A few months ago I was playing piano at a house party in West Asheville (the notorious Montana House) with Reese. We were trading places at the piano bench and mixing it up with some four-handed stuff and really just having a blast playing and entertaining the folks that crowded around the swaying, rocking old upright. We beat that piano to a pulp for five hours, and my old friends Mike Belleme and his girlfriend Kristen were there for much of it.

A few weeks later, Mike asked me to be a part of a skate video featuring the skaters of Asheville’s PUSH Skate Shop that he was going to be in. He’d filmed all his parts and there was a rough edit but no music yet. Inspired by the music that he had heard Reese and I play, he asked me to play the soundtrack. So we met over at World Coffee, where they have a beat up old Wurlitzer spinet in the back, RJ Hess (the filmmaker) set up some recording equipment and I improvised some music while I watched the rough cut. I treated it like I was playing to a silent film, trying to accentuate action. After about six takes and some great ideas from Mike, the above is what we got. Damn it was fun. Mike said we made history — he didn’t think any skater had ever had a live piano track before.

In exchange for musicking his video, Mike took some professional head-shots of me. Here they are:

I even got a shout out in the MountainX. Kind of weird seeing my name listed next to the Rolling Stones. I love a good collaboration, and though the output is unique, what made it work was not. Can’t wait til the next project.

4th of July from John Carl on Vimeo. Music: The Guest Room “When Might Makes Right”

Back in early July, @bentmatches and I were standing at the Skybar a little after a beautiful sunset when our friend @AVLSkylie introduced us to three people looking for an adventure to film. Being expert adventurers, we shared a knowing glance and smile and set to work. Here is what they said about that night:

We went on a road trip for 30 days to 30 cities filming one story each day of people around America. This day we were in downtown Asheville, NC for the 4th of July celebration. We didn’t know a soul but by the end of the night we found ourselves in a parking lot with new-found friends setting off fireworks illegally. And we got there in a convertible driven by a friend who looked like he fronted a 50’s rockabilly band. All in all, an amazing night and one of the more meaningful videos we made.

This night was one of the best of my life. To be young, in love, and feel like the king of town in a hot red convertible surrounded by the talented and beautiful — I know of little better. It doesn’t matter how old I get, I’ll always want to go back to that day. I’d like to go back right now.

The folks we met were an artist collective (The Duck Duck Collective) and were filming a series of short spots all over the Eastern US for a really hip Levi-Strauss ad campaign. They had awesome equipment and great personalities and threw themselves into the fun of the evening. We went to the Admiral first and danced, then went to that abandoned parking lot off Merrimon where we lit all the fireworks. You can see me driving the convertible and vaulting through the fireworks at the end. I’m so glad there is footage of this day of my life.

I’m very excited to have my Andrew Bird tickets (Orange Peel, $25) already purchased. He is one of my absolute favorite musicians and songwriters out there right now, and his live shows are spectacular displays of his musicianship and uniquely melancholy heart, proudly bruised and bandaged in esoteric words that make me reach for a taxonomic glossary. His lyrics recall the most flowing lines of Tennyson’s work, without the classical allusions. I saw him in 2007 with Reese, who played with him briefly in the early 2000s in the Squirrel Nut Zippers, and I got to shake his hand and speak to him briefly, but in rare form I was star struck and couldn’t think of a single bit of conversation. I’m not familiar with the opening act — has anybody seen St. Vincent?

He’s just as good live as in the video. I’ll see you at the show.

Yes, I agree that Detroit is a great city for journalism. The difference is there is no hurricane or war or financial crisis to capture headlines blame — but there are some Pulitzers hiding in the rubble.

For the past two years I’ve gone to the POP Asheville Festival, and I had an awesome time both years. I blogged about it, too.

The festival right now is in a little trouble — the money kind of trouble. Now, I don’t have any money to give but if I can support a great event by talking about it here, then I’m gonna do that. Please, Asheville, support this festival — it’s one of my favorite things about living here and gives such color to an otherwise grey January. I’ve discovered great bands, had an awesome time on LaZoom, and felt like I was stealing it because it was all so cheap. So yes, I would be willing to pay more. I’d pay $25 for two nights of awesome music and bus rides. I think it’s worth that.

Also, Congrats and Good Luck to my friend and former colleague Susanne Hackett of Pollinate Consulting on being named Director of the Festival.

This strikes me as really corny and poorly done. Make music, not films.

“Greatness is never given. It must be earned.” — Barack Obama

As some one who has had the occasion to do a lot of public speaking, I pay particular attention to speeches, speakers and general speechmaking of any sort whether it be impromptu, theatrical, extemperaneous or formal. The time for great formal speeches and statesmanship seemed to be in the past until the admittedly astounding rise of Barack Obama, and it is good to see such renewed interest in speeches from the Joe Six-Pack crowd. Yesterday, in the midst of a national moment of celebreation and rejoicing, we heard freshly sworn-in President Barack Obama’s first speech to the nation he now leads. More than just the typical quadrennial refreshing of executive authority and dusting off of pomp and circumstance, this event was widely anticipated to be a unifying touchstone and a lamplighting of historic proportion.

And it was.

Ok, yeah but how was the speech?

First, Slate’s annotated transcript and below, the video.

And now from  NYTimes.com, the professional criticisms.  

I found William Safire’s critique to be especially astute in the technical analysis. I even learned a new word. Anaphora: a rhetorical technique utilizing the same opening phrase in several successive sentences. He dates himself to the era of critical formalism by refusing to acknowledge context, thereby limiting the usefulness of his appraisal to the technical. I do agree with his assesment that there was no “great theme,” but I think that using a slightly wider lens we can see where this speech fits in at the tail end of  the candidate’s theme of “hope/change” and the start of a  presidential theme of “change/work.” Obama’s truly great speeches tend to come in the middle of an effort, not the start or end — hallmarks of someone that has thinking more evolutionary than revolutionary. With that in mind look to this summer for truly world-changing rhetoric.

Jeff Shesol then lauds the restraint displayed, which I agree with.

While commending the President’s aggressive attempt to spread the center to the “very boundaries of the nation,” Gordon Stewart is put-off by the lack of specifics. But in an administration promising to be the most open and transparent in history, are important speeches the place to elaborate on policy minutiae?

The Times also has this excellent interactive page with every inaugural address, with synopsis and a tag cloud for each.

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As promised… WRAL’s feature on the Tryon Daily Bulletin

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Scott Mason of WRAL TV in Raleigh features small towns and forgotten corners of North Carolina four days a week. They’ve just profiled Saluda, part of my old Polk County stomping grounds. It’s certainly hokey when you put it on TV, but Saluda is a pretty special place. Not shown in the video, but one of my favorite places in the world is Ward’s Grill. The place is a time warp, I absolutely love it. Next time I’m passing through I’ll have to take my camera and get some photos to go with my milkshake and cheeseburger.

WRAL also featured the Tryon Daily Bulletin, but that video isn’t linkable yet. I’ll post it when it is.