great interview with the band in boston. you can get to know all of us better. the girls conducting the interview & taking pictures were so fun

http://www.teapartyboston.com/2009/08/the-mieka-canon/

It is my personal belief that Brian Cassagnol is a genius.  Now, I know the term, “genius” gets thrown around a lot, but I feel compelled to stress that my deeming someone a genius should not be taken lightly.  The criteria is as follows: said “genius” must be a) smarter than I am in some field that I maintain to have expert knowledge in, and b) everybody knows that a good outline needs to have at least 2 points per subheading… hence, point (b).  For those of you who are unaware, Brian Cassagnol is Mieka Pauley’s guitarist, music director, and engineer of an overly elaborate and menacingly complicated system of guitar effects pedals.  Brian has had a huge part in helping steer the sonic landscape of Mieka Pauley’s music in a direction that the rest of the band and fans alike have been coming to recognize as fresh, innovative, and a shit-load louder than it was before.  In addition to Mieka Pauley’s music, Brian also fronts his own band, “The Books of Brian”, in which he sings… better than I can… technically making him a genius by my definition of the word.  In addition to Brian’s “vocal performance genius”, Brian also knows a lot more shit than I do about classical music, music theory, opera, and “staying calm when you’re super late for some shit that you weren’t supposed to be super late for”.  I am fiercely envious of this last manifestation of genius… which brings me to the point of this blog post.

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The title of this blog entry is a direct quote: “I don’t know how to do this,” is something that Mieka said to me on stage during a show at Rockwood Music Hall, recently. I can’t remember if I actually heard the words come out of her mouth. I’m pretty sure that I saw her mouth move in the shape of the words, but…well… it’s just not that important to the story, ok? You see, Mieka has a certain magic about her. She has the power to express, whether she wants it or not. She need not speak. She need not gesture. She needn’t do anything at all, and you are bound to feel her fury; her joy; her despair; her mind-bogglingly neurotic panic. Much of the time, it’s her eyes that do the talking. Mieka’s eyes are beautifully expressive. Even when they are wide with incensed rage, you can’t help but admire their depth. They’re just so big. Often, I’ll find myself gawking in astonished wonderment as Mieka rips me a new one about one thing or another. It’s best not to drift too far out. The sea is uneven. Jagged shards of broken ice bob helplessly amongst inconsistently spaced white-capping waves that head in all directions. Unexplained shipwreck debris finds itself battered into kindling as it claws its way amidst the loosely packed ice, beneath a foreboding and thunderous sky. Lo! A voice; an unseen siren song beckons from the dark horizon… “Are you fucking kidding me?! Have you been listening to anything that I’m saying???” Sorry, Mieka.

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I’ve been obsessed with daytrotter for a while, and I finally got to stop by their studios in the quad cities while on tour last fall. the session got posted today – I am so happy with how the piece turned out – daytrotter puts the art back into the music scene. I recorded, acoustic & live-to-two-track, #1 a new-ish song “We’re All Gonna Die”; #2 a cover of my friend noam weinstein’s “When I Get My”; #3 the first track from my last album (elijah drop your gun) “All The Same Mistakes”; and #4 the a capella “Marked Man”.

here’s an excerpt from their write-up:

Beauty In The Business Of Toughness

Words by Sean Moeller // Illustration by Johnnie Cluney // Sound engineering by Mike Gentry

…She brings words to her tongue that don’t feel to be of difficult conception, as if they are the particles that have just been swishing around her canals and veins for all of her eternity, which is the only eternity that matters much. They are the pieces of her that she’s never going to get rid of and it comes out as music that will make you feel minty and it will make you feel misty and just the right temperature – where the sun’s blazing down on you on an otherwise chilly day. She takes fate on a day-to-day basis and that could be the smartest thing anyone can do. You carve your own way or whittle your own coffin.

A lot of interesting things have happened to us in the past year or so. We won a few contests, made some money, got hooked up with a great producer, and wrote some great songs. A certain clarity has developed with regard to our identity, as a band. A creative force, resulting from 4 (and sometimes 5) distinct personalities has somehow managed to transcend any one of its singular creative voices, culminating in what has become… Mieka Pauley. Which brings us to the week of South by Southwest, 2009… a chance to find out what happens when (putting lame band bios aside) you throw a handful of seriously neurotic music nerds into a soccer-mom-van and send them across the country to play shows.

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last night at the Ultimate Gossip Girl Summit 4 was so much fun – the host, comedian sara benincasa, invited me to perform an original song about gossip girl’s chuck bass. (in the audience was Chuck 2.0 from season 2, episode 12 – that’s a picture of us on the right). one of the gossip girl panelists, comedian baratunde thurston, & I wrote some lyrics over a loose version of a d’angelo song, and here’s the result:


Shit, Damn, Motherchucker – Mieka Pauley Sings To Chuck Bass by miekapauley

the show at friday night in nyc was amazing, thanks to the canal room for being a beautiful venue, cosmo, nysc & q104.3’s jonathan clarke for being beautiful hosts, and alexa wilkinson and bess rogers for playing beautiful sets.

here’s a video of me & the band debuting our new song “whiskey” (thanks to tony maceli for the vid):

3. Whiskey – Mieka Pauley – Canal Room – February 13, 2009 by whosthebass

the band and I just got back from charlottesville a couple days ago, where we were shooting the music video for All The Same Mistakes. the director eric hurt just sent me this video still, and I didn’t even recognize myself:

you can check out more pictures from the shoot here.

can’t wait to see the video, eric …

this is from a loft concert in brooklyn that I did with the lovely sybarite chamber players. matt o’malley arranged the song for strings; robbie mitchell shot the video; and their org sopo productions was responsible for the beautiful night.

Mieka Pauley with The Sybarite Chamber Players- ‘All The Same Mistakes’
from Matthew O'Malley on Vimeo.

my producer/friend/guitarist brian cassagnol unfortunately couldn’t make it that night, but I wonder if, upon hearing his synth string production transformed into the real thing, this would be the result.

brian and I playing in the subway in boston – andrew’s behind the camera – we’re in town to play passim tonight & thought we’d pick up an extra couple bucks: