As April draws to a close, I am preparing for a month-long trip to China. I will be meeting with various musicians and teachers, as well as gawking like a tourist. I’ll keep blog updates on this site. Look for info and pics on Shanghai, Hong Kong, Zhengzhou and Beijing!

Meanwhile, I am also finishing up CD projects with The Just Desserts, Sangeet Millennium and my own new world music project My Exotic Other. Look for concert info in June, as well as uploaded sample mp3s from the recordings.

2010 also seems to be the year of Georgetown (Texas, not D.C.): Since January I have been playing a weekly residence at the Landmark Tavern, on the square in Georgetown, above Amante’s Italian Restaurant. Every Thursday, my cohort Lamar Pecorino (piano & vocals) and I explore classic material under the name of Joint Venture. 7-11pm. Full bar, comfy chairs & couches, and a balcony complete the vibe.

Just around the corner, master chef Francois offers up fine French cuisine as well as lighter bistro fare at La Maison. Live music every Saturday from 6-9pm. I would be there every week if I could, but check my calendar for performance dates. There will, however, be equally cool & talented musicians there pretty much every Saturday.

In June, after I get back from points east, there will be several CD release parties and general festivities. Check my calendar for details.
- PK

From the desk of PK, International Man of Mystery & Music.

After years of talking about it (until close friends rolled their eyes), I finally put together a trip to Asia. Stops included Hong Kong, Bangkok, Macau, and Taipei. The plan was to catch up with old friends, expats from the U.S. who have made their home overseas, and check out the various music scenes going on, with some touristic sidetrips as well.

The trip exceeded my expectations. It was a real mix of ethnomusicological fact-finding, meeting and jamming with various musicians, absorbing new music, and making new friends and musical connections.

I kept a diary of sorts, and now that I’m back in Austin I’m supplementing it with what I can remember of the last month, before it starts to fade in the searing Texas heat

4/18/08
I have been in Hong Kong about 5 days now, just getting used to the island and the constant bustle. As I said to a few people, it is like a mixture of Manhattan, San Francisco and Istanbul. Or more accurately, imagine tying those 3 cities together with bamboo scaffolding, and plunking the assemblage down in the middle of a New Orleans summer.

I’m staying in the Mid-Levels, which is up and up the hill from the harbor about halfway. It is fairly easy to get from the airport on Lantau island to Hong Kong itself, using the Airport Express metro train. It was a little confusing for a jet-lagged musician, even with some advance warning from my Austin-expat friend Linda who has been a Hong Kongian for years now. The drill goes like this (pretty much true for all my international hops): You de-plane, shuffle your way through customs, avoid the taxi scammers trying to glom onto dazed foreigners like yourself (they’ll take you for a ride at a jacked-up price), find an ATM machine, get some local currency, then look for local metro or bus transport. You get your metro ticket from a machine that only accepts cash, that’s why you hit the ATM first. For the Hong Kong metro (MTR) you can buy a single-fare ticket, or get an Octopus card, which is the way to go if you’re going to be riding the MTR for awhile. The Octopus card is like a debit card that you add value to, and the turnstiles have sensors that can read the magnetized strip through your wallet or purse. Very convenient in the crowded hustle and bustle of urban mass transit, even if it does feel a bit Big Brotherish (we can track you anywhere, etc.). You can use the Octopus card on all public transportation except taxis, and you can also use it in chain stores like 7-11. I know that some U.S. cities which have good mass transit systems are now introducing these cards. It’s definitely the way of the future, and Asian mass transit systems are ahead of the curve. I soon discovered that the metro systems in Bangkok and Taipei ran the same way.

The Airport Express train only has 3 stops, Tsing Yi, Kowloon, and Hong Kong Station, so I could relax in the quiet comfy metal tube that hurtled through the evening, watching the lights flash by outside. A green LED display near the ceiling of the car showed the progress of the train. Hong Kong Station is next to Central, the station for the regular MTR line. Linda met me there and acted as my sherpa, guiding me through the urban ascent back to her apartment in Mid-Levels. There is a central staircase and escalator (I think it’s the longest continuous escalator in the world), though the escalator stops running after about midnight, just when one is staggering home from the bars.

I found some great musicians and party animals at a jazz club called Vibe, and jammed on some standards with them. There are many little cafes tucked away in the winding streets and alleyways. Each night I discover a few more. The weather is a little sticky and warm, sort of like Texas in June. A typhoon was predicted for this weekend, but so far it has only brought a cooling light rain. The air quality is a little funky due to the heavy industry pollution blowing in from southern China. Hong Kong itself doesn’t spew out much in the way of factory fumes, but the car & bus exhaust tends to hang in the air. It takes a little getting used to. Between that and my initial jetlag, the first couple days were a bit surreal.

The food is great. I have been pretty conservative so far, mainly noodle bowls and dim sum. There is an amazing array of street food like grilled octopus, stinky tofu, fish balls, and various internal organs of various animals prepared in various ways. So far I have resisted the urgings of my local friends here to indulge in these delicacies… Speaking of food, I think it’s time to get away from the computer and hit the streets. There’s a place nearby with great seafood congee, or so I am told…. -PK

I know the key to getting website hits is to keep it current, with cool and interesting posts, or at least something to momentarily distract websurfers from the daily drudgery, in between latte sips. And so the role of musician increasingly comes to include data entry, which is the kind of thing I became a musician to avoid. But like I always say, “I’m not complaining, just describing.”

Well, it has been a busy 6 months, not just for me but for most of my friends. Zipping to & fro, trying to keep one’s balls in the air (or perhaps spinning plates would be a less problematic metaphor), finding more and more arcane ways to pay the bills.
I had several good roadtrips this period: June/July in San Francisco with the Broken Clock Cabaret; August in Los Angeles with the Golden Arm Trio; and September/October in NYC & Boston with my own project Manteca Beat.

Some of the musical moments include: Various states of inebriation and debauchery with the No Salvation Army Band as we tried to keep up with stage performers’ craziness… A quick recording session in L.A. with guitarist Tommy Kay…And my dad’s 80th birthday party courtesy of the Harvard Chemistry Department. I got together with pianist (and former classmate) Joseph Reid and we played some cool jazz while the scientists waxed eloquent over cocktails and memories.

I also had an enjoyable radio interview with Bob Putignano of 88.1 in New Jersey, played some cool shows and re-connected with some Texas ex-pats who are honing their music chops in the Big Apple.

Back in Texas, both my bands PK Sax and Manteca Beat have been staying busy, playing club dates and private parties. I also got to hang out with oud maestro Marcel Khalife and his group when they played in Austin. Really nice people and great musicians.

Along with swanky shows with Memphis Train Revue, and some serendipitous calls to play with other Austin bands like Hot Wax, Take Five, Stephanie Bradley, Austin Hot Trax, Groovin’ Ground, Jon Emery, the Jazz Pharoahs, and other hepcats, it has been a busy, busy fall.

Of course Halloween is the main holiday in Austin, and I celebrated in style at the Enchanted Forest. Many fantastical costumes, as well as the dependable standard fantasies: pirates, cats, sexy nurses, sexy stewardesses, naughty schoolgirls, and a surprising number of sexy Raggedy Ann’s… It’s good to see that tradition still counts for something around here.

Now that November is here, it is just a fast downhill rush into the holidays…tryptophan, tinsel, and New Year’s Eve tiaras, and then onward into 2008!

-PK

People outside of Texas often ask me how I can live there. There are several ways to answer that question, but the main thing I try to say is that Texas offers you a kind of freedom that I haven’t found elsewhere. It’s not a political, economic, artistic or even emotional freedom. Far from it. But it is kind of a “Gatsby” freedom. You are free to imagine who you would like to be, and then invent yourself that way. People may question you, doubt you, test you, but they also will accept you. To me, this is the spirit of Texas, and why I continue to stay here.

Having said this, I have to qualify it. Everyone knows that Austin is not really Texas; it is a little oasis that somehow emerged in Central Texas. But I think this quality of Gatsby freedom which permeates Texas is strongest in Austin. Austin isn’t completely different than the rest of Texas - it’s just moreso.

So, I have spent over 20 years inventing myself in Austin, for better or worse, and it does feel like home to me, as much as any place on earth does. But I still have that wanderlust, like so many other people I know. Being a touring musician infects you like a virus: once you have that bug it always stays with you (okay, bugs are bacteria not viruses, but the analogy is the same). I get together with other former and present road warriors and we share stories, and we all have that same paradoxical feeling: the road chews you up and spits you out, you come home exhausted and grateful to sleep in your own bed, but after a few weeks you get that restless energy and you want to get back out there on the highway, going somewhere.

This year, so far, has been more settled than previous years. I spent the first 5 years of the new millenium touring with various road bands - Seth Walker, Nick Curran, Janiva Magness, Malford Milligan - but I have settled into a nice groove with Memphis Train Revue, which plays mostly in Texas, and gives me time to work on my own musical projects. Around Austin I perform with my jazz band PK SAX, and my R&B band Manteca Beat. I get various sideman gigs with fun bands (it’s always good to play with new folks; keeps your ears fresh), and I have been able to make time for new recording projects. I am planning a follow-up CD to my experimental “Man In Chamber” which will continue The Klemperer Group trajectory of musical experiments which reflect social issues. I also hope to have my Manteca Beat CD finished by the end of the summer.

I could stay busy all the time in Austin, but that wanderlust virus creeps up on one, so I have to get out on the road from time to time. I had a great trip to L.A. in June, where I recorded some new jazz compositions written by Tommy Kay. The final mixes of that session should be out before long.

Summer gets kind of long in Texas, so I was happy to make a little run up to New England, visited family there, checked out some new jazz clubs in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn, NY, and then met up with my old boss, Marcia Ball, at the Green River Festival in Greenfield. It was a lot of fun playing with her band at the Festival, although the moths wouldn’t leave us alone: the stagelights drew them in by the dozens and they found their way into our mouths, eyes, ears, down our shirts, and pretty much any other aperture you could imagine.

Back in Texas, Memphis Train just finished filming a video. Much thanks to all the friends who showed up to participate. Hopefully it will lead to bigger and better things: Halliburton office parties in Iraq, wedding receptions for billionaire trust-fund babies, Four Seasons banquet rooms on the moon (although the moon doesn’t really have seasons)… the Cinderella stories have no end.

MTR has gigs around the region through the summer; Houston, Dallas, Oklahoma, Louisiana. Wherever it is hot and humid, we will be there! There’s nothing quite like standing onstage in your tuxedo in 100-degree weather, under the stage lights, playing an outdoor wedding, mosquitos, gnats and other biting insects - some of which I have never seen before outside of a science fiction movie - swarming around you. That’s showbiz!

Speaking of science fiction, the movie “A Scanner Darkly” is out now, and doing well by all measures. It was a lot of fun working with Graham Reynolds in his funky home studio on the soundtrack music. It’s pretty amazing to think of the sounds you spit out in someone’s house in East Austin eventually coming out of surround-sound speaker systems in movie theaters around the country. We live in a strange and wonderful world. I don’t know which is more science fiction, the stuff we see on the screen or the stuff we live through each day. They seem to be converging quite nicely.

So, July is spinning on into August, which always feels like the halfway point of summer, even though summer here lasts through October. The world, as always seems headed into worsening crisis. Cowboy W is making the world safe for armageddon. Onward through the fog of war. But we continue on, finding hope in the small things, trying to make art, a living, and a sandwich. As the song says, you have to “snatch and grab it.”
Words to live by.

I’m out on tour with nick curran & the nightlife’s, in the rainy cold northwest. have you spent time out here? one can see why everyone is addicted to espresso - it becomes like liquid sunshine. take care, paul k Notes From The Woodshed, March 2004 by Paul Klemperer Lately I’ve been skimming the headlines of the Wall St. Journal. It gives me the illusion of power, like I’m hobnobbing with the big money that runs this country. It’s not unlike playing a West Austin cocktail party and getting to go through the buffet line with the guests. You feel like you belong with the genteel moneyed class, as long as you don’t abuse the open bar or hit on the rich folks’ daughters. You get a certain lofty perspective, prying your head above the sucking mud that is one’s daily milieu. One of the stories that caught my eye was the wild popularity of Valentine’s Day in Iran. The main reason seems to be that over 50% of the country’s population is younger than 25 (kind of a Logan’s Run scenario ­ the guardians of morality keep coming up with ways to kill off the older folks, perhaps). So you have an ultra-conservative government ruling a predominantly hormone-crazed populace. Sounds like a perfect laboratory condition for a grand social experiment. I’d bet American conservatives are keeping a close watch on the situation, to pick up some valuable pointers. In Iran, officials from the Office of Vice and Virtue patrol restaurants, cafes and shops to make sure that young folks do not engage in public displays of affection. Sounds like a bad Ray Bradbury story, but anyone who has been single and alone on a major holiday might feel a secret moment of vengeful glee (how many of us have had to watch couples swapping spit and talking baby talk while we nurse our watery beers, muttering Get a room?). What does this have to do with Janet Jackson’s breast? It must have some connection, since the media-fomented uproar over her Super bowl antics leads one to believe that every social problem is somehow breast-related. Even if there isn’t a rightwing drive for a constitutional amendment outlawing Janet’s mammary (maybe a rider to the anti-flag-burning shtick), the boob seen round the world has become a rallying point for the morality police. The bureaucracy of these guardians of decency is still somewhat uncoordinated (spread out between federal, state and local levels), but with the Office of Homeland Security serving as a shining example, the day cannot be far off when we have our own American-style Office of Vice and Virtue. In the interests of national security Janet’s breast will have to be incarcerated at Guantanamo or someplace, far from the susceptible eyes of America’s youth. Once the Office of Vice and Virtue (OVV? Surely we can come up with a better acronym; how about the Office of Virtue, Unity and Maturity: OVUM) has secured the Jackson hooter, its agents can move on to other offenders in the showbiz industry. Then shall we surely be running for cover. Of course, us sidemen will snigger and grin as we take covert sips from our pocket flasks. The morality police will be going for the stars, the chick singers jiggling their goods in leather and latex, the foul-mouthed rappers fondling their manhood’s, while the backup bands go unnoticed. But, as any student of German history or bad science fiction can tell you, it won’t stop there. Once the superstars have been felled, there will be plenty more suspects to round up. Censoring nudity and obscenity opens the door to more generally offensive forms of free speech, things like sexual innuendo (one of the reasons Friends’ is censored by Chinese television), decadent behavior, and ideas which endanger the public safety. From there it is a short step to censorship based on aesthetic judgment, and musicians will wake up playing in the orchestra at the Ronald Reagan Theme Park. I hear it pays well, but if you try to play jazz they haul you off to the re-education center. Okay, I did have one serious thought while reading about teens trying to sneak a kiss in Iran. Since the days when jazz first snapped the rest of the world awake almost a hundred years ago, American music (and by extension American popular culture) has been the worldwide symbol for modern freedom, artistic freedom, sexual freedom, mental freedom. But it has also simultaneously been tied to the downside of American culture: decadence, materialism, gluttony, and anti-intellectual superficiality. That, to me, is the issue with regard to Janet’s breast. Is it a breast of freedom or decadence? Is it a breast that feeds our creative imaginations or just a silicone-stuffed Twinkie to jam in our pie holes and muffle our voices? I think the clerics in Iran love Janet’s breast, because it validates their antiquated worldview. I think the conservatives in America feel the same way. For every flash, there’s a backlash. During the backlash the difference between freedom and decadence gets obscured and we move backwards along the path of social progress. Let’s just try to keep our breasts pointed in the right direction, shall we?

I receive an artist newsletter from Robert Genn that often raises interesting questions which apply equally to the sonic and visual arts. A recent issue talked about the rise of digital photography and photoshop-type software among photographers. Reading about the relation of computer-enhanced photography to painting, I was struck by the analogous dynamic between rap music and performed musical instruments. For years music purists have called rap and scratch artists non-musicians, or less “creative” artists. But the idea of “second generation” creativity opens up new artistic and philosophical terrain. Samplers, loop machines, digital recorders have become modern musical instruments, which use chunks of sound rather than individual notes. In my jazz history class I argue that the principles of improvisation, commentary and innovation can apply in the manipulation of prerecorded chunks of sound, particularly where these chunks have historical context. Common examples are James Brown’s signature cries, as well as his basslines and horn riffs. Artists remix these chunks not only to create new combinations of sound, but to reinsert identifiable musical motifs from one era into another.

Perhaps what is lacking in digital photographic art is this element of commentary, the art of play. How one plays with computer technology is the defining criterion of our 21st century techno-culture. It is all too easy to become a glorified computer programmer, since we all increasingly need to become computer literate. The question is: Where is the dividing line? When is the machine an extension of our humanity, and when are we an extension of its mechanization? Are we headed toward a symbiotic future, where we perceive art partly as dream and partly as algorithm? Perhaps the human brain was always wired that way…Food for thought.

I’m writing this at the halfway point of what has turned into a 6 week tour (July9-August18). The band I’m on the road with (Nick Curran & the Nitelifes) was supposed to finish up 3 weeks with a Saturday night in St. Louis, then drive the mere 12 hours back to Austin for a few days of well-deserved downtime. For downtime, fellow travelling musicians will read “doing laundry, paying bills, and letting friends know you haven’t dropped off the face of the earth.”

But our band van broke down, so instead of driving home, we spent Sunday driving back and forth to Autozone, scratching our heads in the hot sun, and wondering why each new part we put in didn’t solve the problem. Finally, sweaty, dusty and covered with grease we accepted the fact that we should leave car repair to authorized mechanics and stick to playing our instruments.

Monday (7/28): With the van up and running, we decided we had to bypass Texas and head directly on to the next 3 week chunk: Colorado, Montana, Caifornia, Arizona. A hot shower, good meal, and laundromat made it easier to face the next 12 hour drive, and gave me time to reflect on some of the last 3 weeks, particularly what it means to be part of the blues community in this country at this time.

The main thing I noticed is that there are more blues clubs springing up around the country, and not just fly-by-night ventures, but well-organized, spacious clubs with good sound systems. A number of these clubs also feature jazz on certain nights, which to me seems only natural as blues and jazz are part of the same family. Unfortunately, as music is constantly commodified into marketing niches, audiences lose sight of the underlying connections. It’s refreshing to see club owners and promoters who have a bigger vision. I talked with the owners of clubs like B&B’s in St. Louis, the Roadhouse in Dearborn, MI, and Boomers in Grand Junction, CO. What they all shared was a desire to provide good music in a comfortable setting. The clubs are all 300-500 seaters, with pictures of jazz and blues greats on the walls to remind patrons of the musical traditions. Nothing too gaudy; slightly swanky but the point is to provide a showcase for good music, a community resource.

I had the opposite impression when I saw the House of Blues in Chicago. Each H.O.B. has become bigger & better (the original in Cambridge, MA is funky and unpreposessing; the New Orleans H.O.B. is big and full of the ubiquitous folk art; the one in Los Angeles has a more oppressively showbiz vibe), to the point where the Chicago H.O.B. is a corporate complex replete with hotel and parking garage. One can’t help but feel that “the Blues” has been turned into a business rather than a musical genre. People go to the H.O.B. to buy some blues in the form of touristic memorabilia. Of course it doesn’t have to be, and the various clubs I played in around the country illustrate this fact. Tourism can be a first step toward greater understanding and involvement in new cultural experiences. It doesn’t have to be a corporate-controlled merchandising scheme.

Maybe the success of large scale blues and roots clubs like House of Blues has made it easier for smaller blues clubs to find an economic niche, as middle America rediscovers its own musical legacy through modern mass marketing. Maybe there is room for both the extravagant large scale ventures and the smaller music showcases. I’m just happy that in these economically hard-pressed times there are more music venues appearing that are committed to presenting good music.

Being on the road also illuminates for me some of the economic issues facing Austin musicians at home. In a lot of ways the struggles and choices we face here are a microcosm of larger economic and cultural events going on nationally. Small performance venues spring up and either find a niche or perish. Meanwhile, city planners inexorably push for large corporate development, a plan in which live music and local culture is subject to the profit margins generated by national trends. Every city and town in the U.S.A. faces these issues. A scary thought, but on the other hand, musicians and music lovers I talked with around the country all view Austin as still a bastion for creative grassroots musical culture. Which, hopefully, it will remain.