Dave Willey

Dave Willey makes his house in the American Western world, but his most noteworthy music pulls from affects elsewhere. An experienced multi-instrumentalist and composer, he flies in currents below the radar of mainstream music listeners, despite getting one of fairly few “avant” performers whose music is certainly uncompromising, difficult, and ambitious but also participating and tuneful, certainly available to anyone also slightly available to uncommon cross forms that can’t become categorized in nice little stylistic containers. He’s an excellent improviser, manifests a world-spanning stylistic eclecticism, as well as the Beatles and Seaside Children make it onto his “best ten bands of most period” list, combined with the Moms of Invention, Henry Cow, and Zamla Mammaz Mamma (at least that’s what he stated around the convert from the millennium). Pay attention to his music, and that makes a degree of feeling. Blessed in 1963, he spent at least some of his youngsters in Oregon, and predicated on the data of an image inside the back again cover of 2011’s Dave Willey & Close friends record Immeasurable Currents — which ultimately shows Willey as a tyke putting on a wide-brimmed head wear and sunglasses that could fit somebody double his size, while deciding on a electric guitar nearly as large as he’s — the music insect little bit him early. He was also inspired by his dad Dale Willey — whose reserve of poetry The Tin Container Papers and Various other Poems includes a 2001 copyright, the same calendar year Dale passed away — and his stepmother Brent (who passed away this year 2010), both of whom had been mixed up in Corvallis, Oregon, Unitarian Universalist Fellowship and concentrated substantial energies on problems of sociable justice and environmental conservation. Dave’s years in Oregon also exposed him as somebody inclined to create long-term and long-range musical partnerships despite range as well as the passing of years; he fulfilled folk-rock vocalist/songwriter Henry Winters in Corvallis and years later on, in 2001, they started collaborating as the Intralopers, completing their Arriving Home Compact disc in November 2003. But Willey offers created his most personal noises while living and employed in Colorado. He was in a variety of rings including a edition of Jeffrey-Paul Norlander’s Americana/origins rock clothing the Denver Gentlemen and performed synth bass in an organization called Big Feet Torso — both which notably also included one of is own most important following musical companions, keyboardist/trombonist/composer Jon Stubbs — though it would have a time frame living in European countries to truly form his inimitable musical persona. He spent a yr in the Czech Republic (where his then-girlfriend Carmel Kooros was teaching British), assimilated live music by organizations like Nimal and Lars Hollmer’s Fem Söker En Skatt and went to gatherings like France’s Event MIMI, and busked for the roads in Switzerland along with his friend Bob Gault. Acquiring inspiration through the sounds he previously been hearing, Willey started putting his personal musical suggestions to tape on the four-track he hauled around in his back pack. And although he previously previously favored free of charge improvised music and — as he consequently linked to Denver substitute every week publication Westword — was disdainful of “anything that was made up or in a period signature or having a melody,” Willey experienced a modify of center. “[T]here’s nothing incorrect with being available,” Willey informed Westword, “You could be available and interesting and demanding all at exactly the same time, ideally.” Time for the U.S., Willey relocated right into a — apparently quite rustic — cabin in the woods outdoors Boulder and started multi-tracking himself on several devices (keyboards, accordion, acoustic guitar, bass, marimba, xylophone, percussion, you name it), completing the music, with learning the help of Stubbs, that he previously begun in European countries and liberating his exclusive amalgam of rock and roll, Western european folk, avant-garde experimentation, and contemporary composition simply because the single cassette Songs through the Hamster Theater, that was reissued on Compact disc with the Prolific label in 1995 (and which includes a especially evocative vocal from Kooros using one monitor). By 1993, Hamster Theater was needs to emerge as a genuine performing device, spearheaded by Willey and Stubbs and targeted at playing Willey’s compositions live. In early stages, the group presented Willey mainly on keyboards, acoustic guitar, and melodeon and Stubbs on bass, plus a sponsor of additional music artists on keyboards, sax, flute, and drums — including keyboardist Deborah Perry, whom Willey experienced fulfilled in 1985 and collaborated with inside a Thankful Dead cover music group. In 1996 a significant confluence of Denver-Boulder region outré rock rings occurred, with Willey and Perry (as vocalist) signing up for the Denver-based avant-prog music group Considering Plague — which have been around in a single type or another on / off since 1982 — and Considering Plague creator/guitarist Mike Johnson and reed participant Mark Harris signing up for Hamster Theater. Now an associate of two Colorado rings of the avant-prog persuasion, Willey discovered himself covering a straight wider spectral range of music in his innovative existence, as co-leader from the completely instrumental Hamster Theater, a relatively melodic and tuneful clothing, so that as bass participant in the knottier, probably even more “hard” Considering Plague, a music group whose frequently multi-part musical suites feature vocals and Artwork Bears-informed lyrics. It could be noted that tries to describe Considering Plague can evoke hook prickliness among bandmembers who experience the group is certainly somewhat misinterpreted; Willey provides stated the group “gets recognised incorrectly as prog/RIO [Rock and roll in Opposition] music,” although explaining Considering Plague therefore does not appear wholly inaccurate. Actually, one might claim that Willey offers centered on the user-friendly part of RIO and post-RIO (L’Outfit Rayé, Samlas/Zamlas, Volapük) with Hamster Theater as well as the even more “severe” part of this music (Henry Cow, Artwork Bears, Present) with Considering Plague. Regardless, by 1998 Willey was occupied with both organizations, documenting Hamster Theater’s first real music group documenting, Siege on Hamburger Town, live at Denver’s Mercury Cafe using a sextet comprising himself now mainly on accordion, Stubbs on keyboards and trombone, Johnson on electric guitar, Harris on reeds, drummer Raoul Rossiter, and bassist Mike Fitzmaurice. Which yr, Willey also produced his Cuneiform Information debut playing bass on Considering Plague’s In Extremis. Through the remainder from the ‘90s also to the change from the millennium, Willey would tour and make event looks in the U.S., France, and Italy with Considering Plague. He’d also co-produce and blend — more than a documenting process that extended to a whole calendar year — modern folk musician Lorna Hunt’s 2002 Sentimental Bedlam record, an undertaking that he relation as you of his “most significant musical encounters” even even today. But Hamster Theater remained a significant concentrate for Willey during those years, as well as the group would shortly take on its most ambitious task to time, the Carnival Detournement record released by Cuneiform in 2001. The record was documented in Colorado with Willey and Stubbs on a variety of instruments; support in the various other Hamsters Harris, Johnson, Fitzmaurice, and Rossiter; and extra contributions from chosen guest music artists. Considering Plague co-founder Bob Drake combined the recording at his Studio room Midi Pyrennes in France. Although Willey and Stubbs indicated misgivings within the Hamster Theater site about their decision “to wreck havoc on Bob’s master, considerably squashing the sonic palette he previously developed,” Carnival Detournement was non-etheless released to substantial critical acclaim because of its wide-ranging carnival-esque mixture of quirky, fun, and occasionally mysteriously gorgeous instrumental music — and stated misgivings had been redressed by this year’s 2009 Collectors Release reissue of Carnival Detournement, which restored the documenting to its Bob Drake-mastered type. In August of 2002, Hamster Theater was invited to execute at Seattle’s Progman Cometh celebration kept at that city’s Moore Theater, as well as the band’s functionality was included on the next disc of the general public Execution of Mister Character/Quasi Day Area two-CD established released by Cuneiform in-may 2006. Mister Character/Quasi Day Area also contains a studio disk offering new compositions generally by Willey and Stubbs, some created for contemporary dance and media shows (Willey wears several hats of both wide- and narrower-brimmed range as an operating musician in Boulder, including a posture of personnel accompanist in the University or college of Colorado Boulder Section of Theater and Dance). In the meantime, all had not been quiet for the Considering Plague front through the early 2000s, as the music group took 2 yrs to record its next opus, A BRIEF HISTORY of Madness, released by Cuneiform in 2003. As the initial decade from the 2000s continuing and neared its bottom line, both Hamster Theater and Considering Plague continued to be intermittently energetic, without fresh recordings but with spread live looks and behind-the-scenes actions recommending that their followers would be compensated in time. Nevertheless, for Dave Willey, a fresh and important documenting is at the works, one which he would afterwards say got “a million years” to full. Immeasurable Currents, these 2011 AltrOck label Compact disc, set a few of his past due dad Dale Willey’s poetry through the Tin Box Documents and Various other Poems to music, with Dave as normal multi-tracking many musical instruments but with essential contributions from different close friends, including Mike Johnson; drummer Dave Kerman and miRthkon’s Wally Scharold using one melody each; and two performers, Deborah Perry and Elaine di Falco — the second option notable specifically for her good shows on recordings (e.g., Delta Flora) by Hughscore, a task offering ex-Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper. And actually, Immeasurable Currents also contains a number of the last documented shows by Hopper (who passed away of leukemia in ’09 2009) himself. (Di Falco dropped along with the Hamster Theater/Considering Plague audience upon joining Considering Plague to complete for Perry through the band’s springtime 2008 Western european mini-tour of France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and Portugal.) Immeasurable Currents was certainly an intensely personal record for Willey, along with his accordion prominent in lots of places but using the record’s overall experience closer to Considering Plague than Hamster Theater — blended with Robert Wyatt’s VERY CHEAP and a little bit of Slapp Happy for added seasoning — as the music artists involved added to a broadly mixed palette of sonic imagery to complement Dale Willey’s frequently free-verse poems. The elder Willey’s poetry was up to date by his unflinching like of nature in every its facets — gorgeous and terrifying — plus a interpersonal conscience that one might presume displays areas of his times with wife Brent in the Unitarian Fellowship in Corvallis, the times of Dave’s youngsters. (The shortest poem within the recording, entitled “The Conservatives,” must have resonance for progressives ten years following the Tin Box Documents and Various other Poems was released: “They buried their deceased near heaven/on the hilltop above the city/Veneration of their ancestors/offers poisoned their kids’s wells.”) Notably, some of Immeasurable Currents was recorded in Dave Willey’s home in Colorado, with Hugh Hopper saving at his studio room in Britain, Elaine di Falco — learning structure in the modern music degree system at European Oregon School in Monmouth — recorded the piano for the monitor “Fall” (“Which, in waspish foolishness, can be trapped, that will not, is really as hard to state as the way the algae strands can proceed to the unstable motions of the immeasurable currents”) in the Unitarian Fellowship in Corvallis where Dale and Brent had been active. When contemplating the genesis from the recording as well as the passing of essential principals in its root narrative — Dale Willey, Brent Willey, and Hugh Hopper, to all or any three of whom the recording is definitely dedicated — it can indeed appear that one currents are immeasurable, while some can be assessed at least in the feeling that they come back inexorably with their stage of origins. Also undoubtedly near Dave Willey’s musical center is normally a fresh transatlantic trio, 3 Mice, offering Willey, di Falco (who today lives with Dave outside Boulder), as well as the like-minded Cédric Vuille, a Swiss multi-instrumentalist using a decades-long participation in the rather Hamster Theatre-like L’Ensemble Rayé. Israeli avant-prog mixmaster Udi Koomran (who blended and learned Immeasurable Currents) acquired recommended that Vuille experience Willey and di Falco in Geneva, Switzerland during Considering Plague’s 2008 tour, and upon their get-together the threesome decided to collaborate within a long-distance group offering Willey on accordion, bass, electric guitar, and percussion; di Falco on piano, vocals, accordion, and vibraphone; and Vuille on different musical instruments including cuatro, ukulele, electric guitar, clarinets, and theremin. Preliminary proof this outfit made an appearance on the MySpace page beneath the name “Pook & Fuegi,” but that moniker offers since been forgotten in choice for 3 Mice, a far more accurate name for any trio, certainly. The group’s Compact disc Send Me a Postcard, offering looks by Hamster Theater drummer Raoul Rossiter and L’Ensemble Rayé drummer Daniel Spahni, was combined and perfected by none apart from Koomran, and was slated for launch in the Disques Rayés label in November 2011. On the other hand, the long await a fresh Considering Plague record, again offering Willey on bass, was finally over in January 2012 using the discharge of Drop and Fall on Cuneiform. While associated with all these actions, Willey provides remained active being a collaborator on many other tasks, including clarinetist Dexter Payne’s Brazilian jazz quartet. Willey also arrived playing accordion on the monitor from Vuille’s 2010 recording, Faire, and he also shows up — along with diFalco and guitarist Mike Johnson — on Iridule, the 2010 AltrOck recording from the Italian mega-avant-prog aggregation Yugen, another group definately not Colorado that could seem to talk about at least an integral part of Willey’s “demanding yet interesting” musical sensibility. He also seems to have partly rethought his previous pronouncements that appeared to favour structure over improvisation, time for free improvisation like a guitarist and declaring that “improvising is definitely method fun with the proper mix of people.” Predicated on the data to date, you might anticipate his 21st hundred years free improvisations to become way as very much fun for listeners because they are for the individuals.