Silence, Silence, Sound

Tonight I'm performing in a quintet with Shelly Blake-Plock and friends at The Red Room, and experimental music venue built inside Normal's Books. This is my third show at the Red Room, and it's one of my favorite venues to play. It sits at the deep and hidden heart of Baltimore's experimental music scene, which is quickly becoming the center of experimental music nation-wide. I'm always honored to play here, and especially with such a tremendously talented group of players who are associated with the famous High Zero Foundation, an international festival for experimental music.

Red Room reopens tomorrow (new and improved and full of surprises), Sat. June 26, with a performance by READERS (Shelly Blake-Plock, John Berndt, Rose Burt, Tom Boram, and Savanna Leigh), a film by Rachel Younghans, and a mystery performance by a duo of French/German wandering free improvisers. 8:30PM; $6.
RED ROOM 425 E. 31ST STREET BALTIMORE, MD. 21218, USA

For those of you who have never been, I STRONGLY urge you to head down to 31st Street and check out Normal's Books. Best used books and records in town. I can't describe it as well as What Weekly:

"In the seldom traveled nooks and crannies of every city across the world, there exist enclaves of lesser-known phenomena that may only reach those few locals who have found themselves in the know.

It’s here, between the mass produced and the homegrown, that the soul of the city can be shaped. There is roughly eight hundred Barnes & Noble’s Booksellers in the United States and most of them are exactly like the next one. There’s only one Normals Bookstore and it’s right here in Waverly. There’s no bookstore quite like it in the world.

The strange medley of books and albums reflects the curiousness and clear determination of its owners whose vision for the store has been honed for twenty years. They’ve grown a reputation as the place to find the obscure and often rare.

The Red Room at Normals has served as a space where performances are free to be explored without preconception by the players or prejudice by the audience. This venue has had an immense influence on the experimental music scene in Baltimore.

It’s in these spaces that the backdrop for the city’s story is erected. You can’t recreate the circumstances that would lead a group of young artists to start a bookstore and you can’t expedite the twenty years that shapes the personality of it. This is part of why Normals is a treasured fixture of our city."

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If you're not already devouring the articles in What Weekly, you should. It's your one-stop-shop for everything you love in Baltimore, and their calendar is a GREAT way to figure out what's going on where when you need something to do. From the performers at HonFest to the Balkan dance parties at H&H, What Weekly's got you covered. It's like City Paper, only more plugged in.

Plug Thyself!

See you tonight at the Red Room.