STG Dub Massive vs Kenny's Westside Pub - May 5 2023

video upload by suitandtieguy

"My opening set for electronic jam band Chachuba at Kenny's Westside Pub in Peoria IL May 5 2023.

Since I was opening for a high energy (not to be confused with Hi-NRG) electronic jam band, I decided to keep my set as low-key as possible. My personal gravity is extremely strong with ambient dub, so I went with that. I would really like to explore this dynamic more in these circles. Hopefully this gig wasn't the end of it.

Something that has bothered me about my live music over the past 15 years or so is that I have wanted an extemporaneous approach, but the tools I chose were more suited to improvisation than composition, because flexibility is more important to me than structure.

What this means is that with very specific exceptions, I've been playing electronic free jazz for 15 years and the stress level hit a point where I just didn't even enjoy playing any more. I would spend my entire gig having a slow-motion panic attack, terrified that what I was doing was boring and made no sense whatsoever.

I started using a tool called The Force by a brand which used to be a division of a legendary Japanese home audio company but is now in the brand basket of an MI corporation that has many faces. I spent years working with it as a sound design tool but never live, and late last year I threw up my hands in frustration with a Very Complicated live rig I spent years building and chucked it all in favour of this thing ... and I can now do TUNES again. This silly looking, horribly typecast box lets me finally interact with an electronic composition in a way that I could do as a bandleading organist with tight relationships with a drummer and a guitarist.

I have some plans to re-incorporate "electronic free jazz" into my sets but I have to build a new (smaller) live rhythm section and it will require that I design and engineer at least three new products.

In the meantime, I'm pretty happy. I had no music-related anxiety about this gig. All of my visible stress was because my Suburban suffered a transmission failure right after leaving my studio, which delayed me 2 hours, but I still started on time. I also had forgotten how to use the Pigtronix Infinity 3 loopers, because their UX sucks, and they should be ashamed of themselves. I'll be designing my own MIDI controller for them soon which will solve some of its problems but those clowns need to get their act together. I think I wasted the first five minutes of my timeslot trying to figure out why they weren't doing what they were supposed to do. (I cut that part out. It was embarassing.)

Like all of my sets, there is an intro, incidents, and interstitials. This is a tracklist:

0:00 - Intro - Suitscape in Abm
4:00 - National Suicide: Military Aid to the Soviet Union (Ebm 70 BPM)
23:00 - Suitscape in Bbm
24:53 - Dub Force Rising (70 BPM Fm)
37:55 - Suitscape in Cm
40:33 - Summertime: Temporary Love (80 BPM Gm)
50:58 - Outro - Suitscape in Dm

I'd like to thank Chachuba for insisting that I open for them, and Kenny's Westside Pub staff for being so hospitable and their owner for being gracious and generous to me. Kenny's also shot and recorded this gig, and livestreamed it. That is so damn cool.

Also, I am contractually obligated to mention periodically, but not constantly, that I am a Hammond USA company artist. They make great stuff like the XK-1c I'm playing at this gig and if you're using anyone else's products for digital Hammond sounds you should probably re-evaluate your choices. I have been playing vintage Hammond consoles since 1998 and ever since I got the XK-1c I haven't felt that hole in my electronic music that existed before, where I had no connection to my roots. I could write paragraphs about this but I need to go to bed.

http://chachuba.bandcamp.com/
http://kennyswestside.com/
http://hammondorganco.com/
http://suitandtieguy.com/"