This week, PSO returns to the porch on a rainy day. A rare melody emerged from this spacious and swirling windswept improvisation. Enjoy!!!
Many thanks to those who came out to support and participate in PSO’s first-ever curated series of performances and presentations at Co-Lab Projects in Austin.
Here are some pics from the series’ final events, including member’s night, when Leslie Moody Castro blessed PSO with a rare and angelic vocal performance. At the end of the night, Sandy Carson and Lauren Grant joined me to make some distorted guitar ruckus to clear out the culvert.
On our last weekend, Jessica Mallios conjured the sonification of solar winds from Icelandic landscapes, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, in a surprise performance, urged us to imagine a museum of the future, and SKLOSS, with namesake Karen Skloss unfortunately hobbled by COVID, conjured a wonderful performance with her daughter, Jaz, stepping in to intone cosmic tonalites with her voice accompanied by Sandy Carson’s colossal guitar crunching.
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Such a great experience, much love and thanks to the Co-Lab crew, board, and members that made it all happen, with a special shout out to the man about town, Sean Michael Gaulager.
LISTEN TO THE ARTISTS FROM VAST IS THE SEA TALK ABOUT THEIR WORK
LISTEN TO ME TALK ABOUT THEIR WORK AND A LITTLE ABOUT MINE WITH GLASSTIRE’S LESLIE MOODY CASTRO
PSO ADJACENT ACTIVITY
MOUNTAINS IN STARS LP AND PHOTOBOOK RELEASE
Thursday, April 11, 4 pm
Northern Southern Gallery
E. 5th Street, halfway between Brazos & San Jacinto. (google map)
FREE and OPEN TO EVERYONE
It’s going to be super fun event! Bill McCullough will have his amazing photographs on the walls of the gallery, and he will even join MiS on the Pedal Steel!! Paul Stautinger will join in on guitar and e-bow and more singing with Leslie Moody Castro!!!
Mountains in Stars is a musical experiment in songwriting, close harmonies, fiddle, banjo, and finger-picked guitars that began with myself, Emily Scarlet Kramer, and Bob Warner in a multi-tenant loft in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in the early '00s.
The group stopped playing when I got a full-time job and moved back to Texas. Since then, Emily has moved to the West Coast, and Bob remains in NYC.
Back in Brooklyn in 2007, faced with my sudden departure to Texas, we rushed into a new studio to record an album's worth of songs. There were some technical and performance (mine) problems that got in the way of its release until now.
Over the years, my frequent musical collaborator, Paul Stautinger, worked some audio magic and rerecorded some of my guitar parts and vocals. Em also recorded additional vocal parts.
It's finally in shape now, and thanks to receiving a grant from the City of Austin, we will be able to press a record called "Watch the Years Gather" to be released in 2024!!
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20-100 years in the making, (depending on how you slice it), WATCH THE YEARS GATHER is a 180g black virgin vinyl LP pressed in ATX by Gold Rush Vinyl and printed on reverse boards with music by MOUNTAINS IN STARS and accompanied by a 40-page, staple-bound, 11x 11 inch, 80lb-text photobook of a selection of my great-grandfather Charles Wood's photographs taken in Montana beginning around 1918.
You can see more of Wood’s work on the MiS Instagram.
This object is funded in part by a LIVE MUSIC GRANT FROM THE CITY OF AUSTIN DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT.