Phil plays so incredibly beautiful. Few people came to the show, it doesn't matter, that happens often in Boston, on a Wednesday when there's no promotion.... it was just a joy to play with Phil. The next night in New Hampshire we had a really positive response, people came out, it mattered to more than just us. There's a lot of energy in the A Love Electric music, but the word that seems most relevant these days, maybe especially with Steven on the gig, is joy. It was fun and outrageous and felt like it touched that piece of most everyone there. I'm really interested in transcending what we find common the more we get out and play..... there is a piece of all of us there. Somewhere we all live but few of us feel we can afford to on a daily basis. There's some threat of a subjective reality that conquers our curious nature. I hope we can play a small part in invalidating that fear, even for just a couple hours, or fleeting moments, when we play. 

We are working on this record in New York with Anton Fier producing and really partnering in it. Its songs, and Im really excited by it, probably won't come out for another year, I don't know, but everyone is exploring all kinds of things in the tunes we wouldn't initially gravitate towards. I am a fan of Anton's and emailed him about a year ago to see if he would play drums on a couple sessions. We did them and it was great, but he had a vision of the music that extended beyond what we'd done.... so we kind of started over, slowly, erasing and rebuilding. Anton and I became friends through the process, and got some of his friends, really some of the greatest musicians, creative players on the planet, I think, to play on the record, come hang in the studio. So Tony Scherr came and played some bass and a little guitar.... Tony is brilliant, I don't know anyone who would disagree. And Billy came and played percussion, sounds, creative things.... so that was this past week. Its really a dream to be this close to music, creativity, and a lot of people I have always looked up to as musicians, thinkers, and people. That really all began years ago when I started playing a bit with Benny Weinbeck, Linz, and Schutte, guys I admire greatly in Minneapolis, that Im still fortunate to play with. With one life, it would seem a mistake not to reach out to these people I admire and hope to spend time with them. Im just very fortunate and I hope it is returned through the music we are making.... I am going to teach some this week and looking forward to that. Playing all these shows and self promoting can start to feel a little narcissistic, which it is. Its important its circular.

A friend recently posted somewhere about how we've developed this sense of reverence for an identity that will garner us some adoration.... which ultimately never gives us what we lack. Simple, child-taught practices of sharing, mutual respect, love, these are heroic traits that require practice and restraint. So..... my thoughts are circling around .... here's some photos of guys I admire in the studio, really intense but loving environment.... the intensity comes out of the great respect these guys hold for artistic expression, and its integrity. 

Photos by Mario Rodriguez, Sharon Cohen, Justin Bias

Photo by Sharon Cohen http://www.toddclouser.com/images/392494_10100839082663420_908384_58144397_1418326103_n_resized.jpg

  Photo by Mario Rodriguez

Here's some recent objects of inspiration that set me right, humble me, back to the place where we are all certain  our knowledge is limited to ourselves, and curiosity, imagination guide.

The story of Mickey Murray, dubbed years back as the next James Brown, and more specifically the censoring of this song due to its unabashed commentary on issues of race relations, is worth looking into. Music, power.

Billy Martin turned me onto the study, or simple joy of bird calls. Using these conversations, whether tonally, rhythmically, or sthe use of whatever emotion/color/word they bring to mind can offer a unique starting point for a tune, melody, thought, poem, whatever.

A dreamer of a musical statement.

The father, mother of them all. The first three sentences, and you could stop there. Its all there, beyond black and white. I return to this often.

Here's some tunes we'll be doing ....

Thanks for com in by, more soon.

Abrazos

I found this song, thanks to John Lurie. Its completely beautiful, and the title is poetry.

I wrote this in the afternoon - I'm ill-equipped for the outdoors on days like this, and have been wanting to spend more time writing.

If the snow is a dancer

I am the blind one

Eyes rolled softly to the back of the Earth

Its been piling and falling 

under and into

its own weight

for hours, since the morning came in wind

God howl, exhale from

the top of the moon

through all the light

passing through all the light

that happened before we see it

and weaving new lines

on our faces

as we clench our arms

arms of each other

lovers, children

walking to our hiding homes, 

buried under the weather

All our love piling

the awe

and falling under itself

to where no one remembers

and tomorrow, God, or something, winks

and we awake too early

to a humbled sun

--------------------------

We're off to San Francisco tomorrow. Its been another encouraging couple of months out playing. Thank you for your support and coming by.

Todd

A Love Electric began as a reaction to my experience in the traditional music industry. After living and studying in Boston for three years, I moved back to Minneapolis and began performing often in mostly rock clubs in the Twin Cites, eventually through the greater Midwest, working in studios, and producing records of my own as well as a series of records that came out on Liquid8, the one that got the most notoriety was a Tribute to the Beastie Boys and a band we had with my brother on drums that ended up being called 4 Letter Man. I haven't heard those in years. By the time I was 22 I had performed on a number of records and released a few of my own out of my basement, but was largely unhappy playing clubs and with the music we were making, or at least the way we were going about it. I grew cynical fast, life felt it had reached a point where I was either going to be this for many years to come, or I could run at something completely different. 

Rusty Trombones at the Uptown, Minneapolis, MN 2005

    I never wanted to play music to be popular again, never wanted to be told what music was supposed to sound like, be part of any scene or specific genre clique, or put quantity of production over the sincerity of it. So I left everything, sold a lot of stuff on Ebay, gave my family and jobs a couple weeks notice that I was heading out, and packed my car with mostly musical gear, some clothes, and Wes, my dog. We drove from Minneapolis to the tip of the Baja Peninsula, where I had vacationed with family and made some relationships. The drive was magic, I recall listening to Bill Frisell's "Blues Dream", lots of Bob Dylan Bootleg series stuff, some Electric Miles, and staring off to nothing, feeling human and inspired again. We stopped in towns along the way, Vegas was terrible with a dog, Tahoe was amazing with him, ran around the Rockies where I used to vacation as a kid, it was mid- May at this time.

VAIL area dog park , May 2006 (or 7?)

    We arrived to Los Cabos and I found a job teaching music at a local international school. The joy of being around the kids and their fascination with what I was bringing them set me right in many ways. I rediscovered some altruism in music. I remember playing "Blue Suede Shoes" the first day, I had arrived not knowing I was going to be teaching, or that I had the job, so took my acoustic guitar from my car and improvised how to teach elementary music. The school didn't care about books or following some set course of learning, so my job was to inspire, and it was cyclical.

     After a year of teaching I began playing out again, jazz, groove, and improv gigs. Whatever I felt like playing, at a great local jazz club called Havana's, since departed. The owner s gave me a chance to come in and do whatever I felt, and I fell flat a lot, lots of mistakes, lots of trying to rediscover a voice, which is useless, and eventually some sort of voice emerging from all that. Meanwhile I was still teaching at school and had loads of private students. The Los Cabos area is a small town, and it was an exciting time a few years ago before the decline in economy, travel, and health and safety scares. Many families have since moved on. 

tracking "Baja on summer school break with Schutte, Linz, Benny Weinbeck

I began spending more time playing, at least a few nights a week, and hanging with musicians from Argentina, Mexico, and the US quite often. I was becoming a performing musician again, but felt liberated from the pressure to conform to a certain style, and the darkness you can find in some music circles was to a far lesser degree than that of some of the bigger cities Ive hung and lived in. 

At Havana's with Jack Sonni and my student Eliot on drums  2008

Summers in Los Cabos are extremely hot, I don't mind it, but the rest of the population down there seems to, choosing to vacate the area for much of July, August,and September. Timing worked out as kids were out of school then. I decided to spend some time in New York playing and studying in the summer of 2009 and everything shifted. I met Steven Bernstein, trumpeter, arranger, encourager. I took a workshop from Steven and admired the way he pulled power from simplicity in music, and there was the blues, soul, jazz, rock, all in there. I sheepishly asked him if he would be interested in coming down to Mexico to do a tour. He said yes. I never really expected it to happen until I got an email a month or so later, and I booked a ten day tour through the Baja and a portion of the Mexican mainland. I had gone from Berklee shed-machine to rock writer to school teacher to performing not-jazz jazz musician in a few years. But there was little question after that tour that this is what I was going to do. Playing with Steven, though I had my insecurities and bumps, gave me the confidence to get back to writing and playing and living free of any of the pressures I would put on myself as far as what is good, what it should sound like, achieving some impossible level of greatness and popularity. IT didn't matter, I loved making music again. Thats all it was, making music. 

First Bernstein tour, Havana's, Los Cabos - with Frankie Mares and Samo Gonzalez

  Art District, San Jose del Cabo - first Bernstein Tour

 So I spent the next month or two writing a record Id hoped I could get Steven on, but needed to get out and tour the tunes, see what worked. Still in Los Cabos, I asked some friends in Guadalajara who I should look up in Mexico to begin this thing, which I was uncertain would turn into anything lasting, but for now, a two week tour of little clubs or wherever we could set up would be cool. A friend mentioned an Argentine drummer, Hernan Hecht, this was  couple years ago, but I can now say that was a gift that gratitude will never fully serve. Hernan is an incredible musician, producer, businessman, and many other things, and has become a close friend and partner in creativity in A Love Electric. We got out and played the short tour, and it was just alright, but there was enough there in the tunes that at least Hernan stuck around, and I asked him about adding a couple guys he plays with frequently, Aaron Cruz, a bassist from Mexico City, and Mark Aanderud, a pianist who at the time was in between New York, Mexico City, and where he now resides, in Prague.  I wrote a ton over the next few months and got into the studio in Minneapolis with some guys I've played with for years there, and one of the all-time great bassists I've ever known, Gordy Johnson. Bernstein and I met in the studio and he put his parts down. It all happened fast. That was the first A Love Electric record, I liked it more than I had liked anything Id done previously, so I blind sent it out to some record labels, venues, so on. Ropeadope Records sent me an email saying "fucking love it, lets talk future release". I never considered myself worthy of that kind of attention from a label I grew up buying record after record from. Yes, times have changed, but that shit not only excited, it also gave me a sense of responsibility to the music I was creating I think. It had to be real now, because thats what I want people to see from me. Thats what I really care about. Yes its subjective, but people can feel it when its there.

    The cats in Guadalajara          and an early early US tour, early 2011, feels longer ago

 Then summer 2010, the four of us - Mark, Aaron, Hernan, myself, all residing or hailing from different countries managed to carve out a month where we could get together, get on the road, and hit it. The energy from the first gig, I don't recall if we ever rehearsed, was outrageous. Just the other day Aaron told me, "when I came to this band, I didn't know how much I needed it". Thats how it felt, a few seconds in we could all look at each other and say this is going to be good. The music ran to places it hadn't with anyone else, and the dialog with the audience reflected it. Writing about those first shows, Adam Meckler had also come down from Minneapolis to join us on trumpet, I want to play now. Things, for me, became completely transcendent when we made music, and we didn't care in the least whether it was rock or jazz or funk or whatever. It was music, and we were there to express, the collective nature of the expression coming about in a completely natural manner. Egos were abandoned, music was served, and people felt it. I remember feeling like that in my teens playing, but not with much frequency since, its almost every night with A Love Electric now.

An early "Curtis" at Zinco - remember feeling we'd conquered all when we could finally get booked there

    I remember Bernstein came back down more recently, spring of 2011, just after Ropeadope released our first record, and played with Mark, Aaron and Hernan and commented that "these are the guys, they know what you're doing with your music". So we recorded records together in Mexico City. As with the shows, the recordings happened fast, we got along great, no vibing, and we recorded some outrageous amount of tunes in 2 separate 2 and 3 day sessions at Sala De Audio in Mexico City. I cut about half of what we recorded, some at various points of completion, but still ended with two plus records that we all felt good about. One, a project I've wanted to do for some time, is de-rrangements of folk music, while also serving as a commentary on what exactly folk music is, or can be. The other is a record of all original tunes I've written and grew with the band over 8 months of touring. Everything happened really organically, after our first sessions in MX City, I went out to NYC for some shows and recording and met up with Steven Bernstein to lay down some trumpet on a number of tracks that I felt called specifically for his unique voice, and also got to hang a bit with Cyro Baptista, who played on both records as well. 

   got to Europe 

   The life of the band, our music, and our relationships with each other, continue to evolve, but everything is positive right now. We've all made enough time for this to be our primary project in terms of dates on the road. When I can't get the guys up from Mexico, Ive been spending more and more time in New York City playing with a bunch of different cats who continue to make me better. Each record is part of a larger body of work I hope someday I can make sense of, but it is honest. There's no hiding my deficiencies, passions, what has informed our music, my writing. Its all in there, and Ive learned to leave it like that. Thats what makes this band unique to me, we are ruthlessly honest and passionate. The experience of playing in A Love Electric, and making music with these guys is abstract, transcendent, and empowering. All that matters has already been accomplished, now we just get to continue to play with the music in a way that inspires us, let it grow as we do. Its going to be fun for me.

With a bit of willingness to listen and consider as the only prerequisite, this is a record meant to celebrate the believer. Its a record of hope. 

I

 Last year when constantly on tour we would go in and have sessions with A Love Electric whenever in MX City at a studio called Sala de Audio. I had a ton of music I wanted to record, and had thought about a double record. The concept was records that commented on each other, a record of traditional music, later I called it folk music as more tunes on the record came to be selected, and a record of original music that was the confluence of many of the folk concepts in music we've absorbed. The record evolved as we got further in, and we dedicated a full album to exploring re-arrangements, de-rrangement of folk tunes, from Malvina Reynolds, traditional tunes sung by the Carter Family, Big Mama Thornton, Son House. All music thats been very close to me from a young age, and where I still go to have the blood pulled places its fallen to still. I grew up with Blind Willie Mctell to Curtis mayfield being played in my house.

It was a very organic and encouraging process in the studio, many of my bandmates, being from Argentina, Mexico, and Illinois (Meckler shot) never having heard these tunes, meaning there were no preconceptions about how the songs "should" sound. We were able to create around the core of the tune, generally just the melody, an entirely new piece. You can hear this in songs like "Little Boxes" and "Pay Me My Money Down". Others, a live performance of the song with adjustments to the harmony and melody seemed a more appropriate way to go about presentation, examples being "All Apologies" and "Gratitude".

The arrangements were all done with the "folk" concept" in mind; the harmony, color, tone of the tracks reflecting the lyrical content, largely where the song's meaning can be found. The lyrics now being absent, the arranging also became an exercise in discovering how I attach certain emotions from the spoken language to music. "Little Boxes" is a protest tune, the arrangement is aggressive from the start but also adventurous in having an odd timed section that perhaps offers an alternative to the satirical commentary in the song's verses. "Pay Me My Money Down" reflects the sentiment in the title in its brash arrangement, "Heroin", so on.

II

Folk is simply the music of the people to me, its no more complex than that. Its not a genre, and unlike jazz or metal or classical, is not marked by a time period in which it had its mightiest weight in society, it was and is always there, as long as we were and are. Minstrel songs were folk music, the blues was folk music, big band swing was folk music in the 20's. Grunge - folk.

Music is a reflection of our human experience, and the times in which it is most poignant are often the times during which a given society, now our global society, is undergoing profound change, challenge, or growth. We emote in reaction to our surroundings and how they affect us, and music is how some of us best tell stories, or emote. Thats a people thing, not a music thing, and thats where the music is found - In humanity -  not in academia nor a genre of an artistic medium that has more to do with a personal identity than acceptance of our human condition. Its in the folks.

A Pete Seeger take on Little Boxes

So thats folk music to me, the music that comes from the depth of human the human experience and our reaction, commentary on it. In the music's creation, knowingly or not, there is a commentary on the human condition at hand. Its incredibly personal, yet universally understood.

The tunes on "20th Century Folk Selections" are only eclectic, or perhaps seemingly random, if we continue the narrow, sales driven construct, of the modern genre and sub-genre. What genres really are are adjectives describing the sound you are going to hear, and only relevant in that they are learned to have an identity; that identity is not inherent. For example, what does "rock and roll" mean? Nothing at all, except that we have learned, at a very young age what "rock and roll" sounds like. But its completely arbitrary the name.

"20th Century Folk Selections" is meant to transcend, and challenge our concepts of divisions within music. In creating these divisions, we've created a nonsensical distance between each other as human beings. The music we share and love, the very existence of music, is of far greater importance than any one person's, or group of people's perception of how sound should be organized.

I hope that by playing what could controversially be accepted as folk music, or songs of the people, in a manner that includes influences from various approaches to sound, a wide harmonic palette, improvisation and melody, form that is presented in a way common to jazz music, adventurous rhythmic concepts; that the result is something genuinely human, can be an emotional experience in empathy, and perhaps offers a commentary on where we are.

Its instrumental, people place all kinds of tags, and confusing in between tags on it, but I believe we made a record of real substance, there's a joy in it, even at the dimmest of moments, being that we are all together in this. With a bit of willingness to listen and consider as the only prerequisite, this is a record meant to celebrate the believer. Its a record of hope. 

Thanks for your support and time coming by, much love

Todd

Video up next on arranging Little Boxes and how it all goes down

Hear "Gratitude" from the record here

http://m.soundcloud.com/todd-clouser/07-gratitude

Things that make the MX City Metro superior to other mass transit Ive spent time on
1 - Stops are marked by symbols as well as words (ex. this morning I am taking apple past Moses to flowers)
2 - There are no stoplights (Boston T Green line)
3 - You can buy action figures and small candies on your ride
4 - It is clean and relatively Tag-free and the equivalent of about 25 cents 1 way
5 - The doors stay open for only a short period of time, riding requires commitment

Then there were these toys being sold on the wall outside

I'm madly addicted to playing music for people, and myself, and feel hopeless without it, and hopelessly inspired with it. I've been really living inside the whole process recently, the results being a more stable and optimistic existence. Lots of writing, practicing, and as close to I can get as a routine, more a disciplined approach to tending to music every day. Writing every morning, never reading it back, is a great exercise, the right brain comes alive for the day. Maintenance practice and working on a tune a week, getting inside it. And constantly creating, it comes more easily when the other pieces are functioning. I couldn't fall asleep last night as ideas came, they had to be written down and remembered. So many great tunes get lost. 

And reading draws something out - this is the roof of our apartment building, and a fine place to read - recently on Monk's biography again, a book called The Four Agreements, and Burroughs' Naked Lunch, again

Ahh yea and check out our band! Here's a couple videos - "Little Boxes" is on our record coming Feb 14 - The next will come mid- June and feature "This Means Love" 

One way I've been trying to assure Im discovering each time we improvise recently is to consider tunes I know the lyrics to from my youth, using their rhythmic phrasing as the basis for what I'm playing. For example, I can still recite Method Man's "Tical" record more or less front to back from my days as a teen. Same goes for the first Wu-Tang Clan record, some ODB, and Bob Dylan. Some masters of phrasing.

  So I'll take "Bring the Pain", and if Im not particularly inspired by anything else thats happening in the tune, use its rhythmic phrasing as the beginning of my solo, whatever notes I want to put to "I came to bring the pain, hardcore from the brain, lets go inside my astrobrain, find out my mentals, based on instrumentals, check it, HEY, so I can write monumentals" (Im not sure those are the words correctly but thats what I remember them as). Each syllable gets a note and the accents fall as Method Man dictated.  The phrasing is really interesting, and you can take just those few lines and then began to deviate from that, still taking a purely rhythmic approach and letting the pitches fall where they may. Thinking rhythmically over tonally can often bring out a more cohesive piece, solo, and hookup with the band. Something always seems to develop, start leaving rests, answering your own lines, repeating, omitting, playing with the tools people talk about in composition, and spontaneous composition.

Its much like a jazz musician would use a bop head as the basis for a solo, but thats the music that I hear more naturally, the hip hop and rock stuff, than the Charlie Parker tunes. Though learning Parker heads is something I've found really beneficial, and fun after the initial frustration.

Others I've used include Shimmy Shimmy Ya by ODB, "Don't Think Twice Its Alright" by Dylan, Dylan's poem to Woody Guthrie, and then Monk melodies. Monk melodies I love and absorb quickly, and are rich in rhythmic content as well, listen to what he does with them. But I think whatever you have internalized, memorized and can emote from, play with, as naturally as possible, a unique piece of you comes out, and cliche is more easily avoided. We are closer to being our own. 

An aside - I think this is why I can still go to Dylan shows and think its completely badass while all my friends complain they can't tell what song he's singing, he's singing them all different, and his voice sucks. He's up there playing his voice like a great improviser. Playing with the accents, the phrasing. Im listening to Its Alright Ma finishing this post and must go be creative, this is the feeling we live for.