Category Archives: Shows

We’ve got a show on Friday, July 11th (2014) in Portland!

This weekend features a neat venn-diagram of bands.

For many years, Jill Knapp has been IJG’s singer in the bee costume. In the few years that IJG has taken a little hiatus, Jill has been focusing on her acoustic dork-rock power duo, Hot Breakfast! which features her and her beau Matt Casarino.

But this weekend, there’s a double-bill with Jill at the middle of that venn diagram: Hot Breakfast! is opening for The Industrial Jazz Group at Tabor Space in Portland, OR, and it’s gonna be a beautiful thing.

There’s more info at the Facebook Invite, but in case you’re not the Facebookin’ type (we don’t blame you) here’s the pertinent details.

DEETS:
WHO: Hot Breakfast and The Industrial Jazz Group!
WHERE: Tabor Space, 5441 SE Belmont St, Portland, Oregon 97215
WHEN: Friday, July 11, 2014. Doors open at 7:00. Hot Breakfast plays at 7:30sharp; IJG plays at 8:30. We have to be out of the building by 10pm, so it’ll be an early night.
COVER: $10-$15, sliding scale.
FACEBOOK EVENT: Here ya go! http://www.facebook.com/events/867466406600726/

This is gonna be one hell of a show, and we’d love to see you there!

 

We went to Italy.

Have you heard? We went to Italy!

It’s true. On March 6th, we played at the absolutely magnificent Teatro Manzoni, an 800-seat theater right in the heart of Milan. We sold out the show, and the audience was so gracious and beautiful.

After the show, the audience stuck around and asked for autographs. I sat on the lip of the stage, and as I signed the programs, people touched my hair. When I looked up and smiled, they reached up and touched and held my face– it was the most beautiful, moving thing. Unfortunately, I only speak third-generation bastardized Italian (think Sopranos), but we didn’t need words to know that we made a real connection.

The trip over the US and across the pond to Milan

The trip over the US and across the pond to Milan

IJG in Milan

Gathering

IJG in Milan

IJG in Milan

IMG_2559

IJG in Milan

IJG in Milan

IJG in Milan

IJG in Milan

IJG in Milan

IJG in Milan

IJG in Milan

What we played, part one

Thanks to everyone who came out to our SoCal shows last week. I’m going to post a rundown of the music we played on both nights (both shows were basically the same), starting with set one, which was as follows:

1. “The Truth and the Abstract Blues” (from Industrial Jazz a Go Go!). At one point, our drummer, Dan, asked for some chord changes to be written into his part to help him keep track of the form of this piece, which was dropped from the set back in 2005. In the process of doing so I realized that “Truth” is actually pretty polytonal in spots. I guess the effect is almost like having three or four different blues records, in different keys but at the same tempo, playing at once. Oh yes, and the title is an obvious inversion of a favorite Oliver Nelson album.

2. “The Bee Dance” (unreleased, though you can hear a rough mix on the ReverbNation player widget, off to the right there). With any luck, this tune will appear on the next album. Though the composition dates from 2007, it wasn’t until 2008 that the arrangement fell into place. Based on one of our heavier grooves, this particular arrangement is adjusted slightly in order to make the Rimsky-Korsakov references a little shinier.

3. “Howl” (from LEEF). Like “Truth,” this one is heavily blues inflected. The title refers not so much to Alan Ginsberg (though I love Alan Ginsberg), but to Chester Burnett (aka Howlin’ Wolf), whose importance to me is somewhat greater: without him I might not even still be making music. It is probably easy enough for the other Wolf fans out there to disentangle the various lupine riffs that have been folded into the first part of this piece. Exhibit A: the trumpet line at about a minute in (again, you can check the version of “Howl” that is cued up in ReverbNation player if you’ve never heard the tune), adapted from the classic Roosevelt Sykes song “44,” of which my favorite version is still Wolf’s. The whole thing ends with a rather dissonant vaudeville two-step sort of thing. Because why not?

4. “The Seagull” (unreleased). One of two brand-new tunes we performed on this tour. There is some serious time displacement nonsense happening here (7/4 against 8/4, or some such thing). I’m not sure I understand it, actually, and I know for a fact that I can’t let my guard down for a second in performance, because there is so much to concentrate on, but I swear the whole thing makes sense once you know how it all fits together. Take away the time madness, and you’ll find the song is based on a pretty simple set of riffs, one of which is very firmly in the “surf sax” genre. You can hear some of the craziness excerpted in this lo-fi video (note how at various points my conducting doesn’t seem to match up with the actual piece — even though I swear it does). Also, this one was originally called “The Pelican,” until I realized it sounded much more like a seagull.

5. “Bajaja” (unreleased). Wow, this is yet another thing you can hear on our ReverbNation player (a veritable potpourri, that). This is a Go-Go era song, and it almost made it onto that album, but was dropped at the last minute, for reasons I don’t quite remember. The tune takes its cue from the Baja peninsula, SoCal culture in general, and Mingus’s New Tijuana Moods stuff. The last time we performed it was in 2005.

6. “The Star Chamber” (from The Star Chamber (duh!)). One of the harder tunes in our repertoire, not least because of the infamous letter E, in which one portion of the band is in 13/8 and another portion is in 13/4. “Chamber” dates from 2002, making it one of the older things in our current set. I think that the next time out I really need to re-insert the piano part (a la the album version), but for this last tour I was too busy trying to make sure everything fit together the way it was supposed to.

7. “Antennae Town” (unreleased). Another one that I hope to have on the next album. A rather sharp shift from “The Star Chamber” in the context of this set, as “Antennae” is an unabashedly melodic and singable tune. I have to say, this is one of my little babies.

8. “Tuxedo Trouble” (from City of Angles). Comically, the twitter pseudo-avatar “Jazz Nerds International” recently posted a tweet that refers to audiences sitting on their hands in the presence of a song that happened to be in 11/8. This tune is in 11/8! (Most of the time, anyway.) And yet people danced when we played it. I guess that’s more evidence that the IJG is not nerdy enough to be jazz nerds, but too nerdy to be jazz non-nerds. Great.

9. And what better way to end set one than with “Jazz-Pop Jerkoff” (unreleased, slated for next album)? Apparently this one caused a bit of a titter in the audience when I announced it, because of course we were performing as part of the Hammer’s “JazzPOP” series, and there was a gigantic sign that said “JazzPOP” hanging right above us as we played. I swear that was just a big old coincidence.

Next: set two.

Upcoming

photo credit: Steven Noreyko

Just when you thought it was safe to go out and hear a show… California, here we come.

On August 19 the Industrial Jazz Group will be at the beautiful Hammer Museum, at 10899 Wilshire Boulevard, in Los Angeles, as part of the museum’s JazzPOP series. If you don’t know the Hammer, check out their summer performance schedule, and you’ll get an idea of why this is such a cool gig. 8 PM, Free. Also: partially funded by Leonard Nimoy. (No kidding.)

On August 20 we return to a venue that has been a long-standing favorite for us: Dizzy’s in San Diego. Located in the San Diego Wine & Culinary Center, at 2nd and J Street. 8 PM, $15 ($10 for students). It’s not necessary to drink fine wine to enjoy our music, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to do so.

We’ll be debuting a slightly revised edition of the group at these shows:

Cory Wright (sax)
Damon Zick (sax)
Evan Francis (sax)
Brian Walsh (sax)
Mary-Sue Tobin (sax)

Dan Rosenboom (trumpet)
Josh Aguiar (trumpet)
Kris Tiner (trumpet)

Mike Richardson (trombone)
Ian Carroll (trombone)

Damian Erskine (bass)
Dan Schnelle (drums)

Tany Ling (vox)
Jill Knapp (vox)

Andrew Durkin (compositions, conducting, piano)

We’ll also be playing some new (and some new versions of old) IJG music. A splendid time is guaranteed for all.

The big tour

Hi folks! We’re keeping this here tour schedule post on the top of the page until the tour is over next week.

To read about our follies on the road, just scroll below this entry.
Thanks! –The Mgmt.

CIMG2572
Well, this is it. October 15-24 will be a week and a half to remember, as the Industrial Jazz Group undertakes the most ambitious tour in its history. Get ready for… Rocktober!

Thursday, 10/15, 5 PM: Pittsfield Jazz Festival (Pittsfield, MA)

Friday, 10/16, 7:55 PM: Green Line Café, Locust (Philadelphia, PA)

Saturday, 10/17, 8 PM: Galerie St. George (Staten Island, NY)

Sunday, 10/18, TBA: Mystery gig (NYC)

Monday, 10/19, 9 PM: The Bell House (Brooklyn, NY)

Tuesday, 10/20, 7:30 PM: The Space (Hamden, CT)

Wednesday, 10/21, 8 PM: Twins Jazz (Washington, DC)

Thursday, 10/22, 11 PM: Automata Chino (Jersey City, NJ)

Friday, 10/23, 8 PM: Time & Space Ltd. (Hudson, NY)

Saturday, 10/24, 9:30 PM: The Black Door (Montpelier, VT)

Yeowza! Makes me want to create one of those moth-eaten tour T-shirts with all the dates on the back. (You know, the ones everyone had in high school, back in the 80s.)

Hope to see you at a show! Please tell your friends!

Contest Mania!

In order to celebrate this mammoth undertaking, we are going gangbusters with two totally rad contests! You could win prizes, fame, and fortune!

First, the IJG remix contest: remix our tune “Howl” (from the album LEEF), and you could win a $50 prize. Plus, your mix could be included on our next album! Details here. Deadline: December 31, 2009.

Second, the IJG video contest: make a video for our song “The Job Song” (also from LEEF), and you could win $250! Details here. Deadline: January 31, 2010.

Fundraiser!

Fundraising for the tour continues. If you have been waiting for a good time to contribute, wait no longer: now is a good time to contribute! We need all the help that we can get! Details here. And thanks!

Rocktober Online!

As usual, all the antics from the tour will be posted online as much as possible. If you’re unable to make it to a show, feel free to follow the fun at the group blog, at this here blog, at Durkin’s twitter feed, at Jill’s twitter feed, or at (new!) Dan Rosenboom’s twitter feed.

And thanks, as always, for your support! We’re nothing without you. Eastward ho!

with much love,
The Industrial Jazz Group