Bay Station "Go Out and Make Some" National Tour

Bay Station is celebrating the release of Go Out and Make Some with a full band show at Amnesia in San Francisco, on March 24, before setting out across the US performing as an acoustic duo. 

BAY STATION 2016 SPRING TOUR

March 24 San Francisco, CA Amnesia
March 25 Los Angeles, CA MUSE on 8th
March 26 Phoenix, AZ Fiddler's Dream Coffeehouse
March 27 Bisbee, AZ Bisbee Grand Hotel Bed & Breakfast
March 29 San Antonio, TX Fralo’s
March 30 San Antonio, TX Sanchos
March 31 Austin, TX The Driskilll
April 1 Dallas, TX Opening Bell Coffee
April 2 Flora, MS The County Seat
April 3 Atlanta, GA Red Light Cafe
April 6 Knoxville, TN Preservation Pub
April 7 Nashville, TN Two Old Hippies
April 8 St. Louis, MO Stone Spiral (early)
April 8 St. Louis, MO Evangeline's Bistro & Music House (late)
April 9 Lawrence, KS Gaslight Gardens
April 11 Taos, NM Adobe Bar
April 12 Santa Fe, NM The Cowgirl BBQ
April 13 Flagstaff, AZ Cultured
April 16 Joshua Tree, CA Joshua Tree Saloon Bar & Grill

Go Out and Make Some is a true melting pot of Americana, blues, jazz and rock and roll, with songs about love, lust, sandy beaches, dusty roads, wandering holy men, wolf birds and more.

 

More information new dates being added at http://baystationband.com/ 

Sitting with Agnes Martin in Taos

One of the songs on 'Little Bird', 'Committed Lines,' was partly inspired by the life and work of artist Agnes Martin. Martin was an internationally renowned Abstract Expressionist who lived much of her life in New Mexico, painting highly minimalist works, often based on lines and grids. She was intent upon conveying inner truth and beauty and was relentless in her pursuit. An article about her work, first read many years ago, was, personally, revelatory. Over the years, I've seen some of her paintings in museums in San Francisco and New York. I was very excited about the opportunity to see the Agnes Martin Gallery in the Harwood Museum of Art, while in Taos earlier this week. Before leaving town on Wednesday, we stopped by the museum (the Harwood had a great collection of contemporary New Mexico artists and a fine representation of Hispanic art and religious iconography as well). The 7 pieces at the Harwood were painted to be exhibited together, and a friend of Martin's constructed the wooden viewing seats, providing a serene setting and an ideal vantage from which to enjoy the paintings. Truth, beauty, yes.

"My paintings are not about what is seen. They are about what is known forever in the mind." - Agnes Martin, 1912-2004

Mountains, craters and gorges

This has been the week of natural, scenic beauty, driving across the southwest, up through Colorado and now in Wyoming. We've slept in the desert, soaked in mineral hot springs, peered down into meteor craters and river gorges, looked up at extinct volcanoes and imposing 14,000' mountains, and played music in backyards, bars, farm-to-table restaurants and ale houses, with time for reconnecting with friends and family along our route. It's been a rich time -- and reminds me again how many great places there are to experience. 

SXSW Wrap-up: Local Music Community in Action

If you've been reading here this week, you know that the Local Music Vibe Road Trip to Austin in Chuck Prophet's van was a success. LMV founder Shelley Champine, San Francisco photog/videographer Matthew Washburn and myself shepherded Chuck's van and associated music gear across four states with a minimum of fuss (one low tire, one jammed back door & lot of smooshed insects on the windshield but nothing major), and as much fun as one can have driving long hours across vast swatches of often desolate looking country. We ate local Mexican food and pie whenever possible, caught some live music in Tucson, while blogging, photographing, videoing and Tweeting about it all when we weren't at the wheel. There was even a little yoga and on-the-fly songwriting along the way (see video below). We got into Austin Wednesday after midnight, unpacked the van, disbanded our road-trip trio and waved Shelley off to deliver the vehicle and her support to Chuck and his band where he had a successful run of shows. Meanwhile, Matthew and I met up with our respective friends and we all soaked up as much music as possible.  Let's her it for Local Music communities working together to get things done!

Santa Fe: Friends, food & deep time

I flew out to Santa Fe for a quick visit and to support my friend Liz as she shot her black & white bicycle ballet, Giselle. It was wonderful to be 7000 ft. above sea level breathing in the sage, pinon and desert air. Liz picked me up at the airport and promptly took me to a little trail head outside of town that led up a ridge and to some cool petroglyphs that decorated the volcanic rock strewn about. From whence did this volcanic rock come from? My question exactly. Some geologically savvy hikers we met on the trail informed us that the Valles Caldera, a ancient volcano now preserved in the Jemez Mountains, was the source. The Valles was 30 miles north of where we hiked hinting at the power of that historic volcano. Yowza. The petroglyphs, meanwhile, are attributable to Anasazi and Pueblo Indians and some were thought to date back as far back as 900 AD. After contemplating all that deep time, we were hungry, so we got dinner at another venerable, albeit more modern, Santa Fe institution: Cafe Pasquals. Stuffed acorn squash and pupusas, a bustling community table set us up for a fun shoot the next day, a bit of song-writing, trick-or-treating and another hike outside of Tesuque. Ole!

Artist Interview: Liz Bucy's Bicycle Ballet

I met Liz Bucy many years a go during a bike race in the Rocky Mountains. I was having what would be my best season while Liz was just returning to cycling and we somehow connected mid-pack. High on endorphins, we 'cooled down' by pedaling up Vail Pass chatting about it all and a friendship was born. Over the next several years, which saw Liz go pro and me concentrate more on my writing, I learned that in addition to being a great athlete, she was a true artist. A Francophile with a love of music and a background in ballet, Liz possesses a unique and clear aesthetic that combines old Europe with movement, beauty and decay. Now living in Santa Fe where she maintains a bodywork practice, I caught up with her as she prepared to make a movie based on a bicycle ballet of Giselle over Halloween weekend.

Q: Has anyone done a bicycle ballet before? How do you go about choreography and how does your early training in dance & years as a bike racer come into play?

LB: I've found some clips of people doing bicycle ballets [which] gave me lots of good ideas. This is going to be a bicycle ballet — each character will have a bicycle and everyone will do a very loosely defined form of ballet. Actually, what I hope will happen is that the inner ballerina in everyone will just manifest in all-out biker goofiness. Oh, but wait, Giselle is really melodramatically serious. But since it is in B/W, I think it will all be perfect.

Some ideas I have for choreography are slightly elevated views of the dancer/bikers doing a couple things in formation — zig-zagging around the cemetery, doing floral patterns, sunbursts patterns... The main idea I have is for Giselle to go down with a broken part (omg, i meant heart! Freudian bicycle stuff!!) , spiraling away from her bike but not letting go until they both meet the ground and are at rest in a beautiful curvy "S" shape. ... stunning!

As far as my bike racing years coming into play here, I think that my joy of riding came from the days where I felt like I was simply flying, and "dansant sur les pedales," which happens when you are out of the saddle a lot, climbing hills, using your entire body, upper and lower, and there is a real sense of grace. To give a dancer wheels is to create magic. It just seems natural to me that bikes and ballet should be together.

Q: What films are you looking to for inspiration? Would you count anyone or thing as an inspiration for the piece?

LB: Hmm... somebody told me that I should watch the modern day Romeo and Juliet to get the sense of anachrony. I have not yet seen it. It's great because things people post on Facebook sometimes help me —I have started noticing details in other films lately and storing them in the vault for the filming [coming up].

As far as counting anyone or thing as an inspiration for the piece... My friend Trice comes to mind. He is the person who got me into bike racing when I was 16. We trained together and did our first race together (in which we got dropped at the starting gun, rode a few miles and then turned around laughing cause we were kinda tired anyway!). Trice got killed on his bike when we were just going into our senior year in high school... I might have been predestined to the slightly morbid side of things anyway, but after that, October has always been challenging and slightly heart-breaking for me. Death, bicycles, beauty... grace and feeling the spirits of people you've known all around, still talking to you and with you. Wheels spinning... Giselle really is tragic because for one, all the bad shit happened because of a misunderstanding on her part... But also tragic because love just found has become love lost almost instantly. The finality of death is heart-wrenching, but then the magic that can continue between souls is deeply inspiring, even if we don't get the earthly creature comfort of that person anymore.

Q: What other artists/musicians have been feeding your muse of late?

LB: Tori Amos is always inspiring. Today, her rockin song Lady in Blue is with me... my housemate and I just synced up our iTunes last night and so I am totally totally psyched to have an entire new music library with lots of Cure on it!! I lost all my vinyl Cure, so I am really really content today. Music is so important. I have also recently been listening to a local group's CD — they are called Medjool and are Santa Feans. Great gypsy-type music. One of there songs, I have visions of people stomping and dancing, a sweet riot — maybe I can use that in Giselle for the happy times scene with the campy teenage villagers! we'll see.... I've also been really taken by Lhasa de Sela's music lately. A friend posted a really cool video of hers and I was completely mesmerized. I went to sleep that night feeling completely electrified, content and so excited that I’d had the good fortune to discover this woman and her music that touched me so deeply!! I woke up early the next day and Googled her immediately to find... that she had passed away eight months earlier on new year's eve after fighting breast cancer. She was only like 40 years old. This affected me dramatically. It's all in keeping with the Giselle thing — love found and lost pretty much immediately. I have been listening to her a lot since then and though I’m sad that she's not really on the planet anymore, I have learned a ton from her. If you don't know her, check her out!! C'est sublime...

Q: Why Giselle? & why shoot on Halloween/Day of the Dead?

LB: To film a B & W bicycle ballet of Giselle... I wish I could remember when this first came to me. In 2001, when my son was one year old, my then-husband and I had moved to Carlsbad, NM, to open a bakery and cafe. I think it was there that the idea came to me, in October. I had a Super 8 Camera and loved to shoot film. We got a lot of folks together and went up on the one hill in Carlsbad one beautiful fall evening in the Chihuahuan Desert and filmed Giselle. It was an other-worldly sight, all these ghostly figures running around with cactus and a setting sun... amazing images. But unfortunately, that was not to be. My sweet little toddler had pulled the Super 8 off the shelf one day and it took a tumble, but seemed all right. It sounded all right and all the lights were working... the film was engaged... but when the people in Hollywood sent it back and said there was nothing on there, I knew the camera was malfunctioning. Good thing some people took pictures of the filming!! That's all we got. So in two weeks, this will be 'Giselle: Take Two.'
Halloween, All Souls Day, and Day of the Dead is the time when the veil is temporarily lifted between our physical world and the world of those who've gone before. Connection with those who've gone before is easier and stronger, just as it still is during the weeks and months right after someone dies. And that is what Giselle is about — the prince goes to the cemetery the night she is buried and spends all night fighting the Willis and the Queen of the Dead so he can have a few more precious moments with Giselle before the sun comes up and she is gone to the other side. Well, actually, that is implied. We don't really know if the prince kept going back night after night, month after month, year after year... He could have had that connection with her....

Q: Where would you like the film to go post-production?

LB: I have never made a movie before, so I am starting with this, a short film, probably 5-10 minute silent film...[maybe]... a short film festival! Facebook, most definitely — I understand its technology, it's easy!... But really, my dream would be to take it to Marfa, TX, if they have a short film category. I drove through there last May and it was neato.

Giselle: The Bicycle Ballet films Oct. 31 in Santa Fe. For more information, contact Liz @ ebucy@yahoo.com