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Sitting in the same tiny room for twelve months can make you a bit stir-crazy. Carolyn and I, on more than one occasion, have asked ourselves “what the hell have we been doing all day? all week? all year?” Sometimes the dishes will pile up or the dust-bunnies will start hopping about the floor, which admittedly, I’ve been less than attentive to lately. It’s easy to get a little melancholy when it gets dark around 5pm and you work out of your house.
So, I said, why don’t we just take a look at what Monkeywhale has done this year. Surely we haven’t been as lazy as we THINK we’ve been. So, here goes. A quick recap as a list in no particular order followed by a long thank you list in no particular order:
1. worked out of our house
2. Shot a documentary as part of the international documentary challenge
Post Production on Saving the Monkeywhale, 2009.
3. Shot, produced et al., an award-winning 48 hour film which also happened to be a musical
Mike working on the storyboards for Love is Dead. 48 hour film festival, 2009.
David taking a nap after shooting for 24 hours straight. 48 film festival, 2009
4. Put together a very successful 3 day MUSIC FESTIVAL
Holy Ghost Tent Revival. Save the Monkeywhale Festival, 2009
Bruce Piephoff. Save the Monkeywhale Festival, 2009
Matty Sheets, Katharine Whalen and Josh from House of Fools. Save the Monkeywhale Festival, 2009
5. Participated in the 2nd Annual ArtBeat Festival by interviewing:
i. Dmitry Sitkovetsky, conductor of the Greensboro Symphony and the European Strings
ii. Preston Lane, artistic director of Triad Stage
iii. Elena DeAngelis, Managing Director of the Greensboro Opera Company
iv. Josephus III, spoken word artist
Shot 4 dotmatrix project performances and posted 3 videos.
Shot, edited, and posted seventy-seven Harvey’s Kitchen Sessions. Yes. Seventy-Seven. We actually shot more than 77 but we’ve only POSTED 77.
Here’s a list of those 77 plus ones I haven’t edited yet:
The Radials, Martha Bassett, Citified, Josh Neas, Molly McGinn, Pete Schoth, Holy Ghost Tent Revival, Sirius B., Eric Robertson, Mike Tourek, Big Bang Boom, The Crap Rock Allstars, The Tremors, Laurelyn Dossett, Joe Garrigan, The Garrigan Brothers, The Alcazar Hotel, Katharine Whalen’s Lucky, Come Hell or High Water, Brian O’Sullivan, Sam Frazier, Frank Stasio, Justin Catanoso, Bruce Molsky, Corporate Assassins, Bart Trotman, SeaHorses, Blind Pilot, Andy Coon, Filthybird, Hiram Ring, Lost in the Trees, Brenda Schleunes, The Never, Sam Quinn + Japan Ten, The BuzzKillz, Albina Savoy, Ray Burnett, Jeri Rowe, Irata, Stephen Van Vuuren, Brian Clarey, Lovinder Gill, Ed Cone, Richard Clabaugh, Samantha Crain, Frontier Ruckus, The Lake Isle, Jim Avett, A Tribute to Mark Sandman w/ the Alcazar Hotel, Stephaniesid, Now You See Them, Invisible, Josh West, Hope for a Golden Summer, Tim Betts Band, House of Fools, Colin Hay, Emily Moore Band, Jill Andrews, Steel Train, The Waybacks, Nate Nelson, Thayer Sarrano, Lyndsay Wojcik, Pearl and the Beard and a number of others …
We also appeared on Frank Stasio’s show, The State of Things, for WUNC, were listed as one of the web’s best out-of-context concert series by Paste Magazine (helping create an entirely new Meme), appeared in Go Triad, Yes Weekly and the News and Record, and garnered an audience of over 78,000 viewers. Our sessions appear on over 33 different websites including Muzzle of Bees, Paste Magazine, German, French, Australian and English Music blogs. Many of our sessions get more than a thousand views in the first day of posting. Oh, and we’re now syndicated via Roku and Boxee which means our audience is increasingly watching the sessions on their televisions.
All that along with doing our commercial jobs which pay the bills.
So what does all this mean? I have no idea. Carolyn and I still work out of our house which we rent. We have lovely neighbors and we just adopted two very special cats named Leo and Eleanor and no we haven’t been approached about a reality television show.
Here’s the thing. We’ve met some really fantastic people this year, people we would not have met had we not gone headlong into these projects, so even though the year was something less than a financial success the personal rewards were great. There’s also no way we could have accomplished any of these things without a great deal of help from some really fantastic people.
BIG 2009 MONKEYWHALE SHOUT-OUT
Anna Pearsall and Michael
Chris Johnson
Shanti Calabrese
Matthew Morrison
Katharine our neighbor
Matt Thomas
Ueli Schweitzer
Matty Sheets
Barry Staples
The spirit of Baffi Lungi
The spirit of Sharky
Heather Moore
Donna Smith
Kara Green
Alex and Jenny Maness
Joe Garrigan
Heineken
Badminton
The Flat Iron
John Rudy and Europa Cafe
Zach Hadgraft
Adam Braun
Driveway Moore
Rosemary and Owen McGee
Myles McGee
Mark Wagoner
James Marshall Owen
William Dawson,
Katharine Whalen
Cece Mathis
Don Ravon Gaye
Josh Neas
Lisa Dames
David Butler
Jennifer Dalton
Emily Stuart
Emily Sulecki
Kit Dean
Mikey Roohan
Tom Ehlers
Stephanie Mirabelli
Jimmy Rhine
Jamie Coggins
Nine Mile Records
Compass Records
Ramseur Records
Trekky Records
Family Records
Good Ship Records
Doc at Blind Tiger
Wendy Lou and Fred Gillespie
Molly McGinn
Chris Jackson
J Eric Ussery
Diego Diaz
and Frank
Jim Avett
Sean Coon
Andy Coon
Jeri Rowe
Ryan Snyder
Brian Clarey
Christian and Courtney Reynolds
Julie Welch
Ashby Pettigrew
Carole Perkins
Frank Stasio
David McLean
Pete and Anne Schroth
German Valle
The good people at 223 Post
Mike Tourek
Emily Moore
Betsy Blake
Joshua West
Wayne Reich
Mark and Janis Dougherty
Altina Layman
Danielle Wagner
Mike Lowe
Chuck Folds
Dan Kelly
Stephen Van Vuuren
Matt Mandarano
The King’s English
Decoration Ghost!
2010 is shaping up to be an interesting year. I’ll begin it with the resolution that we’ll only produce a total of 24 kitchen sessions as we focus our attention on new projects. That’s 2 a month. We’re already booked through April with bands playing from as close as Greensboro and as far afield as the United Kingdom. I resolve to read more, to create more art, and to finish pre-production on The Pongist whilst simultaneously paying the bills through better commercials and documentaries. Who’s in for the 48 hour film festival in 2010?
I hope you all have a great New Year and thank you for supporting us. The “you” also includes David Moore who took the Aycock Historic District Badminton Trophy away from Aycock this Thanksgiving, buried a venison sausage in the snow, and braved an entire bottle of ginseng eyedrops for “science.”
« « Previous Post: Pearl and the Beard: Behind the Scenes | Next Post: February 1 » »
Here’s something I’ve been looking forward to for months. Thanks in large part to our neighbor Heather and the kind staff of the Weatherspoon Art Museum we gained access to the inner workings of the art installation process and were able to interview Leo in our kitchen.
This was a collaborative effort as part of our [...]
Two songs just aren’t enough. They came to our kitchen, braved the cold and the drizzle in the back yard and ate Indian food with us before returning to Brooklyn, NY. Fear not, they’ll be returning to Greensboro on March 13th as part of our Monkeywhale presents series …
Many thanks to Jocelyn, Emily and Jeremy [...]
For the past 2 years monkeywhale and our kind neighbors have thrown a Halloween party. Nothing fancy. A couple of gazebos, a keg, strings of lights across the lawn and a few lanterns. We also project films on the barn that have fallen into the public domain … like, Nosferatu for instance. Creepy and a [...]
An Apache Relay is the pre-colonial version of a courier system. Chiefs would compete against each other to see who could have a message delivered in the shortest amount of time. A Relay of 8 scouts could hand a message over a quarter of a mile in 3 minutes. Apparently. Just imagine if they [...]
Lyndsay, a neighbor to our fellow monkeywhalers in Asheville, NC came to our attention due to the insistence of Dulci, Shane and Jason of Now You See Them (a prior visitor to the kitchen). Dulci and Shane actually accompany Lyndsay on this song along with the very talented Matt Williams.
Who is this Lyndsay Wojcik? (pronounced [...]
Here’s another song from a very special evening that began with a lovely set by Bruce Piephoff (a longtime friend who inaugurated the Harvey’s Kitchen series). Jim Avett is father to Scott and Seth Avett, of the Avett Brothers who were recently signed to Columbia Records.
The dotmatrix project is a monthly concert series which is [...]
January 4th, 2010 at 2:16 pm
I’m in for the film festival, can’t wait!!!