Stage non-presence.

Knowing how to hold yourself and what to do with things like your hands while performing on stage is a pretty important skill in my line of work. People call this stage presence.

But there's another, related, but also kind of opposite skill that's equally important, really. That's knowing what to do when you're onstage but not performing. Stage non-presence.

For a little while, in The Cedar, whenever Neil would do a solo thing, the rest of us would knit, onstage. That kind of worked, but probably wouldn't go over too well with some of my bigger freelance stuff.

A drummer friend told me once about a guy in his band who would crouch down into a ball with his hands over his ears when he wasn't playing. Then he got kicked out of the band.

It's a tough question, what to do when everyone is kind of but not really looking at you. Look at the performer, look straight ahead, look all over the place? Dance a bit? Stay very, very still?

Here's a video (probably off someone's phone. The audience singing is a nice perk) I found on youtube of my gig from this weekend of me mostly not-playing. These are the sorts of things I use as study guides. I think I wave my bow around way too much. But the subtle head-dancing is nice...

Kyrös...FM!

Dear everyone,

As you probably know, I was just in Finland, at the magnificent Arteles.

As you maybe also know, Charlie and I had a daily radio show there. (There is a studio attached to the kitchen. Like any quality residency should have.)

But perhaps you did not know that we set ourselves a challenge for this radio show. Every day (every day!*) we hit "random page" on wikipedia, and then wrote, recorded and produced a song based on whatever random page came up. We had 90 minutes to complete each one, and then we played them on that day's radio show.

Of course, musical genius/hilarity ensued.

And now, you can listen to all those songs! Even if you're not in Finland. We've put them all up on bandcamp for you.

So. Listen. And tell us your favorite! But don't tell us your least favorite, that would be too sad.



*Except a few days. Like when we were in Estonia. Or the day we went to go look at art around a lake.