show was pretty cool. I felt weird being the act that was just playing a guitar and singing songs, and I think I played my stuff much cleaner in practice, but everyone else’s sets were really enjoyable. I did have the distinction of being the set that had people dancing. The same people started doing yoga positions or something during The Ring Toss Twins. I think their set was my favorite, kind of spooky rhythmic ambient electronic circuit-bending and casio sounds that would go over big on My Castle Of Quiet. It really got me thinking about getting my ghetto noise-rig from the early Passage Of Deformed Man Supermarket days back into play (call it a Flight Attendants comeback?). Plus they sell contact mics at their merch, which is brilliant. Talking Computron made chilly electronic sounds, Igloo Martian did a joyful performance art piece, and Seeded Plain opened with their amazing invented-instrument ambient improv (check Public Eyesore Records in the links section of the sidebar). I got one of Nick/Pelzwik’s contact mics and already used it once earlier today to sample a wooden chair and a cymbal stand with a cracked china crash on it into my SK-5. Good times. Here are some pictures:

Talking Computron

Ring Toss Twins' gear

Seeded Plain

And just because it was on my phone, here’s a bonus photo of Pink Villa at the art opening at Ritual Cafe that Why Make Clocks played at last weekend:

My work continues to be busy, so I haven’t been writing a lot here, but I do manage to find time to post various links of interest to the Centipede Farm Facebook page. I figured I should pop in here quick and talk about music things I’ve been to or done lately. Leah and I went to see The Black Keys at the Val Air with busted AC, the place was packed and probably 110 degrees. I looked like I’d been in some kind of sweat-filled dunk tank. They played wonderfully though. I’ve seen some bands tend to play their songs faster live than they sound on record; the Black Keys, at least that night, played things a little bit slower, which I think suited the atmosphere of the sweltering August night. It was pretty rock and roll.

I saw the diva of mom-glam Leslie Hall, with her band Leslie And The Ly’s, bring their celebration of all things snazzy to a rainy Tuesday morning at the Iowa State Fair. Considering the weather and the early hour, they drew a respectable crowd and really pulled out all the stops when it came to silly props and between-song skits. Hanging quilts, a giant cat, and a tractor called Glitter Plow. Grace plays drums, the only live instrument they use in the show, as everything else is on a laptop other than vocals, and I can’t stress enough the level of skill it takes to be able to stay on beat with something prerecorded like that. Grace kicks ass. They’ll be at something called Inglert in Iowa City on September 16.

We did two Why Make Clocks shows this past weekend, and there were actually people at them. Saturday night’s show was at Vaudeville Mews with Noah’s Ark With A Spaceship, a great band we previously met and played with in Omaha where they’re from. They make a loud raucous guitar-noise-pop sound that I’d place in the lineage of Swervedriver. They’re on Slumber Party Records where they’re labelmates with Thunder Power and Outlaw Con Bandana among others. We got to hang out with them some before and after the show as well, and they are a fun bunch of cats. Some variation on what used to be called The Chatty Cathys opened, a group of young fellows making a Pavementy kind of racket, and they were quite enjoyable. In between was another very youthful outfit (14 to 16 years old, I believe), The Seed Of Something, which involves Dan’s wife Kim’s son Jasper and is also currently sharing drummer Will Tarbox with Why Make Clocks while they look for another. They’re really good and we’d like to see them keep at it, so if you know a kid around Des Moines who plays drums well and likes driving indie rock sounds, get in touch.

The following night both Why Make Clocks and The Seed Of Something played a double-birthday-party show at Des Moines Social Club along with The Atudes, Christopher The Conquered, and Poison Control Center. The birthdays in question were of our very own Dan, and of Pat from PCC, both of which were on Monday. Everyone put on a great show, though the sound in the Black Box Theater room of the DMSC was as usual a bit off. Friendly vibes abounded. PCC continue their “Never Ending Tour” tonight at The Slowdown in Omaha, and tomorrow night at The Lift in Dubuque , then a whole bunch of other places. I’d suggest checking the lengthy list of dates listed on their MySpace because chances are if you’re reading this, you’ll have an opportunity or two to see them in the next few months.

Finally, just last night, we did the second-ever show of the reunited Fetal Pig, opening up for the amazing Mahogany Frog from Winnipeg. MF first came to our attention when Why Make Clocks ended up playing with them at Big V’s in St. Paul. We liked them a lot and told them to get in touch if they ever thought of coming to play in Des Moines. They do mostly instrumental psychedelic prog-rock epics with lots of keyboards. It’s partly a recreation of prog circa ’72, but also very modern; I caught a lot about their set that I think fans of stuff like Battles would get into. Hell, anybody can get into stuff this good. While they were playing I kept thinking to myself they might be the best band in the universe.

Leah got me a bag of gummy centipedes!

Tonight: Ember Schrag, Pennyhawk, Ron Wax, and Nuclear Rodeo at Ames Progressive, 8pm.

Work has been crazy. In my previous post about Office Park I should have thought to also plug their Iowa City show with Ed Gray, another artist one one foot each in folk and the avant-garde. But it didn’t happen. Sorry. I can only be expected to keep just so on top of things.

Went up to see Ember Schrag play at Stomping Grounds in Ames last night though, and that was cool. I don’t ordinarily go for the coffee-house-folky thing but Ember’s version has some real dirt in it, and her voice is well above the norm. Plus she’s kind of a friend now, and if you don’t show up to see your friends play, who do you show up for? She did a couple Office Park songs, which was an interesting to hear them in the acoustic setting, and caused me to notice how she can pull off this Mazzy Star kind of vibe with her vocals, and then deftly shift gears out of it and kick in some firepower. It was cool to hang out with Bryan Day too, he’s a real trip. Stomping Grounds has Hoegaarden on tap, I couldn’t pass that up. Ember’s doing an epic two-and-a-half-month tour starting at Ames Progressive on September 1.

The whole thing kind of reminded me of how cool a town Ames can be and why I once tried not to leave it when I really should have. I’ve been a bit wary of embracing it since that experience, the first of my lost years, when I first attempted in earnest to pass as a university student. I was troubled then, and when I’ve gone up there in the past year or so to play with Why Make Clocks, the memory colored things for the worse when I looked around. That color finally seems to be fading. Also my car made the trip with less trouble than anticipated, so I think I should try arranging to play some Distant Trains shows up there.

Joel from Teddy Boys sent me some mp3s of a solo thing he’s working on which, if the ID tags on the files can be believed, is called Little Victories. He was telling me about how he’s been getting really into stuff like 60s girl-group pop and is going for this real pure pop thing. Which seems to mean that what you end up with is something akin to an Alex Chilton idea of pop. Sugary melodies, but not overly so. Songs where every section could have worked as a chorus. I think it sounds awesome, but I may have promised him more detailed feedback than that, so I’ll need to give it a few more spins.

I’ve got some interesting potential collaborations in the works, but I’m not going to talk about them until much later on.

80/35 Festival just finished up, it was pretty cool. I debated with myself whether to write anything about it at all since everyone else is bound to, and anyway I probably missed a lot of stuff. This was my second 80/35, and the first I had main-stage tickets for. One thing I think is cool about 80/35 is that even if you can’t muster the cash for tickets, there’s still a lot of stuff to see: there are free stages; no tickets are needed to hang around the various vendor tents; one such tent, that of Yellowbrock magazine, hosted some acoustic performances, including Poison Control Center and Des Moines’ own American Idol contestant, this past season’s Katelyn Epperly, with her pre-Idol bandmate Nick Frampton, the duo now known as Katelyn & The Bruises. Plus Des Moines Social Club, located right nest door to the second stage, puts some bands on for free in their Sideshow Lounge area. This year’s “third” stage had a new emphasis on electronica, DJs, and hip-hop. I didn’t catch much of that, but the second stage featured no lesser lights than Califone, William Elliott Whitmore, and local rising stars Canby, Christopher The Conquered, and Cashes Rivers. This is a pretty cool time to be a music fan in Des Moines.

However, I must admit that a combination of factors kept me from seeing a lot of stuff:

• being still in the process of unpacking from our recent move, not to mention still recovering from said move, in the sore-and-tired department
• having an 18-month-old, which requires certain preparations and/or accommodations
• being rather down on social activity in general of late, and pretty much hating people overall
• having pretty much no idea who any of the third-stage hip-hoppers were, and hence whether any of them held any interest for me
• weather that alternated between oppressive heat and humidity, and rain

Most of what I turned up for was the main-stage acts, which this year were just too compelling for me to pass up. Related to that last item, my favorite moments of the festival both directly involved rain:

• A gentle rain that begin falling, as if on cue, precisely as Yo La Tengo hit the final chord of their final number “Pass The Hatchet”
• The Walkmen soldiering on through their set in a driving cloudburst, even as the water shorted out their organ, a very appreciative crowd cheering them on

It was great to see Yo La Tengo with Leah. In a way, Yo La Tengo is kind of “our band” in the way some couples have an “our song.” Before we were dating she hadn’t heard them, and I like to think she fell for me when I played Electr-O-Pura for her. Then, in November 1997 when we had been dating about four and a half months, I got her to go see them with me at Gabe’s in Iowa City, something that’s one of our most special memories of our relationship. I was super glad that this time our 18-month-old son Wesley got to share the experience with us.

Right after Yo La Tengo I did catch half of William Elliott Whitmore’s country-soul stylings. He made shout-outs to Why Make Clocks and Ed Gray.

And I must say that I am glad I caught The Walkmen’s set. I kinda-sort liked them before, based on several really beautiful moments on Bows & Arrows I found when I got it a few years ago, but other parts of that album, and much of their first, Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone (boy, if that isn’t a title I’ve really related to a few times), coming off as so languid as to be nearly shapeless, left me a bit unsure. Their most lovably shambolic qualities were definitely in effect yesterday, but I think that the appreciativeness of the crowd made it difficult for them to maintain a properly cool indie-rocker disinterested facade, and they were revealed to be guys who really love and care about what they’re doing. Their floatier numbers somehow made a bit more sense live, but maybe it was just the mood of the overcast day. In short, they were pretty awesome. The newer numbers, that I recognized by how little I recognized them, sounded even better than some of the material from the first two albums that I knew. So I’m looking to pick me up a copy of You & Me once I’m slightly less broke-ass.

I had to go out alone for Spoon, and it wasn’t as fun to be there by myself. I ran into some friends and ended up mostly chatting with them instead of watching the band, as there was such a heavy crowd that it was hard to get a good view of the stage. The problem with big shows is how big they are. Spoon sounded great, though, with kudos due to the sound crew. The band played several of my favorite of their songs, and I thought it was cool how they brought along a big ol’ horn section. The horns even did riffs that on album were done on guitars. The dubby effects on the vocals that they used so much on Transference were thrown in all over the place during their set.

I didn’t bother sticking around for Modest Mouse on the second night, I was pretty much burned out at that point and just wanted to lay around.

Anyway, good festival, et cetera.

Glam-Racket has this really cool post about Gonn, the 1960s garage-rock band from Keokuk, IA that wrote and recorded “Blackout of Gretely,” rediscovered by punk rockers in the ’80s and now considered a proto-punk touchstone, and which can be found on the Nuggets box set (as well as the posthumous compilation The Loudest Band In Town). Also check out the follow-up post with the video of The Fuzztones covering “Blackout of Gretely.”

At the end of what I think is the third verse of “Rock and Roll” on Led Zeppelin IV there’s this weird noise that’s definitely part of Robert Plant’s vocal track. It’s after the line “Open your arms open your arms open your arms, baby let my love come running in”. I’m pretty sure Plant was just exclaiming something like “yeah!” but for some reason it comes out all garbled on the album, sort of like “glelp!” I listened to this record a bunch of times as a kid, and always been curious about this. Check it out at about 2:41:

I wonder if it just turned out that way somehow from going back and overdubbing at that spot, or what. Anyone have any ideas?

A group of artistically-interested folks I know from the Cedar Falls music scene of back in the day that call themselves The Ambient Funk Playwright Society are doing an arts event called The Shan’t Bee on July 16-18.

I posted a link to this awesome video to my Facebook the other day and should have posted it here. I love this guy. Plus he used to play drums for Parts & Labor, so he’s not just some jackass writing about music who knows nothing about making it. I recommend following him on Twitter.

And check out Hype Machine’s response.

UPDATE: Special thanks go out to Ippio for not having a way to embed videos that doesn’t start them auto-playing right when the page loads. That’s fucking annoying, guys. I couldn’t deal with it anymore so I took the embed out of this post, so just follow the link above instead.