WEIRD FOLK FEST VI:
On Saturday, April 16th, I'll be playing at the Weird Folk Fest at the Magnolia Loft in Jamaica Plain. It'll be my first public full set since the beginning of February - and may be my last until the Summer. I'll explain the reason for this below - but first want to talk about the line up for this event:
Back in the Holiday Mountain days I remember playing a bill with Tom Dowd's group, Strange Changes, and getting my mind melted with their proggy funky awesomeness - excited to see what he does solo. And Nosy Mangabe are a whimsical pop-oriented art-folk group with two ukuleles, glockenspiel, melodica, and other stuff and are pretty darn wonderful. I haven't heard Kaeliearle yet - but looking forward to doing so.
MOAR UPCOMING SHOWS:
I will be playing stripped down sets later this Spring (without visuals and as many electronics) which I'll list on this upcoming shows page. So far the ones I have scheduled are both PorchFests - the Somerville PorchFest on May 21st (also with Nosy Mangabe) and the Jamaica Plain PorchFest on July 9th. I am planning on doing my full set up for some Summer festivals (such as Eldwood in Maine and Firefly in Vermont) and will be playing full sets in the Boston area again after that.
RECORDING:
SO - the reason that the Weird Folk Fest on the 16th may be the last full set until then is I've been working on recording and I've realized I'm not able to play shows and record simultaneously because I put all my energy into my live set and keep putting recording on the back burner.
SPLIT WITH SOUND SHAMAN:
The first thing that will be released is a split with Sound Shaman. I mentioned his record from last year, "Black Feathers", in my list of top albums of 2015. I'll be doing more experimental ambient/drone oriented music than what I usually do for this and I'm really excited with how it's coming so far.
VISUAL ALBUM:
I've also been working on the visual album that I previously mentioned on here - The first part of four will be released this year. It's been a really interesting process in having to come up with a definitive version of how these pieces will go every time someone presses play on the recording (versus in a live setting where it can change every time it's performed and can be what feels like the right way to tell the story in the moment).
Here's some stills from it so far:
And here's my green screened face (:
...aaaaaaaaaand
And I'll be releasing a live video of the piece "Ouroboros" in the near future, which I played at the Telethon and the Halloween eve show Grim Din.
Lastly - I've decided going to start calling this project something other than Mike Simonelli...That name change will hopefully happen soon...
As always - thank you so much for listening
Much love,
<3
