Another Open Mic Photo from yesterday

Last night, Jenna, Mikala, Miranda & I all went out to the Open Mic at Corduroy in kits. We had a beer, played a few songs, (royally messed a couple of them up but it was totally ok) & had an absolute blast. It was a great stage and some unbelievably talented people came out. One guy we all agreed we wanted to be our adopted grandpa :) The guy Mike who was running it all was a super nice guy and couldn’t believe that this was Mikala’s first time. Mostly because she rocked it!!!

An Instagram of us playing (taken by the lovely miranda you know cause the jerk with a camera was up playing)

My uber talented friend Jenna Rocking out on stage

I can guarantee that we will be back! Hopefully I can convince some peeps from My Friend Lisa to stay up a little later on a Tuesday night some time! :)

So I have a fear of singing in public and I would include just about everything and everyone as being part of public. In an effort to get over my fear of public singing etc.. I made a video of me, a jerk with a camera, singing a Phillip Roebuck song.

Being that I am not the best singer I thought I would at least make the video really pretty. :)

Lately I find myself doing a lot more music wise then I do photo wise (not to say that i am going to become a jerk with a camera /guitar/banjo/microphone or anything anytime soon) In addition to playing in our increasingly inaccurately described folk rock duo My Friend Lisa (there are four of us now) I have found my self playing with Mikala on a fairly regular basis. I have also been working on a raunchy punk rock side project with my other awesome friend Jenna (whom you may remember from this video) called “The Stank“ All that & I have been recording a few demos for other people! All in all it has been rather busy on the music front these past months.

All the while I have been tring to live up to the camera part of my jerk with a camera name though, as such this is a polaroid from Wednesday of my friend Mikala manhandling Chester!

We were working on some new material but its not quite ready for the masses yet so I will leave you with a cover of the worlds best band EVAH!!!

Mikala & I covering Cactus by the Pixies

This is an instagram that Shannon took during last rehearsal. I liked it so I stole it.

…but it would seem that I try anyway :)

Yup – Not A Drummer

…this is a repost from the the MFL website…

We had mentioned this on twitter but we have been so busy I forgot to mention it on the blog. My Friend Lisa is no longer just a duo! We have welcomed Renee (keys) & Lani (violin) into the fold!! We are still finding our footing with all this but have a listen to our off the floor cuts from last nights studio kitchen rehearsal.

Our favourite song ‘London’
My Friend Lisa – Dec.14.2011 – London

And our complete failure at playing Smashing Pumpkins Disarm.
My Friend Lisa – Dec.14.2011 – Disarm
I personally blame the kettle boiling over at that exact moment. :)

Not perfect but we have only played together a couple of times so I figure we are on the way to AWESOME!!

Now I haven’t posted a lot of actual words this year. (seriously be happy that i’ve posted anything at all) but do actually I have a lot of things to talk about. A big one is This years East Side Culture Crawl. For those that are not in the know about Culture Crawl; SHAME ON YOU!! GET OUT OF THE HOUSE ONCE IN A WHILE!! GEEEZZZE!! :) According to the website the East Side Culture Crawl is…

“A FREE 3-day visual arts phenomenon. This event involves more than 10,000 people visiting artists in their studios in the area bounded by Main Street and Victoria Drive north of First Avenue in Vancouver, Canada.”

That all said IT IS AWESOME! You should probably instantly drop everything and plan out how to visit as many of the 336 artists over the three days as you can. Seriously don’t just half assed not even bother to plan, and end up only going to one of the the 4 or 5 buildings that have the most artists in a single afternoon sometime between a late breakfast and an early dinner and then say ‘we went’ & that ‘you saw what Culture Crawl has to offer!’ Do that on Friday, then go street hoping on Saturday and then go to as many other places as you can on Sunday. Then once you are nearly as exhausted and the rest of us only then can you you say you have truly experienced the Crawl and you will be happier for it :)

As I started this long diatribe out with, We, (we being my darling wife and I) are participating for the first time this year. mostly because this is the first time we have lived in the neighbourhood and been remotely prepared to think about participating :) That said, I am no where near prepared for anything of the sort & nor is my house really :)

We live in our house and as such we are totally fine right now with large unfinished pieces of random plywood leaning against Ikea cupboards as room dividers. My idea of clean is simply get all the junk off the floor in some way & hurray we have achieved clean. :) Needless to say there are more the a few house projects that need to be done for what is rapidly becoming next week

That is not to mention all the projects that we need to do to basically have something to display for the crawl

I have been mixing up photography & table saws and I have a few really intereting projects that if all goes according to plan I will have it all displayed up on our wall for all you to see when you come.

I apoligize for instagram photos as I havent bothered to take a ‘real’ camera down to the woodshop. These get the point across though :)

I have also been attempting to mix photography with ceramics

That is 1/2 tone of clay. The Xterra was so loaded! :)

Oh and also My Friend Lisa will be rocking out at our studio (times to be decided)

OH YA and this is only me! My darling wife will have all of her awesomeness displayed up as well!!!

Oh ya I will have some film screenings happening

um…. there is more I am sure

we might bake cookies

FUN!!!

so YOU NEED TO COME OUT TO THE CRAWL!!!!

here is a handy leaflet that you can email around or link to!!

Bought this babe for cheap of the craigslists! Literally this is worth like twice what I paid for it. 

So last Christmas at the Mint Records Xmas show I bought Geoff Berner’s ‘How To Be An Accordion Player’ book to go with my Accordion Man it is a super awesome book that has very little to do with actual accordion playing but more instead it has more to do with being a whisky swilling drunken jackass :) Complete with a Stalin Centrefold.