SAMARKAND LIVE - AUGUST 18, 2007 Gig blog

SAMARKAND
Saturday August 18, 2007
Andyman's Treehouse

Just when I thought the Samarkand Summer Tour 2007 couldn't get any more last-minute or intimate, a gig came up so quickly that I was the only one who could/would do it!

For the Madlab gig back in July we had a couple of weeks to prepare. For the Cafe Bourbon Street gig in late July we had one week. For Andyman's Treehouse, I had about twelve hours.

So I decided to attempt my first ever solo acoustic one-guy-with-a-guitar performance. After spending a few hours with an acoustic guitar, racking my brain to come up with enough songs that were easy to play and sing at the same time, I was as prepared as I could be.

I had a few alternate songs on the setlist too, because you never know. If the gig was smokin', I didn't want to make everyone wait while I tried to think of other songs to play. But it didn't matter in the end.

We got to Andyman's around 9:30pm or so. The main band was setting up their stuff. Very friendly guys, everyone insisted on introducing themselves to everyone else. Quaint.

The crowd was PRIMED by the time I took the stage! Yeah, right.

Just like the first run of Samarkand gigs in 1993/94, the audiences in summer 2007 have gone from small... to just wives & very close friends ....to ONE WIFE! That's right, I've whittled it down from like 10 people to 4 people to 1 people over the span of three gigs. No small feat. There were probably 10 people at the most at Andyman's Treehouse when I played, but I think I preferred playing to my wife & a couple of other couples, it's too distracting to try to sing about my soul when a clutch of burly drunk dudes are in the back doing their thing loudly. Y'know.

I made a video but I'm too afraid to watch it.

VALLEY
BLOOMER
BEAUTIFUL KISS
INTO
01.28.92
EYE
CATHEDRAL

No surprises in the setlist, although Eye was a bit of a challenge to play. I did the bassline on the guitar, over what should've been a Dmin drone. But strumming the bassline made the song sound eerily John Denver. Hmm.

It was a lot of fun to just play an acoustic guitar and sing my songs through a P.A. at a real rock club on a Saturday night. I'm so glad I finally got to do the folk singer thing. I'd say it's too bad you missed it but it really isn't. It's time to make a new band, I think Samarkand might've proved its point already.

Comments

Unknown Samarkand track circa 1999-2000

Judging by the drum & bass loop I'd say this recording predates any PC multitracking attempts. I was definitely in the zone with the guitar, though. It sounds like an old Cure riff that was abandoned at birth. Maybe it was, who knows. Ian C Stewart - 1999-2000 Unknown Samarkand Track MP3 The other side of the cassette is labeled CLUB AUTO NARRATION SOURCE. My Tokai and BC Rich guitars, circa summer 1987. Posed seductively on my bedroom floor.... in the basement.... Speaking of basements, anyone who came over to my house to jam from 1989 onwards would've had this low-hanging ceiling light to contend with. By contend with I mean leave skin and hair cells upon. The number of times I and everyone else smashed our heads on that thing was quite funny, thinking back.

THESE CHORDS ARE LIKE FAMILY TO ME

Ian C Stewart "These Chords are like Family to Me" MP3 From the 2003 made-to-be-made-not-made-to-be-heard album I Don't Know Why You Think I Won't Kill You .... this is the last song. This was the beginning of my dabbling with intentional randomness in songwriting. The lyrics for the whole album were compiled from albums by other artists that I enjoyed a lot, such as Adrian Belew's Twang Bar King , The Cure's Pornography , Voivod Nothingface , Mercyful Fate Melissa etc. I wrote out entire lines of their phrases and chopped them together. I think at the time I described it as 'sad psychedelic love songs about satan' overall, which is really being too generous. The music was also randomly chosen from tablature found on t'interwebs for favorite songs of mine. In general I played the chords in reverse order to the original songs but I can still kind of tell in a couple of places what the songs were. The titles were my own, obviously. Although I did cho...

EXGIRLFRIEND

SAMARKAND FRENZY WEEK, DAY THREE Samarkand "Exgirlfriend" MP3 This song is from the limited release cassette Sensitive , which was issued in a handpainted edition of 10 in January 1993. Naturally. Sensitive was 60 minutes of almost entirely brand new material, only one or two songs were recycled. It was recorded during what I thought would be my winter break from Berklee in 1992. Of course that turned out to be my permanent break from Berklee in 1992 since the cash had completely run out for my tuition. All the songs were recorded on a borrowed 4-track, possibly Ray's Porta 05. I also had my uncle's massive Carvin PA, Sennheiser mics & Ludwig drums in my basement. All of which feature prominently on this here release, along with the brand new Zoom 9002 effects. Which was an amazing combination at the time, I really felt like the boundaries were down on the equipment end of things for the first time. "Exgirlfriend" is a riff recycled from Domestik Quarrel...

Ian C Stewart Archive of Sound

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