Joshua Van Tassel

(if you’re on facebook, you’re not hearing what you need to be, go to www.joshuavt.com)

Sydney, Nova Scotia’s Clare Lafferty. Beautiful, and totally crazy. I believe it’s in Gaelic, but please please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong……

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….my good friend Graham Flett who is living in the Netherlands right now. Wow. I’m not really sure what I ….think…right now…

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Almost the end of the year, which inevitably leads to a little reflection. here’s a little passage I read from a wise man, not one of the three who went on a big hike to the stable 2010 years ago on Friday, but deserved of the title nonetheless.

” I have begun taking the public into my confidence, and I don’t propose to keep from them anything I know, or propose to know, if I can help it. “
Thomas Edison , Menlo Park 1879

Wraps the blog model up in a neat little package I’d say.

In Montreal, headed eastwards to some reading and writing and maybe arithmetic, who knows really? Hopefully everyone is either safe and sound after traveling, ready to travel, or just staying in one place and enjoying whatever holiday or non holiday you’d like. I keep it general on jvt.com. Happy everything. xoxo

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like this, unexpectedly on the street car, is good –

good rehearsals with good people are good too

†

making weird music can be good too. Started to do a bit of that again.

and, hey, tomorrow is my birthday. That’s good right? If you’re in Toronto, come down to the Dakota, we’ll be hanging out there celebrating all that is holiday related……

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I talk a lot on here about my little H4 recorder and how much fun we have together. As of late, I’ve been thinking about how easy and fast that technology makes it to record essentially any sound I want using a device that fits in my jacket pocket, and how that makes me pretty damn lucky. Why have I been thinking this way? I’ve been reading lots about good old fashioned ehtnomusicology. Songcatching and sound hunting from way back in the day, 1890 to be precise. One of the first pioneers of this ever changing field was a straight laced bit of curmudgeon named Jesse Walter Fewkes.

Originally trained as a Zoologist at the really important and respected Harvard University, Jesse had a very keen interest in anthropological studies as well ( the study of humans and the cultures they exist in). He understood more then most at the time how important music and songs were to many of the North American peoples, such as the Native Americans and specifically the Passamaquddy Tribe. in the year 1890 with a little coin from a lady named Mary Hemenway, Jesse got himself a fresh off the Thomas Edison press phonograph and hit the field hard.

Big, very heavy, over 100 pounds, and hard to make any kind of decent recording on, these beastly machines used wax cylinders as they’re onboard memory. The performer would sing into a large cone or horn, and the vibration from the sound would cause the needle to cut grooves into the wax. I get worried about AA batteries running out? Jesse had real problems like the sun melting his invaluable-once in a lifetime recordings, all the while lugging the equivalent weight of the average human teenager around with him on a horse. Fun times.

Although he had a short lived field recording career (he didn’t make any recordings after 1891), Fewkes joined the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1898, eventually becoming their director in 1918. Big time. Word has it that he returned for a brief visit to the Zuni tribe of Native Americans in the late 1800’s, but one night was chased off the camp by Masawu the earth god who demanded he stop his confounded note taking and split. Official report? Smallpox, everyone had to clear out.

What’s today’s lesson, class? Well, it makes me marvel just a little bit more at all the wonderful things we can do in these modern times when it comes to recording. It also makes me wonder how many other cultures out there didn’t get to have their songs and stories documented, and how many more to this day won’t either? There’s a lot of people in the world, each with a sound or a tale to tell, and it’s certainly hard to get them all. the ones we do get act like mirrors to examine ourselves in, find similarities and things to learn from, different ways to live. Fewkes is recorded as saying – “In sacred observances, it is probable that the music of the songs preserves its character even after other parts have been greatly modified” . By having these hundred year old wax cylinders or records or cd’s of these recording he made, we’re able to get a tiny peek into a history that for obvious reasons most of us could never could never know. And not even just reading a writing or seeing a photograph,but hearing and experiencing the sounds of a culture gone by. Pretty special stuff if you ask me.

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Hey, he said it. The oncoming train kind of makes it sounds like the apocalypse. You never know the colorful characters you may meet on our transit systems.

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Having a good week so far. Had a great brunch with my good friend Ed and his family, including my main small human T Bone. He insists on calling me Apu, and no one really knows why. Weird. He’s pictured below texting and making plans to try to become even cuter then he already is. If that’s possible? I think that’s a question? Or is it a statement!.

My good friends Joel and Bret are back from the Great Lake Swimmers tour and we had a fun rehearsal at Bret’s new not finished home with Mark Hart. Good way to warm it up I’d say. Also found some pennies in the ceiling of the place from as far back as 1903. That’s a while ago.

And my little friend and sometimes boss Kate came over to start working on some stuff that I think is gonna work out well. Here’s the vocals.

If you’re a big geek like me, come back tomorrow and I’ll introduce you to the brief jvt history of field recording devices. It’ll be fun, really.

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About 9 years ago I literally stumbled across a record by a Texas song writer named Chris Whitley called “ Perfect Day”.( by stumbled I mean I was reaching for a disc, this one got stuck the back of it, I fell and almost tripped my into the arms of a security guard who was convinced I was trying to steal it, so I figured I had no choice but to purchase said disc.) Lucky for me it was a little bit of a revelation. It ended up being a record of covers of songs by the likes of Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, and a slew of other really important song writers that I hadn’t yet had the mature mind to get into. It’s a trio record with Chris Wood and Billy Martin of Medeski, Martin and Wood fame, and before the jam band haters write this post off, know that these boys provide some of the most sensitive yet interesting back drop I’ve ever heard on a song writer record. Period. So there.

Anyway, I subsequently started to check out more of Whitey’s stuff and found it all to be really interesting a really eclectic. From the straight up one mic sounds of Dirt floor to the hyper produced electric rocket house, this guy was doing it all, exciting stuff for a nubile mind like my own. Then, he sadly passed of lung cancer in November of 2005. A sad time for many including a major proponent in Whitley’s too short career, Daniel Lanois who in very poetic DL fashion said

“Chris Whitley, my friend since 1988. The deep soul he was gifted with is the soul that challenged his life journey. I will forever remember his beauty.”

Hell, even the pop star that everyone loves to hate or love, John Mayer, loved his work -

“[When] Chris Whitley died…with him went a big part of modern American blues music. There aren’t many fighters for the cause, and Chris never gave up on his mission. His somewhat prostrated place in pop culture earned him a sidebar of an obituary, but to those who knew his work, it registers as one of the most underappreciated losses in all of music.

High praise indeed I’d say. Besides what Chris accomplished as a fantastic and unique voice in the canon of American song writing, he also accomplished the as impressive task of having a daughter named Trixie, a great musician in her own right. Lo and be hold, it’s 2010, and Trixie, Lanois, Brian Blade, and Daryl Johnson have a great project called Black Dub on the go. Apparently a record is being recorded, but for now we’ll have to settle with these really we shot videos.

Check out Chris and his family, and I hope you enjoy……..