Thursday, June 25, 2009

Late June, 09

D face,

What is it about music? Hard to figure. Some kind of fancy use of sound. Makes us feel good though, some kind of complex transference of vibrations or something. Huh. Weird.

We'll try out some of this so called music Thursday night, June 25, after trivia, with a band that call themselves The Moment and are chock full of hippy hop brio and Jazzy Jeff rap. $5.

Friday night begins we couple of songwriters at 7pm, Susie Ransom Wood and Eric Forsythe. $5. Then around 9ish we have Wisebird in the house. This grungy, stony blues band is making waves. We caught them up in Boulder last month and dug them. Check out a couple tunes on their Myspace and see how you feel. Help us welcome them to the D Note. $5.

Saturday night we have a going away party for our beautiful bartender Athena. Athena's been amazing these last 4 years at the D, but she's moving on to Chicago and so we're going to see her off in an appropriate style. Opening the night at 7pm is the groovy hip hop jazz vibe of The Saurus. Then we have special band from New York City called The Volunteers, an epic rock band. Thanks to Ivan Suvanjieff for helping direct them our way. They had a song on a recent MTV Real World episode, but that hardly recommends them. But how about this blurb from The Onion's critic Noel Murray, "The Volunteers' self-released, self-titled album serves up sleazy, indisputably wrong scuzz-rock." Perfect fanfare to send Athena off into the wild world. $5.

Start warming up for Jeremy D and Rico's Birthday Party next Friday night featuring a Jerry Garcia tribute by the excellent Mighty High Band.

catch you on the backside,

D tail

Extra Credit: We came across a beautiful little handmade book by the poet Kenneth Patchen called "Because It Is" in a used bookstore on Cape Cod recently. The poems inside all seemed like nonsense at first. But then a deeper look yielded some unexpected truth and beauty. Here's a sample, saved from obscurity and reproduced here especially for you.

BECAUSE GOING NOWHERE TAKES A LONG TIME

Something in the climate of a hammer
Struck him when young. Call a
Sparrow a lamp, you'll still need
The liking of chairs to settle
What is at bottom only painted over
Cloth; and that flat cunning of plates,
How little it speaks above the soup's
So roundly directional bravura. Count the sky
A pan, you'll still be hard put to find
A flash in its like. But ah, alas, alas,
Lottipo...the mushy marshes, those tree-lined woods,
The so-small journeying, and the trivial occupants thereof...
These, too, and all else, alas, are only real. So may we
Remember once again how the grasses cause the wind to move...
Ah, alas, dear Toppilo, what then is this realm that seems
So like a cell, without jailer or judge, or witness even...?
And that we love! is this not a proof of something!
No, I admit--not necessarily of heaven...

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

mid to late June, 09

D forest,

Good gosh, there's a lot going on this weekend. So let us just get started...

Thursday, June 18, at 9pm, after trivia, we have the return of Chella Negro. Chella Negro is the moniker of a beautiful singer/songwriter in the vein of melodramatic popular song who is hip and folksy at once. $5.

Friday we start early, 4pm, with a concert for the kids by Emmy award winner Farmer Jason from Tennessee. $7 adults/$3 kids. Presented by Music Train. Bring the family!

At 6:30pm Friday we have our old friends Stonebraker back to do an acoustic set. High energy acoustic music. free. Then at 8:30pm we have Archetype back in the house playing their high quality jazz/funk/hip hop sound. They really wowed the crowd last time. And at 10:30pm we have the funk band Ten Pound Elephant back doing their funky thing. $5

Saturday begins Arvada's Gold Strike Festival. Danielle Hastings did a great job of putting together music for the festival so come check it out. And there will be good music in the D Note too: 11:30 JD Cordle, 1pm Dylan Sneed (great songwriter that happens to be coming through town from Texas, recommended to us by Jack Redell), 3pm Cody Crump, 4pm Wonderlic and 5:30pm is 2:10 Special.

Then Saturday night we have The Velvet Elvis at 7:30pm followed by the powerhouse rockabilly sound of The Brent Loveday Band at 9:30pm. $7. If you love Elvis, especially the rockabilly Elvis, you will love this night.

Sunday for the Goldstrike line up we have 11am Jax Delaguerre, noon: Rock-a-phonics, 2 pm Alltunators, 4 pm Wild Mountain Honey.

Then, if that wasn't enough we have a special salsa/mambo band from L.A. called Lucky 7 in for our Sunday night salsa. A great way to spend the evening of the summer equinox. $12.

Got it? Good!

Truly,

D bunk

Extra Credit: We just finished reading Woody Guthrie's great autobiography "Bound For Glory", which we highly recommend. Here's a beatiful poem by Guthrie which Wilco put music to on the album "Mermaid Avenue II".

Remember the Mountain Bed


Do you still sing of the mountain bed we made of limbs and leaves?
Do you still sigh there near the sky where the holly berry bleeds?
You laughed as I covered you over with leaves, face, breast, hips, and thighs
You smiled when I said the leaves were just the color of your eyes

Rosin smells and turpentine smells from eucalyptus and pine
Bitter tastes of twigs we chewed where tangled wood vines twine
Trees held us in on all four sides so thick we could not see
I could not see any wrong in you, and you saw none in me

Your arm was brown against the ground, your cheeks part of the sky
Your fingers played with grassy moss, as limber you did lie
Your stomach moved beneath your shirt and your knees were in the air
Your feet played games with mountain roots as you lay thinking there

Below us the trees grew clumps of trees, raised families of trees, and they
As proud as we tossed their heads in the wind and flung good seeds away
The sun was hot and the sun was bright down in the valley below
Where people starved and hungry for life so empty come and go

There in the shade and hid from the sun we freed our minds and learned
Our greatest reason for being here, our bodies moved and burned
There on our mountain bed of leaves we learned life's reason why
The people laugh and love and dream, they fight, they hate to die

The smell of your hair I know is still there, if most of our leaves are blown
Our words still ring in the brush and the trees where singing seeds are sown
Your shape and form is dim but plain, there on our mountain bed
I see my life was brightest where you laughed and laid your head...

I learned the reason why man must work and how to dream big dreams
To conquer time and space and fight the rivers and the seas
I stand here filled with my emptiness now and look at city and land
And I know why farms and cities are built by hot, warm, nervous hands

I crossed many states just to stand here now, my face all hot with tears
I crossed city, and valley, desert, and stream, to bring my body here
My history and future blaze bright in me and all my joy and pain
Go through my head on our mountain bed where I smell your hair again

All this day long I linger here and on in through the night
My greeds, desires, my cravings, hopes, my dreams inside me fight:
My loneliness healed, my emptiness filled, I walk above all pain
Back to the breast of my woman and child to scatter my seeds again

early to mid June, 09

D liberators,

We begin this d-mail with a loud thunder crack. This isn't meant metaphorically (at least not that we know of), but just to say that as we began to write this we heard an actual thunder crack so loud you can still hear it reverberating off the mountains. Also, we just noticed that every time lightning flashes the radio station goes static. Here comes the rain.

Thursday night after trivia we have J Mitch and The Electric Switch at 9:30pm. These guys are a good example of musical mixology. Old style blues shuffle morphs into Sublime style rap. Listen to a couple tunes and fall into the groove. $5.

Friday night we have a lot of music happening. First at 6:30pm we'll have 40 Gallon Still doing a beautiful job with traditional bluegrass harmonies and finger-picking. Then The Triptones will play around 8:30pm putting an emphasis to the "blues" in bluegrass. These guys are not only excellent local players, but good people too. At 10pm we have Junk Drawer, a rifftastic indie blues rock band. Check out the magnificent "Gold Beard" song on their myspace page for a taste. Batting cleanup at 11pm will be an acoustic set from local Tool influenced metal band Disaffected. $5

Saturday night we have our old friends The Otone Brass Band back in the house (finally). Hard to say enough good things about this energetic and soulful brass band. If you've heard them, you know. If you haven't, now's the time. Those of you that know the leader of Otone, Aden Harrell, should know this: Aden just got married! Congrats Aden! Come help Aden celebrate. $7

At 9pm we have a Zydeco legend, Lil Pookie, from Louisiana. Listen to "Return Of The Mack" on his Myspace page and try not to move. This is an event put together by the Colorado Friends of Zydeco and Cajun, and they always bring us a highly danceable and fun show. $10. We feel fortunate to be part of this corner of the world music community.

Next weekend we have Goldstrike festival, including Velvet Elvis and Brent Loveday on Saturday night, June 20, and a salsa band from L.A. on Sunday night, June 21, called Lucky 7.

See ya soon,

D bilitator

Extra Credit: Last week we had a poem by Leonard Cohen. Just because he is so great let us have another...

Anthem

The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.

Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every government --
signs for all to see.

I can't run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
a thundercloud
and they're going to hear from me.

Ring the bells that still can ring ...

You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

Friday, June 5, 2009

early June, 09

D port,

One friend of the D Note, Tracy Laswell Valdez, sent us an e-mail with these words, "I was walking my dog past the place today and noticed artist Sarah Bergman's name on a flyer. She was a friend of my daughter back in elementary school. It’s like the DNote is this great cosmic artistic nexus of friends old and new…" We love that "cosmic artistic nexus of friends" idea. Last Saturday night we had wedding reception for a couple that met at the D Note, Scot and Michelle Livingston. They had a band play called "Little Dead Things". The band loved Sarah's art and are going to commission her to do their cd cover. So the connections just keep connecting.

This Thursday after trivia (6:30pm) we have a band called Churchill. We first encountered this band on New Band Night and dug them so much we brought them back. Music to swoon to, a la Elephant Revival. $5.

Friday night at 5:30pm we have the hawaiian jam back in the house, Kana Ka Pila. This always brings a fantastic island vibe to the D Note, a bunch of Hawaiian musicians getting together to jam and sing traditional songs. Rumor has it that they are going to sing a song Adam D wrote in Hawaii. We'll see. After the jam, at 8pm we have the great Mono Verde back in the house, a latin reggae band with 9 members from 9 different countries. Opening for Mono Verde will be the Asia Jazz Project. Mono Verde loves to play the D Note so let us love them back and show up in droves to dance. $7

Saturday night we have the "re-do" of the benefit that was snowed out a few months back. The benefit is for Judi's House (providing healing to grieving children) and Bicycle Colorado. The Jagtones, one of the most fun, most danceable cover bands around, will play starting at 8pm. $10. Come dance and help support the cause.

Next Tuesday at 7pm we have the final Metropolitan Jazz Orchestra show of the season, with Rampart HS jazz band opening up. Big band jazz, good stuff. $10.

Ever and anon,

D bark

Extra Credit: One of our greatest living poets, Leonard Cohen, is playing Red Rocks Thursday night. He hasn't been on tour in 15 years. Guy's like 75 years old. In honor of Leonard let us take a closer look at a one of his most popular songs.

Bird On The Wire

Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free

Like a worm on a hook
Like a knight from some old fashioned book
I have saved all my ribbons for thee

If I have been unkind
I hope that you can just let it go by
If I have been untrue
I hope you know it was never to you

Like a baby stillborn
Like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out for me

But I swear by this song
And by all that I have done wrong
I will make it all up to thee

I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch
He said to me, "You must not ask for so much"
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door
She cried to me, "Hey, why not ask for more?"

Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free