Raindog Armstrong is a poet, publisher, and pied piper for poetry. With his Lummox Press, he published the Lummox Journal as a monthly magazine, which showcased artists from around the country, and around the world. Publishing both poetry and in-depth interviews, the Journal has now moved onto the internet. This has freed him, at last, to publish the first of several volumes of his own work, the first of which is called Fire & Rain. It reaches back to some of his earliest work, and spans nearly 15 years of creativity.
Raindog joined me for a free wheeling, and wide ranging, conversation that includes three poetry recitations, discussions of 9/11, and his past and future musical efforts. It is 50 minutes of honest talk with one of our fair City’s creative icons.
If you can’t commit to listening to an hour-long conversation, you can hear all three of his poems:
Many years ago, back in the mid 90s, I worked for a local radio station. I did a variety of things but, occasionally, I pulled a weekend shift where I was basically playing pre-recorded shows on open reel tape, or dat. In one of the small production studios they had two Studer 1/4″ 2 track open reel tape machines and, in a fit of creativity spurred by boredom, I hooked them into a ‘Frippertronics’ set-up.
The machine on the left would have a reel of tape on the left spool which would run over it’s heads, then across to the right (take-up) spool of the 2nd machine. The playback of the machine on the right would be fed back into the machine on the left, along with whatever new sound was added, and the whole thing would repeat, and slowly fade out. The speed of the repeats was a function of the tape speed and the distance between the two machines.
Here’s a lame graphic I created to illustrate the process:
I’m working on a documentary about a friend who is an artist. Amongst the many things she does, she’s been given a fellowship at a local art center where they have a rather extensive printmaking studio. She’s been working there for months, making prints from cardboard packaging, paper bags, etc. In the process of filming her there, I noticed that the space had an interesting acoustical environment, and that many of the machines and other equipment could make interesting sounds. I went there a few weeks back and recorded a whole bunch of different sounds, took them home, chopped them into small segments, and created a piece of music from them.
This is just a rough draft, sort of playing with the various elements, just to get a feel for them. This is, by no means, a final product.
Also, it may be helpful to know that, aside from the parsing of the various sounds, and some basic effects like reverb and delay, the original source sounds have been unaltered.
The tune starts with a metal drawer closing. The ‘kick drum’ sound is a silk screen. There are sounds from springs, a metal sink, a drying rack, an ink roller, etc.
During my many years as a musician, I’ve performed in a variety of contexts. In 6th grade, for example, I sang a solo in Hebrew as part of The Chitchester Psalms, a piece for chorus and organ, written by Leonard Bernstein. In rehearsals, the feeling of singing with so many voices was thrilling and euphoric. I felt myself open up in a way I’d never experienced before.
The night of the performance, I was filled with confidence. I remember walking out onto the stage in my new electric blue wide-wale corduroy pants, feeling the enthusiasm and support of the musicians behind me. The choir director remembered that the translated words were in the program and asked that the house lights be brought up so the audience could read along.
All of a sudden, hundreds of people emerged from the darkness and, much to my surprise, they were staring at me. In an instant, all that joy and confidence evaporated and, in its place, arose a new feeling: Terror. The music began, and I felt a bit heartened but, as my moment to sing approached, my body felt like it was going to split in two.
Some time ago I acquired a hand-made custom bowed psaltery. Recently, I recorded
a wee tune
with it. The tracks were recorded in Cubase SX3, and all the processing was done on the computer. I recorded the psaltery part first then, using an old Brian Eno trick, reversed the track so that it was playing backward, and recorded delay with it. The original track, with the delay, were then both re-reversed so that the original track is now playing forward, but the delay is reversed, fading in rather than fading out. All this was then run through the same delay so it has delay coming and going. I then added the two guitar parts.
Ever since, or perhaps even before, I completed the guitar project I’d dreamed of creating a custom bass. Encouraged by the results of the Sandblaster, I decided to undertake a 2nd instrument-building project: A bass.
I originally hoped to create an instrument using similar African Mahogany but, much to my dismay, large pieces of highly figured African Mahogany are becoming harder and harder to find. Old growth trees are now almost entirely gone, sadly.
Anyway, I began to expand my search to include other woods, and even several woods in combination. ( I just had this idea that one solid piece is somehow better… I don’t know if that’s true, though.) Anyway, I have a Taylor acoustic guitar with Sapele sides and back. Sapele is similar to African Mahogany, but it is heavier, darker, and more expensive. Also, like most popular woods, large highly figured pieces are hard to find. So, after many weeks of patience, John of West Penn Hardwoods selected some pieces that, ultimately, will end up as the body of my next bass.
There are three ‘sections’: The top, which is made of book-matched sapele, the middle, which is made of flame maple (soft), and
This instrument was given to me by a friend who got it from another friend who found it collecting dust in her house. According to trusted sources, it is a Hofner Galaxie. There are a number of different models in that line, however, so more specific info would be most welcome.
As I plough through the detritus of my life I occationally find tidbits, fragments, glimpses of times and places past, long forgotten connections, meaningful references, etc. No better example of this are phone messages. I remember feeling the need to get an answering machine at some point, mostly because 1) I was looking for a job and, 2) my friends all complained bitterly that they could never reach me, the elusive social butterfly that I was. Still, I don’t think the answering machine ever really solved any problems, and caused a few of its own.
I was living on 4th Street, just across from Chipper’s Corner (now the Pike) at Hermosa. I’d been working for Kinko’s but, at some point in this period, I lost my job. It took some time, but I eventually moved out of the apartment and back in with my mom, and started working for KLON.
Featured on the recording are Brian Hancock, Brian Nelson, Joanie Karnowski, Camille Smith, my roommate Jim Theibert, Larry Miller, Mike Dubois, Andrea Adkins, Rychard Cooper, Bebe Wolff, Marvin Wolff, and a few others. I am pretty sure that phone numbers from more than 20 years ago have no modern relevency.
Listen To The Messages
– [this is a large 13MB file, so it may take a while to download]
All I know is that this instrument belonged to my mom, and that it was bought a long time ago, and probably for very little money. The neck is fat and thick, bowed, with frets that are super thin. It is difficult to play, and the intonation goes to hell if you wander above the 5th fret. It was intended to be a ‘classical’ nylon string guitar but when I replaced the frozen tuners, I strang (stringed) it up with phosphor bronze strings instead.
