Michael Garfield - The Avery Archives (Live, 2010 01 14)To whet your appetite for my gig at Quixote's next week (see below) I present to you The Avery Archives – highlights from my two-hour solo acoustic concert at Avery Brewing Company in Boulder, Colorado on 14 January 2010. (It's a pay-what-you-want, no minimum situation here.)
This collection/abbreviation eschews my typical focus on flashy guitar work to emphasize a decade of solid songwriting. Included here are the first decent live recordings of older ballads like "Ruin" and "Don't Fret" and anthems like "Sweeping The Tide" and "In Zero With Grace," as well as "The Cyclist" (previously unreleased, with a studio version coming soon) and two new improvised loopscapes ("It Passed Right Over Us" and "Victory Roses").
This collection/abbreviation eschews my typical focus on flashy guitar work to emphasize a decade of solid songwriting. Included here are the first decent live recordings of older ballads like "Ruin" and "Don't Fret" and anthems like "Sweeping The Tide" and "In Zero With Grace," as well as "The Cyclist" (previously unreleased, with a studio version coming soon) and two new improvised loopscapes ("It Passed Right Over Us" and "Victory Roses").
Many thanks to everyone who came out to support me (i.e., drink and play board games) and to Avery Brewing for their generous contracts and excellent beer...
This album is dedicated to Nicole Taylor.
> Gigs
28 January (Thursday) – Denver
Zach Deputy & Michael Garfield at Quixote's True Blue
A night of live-looping guitar mayhem! This is the best music gig I've landed in almost a year – opening for the unfairly talented Zach Deputy, whose one-man funk looping project is an irresistibly danceable party-in-a-box. Playing in support of Zach is really going to up the ante for my set – he's a fantastic singer and songwriter as well as an inspiring lead guitar player. Zach's chops put Keller to shame, but not too many people have heard of him yet here in Colorado. So if there were ever one of my shows to attend, this is the one! Not to mention, I want to show the guys at Quixote's just how many friends I have...so haul it out next week and let's all get down together!
(Get the details and RSVP at the facebook event page.)
30 January (Saturday) – Denver
Live Painting @ Sound/Mind Presents: Crystallize
This might be the first legitimate psytrance throwdown in Denver, ever. I'm pretty excited to paint for the nation-wide line-up of deep and fluid electronic producers – especially since this event space is brand new and will be thoroughly decked out in gorgeous winter-themed installation artwork and an extensive gallery courtesy of Zach Emmendorfer and yours truly. Get yourself ready for a truly beautiful all-night affair...
(Get the details and RSVP at the facebook event page.)
> Imagery
If It's Depth You Want2009 12 14 & 2010 01 11,12 Toad Tavern & studio
(Coales Whalen, Angie Stevens)
20"x30" - paint markers on masonite
original & signed 11"x17" prints available
I always spend a lot of time looking at the painting I just took home with the worried parental look that says, "Is this job ever done?" A lot of the quicker paintings I do end up boring a hole into my brain until I have to spend a few days giving them their needed final layers, and this one is the textbook example. After starting it up at Tommypalooza back in December, I figured I'd bring it to another concert to finish; but it was stubbornly resistant to more live painting. And so it got some serious studio treatment. Count the layers: a field of reddish trees; a galactic whorl of glowing glassy transparency; helical seaweed-like striving fronds; and the clusters of bubbles they're herding. If it's depth you want, it's depth you'll get.
This painting is dedicated to Tommy Nahulu, whose party it was that day (and still is, only now out in Hawai'i). I haven't forgotten to pay you a visit, Tommy!
Closed Kaleidoscope Eyes2008 11 06 & 2010 01 15 Beta & Cervantes
(James Zabiela & Octopus Nebula, David Seied, DJ Chordata)
18"x24" - paint markers on masonite
original & signed 11"x17" prints available
For a few months, it hung on display at the now-extinct Fat Cat Sake Bar in Boulder, and when they closed they didn't bother to inform me that they had left my paintings with the shop next door. So for a few months, this one was not just annoying, but also officially missing. Eventually the new restaurant was able to track it down for me...and then synchronicity had it that I left my prepared board at home one night, and this was the only unfinished painting in my portfolio. I'll save the heady exploration of this one for the time-lapse movie I filmed while working on it (coming soon). Suffice it to say for now that I was honored to have two artists come up to me that night and thank me for capturing that which continues to elude them: namely, the swirling forms they see with their eyes closed.
PS, Octopus Nebula kicked everyone's asses that night. They're getting so good. This painting is dedicated to them.
Gate Crashers2010 01 16 BMoCA (Fresh2Death, H1N1, DJ Grabass, Elephant Art Jam)
20"x30" - paint markers on masonite
original & signed 11"x17" prints available
As for the painting...well, variations on a theme by Islam. It reminds me of the semi-permeable membrane around every cell, the molecular version of a border crossing. Again, for whatever reason jpg rendering is killing the hot pinks in my photos, so this one isn't quite as vivacious as it should be. Nonetheless, here's to all of us recognizing this picture as a portrait of us: all together in a web of jewels.
This painting is dedicated to Alex Levis, the mastermind behind CoLab West, who inspires me profoundly with his passionate but no-nonsense commitment to helping artists make a living by doing what they love.
