The Raventones: News

The price of gas and the growing indifference of the bandleader towards traveling and live performance is showing in the calendar eh?

For those of you who have remained tuned, as requested, here is the latest from somewhere behind the green guitar:
(sound of beer swilling)
uh..yeAH! We're concentrating on several projects involving recording and video and even other musicians. The main computer in the Mothership of Love is being replaced in the next two weeks to something from this millenium, with skillful skill and speedy speed, so as to better serve you, our 209 fans with some fresh and excitingly empty soundscapes of various noises as well as the usual words and music stuff. More to come. Really!

However just for something to do, we just put trk's 1990's solo albums "water wears the stone" and "ghosts of dreams" up on cdbaby. Hear the Tweeter in full angsty form, with a higher voice, different basses and acoustic guitars, no drums. Check it out!

http://www.cdbaby.com/trkelley

A new improved foamy spot for all things trk, you can check in at www.trkelley.net. yes she finally got her own name as a domain.

Not much artistic happening lately, between holidays, storms and unexpected guests. But here's a little movie bit we put together for fun, just because those strings look so shockingly blue on the black bass .....we HAD to make a video..... more later.
For you who like to keep track of a all of TR's weather and other interesting calamities, be sure and check out http://trkelley.blogspot.com once in awhile. And don't forget to stay toooned.............

Hope to see some of you at our Holiday Market on Saturday, The food! The Fun! The pretty sparkly good smelling ambiance! The heinous traffic and cold damp darkness, ah thanksgiving. We're actually skipping the whole big-bird-on-a--plate holiday thing, might catch up to it at Christmas. If you want to catch us playing live in person, this will probably be your last chance to do so until next summer sometime....

We came, we saw, we talked, rocked & flapped. See a Flickr slideshow with all the highlights. I may post an mp3 of this one as well, stay tooned for download details. Still staring out the window, gradually recovering from the sensory load, the heavy burden of fun, the newness of strange FOOD! the overabundant richness of love, the singular jolts of camaraderie, the spontaneous campfire singalong of the National Anthem in multipart heartfelt harmony, at 1 am in the moonlight by our wacky clan of autistic adults in the woods. It was transcendently weirdly beautiful. Many people said our show was the highlight of their retreat weekend. I say, hey, we ALL made it happen together. This was definitely the best retreat yet, the TENTH annual....only our third time, but we look forward to next year! Finally i get to go to summer camp for Special Kids Like Me! :)
And continuing as usual to live in my Airstream, just towing it somewhere else! Fmailiarity and a very smooth transition experience! Touring is possible. Autistic escape pod and sensory support system of living in a tidy Airstream fulltime makes it possible. Kudos to Randy and Zane for all the infrastructure support.
Now some toast, and off to bed.

Alright ! Our first live show to download, a set at Eugene Saturday Market June 23, 2007. Recorded with a Sony minidisc from the stage, it captures the gritty fun and energy of the Market. 98 MB mp3. Get it Here.

Greeting all, long time no write, here anyway. WE just got back from the Oregon Country Fair and had a great time out there despite the usual conditions of dust and heat. We'd like to thank our stage managers and sound crews for making us feel welcome and sound good.
Before we went to the Fair, we put together a CD featuring seven live cuts, plus the studio version of "starstruck enterprise". This is strictly limited edition straight-from-the-artist stuff. Soundboard AIFFs (not mp3s) burned on quality TDK and Memorex CDR media, lovingly labeled by TR in peel-n-stick mode (she's very accurate and straight in that department!) packed in a slim sleeve with minimal paperwork, ALIVE & FLAPPING captures the Raventones at their raging live improv best!
ALIVE & FLAPPING is available direct from the Raventones in person or on the website for $5.00 postpaid to US addresses. See the store page for ordering info.

Lastly, we will be playing at the Emerald Empire Hempfest on Saturday July 21, exercising our right to peacable assembly and free speech to rally for medicine, fuel, food and fiber!

We've updated the LISTEN page so that all the songs are downloadable as MP3s. Yes! Take one! They're free!
Did some great jamming with friends this weekend, hope to put some highlights of that up somewhere in our cyberempire as well this week. Saturday market coming up on the 23rd oh whatever shall we wear? :)

Don't look for The Raventones on myspace, we moved out back to the country. I was right, it's not a good fit for our vibe. It's like, the Mall, yaknow?
All the late breaking news from this slow little band will be right here on the only band site that's really needed. No horror movie trailers, profanity-filled bulletins, winkyblinkyboingy overload and other obnoxious cybertrash.
Next week - The Raventones Invited a Bass Player to Jam - stay tooned!

Hi All,
For those that follow my other more personal blogs, there's been a FUBAR glitch and i do not have access to them for updating. Not to worry, i've set up a new outpost at http://trkelley.blogspot.com

Music news! Writing new songs, Assembling a quicky live CD to offer at the Fair and Sat Mkt. ..... deciding what to wear, debating a remodel on the headwear, learning some actual folk songs but twisting them into couchy interstellar folkjazz (example: "I've been workin on the railroad")

It's sunny and springish here. Going to take my gee-tar outside and twang for the nice birdies. .^

... And it's a good thing too, we're out of firewood. We have final dates and times for our Oregon Country Fair sets, pop over to the calendar to see.

TR likes to write a lot these days and is always tweaking the cyberreality, so if you like this sort of stuff, be sure and visit all of our fine Raventones-associated sites on the web, they're all different flavors and packed with chewy goodness.
http://www.myspace.com/theraventones, which features all the usual myspace bling plus, at least one new sound bit uploaded every week, more or less.

After much urging by younger and hipper fans, we've entered myspace, refurbishing and remodeling and finally moving in to the page that AHK started for us last year. So go ahead, invite me to be yr friendly neighbor. I hate the dumb ads, but when new friends invite you to a favorite club, don't stand there and criticize the wallpaper, order a drink and check out the band. :)

This is the recording that introduced the public to TR Kelley back in 1993. While surfing today i ran across this CD in the Smithsonian! This album was long out of print in physical form, it's amazing to see it available again. i don't know who gets the money for it, doesn't matter, i feel awed that something i did is in the freakin SMITHSONIAN, especially with the topical subject matter of the song (Clearcut Disillsion - logging). I
THe entire albums is an excellent snapshot of Eugene's folk community in the early 90's, some of these people went on to bigger projects, some have disappeared.

I entered Eugene's original music scene on that session, all due to the fact that i happened to get up the nerve to play a living room coffeehouse gig at the a community house in Eugene the same night this new guy in town from New York showed up and started talking to everyone, setting up open mikes and coffehouses at various venues, stirring up the scene and gettin gthe Fast Folk people interested in Eugene as a folk hot-spot. Tom Intondi was a rare musician, the kind that knit together other musicians and subsumed his own ego to the greater community. ... including inviting the shy but talented bar-band survivor geek from the coffeehouse to play bass with him and submit one of her own songs for consideration to this national project. Tom passed in 1994 from cancer. His music lives on.

Stardate: Now. Captain, a groovy lifeform has been spotted on the bandstand ... He's got bigger hands and feet than me, and dast i say, even bigger ears than i had at that age. That's no red alert, that's my kid. ZWKelley came up with a cool bass riff and let us Raventones jam along with it. This is all on the fly, i love how ZW digs the flow. He's been listening to me play since he was a fetus and i had the tuesday night piano bar gig at Jo Federigos back in uh......1993. he knows how i play, it's in his DNA.
Yeah, just in case you were still harboring singer-songwriter illusions for me (it was a "phase", mom) i'm a bass & guitar twanger at heart, that's me on nasty twang-o-fuzz baritone. We call this branch of our twisted genre tree "psychedelic surf trance bendable metal" :) We're going to record this weekend, this time with more bass in the mix.
http://www.savantservants.net/music/surfzilla.mp3

When we play this instrumental trio format maybe we should be The StellerJayTones, ... aggro and raucous big loud bird noises SKWAWK! .... compared to our usual cleaner dark Raven spirit mojothing .....

It's not worth it, even if i did happen to get paid, which rarely happens at these events.
I really and truly for sure promise myself (and my fans who care about how things sound) i will not play anymore restaurants, bars, cafes or any place where good-sounding music or intelligible audio is not the purpose for the building. No matter how nice the people, how sincere and worthy the benefit, TR Kelley and the Raventones will not be playing there.
I haven't been good at saying no or qualifying the indelible parameters to sincere and good-hearted people.
If people want to hear me, they'll have to make an effort to book a good room, and that means money, which none of these beautiful idealistic sincere enviro-peace outfits have. So thanks for asking, but next time I'll send you a CD you can play on the boom-box, and my best wishes. But I will not allow myself to be auditorily and financially abused like that anymore. I'll pay my sociopolitical dues in other ways.
See you outside at some summer gigs where the "room" is big enough for all your noise AND mine. :)

Randy made this, with some help from a couple TV studios and our camera wielding freinds Brandon Farmer, Zane Kelley ,Tara Kemp, Neil Lyda, Melinda Pride, Dave Roux. Perversely, we can't view it correctly on any of our old computers (400mhz slow) but when viewed on a computer from this actual century (hi tech friend in town) it looks as intended!
Now Randy's all excited to get a newer old Mac to work on video.... fun!

So much to do. so what's the point, at least i'm never bored! More school gigs on the horizon, a few festivals this summer and some version of a new album by mid July, i promise. For now, working on making new sound patches on the Vox Tonelab pedalboard, some voices for the Hagstrom bass. I'm bemoaning the fact that i need do fabricate a double-strap arrangement for it as well, as my scoliosis-related back problems are not improving with age. Drilling holes in a vintage bass that isn't really mine is not an option. The head-diving Haggis has been my main practice axe here at home for the last couple of weeks. i figure if i get facile and dexterous on that double-strung truck, anything else will be a breeze. I leave it laying around looking all red & sexy and i find it easy to pick up for several hours of enjoyment each day.

I'm also finding a lot of new sounds in it, new ideas for tuning and the growing concept for another album, a strictly instrumental thing featuring my collection of odd low-strung twangy things and no yowly yodeling or drums. Many autistic fans will probably thank me, they seem to be the ones with the most honest opinions about my voice when it bothers them, and many of them have problems with drums as well. Sensory differences call for different menus. I love honesty. My voice is unique and has qualities that a lot of people do not find pleasing, a sort of squashed-cat squall with a cross of raspy southern soul melisma and unintelligable meowing and other fretlessness. It's what i got. People sometimes tell me i sound old-school black, "like the blues."
:)
It's what was playing when my brain was soaking up the environment as my didies were soaking up baby whiz. I can't hear the world in 12 notes, only infinite colors, and tonality and inflection when words can't be used because of the man or brain "damage".....
I admired Geddy Lee when i was a teen in the mid 70's. The lead singer of now-famous progrock intelligensia Rush was then just a skinny homely guy with a really weird voice. He also happened to be an aggressively melodic bassist in a rock trio, and is in my top-5 musical influences of all time. Weird voice? why thank you, it ensures that i won't be mistaken for anyone else, which suits me fine. I do get compared to Joanne Rand and Alice DiMicele here in the Northwest. Then i hear all three of us compared to Janis Joplin, like all white girls of a certain age with big brash voices that fall outside the genres and hearing ranges of polite society.

I forgive the casual public, the biggest handle in the room is easiest for people to grab, and most people value common interest over arcane knowledge. How much i still learn as i turn into an old lady with an ever-deepening set of rusty pipes!
At least i'll be a monster on the 8-string bass..... :)

for fans of my electronic word worlds, remember to check out

" radio calico"
http://madmadj.blogspot.com - the general soapbox and rant-o-matic with weirdness and foam. links to everything in my universe

"Route F Box 13" http://stagecoachroad.blogspot.com - local and leisurely life on the river with weather and history and trains and birds.

"cat.a.tonic" http://meowfaces.blogspot.com - the all-cat channel. Truly for the devotee.

The band's mode for this year is that we will go where we are called if the basic conditions are met (No generators, tobacco, drunks yelling for Skynyrd covers, TV sets & clattering cutlery, etc). Looks like we'll finally be able to make to a yet-undisclosed Corvallis location in March, a peace benefit, stay tooned for details.
We've also visited Kennedy Middle School again, with more school visits likely in the future. I would have not believed it myself a year ago.... schools! Bonus for you regulars; here's a new funktacular version of that perennial trkelley favorite, "One Size Fits All", as performed by the Raventones at KMS. http://www.raventones.com/audio/THE_RAVENTONES-One_Size_Fits.mp3
On more familiar turf, catch us down in Cottage Grove next Friday, a friendly progressive pub scene over at the Axe & Fiddle. Fries! Cider! Beer & organic pizza! Walker T starts the show at 8-ish, us probably 9:30-10:00.......

or maybe it was an email chime, but in any case they asked us to come play. Go over to the calendar page & see who & when. :)

Wow. In the holiday rush i'd forgotten that we promised to play at the Deadwood Community Center fundraiser for a new roof. But hey, we're flexible and Deadwood is family, so last Saturday night we piloted the Dodge Beluga over to Deadwood. Teen-age roadies Zane and Mitchell moved all our gear, what a luxury. Those guys are an enthusiastic and useful support crew for the band, look for them helping out at shows this summer!
The Deadwood show was a multi-act event with a lot of talented performers on the bill including Linda Kanter, Cindy Forslev, Sunny Sundstrom, Brian the local tube amp genius and some other fine people who's names i don't remember. And the Raventones.... we went last twanging and chattering and looping out into some eccentric locally induced space. Randy compared me to storytelling legend 1960's Bill Cosby and ...i wept. Wow. I can't listen when i'm doing my thing, it's a one-way channel with that much current in the pipeline. And tape was not rolling. So it was one for the Creator and those that were in the Now.... they grokked it and that was the point. Well, really the point was a new roof for the DCC, and i was told we handily covered that.
We all had cozmik fun and looks like we might get together as a community for some music & food events at the DCC more often in the future. My people! My Neighbors, My watershed-mates!

School gigs! Yesterday we did a presentation at Kennedy Middle School, another great repercussion of the 8/25/06 Eugene Register-Guard newspaper story about TR Kelley, autistic musician. I have to admit i had a lot of trepidation about going BACK to the concept of middle school (junior high) which was Hell Incarnate for me 30+ years ago, very different time and place.
But KMS was a pure delight. They have "therapy dogs" running around in the school, taking in the assemblies, sniffing the visitors and providing a friendly touchstone of truth and reality in an often confusing place for people like me. I certainly appreciated having some fur-time while in a new place, thanks Molly.
Something about the presence of dogs or cats at gigs in so incredibly grounding and regulating to the humans present, no matter if it's a school, nursing home, grange hall or bar. Animal magic heals. I came i saw, i believed; schools have certainly changed for the better on so many levels. mEow! w00f!
So we played some twangy tunes, i blabbed, yakked, & rambled and got off topic & lost track of time ( how accurately autistic!). The students asked great questions and they even humored me on my request to make "rockstar lips" and headbang along and make fuzz-guitar noises. The sixth grade was very enthusiastic about that, the 7th & 8th grades seemed a little more self-conscious about looking silly, but they played along as well.
Like my newest hero Senator Barack Obama, i feel like if i can make a positive difference in the direction of social and spiritual evolution, then it is my duty to do so for the good for the people. And from my point of view, teaching young people new ideas and attitudes plants the seeds of the greatest potential for change. If we helped ONE KID feel better about themselves, if we made ONE KID think twice about making fun of someone else, then it was richly worth it. Hell it was worth it anyway, the sound was great, the people (staff and students) treated us with great respect, and it was just FUN!!!! Thanks to Amy Burrow, beloved teacher and advocate for My People, and chief concert instigator, and the rest of the great staff at KMS, for setting this up!