SAM ROCHA
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Here is the first recorded track of the summer Upi Dupi La La Sessions titled, “Pa Ingalls.” It was recorded in one live take with Walter Gershon on soprano saxophone, a snare drum, and cajon; and myself on the same snare drum and electric guitar. After the session have been recorded, I will release this as a free downloadable album. Enjoy and share!
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Here’s a somewhat psychedelic, experimental rendition of Stevie Wonder’s epic “Living for the City,” with Walter Gershon on percussion and myself on guitar and vocals. Tomorrow I will release the first track of the Upi Dupi La La Sessions.
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Upcoming shows in the Twin Cities
I’ve begun booking some dates in the Twin Cities for June and July. If you’re in the area, I hope you can make it.
I begin at Cedar Lake Farm (in New Prague) on Sunday, June 24th and then I’ll be at the Red Stag Supperclub on Monday, July 2nd and Saturday July 21st. I’ll be playing the weekend shows with Shawn Kolles (on drums) and the weekday show will be a solo act.
Stay tuned for more!
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A demo rendition of the blues classic: “Stormy Monday.” Yours truly on guitar and vocals, Walter Gershon on percussion, and Ty Cosby on harmonica. See below for the first track (a demo version of “My Girl”) and more info.
Stay tuned for more tracks and please share!
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Listening to the playback at Manic Muse Recording. (Photo by Walter Gershon)
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Before I share the heavy stuff, here’s a short and light cover of “My Girl” I recorded for my new demo. It was a great day in the studio (Manic Muse Recording) with the talented Walter Gershon on percussion (and, later, on soprano saxophone) and crazy Jon Jones engineering and playing a little clave.
I’ll post the other track (a short rendition of “Stormy Monday”) tomorrow and the inaugural track of the Upi Dupi La La Sessions, “Pa Ingalls,” after that.
If you’d like a copy of the demo, send me an e-mail and I’ll send you one digitally or by mail (just pay for shipping). The Upi Dupi La La Sessions will be available at Noisetrade once the project is finished, and will also be individually posted on Soundcloud.
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Another nostalgic photo: playing at the Peace Picnic with my good friend (and super guitarist) Spencer Elliot, in Columbus, OH, circa 2009.
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Catfish cleanin, lunch with friends, and mastering…
That, more or less, is what’s on the ledger for today. I’m hoping to have the tracks we recorded on Saturday mastered and uploaded by tomorrow or the next. Stay tuned!
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Upi Dupi La La Sessions, Part I
Today I’ll begin recording the summer-long Upi Dupi La La Sessions with my good friend and percussionist/saxophonist, Walter Gershon. I’ll do a demo of rhythm and blues covers (for getting work at bars and coffee shops), then Walter and I will do a few tracks of free improvisation. Everything we record will be up for free download, so stay tuned.
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My Twitter Garden and Interviews at The Paris Review
Twitter has become a lovely garden of interesting things for me to read. I’ve had to weed it a bit, and could still weed it some more, but it’s getting pretty reliable: just enough news to not live under a rock and, best of all, a few choice specimens to harvest and eat — immediately.
Between other things — seeing if we can buy a house or not, shameless self-promotion, e-mail correspondence, eating Doritos, writing a letter, drinking sweet tea, more self-promotion — I’ve been reading interviews today. Memoirs, retrospectives, and any form of self-disclosure are generally my favorites things to read, so it’s been a good day. (I like to say that autobiographies are my favorite form of fiction. Because they are.)
I came across the one quoted below, where Greil Marcus brilliantly lambasts the late Christopher Hutchins, at the Los Angeles Review. The highlight of my day came when I found this interview with Woody Allen.
I think it’s well worth reading more than once.
At the end of the interview, like the proverbial rainbow, sits a pot of gold: more interviews! It turns out that they have a series going on. “The Art of Humor;” Allen’s is entry numero uno. I am about to read some of the others from “The Art of Fiction.”
I’ll begin with Borges, of course.
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Look, as far as Christopher Hitchens goes… He was a dishonest person. A dishonest writer. Interested in self-promotion, in self-congratulation. That is what his work is about. His mode is self-promotion and his theme is self-congratulation and I think that is all there is to his writing. Of course he was very smart — it’s no compliment to call a writer smart, you have to be smart to be a writer. It’s like saying a carpenter is good with her hands, it’s a sine qua non. Or like saying a sprinter is fast: they’re all fast, what else makes the difference?
Simon Reynolds interviews Greil Marcus, Los Angeles Review -
Debut at “Contending Modernities”
Contending Modernities is a weblog hosted by Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and affiliated with Georgetown’s Religious Freedom Project, housed in their Berkley Center for Religion Peace and World Affairs.
I just published my first piece for them: “Beneath the Healthcare Wars: Difficult questions about living and dying.” It was stimulated by the FUS healthcare story, but goes in a different, more fundamental direction. Thanks for reading; sharing is much appreciated; sorry about all the links.
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Dear FUS: one of these things is not like the other
My alma mater, Franciscan University of Steubenville, has been in the news lately. They’ve been skewered and adulated by the two, predictable sides of every news story for discontinuing their student healthcare coverage. Their main published reason for doing so is out of concern for participating “in a plan that requires us to violate the consistent teachings of the Catholic Church on the sacredness of human life.” However, in the same week, FUS honored former CIA Director (during the Bush administration) and General Michael Hayden. He is a well known advocate for “enhanced interrogation techniques” (read: TORTURE). What happened to the sacredness of human life? What a pithy. John Paul II would be ashamed of this university he was said to think highly of. I know I am.
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Interesting Things to Read
Why I Still Write Poetry by Charles Simic, New York Review of Books.
The New Communism: Resurrecting the Utopian Delusion by Alan Johnson, World Affairs.
Archive of Hemingway’s Newspaper Reporting Reveals Novelist in the Making by Kate Rix, Open Culture (with several fascinating links to intriguing primary texts).
Short Cuts (or, as @sarahemilyduff put it: what Aristotle and a goat in a suit have to do with the assassination of JFK) by Christian Lorentzen, London Review of Books.
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http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/franciscan-university-drops-student-health-insurance-due-to-hhs-mandate/#blogComments
Here is a reprise story/comment (with some, but not enough, editing) on the FUS student healthcare story at the National Catholic Register.
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