MANIFESTO & SUPERMANIFESTO 2024

 Manifesto & Supermanifesto 2024 begins with the most unexpected development of my career. On November 27, University Press of Mississippi released my nonfiction book Poor Gal: The Cultural History of Little Liza Jane. This capped an intensive six-year research process into the most important folk song in American history. Aside from all the stunning historical information I absorbed as well as learning so many “Liza Jane” songs that now regularly dance inside my head, I developed quite a bit as a writer. It was important to step out of my “creative writing voice” and into a realm that was far more important than “me.” For once, I did not find myself trying to write poetry or fiction by depending upon “my own legend.” Instead, I functioned as a conduit for “Liza Jane” to tell its estimable story, one that reminds us of our shared humanity.

I could not have written Poor Gal without significant mentorship by a bloke named David Evans. A two-time Grammy winner, musician, professor emeritus, author, and blues ambassador, David provided patient, old-school guidance from the darkest days of the pandemic all the way to the book’s production. I had read his legendary book Big Road Blues when I lived in Arcata, but I should like to note the appearance of Going Up the Country, a 2023 work David co-wrote with Marina Bokelman. Going Up the Country blends an adventure narrative with detailed notes about making field recordings and, at its heart, relays an edgy investigation into American folk and blues music.

I enter 2024 with an ambitious creative agenda. I am hoping to step back to the microphone once again as a lyricist-vocalist with a band. Together with my colleague Emily Cohen, I am / we are still cranking away on a documentary film about “Little Liza Jane.” Emily and I feel a renewed sense of momentum regarding this endeavour (sic). Having seen Poor Gal hit the bookshelves, I have returned (buoyantly) to my “creative writing practice” or rather my “roots” as a writer. On the one hand, this would involve dealing with some shocking experiences—such as the long-ago murder of my friend Warren—as well as rendering myself more “vulnerable” in the presence of my own foibles. 

This too, of course. Not long after my friend (and his girlfriend) were murdered, my brother David Gutstein passed away. He had just turned 27. Over the last twelve months, I have really reflected upon the gift of life. One that I have been fortunate enough to enjoy but my brother was not fully able to: he has been gone, by now, for more years than he lived. He had not really gotten started. I visited his grave earlier this year and it really f****** hurt. Yet this well of emotion cannot simply smolder. It must lead to creativity, community—and earthly love. 

“I hate spending a lot of time in graveyards / We’re all gonna spend a lot of time in graveyards.” I meant these lyrics with both acidic and ironic properties alike. (Obviously, they follow from my admission above.) This music video from Joy on Fire’s 2022 album States of America is certainly titled for the season. The song features a medium burn and a more lyrical presentation than some of the hard-charging songs we fashioned together. Too, John Paul Carillo (bass, guitar) and Anna Meadors (saxophones) visited some fabulous production values on the effort. They filmed half of it in Trenton and the other half here, with me, in the Rockville, Md. area. “Show interest / Show interest / I show interest you” is aimed at you, my friend. Reach out. Let’s talk.

Let us not end the year without some serious geese and gosling action. Have a gander at this here gaggle as they comply with local traffic signage. They do not run afoul of going the wrong way down a one-way, so you can relax, the giant yellow arrow tells said waddlers where to waddle. These fowls are headed to the creek, where they can duck back onto the water. Even as they disappear around the bend, it is not their swan song. These here gooses can be seen regularly in the air as a plump wedge. In fact, they live in the same habitat (where their habit is at) as my best animal friend forever, the mischievous scoundrel known as The Fox.

People ask me have you seen The Fox? Well, yes I have. She is quite robust. Rusty red. Full of mischief. A true scoundrel of the finest calibre (sic). This summer, I spent some time with her before I went to live downtown in a friend’s apartment. Perhaps she sensed that I might be departing for a bit, so we chilled in the shallow woods, enjoying each other’s company. For some reason, the fake Australian accent emerges—“You’re a good lookin’ fox, man”—but she’s a vixen, not a reynard (sic). When she sees me, she has this way of darting a short distance away and then abruptly sitting down. She slays me pretty good with her wily shenanigans!

I’ll never forget the day The Fox let me sit at the edge of the den, where her seven kits flounced about, clearly inheritors of the same vulpine mischief. She brought seven rascally souls into the world!

Notably, in 2023, I vanquished my first chess-bot rated 2000—even as I played the black pieces! I am usually too chicken to sacrifice my queen, but I did so because an opportunity presented itself. And lo, the chess-bot was check-mated. Heh heh heh.

Happy New Year, Everyone! My very best wishes to you and your loved ones.

It would not be a true Blood And Gutstein post without a thumping R&B shaker. You may know Booker T. and the MGs for their hit “Green Onions” but I will take “MG Party” any day. The addition of horns to the classic lineup really clinches this song as a romping dance-floor instrumental from 1964. The infectious, propulsive beat will overcome the proceedings. To wit, let us flounce like kits, let us sacrifice our queens, let us croon at the microphone, let us be mentored, let us tell the kinds of tales that exemplify our connections to one another. Above all else, let us strive for peace and love. This is aimed at you, my friend. Reach out. Let’s talk.


----
discographical information for “MG Party”
Booker T. and the MG’s. “MG Party” B-side b/w “Soul Dressing” A-side. Stax S-153, Memphis, Tennessee, 1964. Likely personnel: Booker T. Jones (organ); Steve Cropper (guitar); Donald Dunn (bass guitar); Al Jackson, Jr. (drums); Wayne Jackson (trumpet); Floyd Newman (baritone saxophone); Charles “Packy” Axton (tenor saxophone). Compositional credit: Jones, Cropper, Jackson, Dunn.

DISRUPTING THE MINDSET OF COMMONPLACE APATHY: JOY ON FIRE’S “WEEKDAY AVE.”

Behold “Weekday Ave.” I sometimes consider it to be the jewel of Joy on Fire’s hard-charging (and mildly charting) 2022 album States of America. Your humble blogger served as lyricist and vocalist for said album, and as you might imagine, Dear Reader, I brought some poetry to the mix. In this regard, you might detect echoes of Robert Hayden and Paul Celan. See below for those details, as well as the full lyrics, but first let’s have a look “under the hood” at the fabulous musicians who provide “Weekday Ave.” with its formidable pulse.

Songwriter and guitarist / bassist John Paul Carillo directs the highly textured musical expedition of “Weekday Ave.” — one that seamlessly enters a variety of idioms. The song burns low-medium (or straight up the middle) with some notable climbing action. While JPC may describe the overall sound of Joy on Fire as “punk jazz,” this piece resists category. Ultimately, “Weekday Ave.” offers a potent urban elegy, but not without the energetic stripe of optimism that courses through the band’s catalogue.

Enter saxophonist Anna Meadors, who displays enviable versatility throughout. She doubles the vocals, chants in opposition to the vocals, and confers the sort of lyrical statement on saxophones (alto and bari) that endows the song with most of its emotional content. (She also audio-engineered the proceedings, including the addition of some synth keyboards.)

Drummer Chris Olsen delivers propulsive, off-kilter percussion, which amply contradicts the typical enervated rhythms found, these days, on a typical American weekday avenue.

The outro is sheer magic, and owes to John’s guitar communicating with psychedelic themes as well as futuristic content. It should be retroactively added to the sci-fi flick Blade Runner.

As for the lyrics, they are mostly original, but borrow from two twentieth century poets.

If you know Robert Hayden’s masterpiece “Those Winter Sundays,” then you might recall the phrase “weekday weather” as it applies to the speaker’s father, whose hands cracked selflessly during manual labor in just such climatology. From there, I arrived at “Weekday Ave.” — the typical American thoroughfare capable only of generating “glassy condos,” “cute t-shirts,” and symbolic outrage during a crisis. The enjoyable play between “Weekday Ave.” and “weekday haven’t you” ensued straightaway.

I drew a little more from post-Holocaust European poet Paul Celan, whose lines “Die Welt ist fort // ich muß dich tragen” (“The world is lost // I must carry you”) ring outward from his 1967 collection, Atemwende, or Breath-Turn. I invert and jumble these thoughts, with the singer (me) requiring the burden of being carried. Much of everything returns to love, and the inward turn we all take, when we lose someone. While Celan may have intended his lines to read with centripetal gravity, the genius of his language may reside in its elasticity — and universality.

As John’s outro proceeds, the concept of feeling inwardness springs forth. I suppose there is a difference between inwardness and feeling inwardness. The way there is a difference between “Weekday Ave.” and “weekday haven’t you.” The way we might trip along, numbly, without forming “a thinker’s word.” 

The lyrics follow below. States of America can be heard and purchased [here]. As always, Dear Reader, we urge you to don sensible attire, alter your mindset responsibly, and hardly resist when your body begins to move without any inhibitions. Oi.

     Weekday Ave.


     Scream, a siren
     The scream alone
     “O” of outrage
     & secondhand time

     [Chorus:]
     Weekday Ave.
     Or weekday haven’t you?
     Weekday Ave.
     Weekday Ave.
     Weekday Ave.
     Or weekday haven’t you?

     Yeah! / Yeah!

     Glassy condos
     & cute t-shirts
     Never require
     A thinker’s word

     [Chorus]

     Da-da da-da! // You must carry me
     Da-da da-da! // The world is lost
     Da-da da-da! // And if the world is lost
     Da-da da-da! // I feel inwardness!

     [Da-da da-da! + Chorus]

     I feel inwardness […]


     personnel

     John Paul Carillo: bass guitar, electric guitar, songwriting
     Anna Meadors: Vocals, alto sax, bari sax, sound engineering
     Chris Olsen: Drums, percussion
     Dan Gutstein: Lyrics, vocals

     “Weekday Ave.” & States of America appeared on Procrastination Records (2022). 

AT NIGHT, I AM THE NIGHT: THE GRISLY MASHUP BETWEEN JAZZPUNK & HORROR IN THE MUSIC VIDEO FOR JOY ON FIRE'S "IN SPEAKING LIKE THUNDER"

Behold the music video for “In Speaking Like Thunder.” It completely eradicates the distance between Jazzpunk and Horror, leaving us stranded in a world that crosses rural sectarianism with discordant Middle Ages topographies. With music by Joy on Fire, lyrics and vocals by your humble blogger, and video by Daphne Bacon and Cody Snyder, “In Speaking Like Thunder” will have you reaching for a talisman and a baggie of shrooms alike.

The main character and his fellow townsfolk attempt to confront a series of omens in the form of moonlit disturbances, grisly discoveries in the woods, puzzling iconography, and dizzying isolations. A proliferation of period weapons — scythe, axe, pitchfork — accompany the period garb of a transcendent era. Viewers will hardly doubt the extensive lubrication proffered by meads, wines, and grogs; surely, there must be some greenery in that phat pipe!

After a torch-wielding posse melts away, the main character confronts a bipedal forest beast who has fostered all the mayhem. The man bows down before the beast. He embraces the beast. The two even dance together. Then, the clouds part and the full moon confers some sobriety on what will surely be a gruesome conclusion. The lines “At night / I am the night” may apply to the powerful beast, or they may apply broadly to the moon-force, or the presence that speaks “like thunder.”

The music veers between an up-register drone and crunching narrative; between free jazz outrage and gnawing synthesis. Indeed, all these sounds congeal at once as the instruments stretch toward the denouement of the final, mad dance. As for the lyrics, this is the second time I wrote a song in French, before bringing it over to English. (Also see “Unknown City.”) My French is hardly perfect, but in the translation, cometh the jaggedness.

The lyrics in both languages follow below. May they inspire new thoughts and images. May you play the song loud, pour yourself something mildly intoxicating, and jump around in the usual manner. Oi.


       In Speaking Like Thunder

       In speaking
       The thunder
       In speaking
       Like thunder
       In speaking
       The thunder
       In speaking
       Like thunder

       My word
       As crazy as
       My word
       As crazy as the mouth
       My word as crazy as
       The mouth of God
       My word as crazy as
       The Mouth of God

       At night
       I am the night
       At night
       I am the night
       At night
       I am the night
       At night
       I am the night

       At night
       In speaking
       I am the night
       Like thunder
       At night
       In speaking
       I am the night
       Like thunder


       En Parlant Comme le Tonnere

       En parlant
       Le tonnere
       En parlant
       Comme le tonnere
       En parlant
       Le tonnere
       En parlant
       Comme le tonnere

       Ma parole
       Aussi fou que
       Ma parole
       Aussi fou que la bouche
       Ma parole aussi fou que 
       La bouche de dieu
       Ma parole aussi fou que
       La bouche de dieu

       A nuit
       Je suis la nuit
       A nuit
       Je suis la nuit
       A nuit
       Je suis la nuit
       A nuit
       Je suis la nuit

       A nuit
       En parlant
       Je suis la nuit
       Comme le tonnere
       A nuit
       En parlant
       Je suis la nuit
       Comme le tonnere

MANIFESTO & SUPERMANIFESTO.

This manifesto begins with love. For my mentor and close friend, Faye Moskowitz, who passed away in February. A love that can no longer be expressed, directly, to the person whom I love. Faye changed my life, through hundreds of interactions. Teaching, listening, sharing, crying, singing, even smoking weed once, yep. What does one do with grief that keeps ringing outward? Understandably, loss can turn to outrage, given the subtractions we must endure.

 

I listen to “In My Head” quite often. I’m jealous of the group, Gilla Band (or “Girl Band”), who hail from Dublin. This song is emblematic of the music I’d like to make: short, powerful, and aggressive. It’s the group’s first single, from 10 years ago. When the vocalist, Dara Kiely, screams toward the end—well, that’s how I feel, about losing Faye. You transport your feelings to a song and make them fit.

 

I did something similar on a piece, “Uh Huh,” I recorded with Joy on Fire, the band I collaborated with to produce States of America, an album which we released in June. In the middle of the tune, when our saxophonist Anna Meadors (above, left) tears the building down, I do some shouting. But it’s not like Kiely in Gilla Band. I think he means it a bit more. And it’s something, frankly, I need to work on.

I listen to John Coltrane’s composition “Equinox” (recorded in 1960) every day. He’s more famous for other compositions but I keep returning to this blues because of the gravity established by the pianist, McCoy Tyner, and Coltrane, too, when he enters the song on tenor sax. Of course, Coltrane’s notes become brighter, the brightness of grief, because he was a cerebral and sweet individual, I would imagine. Don’t take my word for it, though. Go listen to “In a Sentimental Way” released in 1963 by Trane and Duke Ellington. 

You could look upon the1963 Ellington & Coltrane album as a “super-group” effort. I do. Together with my friend, Emily Cohen, I’m assembling a “super-group” to help tell the story of the folk song “Liza Jane.” (Above: find a conceptual trailer featuring harmonica player Phil Wiggins.) It’s not public yet, the super-group, so I can’t reveal the identities of the musicians, but they’re amazing. We’re going to film them, extensively, in performance, in 2023. The group is older and younger, men and women, Black and white, folk and blues and rock, banjo and fiddle and violin and slide guitar and quills . . . .

2023 will also see the release of POOR GAL: The Cultural History of Little Liza Jane, forthcoming from University Press of Mississippi. I wrote the book during a torrid six months, while the pandemic raged. Above, I say “the folk song ‘Liza Jane’” but it’s a family of songs, an extremely unruly lot at that. This book’s the hardest thing I’ve ever written, and undoubtedly, flawed. But I mean it, the writing. Just as much as Kiely means his yelling in Gilla Band. The story of this family of songs, well, is bigger than me. And that’s part of the supermanifesto. Writing is not about “me.” Rather, it’s bigger than “me.” 

I did okay as a writer in 2022. A book of poems, Metacarpalism, appeared from Unsolicited Press, out yonder in Portland, Ore. The Washington, D.C. press Primary Writing Books produced my prose-and-photography collection, The Fox Who Loves Me. Grantmakers, literally, kept me afloat: the Maryland State Arts Council and the Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County (Md.) I am indebted to the kindness and professionalism of these presses and organizations.

A few weeks ago, my close friend Doug Lang (above) passed away. Doug was a poet, and a teacher, who inspired people with his writing, Welsh wit, and comprehensive knowledge of American culture. We grew especially close after his childhood football team, Swansea City, climbed into the Premier League for a few years. A group of us became hooligans upon this development, often getting tight off stout at 10 am in pubs, and listing out into the sunshine, to crow about our worldview. Doug enjoyed this “bloke” activity quite a bit, and now, once more, there’s love that can no longer be expressed, directly, to the person whom I love.

I will always be Swansea, “O City Said I.”

One of the Swansea City hooligans (Casey) turned me on to Gilla Band and another (Rod) turned me on to Dry Cleaning, a group from London. I’m a bit obsessed with “Magic of Meghan” and with the singer, Florence Shaw. She projects so much tragedy at the microphone, and of course, the lyrics are often spoken, which is what I tried to do with Joy on Fire. She has amazing timing, and often delivers scathing satire. The “whoops” (all three of them) are quite nourishing.

I was once at a reading facilitated by the English department where Faye and I taught. Since students were there, it was a “dry” event, but I’d bootlegged-in a bitteen of the spirits, and, having extensive knowledge of the domicile, I snuck through some secret passageways and doorways, where I would situate myself in a private enclave, where I could partake of a “nip.” Privately, or so I thought, because once I stepped-through into the ostensible safety of the enclave, there was Faye, smoking a joint(!)

At a party once (but not the one depicted above.) Doug with an “ass pocket of whiskey.” I have to put it like this: an “English aristocratic sort” had insisted that Doug’s hometown of Swansea had not been bombarded during World War II. Doug retorted that he’d lived through said bombardments as a very young boy. (Wikipedia, et cetera, confirms Doug’s account.) Anyhow, this “English aristocratic sort” had attended the event with his trousers rolled very high, and Doug made sure that the fellow understood the folly of the trouser-rolling, as we were on the second floor, in a city that wasn’t bracing for a flood. It wasn’t even raining.  

When your best friend from the animal kingdom emerges from the mist. The scoundrel. The trickster. The beautiful vixen. She knows she’s a good-looking fox because I tell her as much every time I jog with her after sunset.

It wouldn’t be a true “Blood And Gutstein” without an old R&B number that will rattle your windowpanes. Behold: “Big Bo’s Iron Horse” from 1962. This has been a longish, searching, raking post, one that expressed despair, and yet, there is much vitality ahead of us, in 2023 and beyond. Let us jump. Let us flounce. It’s hard to know where the manifesto leaves off, and where the supermanifesto begins. Where our hands touch, and where we embrace. Most of all, let us acknowledge the love that’s still around us. Even in sorrow, the love we feel for those we’ve lost will inform the very next love we develop with a new soul, and if that soul is you, my friend, then I want you to know how much I love you, and maybe, in some small way, you can see just where I’m coming from.

discographic information for “Big Bo’s Iron Horse”

Big Bo and the Arrows. Willie “Big Bo” Thomas, Jr. (tenor sax). Other musicians, potentially including organ, bass, drums, guitar, horns: unknown. Gay-Shel Records, 1962, Dallas, Tex. “Big Bo’s Iron Horse” 701A b/w “Hully Gully” 701B.

JOY ON FIRE RELEASES AN ALBUM -- STATES OF AMERICA -- THAT WILL THROTTLE YOU (AS IT SHOULD) WITH SOME HARD-CHARGING JAZZPUNK.

 
We don’t say “throttling” anymore, but if we do, we mean giving you a good, solid “rattling.” These songs have hands. They will reach out, through the streaming device, and “throttle” you. They will “rattle” you in your waistcoats & petticoats. Normally, we’d urge you to flee, but we believe that, after a good, solid throttling & rattling, you will want to play States of America again.

Click [here] to purchase States of America at Bandcamp

Click [here] for the Joy on fire website / more info 

Personnel: John Paul Carillo (bass, guitar, songwriting); Anna Meadors (sax, vocals, lyrics on “Dangerous Whimsy”); Dan Gutstein (vocals and lyrics; backup vocals and lyrics on “Dangerous Whimsy”); Chris Olsen (drums).

Some recent press:

Bob Boilen noted the band’s “fiery sound” when debuting “Thunderdome” and its video on NPR’s All Songs Considered.

American Pancake cited the jagged punk eruptions for song and video “Happy Holidays.”

Jammerzine described the Joy on Fire song and video “Selfies” as being “sonically decadent in all the right spots.”

Kendra Beltran posted a great interview with the group at ZO Magazine.

The video for “Uh Huh” has been an official selection, or better, at more than a dozen international film festivals, including Obskuur Ghent Film Festival, where it won.

Thanks for your support! Oi. 

UNKNOWN CITY.

 

Hopefully, 2022 will be a transcendent year for Joy on Fire. The group intends to release its full-length album, States of America, which features lyrics and vocals throughout. It’ll be the first such album in the band’s history and I’m proud to be the bloke at the microphone. In the buildup to States, however, I collaborated with the group on a couple songs that appear on another album, Unknown Cities. I wrote lyrics for the title song (above) in French, actually, before situating them in English. While I can’t fully vouch for my Francophone accuracy, I do think that the overall voyage between French and English helped the word formation to be more adventurous. The lyrics in both languages appear below. On the one hand, the song is about a split between two people, with the singer seeking a rapprochement, and on the other hand, it is about loss, about writing the names of the lost in an unfamiliar locale. (For the sake of anonymity perhaps or to be astray within the sorrow?) We are living in an era of loss, even as the song attempts to be timeless. I can only hope that the lyrics match the virtuosity of the music, which is beautiful, and operates in time signatures more moderate than some of our grinding and jumping punk songs. I hope you enjoy the listen.

Unknown City

Did you sleep that night?
In the morning
a wooden bird sang
in a language
that had forgotten its weapons.
You know nothing but
my name in your voice,
the gray light of the rain
behind the door,
clouds in the false river,
the river
where your grief met
the sound of my footsteps.

I write your name
in an unknown city,
write your name
in an unknown city.

Well yes so what
god is a factory.
At the end of a sentence
I put a period.
That’s the dead hand,
that’s my madness.
The despair so beautiful,
a bouquet of stars
on the rooftops.
Leave the door
open.
Leave the door
open.

I write your name
in an unknown city,
write your name
in an unknown city.

Your name
your name.


Ville Inconnu

Dormiez-vous cette nuit?
Au matin,
un oiseau de bois a chanté
dans une langue qui a perdu ses armes.
Tu ne sais rien que
mon nom dans ta voix,
la lumière grise de la pluie
derrière la porte,
des nuages dans la fleuve faux,
la fleuve
où ta doleur rencontra
le bruit de mes pas.

J’ecris ton nom
dans une ville inconnu,
ecris ton nom
dans une ville inconnu.

Eh bien oui et alors
dieu est une usine.
A la fin d’une phrase
je mets un point.
C’est la main morte,
c’est ma folie.
Le desespoir si beau,
un bouquet d’étoiles
sur les toits.
Laisser la porte
ouverte.
Laisser la porte
ouverte.

J’ecris ton nom
dans une ville inconnu,
ecris ton nom
dans une ville inconnu.

Ton nom,
ton nom.


Personnel: Anna Meadors, John Paul Carillo, Chris Olsen, Dan Gutstein. Visit the Joy on Fire website for more information.

UH HUH: JOY ON FIRE’S ANTI-GUN ANTHEM BECOMES AN OFFICIAL SELECTION AT SIX INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVALS (AND COUNTING.)

 

Have a watch then learn about the mayhem below. 

John kept playing combinations of “dinn-dinn-dunn” on the bass and I kept saying “uh huh” after every iteration. This was 2018, when he and I first started adding words to music, in my old apartment up the hill, in Adams Morgan, D.C., where you could see the Washington Monument from the living room windows. The amp was thumping; the neighbors must’ve been going crazy. Were there bottles of stout? Why, yes there were. “dunn-dinn-dunn!” // “uh huh!”

I said “uh huh” because I dug the bass line, but it became a regular part of the song’s opening cycle, and eventually the title, too. A change in the lyrics would appear after one of the song’s thumping, electrified transformations. There, the words would speculate on the unknowable: the songs not for the dead but of the dead. Ultimately, “Uh Huh” is an anti-gun anthem. In it, we challenge murderers to atone, by returning the bodies (of those they murdered) to the earth.

 

Importantly, other hands touched the song. Chris Olsen would add the metrical necessity of drums. Anna Meadors added both dirgeful and enraged saxophones; she also devised the refrain (the little loop of singing) at the outro; she engineered the entire recording. In the fullness of time, Mark Isaac and Gabriela Bulisova interpreted the song visually, through a combination of thermal, rippling water, video game, marching, and corporeal imagery. It seems quite accurate.

Even as Covid-19 has prevented us from performing, the video has been gaining traction at several international film festivals. A special thanks to our friends at the Oregon Short Film Festival, London Rocks Film Festival, L.A. Rocks Film Festival, Brussels Independent Film Festival, Hollywood Verge Film Awards, and Rome Independent Prisma Awards. Yo! With a dozen more submissions yet to go! We didn’t have ginormous resources for a big push, thus the level of interest has been especially surprising.

If you are inclined, travel to YouTube and give us a thumb’s up. Give us an “uh huh.” Thanks.

this post is part of a double-issue focused on joy on fire music videos. for behind the scenes at the “thunderdome” video shoot, click [here].

LATE OCTOBER UPDATE 2020: A PHOTO ESSAY.

 

key to photographs:

1. Joy on Fire poster for our music video, “Uh Huh,” which has been an official selection at the Prisma Rome Independent Film Awards (2020), London Rocks Film Festival (2020), and L.A. Rocks Film Festival (2021). Many other submissions are pending. You can check out the video through this link.

2. I got my flu shot this year!

3. While the image quality isn’t the greatest, this does represent the reunion between me and the fox. By reunion, I mean that we jogged together for the first time since she raised her cubs. As per usual, the fox was more agile.

4. The “Li’l Liza Jane” project goes onward. Once it’s safe, I will go to Emory University in Atlanta, via a Rose Library Fellowship, to research the song in greater depth. We have learned so much about America’s favorite poor gal, including the fact that the tune has been absorbed internationally (and nationally) by a great number of cultures. Pictured above is the song translated into the Chinook language.

5. I voted. Well all right, then.

 

too updated? see “dark valley” by the holidays

JOY ON FIRE // “UH HUH” // OFFICIAL VIDEO // 2020.

“Uh Huh” is a protest song, during a protest year, during a baffling era.

The lead instrumentation—John Paul Carillo’s bass and guitar; Chris Olsen’s drums and percussion—alternates between harrowing restraint and thumping outcry. Anna Meadors plays the song’s dirge on her alto saxophone; the song, then, absorbs the universal lamentations of people who’ve been deprived of other people. When all four of us participate at once, including the howling vocals, there is a variety of madness that we could call liberation, or honesty. Listeners will be rewarded again and again by the virtuosity of the musicians. The outro, in particular, estimates the emotional quandary of marching forward, despite a societal environment that cannot remediate its own destructiveness.

“Uh Huh” refers to brothers in the universal sense: close and distant family, comrades, colleagues. We are protesting an inexcusable societal blight like gun crimes, on the one hand, but many protests can be echo-located in “Uh Huh.” (What’s your protest?) In the lyrics, a gun is pointed at an unarmed person. This fundamental inequality can transfer from one situation to another. You’re powerless at a crucial moment, you fear for your life, you lack a basic resource. You struggle to envision a future, uh huh.

                                                                 

The artists who created the video—Gabriela Bulisova and Mark Isaac—have stamped their narrative on the song. By turns eerie, disturbing, and deeply righteous, the video commences with the thermal imagery of headless bodies trudging toward a blank destination, at an orderly pace, their backs to the viewer. Without being told, we know that many of them are doomed. There is a gun-scope encircling a partial portrait, and an incongruous flag unfurling, and a litter of human shapes strewn upon a stained ecosystem that’s struggling, itself, to persevere.

“De voi depinde,” said the poet Paul Celan: “It’s up to you.” What he meant was: the individual really matters. By design, the band does not appear. Our faces don’t outweigh the importance of the protest. What will our brothers be singing? What will our, what will our brothers be singing? If we deaden ourselves to loss, we’ll never challenge the status quo.

Play this song loud. Expect punk-jazz. Topple the establishment.

Joy on Fire is

John Paul Carillo (bass, guitar)

Anna Meadors (baritone and alto saxophones, vocals)

Chris Olsen (drums, percussion)

Dan Gutstein (lyrics, vocals)

“Uh Huh” composed by Carillo / Gutstein / Joy on Fire (2020)

Joy on Fire formed in Baltimore 12 years ago and is currently headquartered in Trenton, N.J.  Featured last year on NPR's All Songs Considered, the band is scheduled to play a Tiny Desk Concert in July.  Its most recent release is the Thunderdome EP, which features "Uh Huh," and is available on vinyl only at the Joy on Fire website.  Maryland label Procrastination Records will release the band's next full length album, Hymn, in June. States of America, the band's first full length album with vocals, and which will also include "Uh Huh," is currently being mixed with release plans to be decided.

Video and band photograph by Gabriela Bulisova and Mark Isaac (2020). 

“Uh Huh” is an official selection, PRISMA Rome Independent Film Awards (2020), London Rocks Film Festival (2020), and L.A. Rocks Film Festival (2021). 

TEST PRESSINGS.

Who: Joy on Fire.

What: Punk Jazz.

When: January, 2020.

Where: Trenton, N.J.

Why: To Rock the World.

Joy on Fire will be releasing a limited-edition 180 gram LP on black vinyl entitled Thunderdome Extended Single. It will feature two songs (“Thunderdome” and “Uh Huh”) from our forthcoming States of America album, plus three remixes. These songs add lyrics and vocals to the band’s trademark punk-jazz sound. If the test pressings are any indication, get ready to dance, jump, bang your head, holler, run amok.

Personnel:

John Paul Carillo (bass, guitar)

Anna Meadors (bari sax, alto sax)

Chris Olsen (drums, percussion)

Dan Gutstein (lyrics, vocals)

Please contact the band if you are a deejay at a college radio station or an independent radio station, or if you would like to suggest a potential recipient for this record. We would be happy to send some vinyl your way in 2020. Hoy hoy! And otherwise, stay tuned, friends! 

WHERE I AM + WHERE I’M GOING: REFLECTIONS ON MUSIC-MAKING + FILM-MAKING + SEEKING A NEW LITERARY COMMUNITY.

In 2020, Joy on Fire will release a first-ever 

full-length work featuring vocals throughout.

When people ask me what I’m doing with myself these days, the short answer is: making a record, States of America, with Anna Meadors, John Paul Carillo, and Chris Olsen of Joy on Fire, and making a documentary film about the tune “Li’l Liza Jane” with Emily Cohen. (The two activities will eventually intersect when Joy on Fire unfurl a punk-jazz version of “Liza Jane” whilst the cameras roll.) Both music-making and movie-making require a tremendous amount of exertion, as it turns out. One could speculate on the “ups and downs” of the creative cycle, but in reality, there are only up-sides, so long as I’m expending the level of effort that my team-mates require of me. The term “team-mate” of course wouldn’t have applied a few years ago, when I toiled singly as a writer of poems and stories. That work continues, by the way, but unfortunately I’ve grown apart from my long-term involvement with the DC Poetry gang, even as friendships continue with many of its members. Perhaps my next great endeavor will involve entry into another literary community, or founding a brand-new one.

Joy on Fire just concluded an intense period of recordings, as well as a mini-tour that whirled us from the hot rooms of a classic music space in West Philly to a Jersey Shore pool party (“lol”) to the fabulous Lou Costello Room in Baltimore’s Hampden neighborhood. The mini-tour, three venues in three nights, required a fair amount of howling, and by the end, I was a bit hoarse. Joy on Fire describe themselves as “punk jazz,” which means that they’re not timid. To be heard requires projection. It’s quite a different environment from the “funereal quiet” of many literary readings. Even when I’ve given readings in bars, or at outdoor beer festivals, or at flash mob events, I’ve been able to declaim without howling, but now I howl, and truth be told, where has howling been all my life? (I seem to recall a poetry book whose title involved a form of that word—either in advocacy of said act or as testament to its arrival as an art form.) To howl isn’t even half of it, of course. Music and words had to be joined together, in a series of trials, with each member of the combo placing her or his stamp on them. But the biggest adjustment, for me anyhow, has been doing everything by memory. How many times as a writer (hundreds?) have I stood at a lectern, holding the words to my eyes, for easy recital? Don’t do and you won’t learn; don’t learn and you won’t grow. Become a vocalist in a punk-jazz orchestra! 

The great Cajun musician, Iry LeJeune, who died 

in 1955 at age 26 after being struck by an automobile.

Over the course of two years engaging in pre-production tasks centering on Li’l Liza Jane: A Movie About A Song, Emily and I have built a powerful, unbelievable cultural history for a tune—dare I say—more unique than any tune that has developed in North America. I should say “family of songs” since the many titles, melodies, and lyrics easily approximate the breadth of a poetic forms handbook. The research discoveries have been shocking, even triumphant, particularly since they’ve been extraordinarily difficult to achieve, in certain instances. We’ve been mentored by some of the greatest folklorists in the country, including Grammy-winner and author of Big Road Blues, David Evans, who has guided us in the present and “in the past,” and when I say “in the past,” I refer to both historical information as well as an article he published years ago that helped us establish a relationship between the “Liza Jane” family and the Cajun standard “J’étais au bal” (“I was at the dance.”) If you play the version, say, by Cajun legend Iry LeJeune, you can hear where the melody of “J’étais au bal” (sometimes known as “J’ai été au bal”) overlaps with the “Liza Jane” family. This relationship is but one pinprick of starlight—out of hundreds—that helps to establish “Li’l Liza Jane” as a monumental constellation. We look forward to fully telling the epic story of America’s favorite Poor Gal. 

An apartment poetry reading for out-of-town 

literary visitors Cathy Wagner and Susana Gardner.

It’s no accident that I chose a song as subject matter for a documentary foray, since folk poetry informs part of its lengthy history. The thought of poetry sometimes turns my mind toward writing community, and my association with the DC Poetry crowd, in particular. My relationship to that group involved hosting dozens of parties (many legendary); hosting the popular Beer Club Salon of Ideas; and co-hosting several popular happy hours over the course of two decades (Drink & Walk and Public Office Hours, to name two). I even started DJ’ing from my Shakers and Jump Blues projects as the DC Poets took over the basement of the Black Squirrel on Thursday nights for many seasons. I’m grateful for abiding friendships with many writers and performers who hail from both generations of the DC Poetry scene (many now expatriates), including Rod Smith, Heather Fuller, Mark Wallace, Terence Winch, Phyllis Rosenzweig, Tina Darragh, Doug Lang, Casey Smith, Susana Gardner, Joe Ross, Cathy Eisenhower, Maureen Thorson, and Tom Orange, among others. Things change, of course, and I wish the DC Poetry scene good tidings even as I contemplate the next literary community to join (or found).

I’m excited for 2020, when my collaboration with Joy on Fire will result in the release of a limited-edition LP on 180 gram vinyl as well as an EP of six songs. Li’l Liza Jane: A Movie About A Song will enter production, combining an impressive roster of musicians and scholars who will create a durable monument to a deserving folk tune. All the while these two projects have been percolating, I’ve been adding to, shaping, and editing several manuscripts, including a novel, a collection of stories, and at least one collection of poems. I’d love to start reading from my creative writing again, and I’d also love to identify publication opportunities for these manuscripts. Too, I’m nomadic right now, splitting time between the care of my elderly parents and the makes-takes of Trenton, N.J., so I’m on the lookout for an unoccupied shotgun shack somewhere in eastern U.S.A. I’d be interested in knowing if there’s a literary collective out there which needs a bloke like me, or if others felt like bonding together in order to form one. For these, or any reasons, drop me a communiqué, yo! Meanwhile, best wishes to you, and thanks for taking a gander at this here Statement of Human-being-ness. xo

VIDEO + PHOTO ESSAY: JOY ON FIRE PRINCETON RECORDING SESSIONS + MID-ATLANTIC MINI-TOUR.

John Paul Carillo lays down bass for a song

from States of America EP (forthcoming 2020).

Before we begin, let us first apologize for being such a quaint orchestra. Actually, we could say “combo” as opposed to “orchestra,” and decibel levels notwithstanding, we thank you very much for letting us howl, honk, crank, and thump. We will not amplify our thought balloons, however, seeing as this would emphasize griddlecakes and three-egg omelets. At this point in time, I, the vocalist, must take full ownership of the Frankfurters Incident: look not to our percussionist, our guitarist, our saxophonist (and glockenspielist!) Yes, a precocious youth detained us briefly on the whirlybird sidewalks of West Philadelphia but we negotiated successfully with him and his whiffle-ball bat. In the end, he permitted us to realize our full creative vision before he whiffle-batted the crap outta some hardy weeds. Are you hiring? Because we’re lowering. If a couple of sweethearts can’t achieve “Radar Love” then perhaps they could settle for “Radar Like” or “Radar BFFs.” Behold the weary idiom, it is low-sodium, and behold the soda, it is low-odium, and behold the coda, it is low-podium. May your edifices crumble merrily after we depart and may your finest peoples endorse our ruckuses. See you at the Joy on Fire corner of the world, Tigresses and Tigers, and in fond, fond anticipation of that, we offer you our selected photography, please see below.