Recording: The Allison Cameron Band

Artist: The Allison Cameron Band

Song: [excerpt from 2nd piece]

Recorded at Array Space (MFS 10th Anniversary Celebration: A Night of Improvised Music), February 10, 2019.

The Allison Cameron Band - [excerpt from 2nd piece]

Every year around Valentine's Day, I tend to remember that it's this blog's anniversary. Then I check back to that first entry, see I'm already a day late, and go on with life. This year, I was thinking about it well ahead of time, and seeing that big, round (and mightily unexpected) tenth anniversary approaching, it seemed befitting to do something a little special. That ended up being a pair of shows, conceptually split into "improvised" and "rock" nights.

For the former, Somewhere There helped out by lending me their regular second Sunday of the month slot at Array, and from there, it was just a matter of winnowing it down from the dozens of people that I wanted to ask to play. It was a no-brainer to ask Allison Cameron to play, as her work as an improviser has inspired and taught me so much. By sheer good luck, three busy schedules aligned and I managed to wrangle a rare show from the "new" Allison Cameron Band (and, as far as I know, their first away from the Tranzac) where Cameron's banjo, keyboard, toy hedgehog squeezebox and tableful of Honeytone mini-amps are augmented by Kurt Newman's guitar and Thom Gill's guitar and synth. There's been talk of working out some pieces for this group to play, but for now, it's just improvisations finding intriguing meeting points in loud and quiet places.

[Allison Cameron will be debuting a new trio named Agar Agar (with Germaine Liu and Andrew Zukerman) at a very cool/noisy Burn Down The Capital show at The Burdock on Tuesday, April 23rd, and will be bringing some Two Ted Country Blues to The Tranzac next Wednesday (April 17th) alongside Nick Storring and Kurt Newman. Newman will also be playing a trio with Mark Zurawinski and Allison Cameron that night, and you'll also be able to find him at The Tranzac tomorrow afternoon (April 14th), doing some pickin' at Ayal Senior's monthly.]