A couple of weeks ago we were on 107.7 The Bone. It was pretty cool. The Bone is a Bay Area radio station that plays bands like Guns’n Roses, Poison, Led Zeppelin and all of the other totally rock’n bands of music history. It was quite an honor to join those ranks. We did a nice interview and played a couple of acoustic songs. Check it out:
DOWNLOAD MP3 OF OUR PEFORMANCE / INTERVIEW ON THE BONE
Photos by Selene Santos
FREE MUSIC DOWNLOAD: BOOTLEG OF ENTIRE SPEAKEASY SET by TASY WAX RECORDINGS
Wow, what a crazy week! This was a great tour. It was the first tour that we booked ourselves in a while, so that meant way more adventure. The northern California shows were all great, especially at The Crepe Place in Santa Cruz, which sold out! Big shout out to Mountain Animal Hospital, the great Santa Cruz band that we played with that night. We definitely felt a whole-lotta-love from Nor Cal. Thank you!
Santa Barbara was interesting. We played at a sporty tequila bar called Sandbar, opening for our friend’s Reggae band Onetwo Tree. When we got there we heard that the owner wanted us to play our “softer, more melodic material”. I guess he was worried we would scare away the party crowd. To be honest, we were a little bit worried too, but as soon as we started people were totally into it. It turned out to be another awesome show. Afterwards I sat in on violin with Onetwo Tree, which was really educational. They are all solid musicians and their drummer, who used to play in Steel Pulse, holds it down with a totally different kind of feel than I am used to. Playing with them was quite a pleasure.
This is the bar that we played at in Santa Barbara
Our LA show was also pretty unusual. It was at this new place called The Bootleg Theater in Echo Park. It is actually a theater – as in dramatic theater. There was a play going on and we were supposed to play in the lobby. It was pretty weird. We loaded in and set up during the first act, then everyone came out for intermission and we just kind of hung out for a bit, then everyone went back in and we had to wait quietly until the second act was over. What made it even weirder was that the play was running about a half hour late, so all of our friends started showing up in the middle of the second act and we had to wait around whispering until the play ended. It was a little bit awkward. As soon as the play got out we were supposed to get up on stage and start playing before all of the play audience left. That was actually kind of cool, because we got to play for a totally different audience, at least for the first couple of songs. There was one little kid who came up and sat right in front of the stage. He was totally feeling it. Future metalhead for sure.
This was the play that was going on at the Bootleg Theater while we were waiting to play.
Our Oceanside show was really special, and probably my favorite show of the tour. I first discovered Speakeasy Studios, an amazing recording studio and art gallery built into a car repair warehouse, during our tour with Dredg in May. There I saw The Burning of Rome play an epic, inspiring show, complete with robots, wedding gowns, fire dancers and the kind of choruses that could get even the most stuck-up, arms-crossed hipster audiences pumping their fists and singing along. Later, I contacted them to tell them to see if they would want to do a show with us and they offered to have us play their next event. It was so awesome playing on the quirky, home-made Speakeasy stage. We got to go on right after nightfall, the perfect time to play, and we got the audience to pack in really close. It was a blast.
Check out this crazy robot and alien art that was showing in the Speakeasy gallery.
After our set the cops came! Everyone had to go home and The Burning of Rome didn’t get to play. LAME! There was one little girl, maybe about 5 years old, who explained to me what happened: “There’s a mean lady on a hill who called the police. And she’s trying to sleep really early.” (You can read the real story of why the cops came HERE) After most of the crowd left we started packing up the stage, which was outside, and moving all of the gear back into the studio. The Burning of Rome set everything back up in the studio and rocked late into the night for all of us after-partiers. It was a great time.
The next day, after a crazy, late night of partying and jamming we woke up at 5:30 am and drove to the Orange County airport. Lewis and I had to catch a plane to meet up with Mates of State in Tahoe for the Wanderlust festival. Jon, always the trooper, drove the van back to the bay by himself. We had a super quick layover at the San Francisco airport. I split up with Lewis to go use the bathroom and I didn’t see him after that. When we landed in Reno I called him to see where he was and he told me that he was still in San Francisco. He had missed the flight! He had used the bathroom too but apparently his trip had been a little more serious.
Check out my sweet ride at Wanderlust!
Well he totally missed out. I picked my rental car at the airport. It was a bright blue 2010 Mustang! So I rolled up phat to the Squaw Valley resort, parked and hopped on the Gondola, which took me way up the mountain to the festival site. It was absolutely amazing. This was the first year of the Wanderlust festival but if I ever have the opportunity to go again I would want to go and camp out. It was just so beautiful. I had a great day, hanging with the Mates and other friends. I met a bunch of really nice musicians from other bands like Broken Social Scene, Rogue Wave and Spoon. Our old friends in Wendy Darling were playing there too, and my friend Tyson, from my other band Devotionals was just there hanging out. So it was a quite party. We drank lots of beer, went wading in a freezing cold pond during the beautiful sounds of Andrew Bird, and got to watch some great bands from the side of the stage. Spoon totally killed! There were parties and fun happening afterwards but I was too tired, so for the first time on the tour, I stayed in. I had a big week. Can you blame me?
-Anton
Artwork by Phillip Ginn - www.legendhouse.com
HUGE BLACK MAN / HUGH JACKMAN EP
01. Side A
02. Side B
Recorded in Sacramento in September of 2006, Huge Black Man’s “Hugh Jackman EP” was in many ways a musical experiment. The rules: 4 musicians from very different bands would meet in a practice space for one day, without any prior rehearsal, and record an entire album.
Those musicians were:
Anton Patzner of Judgement Day - Violin
Nick Reinhart of Tera Melos – Guitar, Knobs
Sam Phelps of 4 Guys from Reno – Bass
Noah Clark of Brilliant Red Lights – Drums and Producer
The result is a highly unique blend of musical styles and an intriguing study of spontaneity and creativity under the pressure of time constraint.
It’s also pretty fun to listen to. Check it out:
When I’m not writing music with Judgement Day I write music for films. I’ve always loved film scores. My favorite growing up was The Empire Strikes Back by John Williams. It’s super epic and has tons of great themes that interact with each other in cool, interesting ways. It’s dope. Check it out.
The first score I wrote myself was for “Black Scar III”, a movie I made with my friends in 4th grade. My uncle Joe said that it sounded like music from a porno. Since then the scores have gotten a little bit better and a lot more ambitious. In high school I worked with director Hoku Uchiyama on a film called “The Killer Chihuahua”. Although it was all synthesizers and kind of sounded like an 80′s horror movie that was kind of like my first real score and my first of many collaborations with Hoku. In college I started using real instruments in my scores, adding more and more each time until they started sounding like real film scores. That’s how I got started and I’m still doing it to this day.
I released two of my scores on cd: “Undercut” in 2005 and “Rose” in 2006. “Undercut” is now out of print and “Rose” has stopped selling so they are both free downloads now. I hope you enjoy them.
-Anton
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Undercut
This was a no-budget martial arts film directed by Stephen Reedy that ended up getting nominated for an MTV Movie Award (best student film). The music is somewhere in between Shaft and Mortal Kombat. Then there are some parts that sound like smooth jazz. Ya. It’s a pretty weird movie. In a good way.
DOWNLOAD THE UNDERCUT SOUNDTRACK
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Rose
This film is a 30-minute ghost story directed by Hoku Uchiyama. It’s scary, sad, sweet and pretty awesome. It it did really well on the festival circuit and it will hopefully be out on the internet soon. The music is mostly orchestral but has some folk instruments as well. The melody for one of the main themes was written by the singer-songwriter Amanda Mehl. She also does all of the ghostly vocals. Lewis has a nice cello solo on one of the other main themes. A bunch of other great musicians are on it as well.
This is the happiest song that Judgement Day ever wrote. If you have heard Opus 3: Acoustic then you know the acoustic version of Noae Kaedae but we also have an electric version. We originally recorded it during the Dark Opus sessions but we decided it was just a little bit too sunny (and sloppy…) to fit on that disc. It ended up on the 2005 Norcal Compilation which was put out by Agent Records and featured other bands like Tera Melos, Desa, Audrye Sessions and Overview. We still have a few copies of it lying around. We might be able to sell you one if you want but you could also just
The ORIGINAL Acoustic EP (2003)
OPUS 1: Acoustic EP
Before we had drums or FX pedals, before we tried to get every note perfect, before we had enough songs to make a full length record, we released our first EP- The Acoustic EP. The songs on it are basically the songs we used to play for spare change on Telegraph Ave in Berkeley along with a couple of quieter avant garde intros. I just listened to it again for the first time in a couple of years. It’s interesting. It’s definitely raw. We recorded it really quickly in our parent’s and uncle’s garage without computers so there’s no editing or cheating. Some of the violin parts are improvised and sometimes doubled by another violin that is improvising. The intro and interlude were completely improvised. We didn’t do very many takes so some of the songs have blatant mistakes. Overall, though I think that the rawness gives it a pretty cool energy. If nothing else its cool to hear how it all got started.
BONUS TRACK
The bonus track, “Carol of the Bells (orchestral)” is the same as the original ep version except with 4 or 5 extra violins and a couple of extra cellos doubling what is already there. We decided to use the version with just one violin and one cello because it sounds more real but I always liked the “Orchestral” version too so we’re putting it on here as an extra holiday bonus.
FREE DOWNLOAD
The original release of the Acoustic EP was a CDR in a plastic sleeve with a black and white booklet. It’s been out of print for a few years now so we are excited to be able to share it with you all again now as a free download. Take a listen and let us know what you think.
Practicing with Margot Before tour:
Late night jam with Margot – San Francisco 10/6/08
Rocking out in Norman, Oklahoma – 10/17/08
photos by Kriea
Live on South Street in Philadelphia – 11/9/08
Our set got cut short this night so we decided to play the last song out on the street after the show. Thanks to Joe for the video.
Live from Minneapolis – 11/17/08
FREE AUDIO DOWNLOAD: Klagenstuck Live in Minneapolis
Hear the rest of the set at The Live Music Archive .
Thanks to John Coughlin for taping.
Live in Omaha – 11/20/08
If you have any other cool videos, pictures or anything else worth checking out let us know.
Photo by Riki Feldmann
We bought a van! Well, a minivan. It’s prefect though. We can fit all of our stuff in there and still have some room to move around. That’s the beauty of being a 3-piece without amps. We need to think of a good name for it. If you think of one you should leave it as a comment on this entry.
So we are in Oregon now. We played in Eugene on Wednesday and and Corvallis last night. Both of the shows were great. We’ve been having a fun time. There was a webcast of the show last night at The Fireworks venue and it actually sounded pretty good so we’ve got a song from it for download here:
Finis Omne Live at Fireworks Bootleg MP3
Tonight we’re playing in Salem, which is a very short drive, so we pretty much have the day off. We’re staying at our aunt and uncle’s amazing house and they’re letting us ride their bikes so I think we’re going to ride downtown, check out some music stores and try to put some cd’s at Happy Trails Records. It should be a pretty fun day.
We are officially on tour! We’ve decided to name this tour “The 4-Door Tour” because both Judgement Day and Silian Rail are traveling in little 4-door cars packed to the max with gear. It has been amazing!
Our kick-off show in Sacramento featured Lewis rocking out so hard that he fell over and snapped his bow in half at the end of “Revelations”. Luckily our friends from fellow string band The Definite Articles were in the audience and let us borrow a cello bow to finish our set. What are the odds of that? That’s the first time we’ve ever broken a bow. I guess that’s what happens when you get possessed by the metal spirits. Good thing it was only a backup bow.
CHICO!!! We love Chico. This was our fourth time playing there and definitely our best yet. We played at this little art space called “The Crux”. The local bands The Secret Stolen and La Fin Du Monde both totally killed it and Silian Rail had an especially good set. I jammed with them on a couple of songs which was fun.
Lewis was going to jam too but when he took out his cello he found out that the end pin had fallen backwards into the body and was rolling around making loud, bad-sounding noises. It was scary. We spent more than an hour trying to get it out through one of the F-Holes but it was too big to fit. We ended up having to play the set with Lewis holding up his cello on a drum stool. He had to be careful not to move in the wrong direction and put a hole in his cello but he still managed to rock out and play a great set. We played a bunch of old songs and brought up Eric from Silian Rail to play some extra drums on a crazy 9 minute jam at the end. Good times.
Later on after the show we had an epic late-night jam sesh with 3 guitars, bass and pizzicato violin until 5 in the morning. Eric is just as crazy on guitar as he is on drums. He was totally blowing my mind.
The next day we went over to The Music Connection (a music store/repairs shop) to take care of Lewis’ cello problem. The dude totally handled it and we were back in business. We had lunch at Broadway Heights and hung out for a while and then headed to Redding.
The Redding show was smaller but pretty chill. Lewis and I both jammed on Silian Rail’s set and Eric played Glockenspiel on one of our songs. The guys that put on the show are the same people that used to run this awesome Redding venue called The Dip but since it shut down a while back they have to bring their whole sound system now whenever they want to have shows, so it was pretty cool that they wanted to have us. After the show we headed back to their place and had another epic jam sesh, this time with a 12 string guitar and a little bit of piano in addition to the usual acoustic guitars.
In a little bit we’re going to head up to Oregon. We’re playing in Medford tonight. Hopefully it will be fun.
-Anton and Judgement Day
MP3: Excerpt from the Chico Jam with Eric
