I grew up in Oregon. I think we all know at this point. Oregon is rainy. Check. This brings out slugs and worms. Gotcha. This, however, does not bring out waterbugs. Strange, I know. I did not encounter a waterbug (what I thought of as a giant mutant cockroach until someone was kind enough to explain the subtleties) until moving to New York. I wouldn't say that I have a fear of them, or a hatred even. It is more that when I look at one I am morbidly fascinated by my own capacity for gut-wrenching disgust. I physically start to seize up like I am going to vomit, and yet I continue to gaze upon the little prehistoric critters. I have a similar reaction to the thought of chewing on a popsicle stick or a bit of an aluminum foil gum wrapper.

This is all just a precursor to the fact that above the urinal in my place of employ, there has been a dead waterbug for at least a year. The little mother walked in the cracks between the ceiling tiles and hit a dead end..... literally. My guess is that it just swung its mad little legs until it died from overexertion. I think a lot about this waterbug, which I have named Wanda. I don't know why, it just seemed right. I have to look at Wanda everytime I use the urinal, not because of any kind of intellectual curiosity or to overcome my disgust, but because I am convinced that one day, as the decomposition process proceeds, Wanda will fall on the head of some poor office sucker and that person will wet themselves. Well, that sucker is NOT going to be me. I drink a lot of water at work, so I see Wanda about 5 times a day and have started identifying with her a little. I mean, sometimes you're just going along all fine in one direction and everything is peaches and ice cream cones and The Carpenters on the radio and POW, dead end. I mean, if you're lucky, you can back up, or turnaround, but what happens when you get in that metaphysical ceiling tile joint? Absolutely scares the bejeezus out of me.

Recently, upon returning to work from tour, I noticed that there is now a second waterbug nestled up snug behind Wanda, also dead. I have named him Bill. I am now thinking a lot about Bill and how he didn't learn from the example immediately set out before him. This is a new level of anxiety for me. Good times. Wow. I have a lot of time on my hands at work.

Three gigs coming up with a load of musicians known for their inability to be pigeonholed and actively avoiding dead ends.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday
(if you try and imagine that in the voice of Al Roker, it is mildly funny, but only mildly.....do it, don't do it, I don't care, it really depends on how bored you are)

6 pm
Magical Listening Hour
Steve Swell
Louie Belogenis
Michael Attias
Nate Wooley
Downtown Music Gallery
13 Monroe Street
Manhattan
FREE!

We're doing an early show at DMG, who are now fully underway with the Sunday shows again! Come in, buy a million records, maybe pick up a copy of Crackleknob!!!
then, I will take a train, plane, car, rickshaw, tricycle and megalodon with a saddle to quickly quickly quickly get to:

8 pm
CRACKLEKNOB CD RELEASE PARTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mary Halvorson
Reuben Radding
Nate Wooley
Issue Project Room
232 3rd Street
Brooklyn
10.00

This is one of my favorite groups and two of my favorite people who happen to be amazing musicians in the world. Crackleknob was released on HatHut Records and is being favorably reviewed by the media machine, so come see us play, give us hugs and let's drink! The next day is a holiday!

please note that both of these gigs are on Sunday. If you come to both, I will give you a handshake, manhug and say something really positive to you (you gotta love that deal)

Then.
Take a day off, you deserve it.

Tuesday
8 pm
Nate Wooley Quintet Premiere
Matt Moran
Josh Sinton
John Hebert
Harris Eisenstadt
The Stone
2nd Street and Avenue C
10.00

This is a new group that I'm trying out. Wrote some new music. Will try playing something different on the trumpet. Let's see how it goes!

Here's hoping that we all scurry on the floor in the sun this summer and don't find ourselves in a ceiling joint with no escape in sight!

love,Nate

When it Rains it Pours: Two New Releases!

Redrawn

soccer Committee & machinefabriek remixed and covered

Well, the subtitle says it all.

80 minutes of music, and one hell of a trip.

The cd is housed in a stylish grey tone carton sleeve, and it's mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi.

The tracklist:

Andrea Belfi High Jacked Drone 1

Holden Goldmund Di-o-day

Taylor Deupree For I Am Distant

Mark Templeton Landslide

The Puddle parade Magpie

Nate Wooley Mees

Tori, Reiko & Namio Kudo Thole

Francisco López Untitled 221

Németh Very Well Drawn, re-edited

The north Sea Di-o-day

Steinbrüchel Seem

Squares on Both Sides Very Well Drawn

Gary Smith Klauwier Materials, solo guitar into a duo

Lawrence English A Reversion to Thole

Kenneth Kirschner Di-o-day

Annelies Monseré For I Have None

The Fun Years The Fun Years Scribble with Crayons

Stefano Pilia Mees

Peter Broderick Christopher (for Suzanne)

Xela Low Drone 2

15 euro including worldwide shipping. order@machinefabriek.nu

Machinefabriek is one of my recent favorites, especially his solo album "Dauw", so I was honored to be asked to tear apart one of the pieces he worked on with visionary trumpet player Franz Hautzinger, lots and lots of slow tape and maybe a little more nightmarish than the original. I'm really looking forward to everyone else's contributions!

and.......along the lines of a Crackleknob like patience!

Transit-Quadrologues

"Quadrologues is the second Clean Feed release by the New York based quartet Transit. This collection of pieces integrates the tradition of jazz and the never obvious approaches to music. Each piece reveals an intelligent design with a clarity of purpose. Static and the hyper activity of free-jazz are equal partners in Transit's compositions. Falling in and out of tradition - Transit has created it's own "thumbprint" that reveals an individual sensitivity within a group consciousness. Jeff Arnal (percussion), Seth Misterka (alto saxophone), Reuben Radding (double bass) and Nate Wooley (trumpet) contribute choices in the moment - Impulse - Silence – Response - from a rich palette of individual style within a non linear structure. Each moment is unique and unpredictable. Quadrologues can count itself as apart of a new emerging music - unknown sounds of the 21st century. This collective is informed by decades of experimentation in the trenches of the Avant Garde. Full of risk but quick to reveal the importance of cooperation and the synergy of true dialogue. In conclusion: this music creates an innovative landscape that mirrors the complexities of the environment from which it emerged."

This is a great band that doesn't get to play often enough, but always seems to make some magic when it does. I'm really excited for this one. If you have the first eponymous release, get this and be a completist!!!

Intention Vs. Reality (Shows this Week)

So, this morning while I was coffee deprived and generally crabby, I had an interesting conversation with a young stock trader at the Starbucks on Wall Street. The conversation had to do with one's intent versus one's reality in relation to the outside world. This is something I've thought about quite a bit over the years, starting as early as age 12 or so. Let's take the time machine back, shall we? I was a ruddy youngster and salty as hell. I fancied myself quite a "speed demon" on the skateboard and in relation to the other 3 skateboarders in Clatskanie, Oregon, I was pretty damn good. I entered a regional competition, regional meaning Clatskanie and it's suburbs (yes, we had suburbs) and Longview (the big city, at least 10,000 people and two paper mills). So, my intent was to win the competition, show some young ladies how strong, graceful and gazelle-like I was and become a national hero, travelling the globe with a small entourage of like minded youth in search of the mystical Animal Chin. Now, again, that was my intent. Luckily, someone videotaped the competition, and I realized that the reality, my reality in relation to the rest of the world (in this case NW Oregon and SW Washington) was that I was a slightly tubby Swedish kid flopping around on a plank of wood with rubber wheels, spending more time off of it than on, that there was nothing gazelle-like about me, and perhaps manatee would be a more apt anthropomorphization (it's my intention that this is a real word). Okay, so good lesson, thank you technology, I started practicing trumpet more.

Okay, back to the present, there are times, beautiful still moments when intention and reality meet, like this morning, when my intention was to get a delicious cup of coffee (okay, it was starbuck's, but I'm still drinking it, so just let me believe for another couple of ounces), and I had completed the real world process of standing in line to pay for said coffee. This is what I was trying to explain to our dear friend the stock trader in very reserved tones. See, he also had the intention of getting a delicious coffee, but instead of dealing with the reality of his surroundings, he thought it would magically appear if he stood in front of the bagels fridge and yelled into his iphone, silly stock trader. I guess he never had someone videotape him at a skateboard competition. poor guy.

And some other moments of intent meeting reality this week!

Tonight: Bar 4
Pete Robbins Quartet:
Pete Robbins alto saxophone
Jeff Davis drums
Daniel Levin cello
Nate Wooley trumpet
7-10 pm
444 7th Avenue
Brooklyn
Free! (tips graciously accepted)

Thursday:
The Stone
Magical Listening Hour Record Release Party
Louie Belogenis tenor and soprano saxophones
Michael Attias alto saxophone
Steve Swell trombone
Nate Wooley trumpet
Sets at 8 and 10 pm
2nd street and Avenue C
Manhattan
10.00

And the Heavens Opened.....

Every day I walk from Vesey and Church to Wall Street for work. I thread my not so slenderness between the teeming hordes of macabre Nebraska high school girls basketball squads trying to snap a picture of the World Trade Center pit, the sweaty Wall Street traders looking on the edge of jumping out a window, Ben Bernanke and his phalanx of NYPD that, for some reason, are always dressed like a Tom of Finland recruitment poster and the botoxed PR guys rushing to their offices to work on convincing the idiot masses that Miley Cyrus is more than what she should be (a cute Tennessee diner waitress with dreams of hitting it big). Okay, so not really any different than the average NY commute, and I've learned to take a certain Taoist approach, becoming the stream that rushes quietly around the intervening craggy rocks, but one thing drives me completely insane....makes me grit my teeth, immediately upon hearing it, and that is car horns. I'm all for sound, addicted to it actually, but the pointless honking in New York is maybe my second biggest pet peeve (after umbrellas), and lately I have been having this little day dream, that I would like to share in hopes that if it is said out loud it will somehow come true. Thank you for your patience. If you would like to skip down to the gigs, please feel free at any point, I don't mind.

My day dream starts pretty grounded in reality, walking down Church to work, but then some jackass (re: livery driver) lays on the horn because he is shocked that there is a red light and this seriously inhibits his ability to do his job which is to drive a car in New York City, which has red lights in it. I walk over to his car, gently open then hood, and proceed to rip out the horn with my bare hands. Now this is where things start to get a little testosterone, so if there are kids around, please make them jump to the gigs now. As I'm standing in the viscera of the handily dispatched car horn, a red film covers my eyes and I move to the next car and repeat the process, and the next, and the next, and the next, until I am a whirring mass of silent destruction, stripping electrical cables with my teeth, flinging small plastic air horns hundreds of feet into the air as I move quickly up town in a crisscross pattern, leaving no horn unturned. Finally, it is dusk and I am laying in a pile of shredded cheap plastic, gasoline, and well, it's new york, so probably urine of some sort. My fingers are nubs and I am breathing in short but thankfully quiet gasps. The people of New York lift me gently on their shoulders and carry me to midtown. They sing William Basinski's tape loops using the syllable "lu" as a Norse chariot comes flying out of the sky pulled by a million unicorns. Leif Erickson, Zeus, Don Knotts and Alyssa Milano (of course) gently lift my depleted carcass into the chariot and kiss my brow as we fly heavenward to an eternity of rest, relaxation, indian food and matlock reruns. The people cheer and all is right with the world.

Shanda thinks that this wouldn't actually happen if I dismantled every car horn in New York. She runs on a different set of religious principles than I do. However, since I usually blindly believe anything a proven pragmatist tells me, I will learn to live with it and maybe even become friends with the cacophony. Maybe I'll start this week with these two gigs:

Tonight
Brooklyn Lyceum
227 4th Avenue
8 pm

Adam Lane's Full Throttle Orchestra
Taylor Ho Bynum/Nate Wooley-cornet/trumpet
Reut Regev/Tim Vaughn-trombone
Avram Fefer/David Bindman/Matt Bauder-saxophoneAdam Lane-bass
Igal Foni-drums

and

Saturday
IBeam Studios
168 7th street
Brooklyn
8 pm

Tilt Sixtet
Rich Johnson/Nate Wooley-trumpet
Chris McIntyre/Ben Gerstein-trombone
Joe Exley/Jay Rozen-tuba

Also, Crackleknob is out!!!!!!! The new disc with Mary Halvorson and Reuben Radding on Hatology. Please go to your local sounderie and buy 9 copies. Seriously, you will break the first 8 with glee upon listening.

and finally, some folks have asked me to post these announcements on my blog (blogspot.nwooley.com) so that the whole world can know what a doofus I am. So, there you go. This will be up today. Tell your friends, especially if you've been having an argument about what a doofus I am.

Behold the Coming of Crackleknob!

I can only assume that somewhere, somehow, someone laid waste to a chicken while chanting at the moon with a cajun accent because Crackleknob is finally out! That's right boys and girls, I have a copy on my desk right now. HatHut did a beautiful job, as did Reuben Radding in the mixing and mastering of the disc. For those of you not in the know, Crackleknob is the most delightfully underheard trio in modern times. Comprised of Mary Halvorson on guitar, Reuben Radding on bass and Nate Wooley on trumpet, the trio has been hard at work playing for millions and generally staying humble about it. Well, no more. The disc is out, it is great, and I'm guessing you will want it. Drop me a line here for info on getting a copy, or find it yourself at all the fine record stores that specialize in improvised music (i.e. downtown music gallery)

Magic Listening Hour on Cadence

Just released!

Steve Swell on trombone

Michael Attias on alto sax

Louie Belogenis on tenor sax

Nate Wooley on trumpet

recorded live at South Street Seaport in 2007. You may have seen this disc floating around as a DIY project, but it was just released by Cadence with a new cover featuring another painting by Steve!

All About Jazz

Finally back in some sort of work stasis after travel, recording and the typical Easter trumpet madness. A little behind, but here is a great review for "Hammer" by Lyn Horton from allaboutjazz.com

Seemingly the most complicated music is really the most simple; complexity might stem only from the mindful choices the performers make when they play. Yet, when the vocabulary of each performer is so well attuned to the possibilities of an unusual instrumental setting, then the choices for improvising, even though they might sound oddly pressured, are instinctual. What the musicians give each other musically and how each responds, generates the music.
This concept holds true on Throw Down Your Hammer And Sing, featuring the trio of Nate Wooley on trumpet, Fred Lonberg-Holm on cello and electronics and Jason Roebke on bass. How they relate to each other is through pure sound-making— where the sounds are discrete, but tend towards surprising fluidity ("Southern Ends of the Earth"), or what might seem to be total cacophony ("Tacones Altos") is totally sensible. It would be difficult to suggest that the music could be any other way than it is. The journey takes only one road and it is fascinating to follow it.
Five tracks, each lasting over ten minutes, give unquestionable substance to this recording. The textures are constantly changing. They metaphorically evoke auditory images that are mechanical ("Sans Aluminumius"), digital ("Saint Mary"), or are downright spacey and environmentally natural ("Anywhere, Anyplace at All"). Even though Lonberg-Holm steers the electronics, it is often the acoustic instruments that are tonally blending so well that how they merge seems electronic ("Sans Aluminumus"). Sometimes the question could be asked: where is the percussion? And the answer might be anywhere, anyplace or at none all.
The activity of singing, implied in the title, occurs where the song is the subtle, nuanced conversation among instruments ("Southern Ends of the Earth"). When the trumpet and the cello merge in timbre ("Sans Aluminumius"), the resulting surge ushers in a sinking sensation not without a deep bass tone, as if to eradicate all that annoys, leaving a state that allows for aberration to pass through aurally, as unavoidable but not untenable gestures from the outside world.
When the trumpet, cello and electronics interact ("Southern Ends of the Earth"), there is no contest; Wooley's tone often matches that of the cello so that its timbral quality disappears. The sound of the trumpet intercedes sometimes as accent ("Tacones Altos," "Saint Mary") or to embellish the fullness of the overall sound ("Sans Aluminumius" and "Southern Ends of The Earth"). The entire recording attests to Lonberg-Holm's genius as he advances his adventures with the bow as it scrapes, tweaks, scratches, twists, grinds, saws or broaches melody on the cello strings. Roebke's curious pizzicatos and well-placed arco consistently supports predominate textures whether they be electronic or from the cello ("Anywhere, Anyplace At All," "Southern Ends of The Earth").
This music induces a magical meditation—so abstract, so non-melodic, and so persistent in its vagaries that its appreciation is subject to transcendence, the skirting of analysis and just going with the flow.