Lots of you, I know, were interested in the photography workshop that Jim Kronmiller had on the far side of the state, but with time and schedules is was hard to get things lined up. Wait no more. Kronmiller Creative Portraiture is holding a weekend fall photography workshop for families on October 24 –26, at Two Mile Run County Park. Leave the electronic devices behind (cell phones for emergency use only) and enjoy the great colors of fall in our own back yard. Bring your own tent, food and supplies.
Campfires will be available along with loads of fall photography instruction. Electric, water as well as a heated shower will be available. Costs: Camping $34 for two nights (per tent), and workshop for entire weekend $60 per person.Only limited space available.
Call (814) 673-0900 for registration or more info and make sure to visit the studio at 206 Seneca St. 2nd Floor Suite 25, Oil City, PA 16301 in the historic National Transit Building.
Brother Bean is moving its shows back to Saturday night which make me giggle with glee. However, this Friday's show, Hello Tokyo, has been canceled. I'm not telling my daughter, her wrath will be Biblical in nature.
When I was an undergrad we focused on useful stuff like PostModernism vs Marxism, not stealing fiberglass bears.
What do you expect from a group called the Independent Order of Odd Fellows?
Dear mother, I died but I didn't go to heaven, instead I arrived in Bdin. The postman frequently passes by on his rusty "Ukraine" bicycle, thus, contrary to all laws, you will have news from me. To tell you the truth, I haven't gone very far here either, since I've never been much good with languages. I have remained a poet. But being a poet among the mute is like being a gravedigger in the Beyond. (By the way, I saw the graves of Levski and Botev.) My contemporaries have long since become classics, while I'm left munching sunflower seeds on the edge of the Canon. Otherwise, I tend the Tsar's sheep, and thus earn my daily bread. I have met two kinds of people. Some say - "We'll divert the river here!" Others say - "We'll divert the river there!" My mind was torn, I sat in the middle. The water poured over me. As before, I have no companions.
I walk alone on the banks of the river. I look upstream, waiting for it to bring either some chest of drawers, or some votive candle, or a nest to build a home in, or to meet the woman I love.
Brother Bean has been bringing in local, national, and international bands for free shows for almost three years now. It's the epicenter of music talent in Venango County, one of my favorite places to while away a few hours and is breaking my heart.
First was the announcement that shows were moving from Saturday to Friday night which with my schedule meant that I would miss 40 out 52 shows per year. Then came the coup de grace, co-owner Gwen Kahler emailed me to tell me that she and her husband Bruce were preparing to pull up stakes and head out West. And while I'm delighted they'll be able to spend time doing what the want to do, the news left a big emptiness not only in the prospect for quality local music, but in my heart as well. I'm close to making it to the Kubler-Ross stage of acceptance, but I don't like it. Not one bit.
Gwen Kahler of Brother Bean's Top 10 List for September:
Top ten favorites in no particular order
1. Sweet Potato French Fries at The Villa in Oil City. The yellow dining room booths make them even better! And with butter and brown sugar they are amazing.
2. The Bike Trail. We don’t get on it often enough, but really do appreciate having it nearby and love taking walks along the river. (well, Bruce does a version of wobbly roller blading while I walk; I always see people approaching him with a look of wonder and alarm…”I wonder if I should take cover? Is this guy gonna fall over on me?”)
3. All the places to swim for free around here. Swimming holes in the river and creeks.
4. All the different colors of green in the spring. I think it’s amazing how many shades there are when all the trees and plants are recovering from their winter sleep.
5. The small town wonder of being in a store and knowing so many people that you spend your time talking instead of shopping.
6. The sense of community that is growing in the music and arts “scene”. I am so excited over the growing cooperation between venues especially.
7. Local musicians (who are legion!) that have so graciously helped us build the brotherbean music venue.
8. The brucchetta at the new Italian place in Oil City's Arlington Hotel.
9. Watching people watch some of the strange looking young adults that come to stay with us! Musicians and artists get pretty creative and I like to watch people observe them.
10. And, of course, hanging out at brotherbean. I have the coolest job in the world. It’s like all my friends come over to hang out with me in my giant living room!
Brother Bean is located at 2803 SR 257, Seneca, PA 16346 814-677-0232 HOURS: Mon.-Fri. 7:30 am to 9:00 pm, Sat. 9 am to 9 pm
This Friday, October 3rd, Hello Tokyo rolls in from Brooklyn for a no-cover show from 7-9pm.
SOLID ROCK CAFE PA SYSTEM FOR SALE
$2400 matched pa system mackie 16-channel board in rack qsc - 1220 - amp pa amp with connector cables balanced main and subwoofer speaker (electrovox)
contact Gwen at 814-677-0232
I took my daughter to see Wicked(again) for her birthday, while at Pittsburgh's Benedum, I couldn't help but notice that SRU prof Steve Hawk was playing in the orchestra.
A new exhibit opens today at the Erie Art Museum. Beginning today through March 2009, the museum will feature the first North American museum exhibition of East African textiles and will host guests from Kenya and Tanzania, who will be participating in a variety of events scheduled in October. Admission is $10 per person with a free public opening reception is scheduled for Gallery Night Friday, October 10, 2008 from 6 - 10 p.m. (via)
. . . you as an artist will be required to give us a detailed set list (names of songs and the person who wrote them)which we will hold you to, please be sure it is you, ABSOLUTELY NO COVERS OR VERSIONS OF COVERS WILL BE ALLOWED!!!
Don't forget that The Venango Digital Film Association is issuing a casting call for the filming of two short digital films in conjunction with the 2008 Film Festival to be held in September. These films have a small number of roles available and they are as follows: A 20-something woman, a 40’s to 50’s woman, a man in his late 20’s, a man in his 40’s and a number of extras. Those interested should be at the Latonia Theatre in Oil City at 10:00 a.m. on August 30 to audition for these parts. Additional information can be obtained by calling the Latonia at (814) 677-1260. A 300,000-square-foot, $30 million film production facility is coming to Pittsburgh's Strip District.
I was psyched to pick up a bakelite body 1949 Kodak Pony 828 for $ .69 at a thrift store yesterday - It's not valuable or anything, but I'm going to clean it up tomorrow and then mod some 120 film to fit it. Look for results in a month or so.
Pittsburgh Opera holds open auditions for supernumeraries (extras) for its fall productions on Tuesday, September 23 at 7:00pm at Pittsburgh Opera in the Strip (2425 Liberty Ave.) Adult men of all ethnicities wanted for Samson & Dalila (Oct. 18-26) and The Grapes of Wrath(Nov. 15-23). To register, contact Iris Lin at 412-281-0912 x266 or ilin@pittsburghopera.org
Don't forget -- applications for the Pittsburgh alt-craft show Handmade Arcade are due on Sunday, August 17. Apply online at www.handmadearcade.com Donald Erb, a Cleveland avant -garde electronic music composer has died. Jerry Wexler, who coined the phrase "Rhythym and Blues" has died.
Yep. That's my honey bunny on pg 1 of the News-Herald this morning storytelling at the Taste of Franklin. If you're in the market for a storyteller at your next shindig, drop her a line about availablity and pricing.
I'm very pleased to announce that the Butler Area Public Library and the Pennsylvania Humanities Council have contracted me to facilitate the Pennsylvania Writers book discussion program at the Butler Public Area Library.
Over four monthly meetings, beginning in September and taking place on the Second Thursday of each month, we will read four different literary works:
It's going to be a ton of fun. Contact the Butler Area Library to sign up, there's no fee involved and books are provided - but move quickly, space is limited.
This week I'm reading How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle by Frances Willard for the Franklin Area Public Library's Summer Reading Program for Grownups. While I can't agree with all of her political stances (she was, after all, a driving force behind the Women's Christian Temperance Union), it's a fascinating view of early feminism and early cycling culture.
Don't forget today is the last day to apply for the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship.
The funding categories available for 2009 include:
. Visual Arts - Photography, Crafts, and Sculpture . Theater - New Performance Forms . Music - Jazz/Blues/World and Non Classical Music Composition . Literature - Fiction and Creative Non Fiction . Media Arts - Experimental and Animation . Arts Commentary - Perspectives on the Arts . Folk & Traditional Arts - Craft Traditions
In just a few short hours, Soulmobile takes the stage at Brother Bean to help celebrate Venangago-go's third birthday. If you love me, you'll be there from 7-9pm. If you've been waiting for a chance to check out the Bean, tonight's the night!
Speaking of Brother Bean, they have a:
mini-efficiency apartment is available for rent. trust me, when i say it's small...it's SMALL. but oh so efficient! $300 covers tv, utilities, internet, garbage, water, heat...everything but phone. it's furnished, you must be willing to live alone (only room for one person) and climb a ladder to the sleeping loft.surely there's some recent graduate out there wanting their own first place....this could be it....and it's easy to get a job out here in cranberry too!Call at 814-677-0232 or message on myspace.
Oil City artist Linda Lineman is featured in the latest issue of Porcelain Artist. And, BTW, the Pennsylvania Porcelain Artists state convention is coming to Franklin in September. That my friend, is the arts helping to drive the area's economic engine - 500 artists and families buying up hotel rooms, meals, and what not. Looking at Business.Net's national average of ~$400 spent per convention attendee per day, that's a big potential windfall for the region. My wife's favorite comedian, George Carlin, has died. Three films took the top prizes when awards were announced at the second annual Pittsburgh 48 Hour Film Project's "Best Of" screening Friday night.
Brother Bean's Book Club meets this Thursday to discuss the first 8 chapters of Howard Zinn'sPeople's History of the United States. The Club is free and open to the public and will meet once a month in June, July, and August.
Brad Yoder dropped by Brother Bean Saturday night for a two hour acoustic show. I had seen Yoder at the Oil Region Indie Fest and so had a pretty good idea of what to expect. He didn't whip out the tenor sax, Kenny-G style (a moment to acknowledge the poor tenor sax, an instrument now as scorned and ridiculed as any other, strictly because of one strangely coiffed 80s smoothy.), as he had when playing at the Fest, instead focusing on straightahead folky music.
Yoder plays a lot, logging over 150 performances annually, and drove probably over 100 miles to get to Brother Bean, and so, if he seemed tired at the start of the show, it was easy to cut him a little slack. Soon, he settled into a rhythm, moving smoothly from between song patter (one sample of which , before a song that deals with breakup of "a great local band", lead my wife and I into a long, giggly debate about the most unlikely band it could be about. I settled on "The Povertyneck Hillbillies", while her vote remained squarely on "Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers") to a greatest hits sort of show, ranging wide from early material to songs on his latest CD and even taking requests.
Yoder's music has been featured on CBS’s NUMB3RS, NPR’s Car Talk, the ABC Family Network’s Beautiful People, and the Dawson’s Creek 5th season DVD. With success like that, you know that he's not going to be edgy. Instead, his success grows from a combination of cleverly written mid-tempo folk, a confidence on stage, and a willingness to meet and greet the people who come to see him.
There's a clarity, a transparency, to his music. There aren't, two a cappella numbers aside, any tricks in his writing or performance style - think Rubber Soul-era Beatles and Blood on the Tracks-era Dylan. Within his performances (and by extension his album - for Yoder seems first and foremost to be performing artist and secondly a recording artist(albeit a prolific one)he seems to be creating a system - a world. He's not creating an epic, but instead relying on answerablity - using his art to explain answers that have already been raised in response to questions about society - can gay people be a seamless part of society? Why do we become so hard and angry in our culture? Why has religion become a tool of oppression rather than liberation? He attempts, in same way that Kant did, to place these disparate answers into a seamless system within his albums. "Reason cannot permit our knowledge to remain in an unconnected and rhapsodistic state, but requires that the sum of our cognitions should constitute a system." Kant writes in Critique of Pure Reason.
In other words, Yoder has chosen the perfect medium (or perhaps the medium has chosen him) - folky, smooth, well polished, even a little poppy to explain to us how issues are connected in a disconnected society - he's a teacher, metaphorically (and perhaps literally as well. I don't know, but he sure had a "cool teacher" vibe around him, and he speaks French real purty...). However, because such a system is ultimately impossible to finalize, pieces of melancholy, even anger seep into his writing. Here, he performs his reply to neo-cons misusing Christianity with his song. "WWJD?" from his latest album Someday or Never
Yoder has a fantasic website with downloads and the like, as well as a MySpace page. You should visit both.
Wal-Mart is cutting out the middleman - that is, record labels. Reframe is an attempt to get smaller films seen. I've given live Cop Shoot Cop shows to a lot of students who come into my office to talk music rather than writing. Now, former CSC frontman Tod A has a new band, Firewater, which is equally sonically fascinating, but in a completely different way.
While teaching English in Bangkok and Calcutta, Tod A. concocted an ambitious plan to tour India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey, and Iran with a microphone and a laptop computer, recording a new batch of songs with local musicians he met along the way. He checked into cheap hotels in Jodhpur, Lahore, and Peshawar and ordered up so-called nautch parties, with a traditional wedding band featuring a ululating singer and a G-rated belly dancer. None of the performers understood English. “They were a little confused,” he says. “I would play them the song and try spitting and making mouth noises to describe the beat that I wanted. [The result] was always something different, but always better.” Threadless' $10 teeshirt sale continues through midnight tonight. I went with "The Beginning", my daughter with "Shotgun", and my wife with "Permafront Pollution".
Threadless is also sponsoring a very interesting Lomography contest. "Natasha" is a newly translated Nabakov story. Free and Legal Downloads:
This weekend, of course, is the Oil Region Indie Songwriter's Festival.
This year, the festival has been expanded over two days and girls are now invited too! While last year was a strictly male event, Festival founder Jerome Wincek and his merry band of followers, this year has created a wonderfully diverse mix of styles and approaches to songwriting.
While last year was damp, we're looking at 65 and sunny on for the outdoor shows on Saturday - perfect festival weather. Although all shows are free, bring fistfuls of cash to pick up the artists CDs and merch. Booths will also be open with a variety of regional artisans hawking their wares (I'm really hoping the pirogi guy is back again; there's way too much blood in my butter system).
Sure Michael, you're saying, but I haven't heard a lot of these groups.
Fear not, earlier this week I contacted all the artists and asked them to kick in a song for a downloadable sampler. Many were asked, few answered. But, I've compiled full length songs of all those who were nice enough to write back, cooked up a little CD insert and then zipped it all up for you - download, burn, and get familiar before heading up.
Added to my summer reading list? Net, Blogs and Rock 'n' Roll: How Digital Discovery Works and What it Means for Consumers So, here's the deal. I want to buy a 2008 Honda Civic Hybrid by the end of the month, and I can't get any local dealers to get me anything before September! I don't care about the color, or if it has GPS. So, if you have any pull or ideas, email me. If your tip results in a purchase, there's a finder's fee in it for you.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Last night marked the second artist straight from SXSW to show up at Brother Bean. Let me just say that first off. It's incredible (and a testament to the professionalism and devotion to music that Gwen and Bruce, the dynamos behind Bro Bean) that a small venue can bring in acts like Hello Tokyo and, yesterday, Harrisburg area singer-songwriter Greg Koons.
Koons was playing to a small crowd on a rainy, cold Saturday night, but he had an easy comfortable way with the audience, building rapport through his between songs patter, revealing the stories behind his tunes - including a surreal and funny one about an unrequited love between himself and a drive through window girl.
Koons' playing was clean with effective use of his delay/loop pedal to fill out the sound of a solo artist used to paying with a full band. What shines through live, though, is his songwriting and voice. He's got a bit of a Steve Earle sound to him (ballad-y Earle, not Copperhead Road Earle, a distinction that ever must be made in Northwestern Pennsylvania - although really, when have bagpipes ever hurt a song?) - a world weary tinge in his otherwise clear voice that pushes through the emotion of his work without ever slipping into pathos. Love or rather the loss of love shows up a lot on Koons' work; there's a palpable sense of longing in his songs. I'm the first person to bury his head in his hands when a student shows up in my workshop with a poem that uses the word "love" to talk about, well, love. Koons senses, with the skill of a practiced pro, that beyond Top 40, the key is to paint emotional portraits to explain the state of love and a bone deep longing in a fractured world.
"I've got lots of different influences," he told me, "but you know when you see a great pair of pants and you think, those are great pants, but there just not gonna look great on me? Well, I love The Who, Guns and Roses, even Zeppelin, but I know those pants just aren't going to look right on me."
He's an approachable guy, very knowledgeable and amiable. And while his album has been pushed back to a Winter 2009 release date, there's a chance he'll be swinging back through the area in the fall.
Greg Koons next plays with his band The Misbegotten on May, 23 2008 at The Muddy Cup (410 Main Street, Catskills, New York 12414) at 7pm. If you're in the area, you owe it to yourself to check him out.
Did I mention Oil City's Latonia now has a MySpace page?
I mentioned earlier that I'm taking a pass on American Eagle's New American Music Union, but the Pittsburgh International Festival of Firsts sounds pretty good: Andy Warhol's black-and-white film shorts will be put to music at the Byham theater, actors in a Spanish theater group will perform before individual audience members in a labyrinth of rooms and a Slovenia dance group will set Shakespeare's classic love story to music by Radiohead, to name a few of the performances that will run from Oct. 10-25.
In celebration of International Museum Day, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) will offer a "buy one general admission, get one general admission free" deal on Sunday, May 18. In Pennsylvania's Great Lakes Region, the offer applies to both the Erie Maritime Museum and US Brig Niagara and the Drake Well Museum.
contact me
Artists, promoters, venue owners, include me on your mailing lists: simpub@hotmail.com or
Dittman
POB 1082
Franklin PA 16323
and social networking:
Buy My Stuff
Masterpieces of Beat Literature
This guide to their achievement covers John Clellon Holmes, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and Tom Wolfe. ". . .a superb body of scholarship that is strongly recommended for inclusion into academic and community library American Literary History reference collections and college level supplemental reading lists." - Midwest Book Review Jack Kerouac: A Biography
[A] top pick for high school to college-level collections....Dittman focuses on the facts surrounding [Kerouac's] life and literature and provides many alternative views of these events which students should find intriguing. MBR Internet Bookwatch/The Bookwatch Small Brutal Incidents Home from a brutal stint in the Pacific, WWII veteran Graeme Burns finds himself unemployed and blackballed as a whistleblower from the only mill in town still hiring. But his life changes forever when the Ketchum family forces him to find their murderer.
With the violence of war fresh on his mind, Burns fights his way through a list of baffling, dead-end leads every day, before sinking to the bottom of a bottle every night. When his path finally leads him full circle, Burns is caught in a familiar game -- one of survival. It's kill-or-be-killed, and smart money goes to the man who has nothing to lose.
Danielson Alive - Danielson (album)
(again) for her birthday, while at Pittsburgh's Benedum, I couldn't help but notice that 
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