Propeller Dance Fundraiser follow-up

I had a fabulous time last week at this event! The dance class that I work with performed at the Tuesday night show, and everything went well. Propeller Dance president Dave Scrimshaw has a pile of photos at his Flickr page. Ours is the group dressed in black and using pieces of fabric as props (above photo).

When I was at the official media launch of Propeller Dance the previous week, a profound thing was said. Both Renata and Shara (co-founders) said they are often told "it's wonderful what you do for these people", and Renata said (paraphrasing) "they also do something wonderful for us - they show us how to move in ways that our professional dance training never gave. So we all learn from each other."

And it's very true. People with disabilities, whether developmental or physical, have to work and play around certain "limitations". But those limitations just make a person find their own, very personal way of expressing themselves. Yes, you can indeed dance in a wheelchair! And these classes are for people of all abilities, so we indeed all help each other to transcend physical, mental, and emotional barriers.

For me, I've spent most of my life sitting behind a drumset and playing fairly straightforward music. Yes, I can of course improvise (and love to!) and am often looking for ways of putting my stamp on the music, but both with the Grasshoppa dance group and Propeller I often have to make music and sounds on the spot, and not always just melodic ideas or themes. And it took me a little while to feel comfortable with the idea that some of the more "interesting" ideas were musically valid. But the more I do this the more I know I'm doing the right thing.

But back to the event...

I not only get to provide music for this inspiring group, but as often happens when the various classes get together (both at shows like this and also our Community Days) the different accompanying musicians help each other out when musically suitable.

At all of these events the Sunday performing group is the main feature, and they were ably accompanied by Dominique St. Pierre (synth, effects, African flute, darabuka, and electronic effects) and Mike Essoudry (drum set, clarinet, and kalimba). I joined them where appropriate (as they also did with me), which makes things interesting because we do not rehearse this ahead of time. Dom and Mike have of course worked out the structure of their music, and so having me add my little bits won't throw them off. I have just have to keep my ears wide open and stay out of their way and watch for any cues.

Here's our collective set-up, with my gear on the left:

For my group, this is only the second time we've performed together, and I had to create sound for about 25 straight minutes with no delays or dead air between sections. And each of the seven sections had its own theme, so I needed to create different moods or textures throughout.

In order to do this I decided to add some more hardware to my usual set-up. So in addition to my trusty Kawai K4 synth, alto recorder, djembe, and percussion toys I included my 1990-vintage Roland SPD8 drum pad, a very new Boss RC-2 looping pedal, and ran it all through an equally new Behringer K1800FX keyboard amp (the little amp I use for classes is not powerful enough for most live gigs).

While the amp is great (having four channels, 7-band EQ, and built-in effects), it's that cool little looping pedal that made things interesting. I programmed the loops ahead of time with the synth and drum pad, and ran the pedal into its own channel, with the synth bypassing it into another channel so I could separate the effects. So I could fade the loops in and out and let one run while calling up another synth sound, or hold a synth chord or play the drum pad or djembe one-handed while quickly changing pedal programs.

Here are two views of my set-up:

The only tricky part was that I got both the amp and pedal about two weeks before the gig and so did not exactly have a ton of time (incl. only two rehearsals) to get familiar with them! And I'm an acoustic drummer before I'm anything else musically, and using electronics and pregramming, while not foreign, is not something I've much of in a live context. But as noted earlier, part of the thing with this experience is taking myself out of my comfort zone of sitting behind the drums and grooving. And I'm loving it!

So much so that I'm also incorporating the amp, drum pad, and pedal into my Thursday night gig at the Met with the Orbiters. Tom is playing his baliset, which has full MIDI capabilities for all sorts of sounds, and Steve is running his trombone and voice through an effects pedal at times, so I thought I might as well join the fun. More on that in another post...

And as usual, during the dance event the cargo trike waited patiently, sporting its new cargo box cover, made in my usual fashion from scavenged sheets of coroplast, held together with duct tape, and tied down with bungee cords. It so far has worked extremely well, keeping all the gear (both acoustic and electronic) as dry as possible.

Swap Box

I had never heard of these things, and a month or so ago found this fastened to a lamp post a few blocks from my place. What a lovely idea!



Fellow HPVOoOer RealGrouchy has more about this at his blog.

The stupidity of Critical Mass

I've been wanting to post my thoughts on CM for a while now, but the Interwebz once again have saved me the typing so I can simply provide links to others that have already said it:

http://www.joeydevilla.com/2006/09/29/critical-massholes-or-why-i-no-longer-ride-with-critical-mass/

http://www.joeydevilla.com/2008/06/01/critical-massholes-strike-again/

Propeller Dance

I've been working with Propeller Dance for a few years now, providing musical accompaniment for the classes taught by Renata Soutter, who I met through the Grasshoppa Dance Exchange.

Propeller started out as DanceAbility, which is dance classes for people of all abilities, whether handicapped or in a wheelchair, as well as able-bodied people. It operated under the auspices of The School of Dance, and last year Renata and co-founders Shara Weaver and Alan Shain decided to go on their own and hence Propeller Dance was born (someone else owns the rights to the name DanceAbility, so they could not call it that as a legal entity).

The original class was (and still is) on Sundays, and it's the main performing group. Twice a years we have Community Day performances and once a year a fundraiser at the NAC's Fourth Stage. Our Monday class did well at our last Comm. Day, and is turning into a performing group in its own right, and so this year we will be at the fundraiser as well.

It's taking place over two nights this week, Tuesday June 3rd and Wednesday June 4th, though our group is only performing on Tuesday. I will be playing keyboard, djembe, percussion, and recorder, all during the course of our 20 minute segment. I've got a new Behringer amp for my keyboard, and a Boss RC-2 looping pedal that I'm still getting used to (just got it last week, and it's a neat little tool for making more involved music when one is the only musician). More on this gear in a future post, as I'm also using them on my regular Thursday gig with the Orbiters.

Please check the brand new Propeller website for more info on this week's shows.

Oh, and the Monday classes are out in Vanier, but in my years of doing this I've only used a car three times, with all the other trips done by bike (in the winter, towing a trailer) or via the cargo trike.

Three Speed Gallery

Just added a new link to the "Elsewhere" section: http://threespeedgallery.blogspot.com/

Jim Thill at planetary-gears started this one "as an antidote to fixed gear gallery". I like the sound of that! ;)

re-Cycles media coverage

In last Thursday's Ottawa Citizen the bike co-op was featured in a story titled "Five great places for a bike tune-up". The online edition only shows one photo, but the print version had all five shops across the top of the page, with re-Cycles featured first! There are a few inaccuracies - in our case our overhauled bikes do not range from $25 to $75 (our As Is bikes are in that range, while overhauled ones start at $100), but at least they didn't get our address wrong as they did for McCrank's!

And while it's nice to get the press attention, I was uncomfortable with the photo shoot. They want a photo of one person, since the photos would be small, and of course the want the "guy in charge". Easy to do with the other shops, but since ours is run as a collective I get a little uneasy when I'm singled out. Sure, I'm the Director and at times that will mean being viewed as a figurehead, but re-Cycles only works because of everyone involved.

drum trikes!

Some of my friends call my cargo trike "drum trike", since it was built mainly to move my drums around. I have a recurring fantasy to create an actual drumtrike; that is, a trike and drums combined. Using my friend Richard's BMX trike I did sort of create one for a day...

...to accompany the Grasshoppas during the 2006 Canada Dance Festival, but will create my own some day.

But in the meantime others seem to have beaten me to it...

(No further info on this beast)

(From: http://www.lourider.net/home.html)

And:

(From: Pulling-the-Drummer-out-from-behind-the-Bandstand)

Back at the Met.

No, not the famous Opera House, but the restaurant at Rideau and Sussex. We've just begun our third season of gigs on the plaza there, playing straight-ahead jazz for the Sunday Brunch crowd from 11am - 2pm, and "Swingin' 60's acid jazz" on Thursdays from 5pm - 8pm. And while we perhaps sound best to the crowd on the patio (because we face them) you can still enjoy the music by simply sitting on the plaza's perimeter.

And yes, I continue to use my cargo trike to get to these gigs.

(Previously blogged here and here.)

Hop to it

The Grasshoppas wanted to celebrate International Dance Day. So the call went out and we teamed up with students from Sylvie Desrosiers' modern dance program for some noon-hour fun. I was the only accompanist, which was fine, though it was a bit hard to both take photos and keep the music going!

More at the Grasshoppa website.



A smaller group did a Hop back during Winterlude on the canal.

Cheap therapy

Ever felt the urge to smack someone? (Well, that's rather violent, and I'd never go through with it myself).

Ok, ever felt like like hitting something with a stick (wait a minute, that's called "drumming"...).

Ok then... Have you ever needed to just get some frustration out? Well, here's the Net version of the old adage "therapy is expensive, while popping bubble wrap is cheap":

http://www.therightfoot.net/mystuff/whatever/swf/bubblewrap.swf

And make sure your speakers are on when you click "fresh sheet".

I've been blogged...

... by Kirstin Endemann of the Ottawa Citizen. She contacted me regarding the re-Cycles Co-op for an article she was writing, and we found we had a music connection as well.

Earth Day gig

Upcoming IJO gig

This coming Friday night the Impressions In Jazz Orchestra offers up perhaps it's coolest program yet. We will be playing some great arrangements of the music from My Fair Lady, as arranged by Johnny Richards (best-known for his work with Stan Kenton). We'll also do the medley from West Side Story as made famous by Buddy Rich, which features your blogging drummer.

And to top it off, we'll also play a whole bunch of TV theme tunes from the 60's and 70's, mainly along the lines of spy and detective shows. So not only do I get to wail away on some great jazz, but also stuff like the theme from Hawaii Five-O, and Batman, and Perry Mason, and Star Trek...

Oh, and we'll even have Laurence Wall from CBC Radio as our "Guest MC and Quiz Master"!

For this show we are back at Dominion Chalmers Church, which has wonderful acoustics, but hard wooden pews to sit in. There are some seat pads scattered about, but you might wish to bring your own.

re-Cycles move

On Saturday the 5th we moved the entire re-Cycles Bicycle Co-op shop to its new address at 477 Bronson Avenue.

While a pedal-powered move would've been interesting, we had so much stuff that it was just not practical. We rented a 16-foot truck, and it took three full loads! We had a good crew of people, and the first loading to the last unloading took only 6 hours. And that included waiting a half hour for the new space to be swept of drywall dust and the floor mopped, which was supposed to have been done for us beforehand...

The new shop is quite conveniently about three blocks from my house. And I don't feel at all guilty about it, as someone else found the address. I simply approved it. ;) We were able to close on a Thursday night as usual and open the new shop for a regular Tuesday shift, so we did not miss a single evening. Which was good, as this is our busiest time of year.

And now a few photos, while I compile a full page of them for the re-Cycles website.

The old shop.

Quiet Mike and Derek hold back the pile.

The new space has two rooms plus basement storage. This is the "showroom", slowly getting organized, with the entrance to the work room just past the shelves.

Most of the moving crew after beer and pizza (some had left earlier).

busy busy busy

I'm currently a tad swamped...

The re-Cycles Bike Co-op has entered into a partnership with Causeway Work Centre, and on top of putting this together we have been scouting for a new location in which to set up shop, as they will use our shop facilities during the day, since the co-op is only open during the evenings. The new location has been found, and we're moving in this coming Saturday!

It's going to be a ton of work moving all the bikes and tools and parts and getting the new space set up, but it'll be worth it, as we'll finally have a proper retail space, and will no longer be in our old basement space surrounded by noisy band rehearsals (yes, I know - strange irony for me to be driven half-nuts by other musicians, but even the best bands sound bad when more than one is playing at a time!).

A rather nice aspect for me is that the new space is at 477 Bronson Avenue, which is only three and a half blocks from my house. This will make it much easier to just drop by and help out, aside from my role as the co-op's Director. And no, I did not find this location for us, so I don't feel too guilty about its proximity ;)

On top of this fun, the Impressions in Jazz Orchestra has another fab show coming up on April 18 at the Dominion Chalmers Church. One of the numbers we'll be playing is the West Side Story medley made famous by Buddy Rich. Since it's a drum feature I'm doing my best to get this piece memorized, as it's eight pages long and my hands will be way too busy to turn them!

I'm also rehearsing with local bassist Tom McMahon for some shows we have coming up featuring some of his original music. And after four weeks off my gig with Propeller Dance starts its Spring season mid-month.

All in all the month of April is shaping up to be rather stimulating! Now if the snow would finish melting so I can get the cargo trike out of hibernation, as riding the winter bike and towing a trailer for the past four snowy months has lost whatever "fun" factor it may have had...

dance show

My friend Amanda Bon is a local dance artist, and she is in a show at La Nouvelle Scene this coming Thursday and Friday. She is also a very talented singer-songwriter, and I've been working with her since last September. We've done a couple of gigs and are constantly working on new music, and are in the midst of putting a demo together. Her "day job" is in Modern and Flamenco dance (both as teacher and performer) and I'm going to enjoy seeing her in action at the Friday show.

Parade fun

This past Saturday the HPVOoO gang once again took part in our local St. Patrick's Day Parade. I could not attend last year, so it was fun to make it this time. Photos can be found here.

St. Patty's Day joke

(Courtesy of my friend Ian in Montreal)

Paddy had been drinking at his local Dublin pub all day and most of the night celebrating St Patrick's Day.

Mick, the bartender says, " You'll not be drinking anymore tonight Paddy." Paddy replies, "OK Mick, I'll be on my way then."

Paddy spins around on his stool and steps off. He falls flat on his face. "Shoite" he says and pulls himself up by the stool and dusts himself off. He takes a step towards the door and falls flat on his face,

"Shoite, Shoite!"

He looks to the doorway and thinks to himself that if he can just get to the door and some fresh air he'll be fine. He belly crawls to the door and shimmies up to the door frame. He sticks his head outside and takes a deep breath of fresh air, feels much better and takes a step out onto the sidewalk and falls flat on his face.

"Bi'Jesus... I'm fockin' focked," he says.

He can see his house just a few doors down, and crawls to the door, hauls himself up the door frame, opens the door and shimmies inside.

He takes a look up the stairs and says "No fockin' way". He crawls up the stairs to his bedroom door and says "I can make it to the bed." He takes a step into the room and falls flat on his face. He says "Fock it" and falls into bed.

The next morning, his wife, Jess, comes into the room carrying a cup of coffee and says, "Get up Paddy. Did you have a bit to drink last night?".

Paddy says, "I did Jess. I was fockin' pissed. But how'd you know?"

"Mick phoned... you left your wheelchair at the pub."

snow fun

Well, the snow just won't let up, and this past weekend's 56 centimeters has put us very close to our all-time record amount of snow. And while in my new place a contractor clears the driveway (though they're not very quick about it) I still have to shovel my way to the basement door, and my neighbours and I also do the front walkway.

Recall my post about clearing ice off the trikeport? Well, I've had to do that at least five times now, with upwards of 3" of ice thickness at a time. That has been a LOT of weight, but I did design the 'port to hold up to that. Most of the times though it has just been a matter of pulling the snow off, and yesterday was no exception.

There's a 4' high, 12' long trikeport under there, somewhere...

And the front walkway

After that was done it was time to meet some of the HPVOoO guys for a slushy bike ride. Our destination was Rideau Falls, to see how the ice was piling up now that the induced ice break-up is happening.

Along the way we passed some cars that might not move for a while:

The annual ice wall was not happening yet, but that could change in a day. Still pretty, though...


The prevailing wind has slammed enough spray against this railing to really cause a build-up:

This machine lifts out the squared timber logs that make up the water level control dam:

After that it was time to head to the Sunday noodle soup dinner. Here's the snow at Somerset and Arthur Streets. Keep in mind that in preparation for the incoming storm city crews had completely cleared the previous snowfall and all snowbanks 48 hours earlier.

Icanhascheezburger

Some of you may be familiar with the Net silliness that is LOLcats. These are photos of cats (usually) with captions written as if the cats are saying them (for the most part). And of course being cats they don't spell well or use good grammar. ;)

A fine site for one's daily fix is icanhascheezburger.com/, and below I give you some of my faves from that site.

Winterlude fun

My friend Tanya (aka crazybikerchick) came up from Toronto the other weekend to take in some Winterlude fun.

We of course wanted to get around town by bike, but since only one of my many bikes is properly set up for winter cycling I decided to do what we did last winter and use the elderly CCM tandem and clean it up afterwards. As there was no snow in the immediate forecast and the roads were reasonably clear I did not swap the slick summer tires for knobby winter ones (like I did last year). And it was fine - I think the combined weight of a heavy tandem plus two riders helped keep the bike rubber-side down.

Saturday afternoon we headed to the Rideau Canal for a skate. It was a beautiful day with the temp. around -8C or so, which kept the ice from getting really ragged due to the many blades slicing it up. And on such a nice Winterlude day it's not just a matter of a lot of skaters, but more like a busy highway of skaters! (Along its 7 km length there might be up to 100,000 on at one time.) We got on at 5th Avenue and managed to find a spot so we could switch from boots to skates. On quieter days I'd just leave my boots in the change hut, but on such a busy day it's often prudent to bring the boots along. And this particular day it really paid off to do so...

Skateway freeway

Crazybikerchick (with my fave jester hat)

Part of the Winterlude thing is to chomp on a Beavertail. But of course the lineups at each hut are a bit lengthy...

Fortunately, each Beavertail hut is staffed with about 500 teenagers (the work environment resembles a giant beehive) and they turn things over fast. So we did not have to wait all that long for our chocolate / hazelnut 'Tails.

Yum...

Skating back, and I wanted to get a photo of the Skate Patrol helping out an injured skater. I only realized afterwards that I also caught this guy wearing his huge boots! It's not uncommon to carry one's boots while skating, but these are the largest I've seen around someone's neck. One also occasionally sees people wearing a boot on each hand like a glove. This comes in very "handy" if one falls forward.


At one point Tanya stumbles and says "something's wrong with my skate", and we look down to see that the elderly molded plastic boot had shattered!

Now weren't we glad we carried our boots with us! So she walked and I skated and we got off the canal at the next set of steps and walked back to the bike. Later on we cycled down to Confederation Park to look at the ice sculptures.

There were big plans for the following day. An afternoon ski bike / toboggan party at the Arboretum, then the usual Sunday night HPVOoO pho dinner, then an evening bike ride with our various bikes all lit up. Well, that WAS the plan, but freezing rain set in about two hours before the first event, so that was canceled, as was the bike ride due to the nice glossy coating all over everything. But T. and I had time to ride the tandem over to Dow's Lake and walk around the goings-on there before the rain arrived. And yes, we had another Beavertail.

The tandem was fun as usual, though also sluggish and flexy as usual. It's the ultimate cruising machine though, and I'm glad Tanya is happy to ride in the back and let me "captain". She's an experienced cyclist, doing such things as 200km randonneuring rides in addition to her daily commuting, and it's not always easy to give up control of a bike to someone else.


Yes, the bike got rather messy and the salty slush was not going to be good for it (the bike was locked up outside overnight to prevent the slush from melting and dripping all over the bike). A pail of hot water rinsed off the gunk and a good wipe-down was done when the bike was finally put away.

Despite the rather crappy weather we had 20 people for dinner, and not one of us rode our bikes to get there due to the slippery conditions. Most walked or bused, which was a tad ironic as motor vehicle traffic kept the roads in perhaps better shape for cycling than the icy sidewalks were for walking!

(Photo by RGB)

Japanese Deep Purple

I Am Canadian

And since I mentioned Bill Shatner in an earlier post here he is, happy to poke some fun at himself.

RIP: Sheldon Brown

Official notice of his passing.

Sheldon Brown was THE Internet bike tech guru for many years. He worked at Harris Cyclery, a family-owned shop in Boston, and it was one of the first shops with a Net presence.

Among other things Sheldon put together a fabulous listing of bike tech articles, which became a standard reference. We did a bit of correspondence over the years, and I got a small thrill when I found that he had linked to my website, mainly due to my page on the Raleigh Twenty folding bike, of which he was a fan.

Sheldon's health had been suffering over the past two years, and he'd been diagnosed with MS. It was heartbreaking to read how he could no longer ride a upright bike, and even with his stable Greenspeed trike he could not ride as far as he used to. He talked about his travails in his journal, and he was posting right up until the final day.

Rest in peace Sheldon. You were an inspiration to far more people than you may have been aware, and certainly to me. I started my website because of people like you - people that so freely gave their knowledge to others. You will be missed...