matthewjosephpayne

Part of the reason my east coast tour happened at all was that I was asked to do visuals at July’s 8static. It went great, but not without some tribulations.

The sun makes it look like I’m arc welding or something.

It took me a little while to figure this out when I got to Rochester, but my video mixer took a real beating on the plane. Everything else survived intact, thankfully, but thanks to quick thinking, Nick’s graceful tool and space loaning, and a rad electronics shop down the street, I was able to hack things back together, albeit with a rotary potentiometer dangling out of the crossfader slot…

In the end, though, I’d say it was a success.

Kris Keyser – photo by chiptography (Marjorie Becker)

I got to have fun with some custom NES roms put together rather simply with nocarrier‘s awesome utility logones.

Once I came home, I got to jam on visuals again at August’s 8bitSF. The bill was a set of artists that Eric Fanali and I put together, and I was really excited to light up the stage for 1000 Needles, Slime Girls and Space Town Savior. Photographic evidence is short as of yet, but I’ll come back with more when it appears. I tried to step up my logones game a little bit with more complex custom lettering…

Photo by La Vie En Photos, but thrashed by Facebook.

Starpause provided visuals for the open mic and for my friends in Adonisaurus, and during Space Town Savior’s set, we plugged his rig into mine and jammed. That’s where the real magic happened, so I hope I can show that off soon.

Photo by La Vie En Photos and thrashed by Facebook (again)

So.

Photo by EMi Spicer

Last month I got to take a little trip. It was way super rad.

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Coming hot off the heels of a successful first show at the delightful Cafe Stritch in San Jose, I’m pleased to announce my first East Coast tour! So – tell your friends, tell your foes!

July 11th – Rochester, NY – Rochester Chip opening for Revengineers and Math the Band

https://www.facebook.com/events/138758462995444/

July 12th – New York, NY –  Garden Flow with Jonathan Mann and Duravirgo

https://www.facebook.com/events/520398254681375

July 13th – Philidelphia, PA – 8static with Chipocrite, Kris Keyser & Noisewaves – I’m also doing visuals!

https://www.facebook.com/events/551370224926354

Hey, what are you doing tonight?

Hey you should come to this cool show I’m playing in San Jose! Yeah, I’ve got like 6 or 7 people playing with me… and the other bands are really cool too! A Yawn Worth Yelling has very cool vocal harmony stuff going on, and Containher & the Star People has a very unique hybrid kind of creativity… yeah it should be great! Oh and I keep hearing about all this mac & cheese waffle business that the venue sells, but I don’t eat either of those things so you’ll have to make your own judgement.

Completing this powerful quintfecta of musical artistry is the fantastic Ken Yee, a powerful freelance trombonist residing in the East Bay. It’s no secret that I have some special love for the trombone, and the powerful synergy between Ken’s tenor, Nate’s bass and the gameboy’s WAV channel will make DNA Lounge quiver and quake, I promise you.

Oh, and videogamey pew pew whatever, I should post this picture of Ken too.

And that’s about it! I expect to see you all this Thursday… Auxide, Together We Are Robots and I have some special surprises in store for you – and don’t forget the open mic! And the live stream!

Okay, I’m getting a little down to the wire here. But I have all these cool people playing with me!

Sophie is a wildly talented clarinetist who has played with The Family Crest, Magik*Magik orchestra, and others. She’s also a player in and co-director of Wild Rumpus, a new music group that does a fantastic job of actively seeking and supporting composers with new commissions.

I’ve been consistently stunned by her playing when sharing the stage with her in the Crest occasionally over the last few years, so I can’t tell you how excited I am that she’s agreed to offer some delectable reed flavors to this Thursday’s 8bitSF show!

Tickets! http://www.dnalounge.com/calendar/2013/06-13d.html

Facebook! http://www.facebook.com/events/571963992825331

Keith and I have had some great times together on the stage, most notably in the CSUEB/Dandelion Dance Theater production of Tongues, which ultimately traveled to the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. In that show, we played a pair of (mostly) wordless accordion playing ghosts. It was pretty rad.

Keith is super active – he plays in the old timey parlour band The World’s Finest Apples, performs as a dancer and multi-instrumentalist with Dandelion Dancetheater, and has a bevy of other projects in the works. He recently shared accordion duties with me on the upcoming album The Family Crest album, Beneath the Brine.

Luckily, he’s put the time aside to spend some time on the Matthew Joseph Payne bandwagon, lending his talent and energy to my 8bitSF show this coming Thursday, June 13th.

I’ve got TWO MORE band members to feature yet – watch this space!

Nathaniel Browne will be joining me for the second time on the bass trombone, having joined the MJP caravan recently at a recent Berkeley show where we surprised Cartoon Bar Fight with an impromptu three trombone arrangement of their song “Reincarnate”. Nate is an accomplished bass trombonist, set to graduate from CSU East Bay this year.

Meanwhile, Nate does double duty as a DJ and producer under the name La Facé, podcasting weekly mixes of Progressive House, Electro and Tech House as Phace-Time Radio.

Nate will be DJing 8bitSF on August 8th, but for now get ready to be blown away by some pure low end brass power! Are you ready?

If you’ve been following me for awhile, this won’t be the first time you’ve heard of the fantastic bassist Matt Roads – he played previously on both the recorded and live versions of Rodent to Rodent, filling out a number of arrangements with his insightful upright and electric bass playing (as well as some badass live solos).

Matt plays bass in more awesome acts than I could reasonably list here, but they include Loudtalkers, Mr. Kind, and Dirty Cello (with whom he just returned from a China tour!)

I can’t wait to have Matt rock the stage with me again – I hope you can’t either!

I’ve had such a great time attending and doing visuals at our new monthly 8bitSF events at the DNA Lounge upstairs space – I can’t tell you how excited I am to be headlining the June show!

I’m going to have a new ensemble playing with me this night, and I’ll be posting an article every day for the next few days featuring each of my players – so keep an eye out for that!