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.”