blakejonesmusic
local music, local arts, The Underground Garden

It’s hard living a double life.
You know…the dayjob with the medical insurance and steady income and
that other part of your life that makes it all worth living.
It’s even harder when that double life gets divided into further little pieces.
One starts feeling like a person with multiple personality disorder.
And sometimes, one yearns for a day off! (laughs)

I just finished stuffing a few envelopes with a CD and our promo info to send
to a couple of magazines.
I’m trying to get some notice for our new album.

One has a limited amount of time. The trouble is, there’s so much to do.

We live in a world now where a musician can be his own record label, but that
involves contacting college and internet radio, online and print ‘zines and blogs, staying on top of
websites like facebook and myspace, booking gigs, trying to make new out-of-town
contacts to get the band out and heard…..the list becomes long and the hours grow short.

Oh yeah. And you need to write some good songs.

Summertime was a busy and productive time for The Trike Shop:
Plenty of gigs in and out of town while also spending time promoting our new CD
The Underground Garden via the internet and the good ol’ US Postal System.

And now we’re running into Fall.
Our goals for the coming season:
1) Increase the number of gigs we
do out-of-town
2) Continue to spread the word about the new CD by trying to get some more notice in blogs, podcasts, magazines, etc. (Watch for some news in the next couple of weeks about a song of ours being included in a UK publication!)
3) Lay the foundation for our tour of England coming up this Spring.

I just noticed that this blog is on the blogroll of FresnoBeehive.com. I read that blog daily. There are several other blogs that I keep up with on a daily or nearly daily basis. Those are all listed below on my ‘blogroll’.
Talk aboutchyer ‘connectivity’ and ‘inter-reliance’ and ‘underground railroads of communication’—blogs really do serve these functions in today’s world and specifically in the arts/entertainment world around this and many other towns. Thanks to all who keep us up on the local music news.

p.s. posts have been sparce because (choose one or two or all):
*was living through all the gigs I’d been plugging all summer
*school started, and that’s how I make my daily bread, and it’s crazy getting back into the swing
—Thanks for y our patience: I hope the posts will come fast and furious now.

Olly Neasham (pictured above), hailing from Bolton, UK (north of Manchester), is coming to the West Coast to do some shows.

Olly has played England’s edition of International Pop Overthrow Festival before, but now he would be travelling the West Coast. Following this whole “Underground Garden”, we-are-all-connected kinda vibe, the director of the IPO, David Bash, tagged me and said we might connect as this guy is looking to book some more shows to help fill up his calendar in the U.S. .

So…here’s what we got for him in the Fresno area:
He’s opening the show for the Post-ArtHop party at Tokyo Garden on Thursday, August 5th.(9:30ish?)
On FRIDAY, August 6th, with the gracious help of [musician, promoter, all-around-good-guy] Steve Ono and the Fresno Folk Society, we’ve got a show that
includes sets by myself, Steve, Omar of Ballad: The Memory, and, of course Olly Neasham.

Then, Neasham moves on to some IPO fest shows:
Los Angeles–Aug.7th
Portland–Aug.11
Seattle–Aug.18

Whichever area you live in….check this travelling songwriter out!
Hopefully, we’ll meet him again as The Trike Shop travels back to England in Late Spring 2011.

playing the IPO fest Sunday and will be on their new CD compilation!

I knew that this would be a busy summer.
I did it on purpose. I wanted to accomplish some things.
Spent the first 1/2 on the phone
and in the mail—trying to promote the new CD and
set up a bunch of gigs for the band.–and now, it’s
like we’re tipping over the first domino…and they’re all
starting to fall fast and furious.
We’re playing Los Angeles Sunday (July 25), and then Visalia
the Saturday after that (July 31)..and then some gigs
closer to home. (Oh yeah, and tonight I finished editing then delivered the
Spencer/Morris recordings I wrote about a couple posts
down the way…)
I think I need a Summer Vacation!

We’re at the beginning of a whole slew o’ gigs here in mid-summer.
An interesting one happened a week or so ago.
Part of Fresno’s “Art-Hop”…a First Thursday night of galleries staying
open and the unafraid-to-leave-the-northern-enclaves-of-suburbia
coming out to check out the pulse of downtown and the local arts.

We played in a new store called “All Things Fresno”.
Many folks cruised in and out…..but when some of your bestest pals come by…
that’s when it’s good.

Hats off to my friends (pictured above) Ron and Fran who can talk your ear off about
the value of true and authentic music…from the garage to the sweaty club stage…these
are two friends who know it, have lived it, and can tell us all a thing or three.
I’m more than thankful for such as these.—pictured just outside the venue on a break.

what else to say but….”God Save the Village Green” and “God Save the Kinks”!

Tony

Aileen

It’s always a mix between ‘sadness’ and ‘thanksgiving for what was’ when a place
closes down. On one hand you wanna sigh and say ‘oh no’ because in a small and tight
community like ours, every little foothold is so important. On the other hand it’s a great
time in our ‘nothing lasts forever’ universe to show some gratitude for the work put it.

Aileen and Tony Imperatrice have run Ashtree Studios for around 8 years. In that time,
not only has the place facillitated and displayed their own work, but it’s been a venue
for the showing of other artists’ work, and, on occassion, a spot for performing artists.
The Rogue Festival made use of Ashtree as a performance venue and as a headquarters
for years and years.

Ashtree is closing it’s doors for now. There’ll be a chance to say ‘farewell’ and ‘thank you’
Saturday night fromo 6-10. It’s free. It’s a party. It’s a potluck.

There’ll be music (I know I’ll do an acoustic set from 7:45-8:15). There’ll be food. There’ll
be good company.

The Underground Garden project will receive it’s second showing.

Come on by! Everyone is more than welcome.

Thanks to Dale Stewart! He’s been coaching me on video editing.
One of the things I’ve been trying to do with this Underground Garden
Project is to document some of the stuff that goes on around here.
For me, that includes the history and the current work being done in
the arts/music scene here in the Fresno area.
I’ve shot a lot of raw footage, but was having a hard time uploading it,
and then editiing it.
Dale set me on the right path. I’m still a newbie…but it looks like I might finally
dive into the part of the Underground Garden Project that had been lying fallow:
short movies for YouTube etc.

The first few months of this year were a blizzard of activity, a long well-fought campaign, a big ol’
mess o’ gigs.

It’s time for cleaning up and organizing (literally, in the case of Whispermaphone Studios, figuritively in the case
of the collective mind of The Trike Shop) and then planning our next steps.

There are a lot of interesting opportunities floating our way, and we need to figure out which
ones to invest our time and energies into. The band is meeting Wednesday night.

In the meantime, look out for the second showing of the Underground Garden art piece at the farewell
party for Ashtree Studio near the end of this month.