How About My New Site?
Hey everybody,
My management company Crush have completely redone this website and eventually will infiltrate and help out the hopelessly dated robmathes.com , which is barely updated and owned by Eaglevision, the wonderful people who filmed my Christmas Concert years ago for Public Television. They are good people but have no need to keep the site ridiculously current so here is robmathesmusic.com
I still have to add links and whatnot but Doug at Crush is keeping on me to make this a relevant and happening site and I am going to do my best to blog here at least once a week on stuff. I have been working feverishly on the new music for the gig on Tax Day at Satalla. It has been a moving process for a number of reasons. First of all, it is just incredibly moving and uplifting to play music with great musicians. There is nothing like it. The band stand comes alive and every trouble flies away in those moments.
Second of all, for those of our community that are able to live their whole lives as artists and pay their bills from underground people like young bands to superstars, God bless 'em. For us mortals who, for a number of reasons, never got signed in our twenties and found a life in a different part of the industry, it is an increasing challenge to make the time to remain an artist as much as one was earlier in life. In my case I think I am useless to the various people I have worked with from Phil Ramone and Vanessa Willliams to Lou Reed and Carly Simon if I am not still working as an artist in my own right. I don't believe this for all artisans, so to speak, but for myself I know it is true. The thing that drove many people to my orchestrating, writing, arranging and producing (lots o' pretentious words there) was my own work because when you express yourself freely in your own art, it is infinitely more honest and less pre-baked then when you are fitting yourself into a pre-conceived model or project concept. It is still important to be able to sublimate yourself for the benefit of whatever direction the project you are working on is going in but............ I feel that often, with myself and many of my friends and fellow artists, that our best foot forward is often the one we take freely and on our own.
Records that define this for me are Joni Mitchell's Heijira and Mingus, Peter Gabriel's US, XTC's Apple Venus Volumes 1 and 2, most of Conor Oberst's work though sometimes his voice hinders my enjoyment of the astonishing writing. Most of Duke Ellington and Keith Jarrett and Miles Davis has this in spades: freedom of expression at the same time allied to ridiculous genius both in leadership and in the people around these peerless artists. There are also many cases where artists implode when given too much freedom. Perhaps a case could be made that there are more cases of failed art because of the lack of constraints but it is still so thrilling to just WRITE!!!! Write what one feels for better or worse, always trying to be as communicative as possible obviously. I bow to the artists listed above but am grateful for this recent bit of creativity personally.
God bless you for visiting the site. I hope some of you will catch or caught the gig at Satalla. I am proud of a lot of that music and we will continue to pry into this idea of Saturday Night meeting Sunday morning though it is an old and tried and true concept given to us peerlessly by Howlin' Wolf, Blind Willie Johnson, Skip James, for that matter Prince at times, Earth, Wind and Fire, Duke Ellington certainly, and many others.
Peace out,
Robbie M
My management company Crush have completely redone this website and eventually will infiltrate and help out the hopelessly dated robmathes.com , which is barely updated and owned by Eaglevision, the wonderful people who filmed my Christmas Concert years ago for Public Television. They are good people but have no need to keep the site ridiculously current so here is robmathesmusic.com
I still have to add links and whatnot but Doug at Crush is keeping on me to make this a relevant and happening site and I am going to do my best to blog here at least once a week on stuff. I have been working feverishly on the new music for the gig on Tax Day at Satalla. It has been a moving process for a number of reasons. First of all, it is just incredibly moving and uplifting to play music with great musicians. There is nothing like it. The band stand comes alive and every trouble flies away in those moments.
Second of all, for those of our community that are able to live their whole lives as artists and pay their bills from underground people like young bands to superstars, God bless 'em. For us mortals who, for a number of reasons, never got signed in our twenties and found a life in a different part of the industry, it is an increasing challenge to make the time to remain an artist as much as one was earlier in life. In my case I think I am useless to the various people I have worked with from Phil Ramone and Vanessa Willliams to Lou Reed and Carly Simon if I am not still working as an artist in my own right. I don't believe this for all artisans, so to speak, but for myself I know it is true. The thing that drove many people to my orchestrating, writing, arranging and producing (lots o' pretentious words there) was my own work because when you express yourself freely in your own art, it is infinitely more honest and less pre-baked then when you are fitting yourself into a pre-conceived model or project concept. It is still important to be able to sublimate yourself for the benefit of whatever direction the project you are working on is going in but............ I feel that often, with myself and many of my friends and fellow artists, that our best foot forward is often the one we take freely and on our own.
Records that define this for me are Joni Mitchell's Heijira and Mingus, Peter Gabriel's US, XTC's Apple Venus Volumes 1 and 2, most of Conor Oberst's work though sometimes his voice hinders my enjoyment of the astonishing writing. Most of Duke Ellington and Keith Jarrett and Miles Davis has this in spades: freedom of expression at the same time allied to ridiculous genius both in leadership and in the people around these peerless artists. There are also many cases where artists implode when given too much freedom. Perhaps a case could be made that there are more cases of failed art because of the lack of constraints but it is still so thrilling to just WRITE!!!! Write what one feels for better or worse, always trying to be as communicative as possible obviously. I bow to the artists listed above but am grateful for this recent bit of creativity personally.
God bless you for visiting the site. I hope some of you will catch or caught the gig at Satalla. I am proud of a lot of that music and we will continue to pry into this idea of Saturday Night meeting Sunday morning though it is an old and tried and true concept given to us peerlessly by Howlin' Wolf, Blind Willie Johnson, Skip James, for that matter Prince at times, Earth, Wind and Fire, Duke Ellington certainly, and many others.
Peace out,
Robbie M
posted by robmathes at 11:42 AM
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