Friends of the Sea

Just off the boat from a six day tour of Lake Michigan, I can report that the walls are still swimming from rough seas as we disembarked from Manitowac, Wisconsin. Also, the captain of the fine vessel that carried me about liked the Recluse and White Pines CDs I played for him a great deal. We listened to them under sail, running down from Sturgeon Bay, at the foot of Door County. I am looking forward to seeing old friends and hopefully making some new ones at our upcoming barbecued house show. And I hope that many of you check out a new friend of Jumberlack, Manwolf, whose website we will be designing. You can check out his music on his MySpace page. I am too off-kilter from my time adrift and will write more soon. Until then, this is your First Mate signing off. - Dylan

Summerlack

We are planning a house show for this summer. It will be similar to our annual house show in the spring except it will probably be outside and involve a BBQ and more bands participating. So far we have White Pines/TH!TTG!/Dylan James Brock confirmed and working on getting more bands added to the lineup.

White Pines is hitting the road this summer and you can check his myspace out for more details. More dates will also be announced real soon.

That is all for now, I am on my way to see Bottomless Pit at Schubas. - Ken

Another Voice From the Manor

Hello,

I've been promising Dylan that I would jump into the Jumber blog-o-sphere for a while now and with him heading out to sea I have to fill the Internet with my ramblings. Although they may not be as a eloquently written as other, I hope they are entertaining at the very least. There is much going in the Jumberworld with the recent releases of Recluse and White Pines EP's and we are now planning the first Summerlack Festival at the Manor. We hope to build on the momentum of our annual spring house and bring more exciting musical acts to the west side of the mitten. Stay tuned for more details, but you can be expecting a cookout and great music. - Ken

The Business of Breaking Hearts.

There is a brilliance to the darkness in the music of That's Him! That's the Guy! We musicians often find ourselves in the business of breaking hearts. We look for the cracks and wedge them open. Sometimes this is done in one song, but with "An Army Life" David Martin and Joseph Scott plan heartbreak like a beach storming campaign. There are phases of kindness and beauty needed to establish a point from which the listener can descend into beautiful disappointment. The loveliness of their arrangements and harmonies coat the poison in sweetness. It goes down smooth and takes you down from the depths of your chest. I think of sitting a cafe in Montpelier, Vermont, where I broke down in tears listening to the pain in their concept album. Tears in public. I didn't gulp and gasp and sob, but there they were, those chills and that heart within mine, soothing me with the realism that only sad music ever finds, illuminating and casting relief at once, shadows and highlights whose truth sets its witness free. I am listening still. - Dylan

Freedom in a Parking Lot.

I first heard Freer in the parking lot outside an events hall in Muskegon, MI. It was August of 2006 and Jumberlack was a fresh idea and we had no idea where that idea would go. Nick Adams, who became their drummer, played me a burned CD of their fledgling recordings on the CD player in my little brother's blue Corolla. I heard the first bounces of a catchy melody and then the voice of Jeremy Freer and followed the song in my head to its conclusion. He asked me what I thought of them, in part because he thought that this was more my type of music than his. Freer had a show at the Magic Stick in a few weeks and were starting to go somewhere. Nick told me he was probably going to join them and I told him I thought that could be very good for him. Then we went on to the beach bar around a bend from that events hall. I never heard that CD again, nor did I have anything to do with getting Freer to collaborate with us, but I remember being there early enough to see it all coming. The whole drive to the beach bar we listened to the CD, and we had hopes that great things would follow that first listen. - Dylan

Echoes of the City's Edge.

I am sitting here thinking about music. I am remembering the first time I really listened to "Help Me, I'm On Fire." I was living in Manhattan at the time, in the strange unnamed region between Peter Cooper Village and Bellevue Hospital, an area that is only a gray blob on the maps seen in the back of Taxis. I had to walk five Avenue blocks from FDR to Madison Avenue to get to the one train that stopped near there, the six, and so I would make these long mixes to cover the length of my commute. I started putting some of David Martin's songs in with the other Pitchfork darlings and vintage gems I would stack the lists with. And I remember being struck, and struck hard, by how well "For the Learned" and "February" stood up in comparison to the Mountain Goats and the Boy Least Likely To and the other weird almost-folk I was listening to back then. It was the fall of 2005 and I still thought I would be in New York forever; Michigan was this strange dream of origin that I couldn't escape and couldn't forget, my own sort of colony after the fall of the American empire. So what began as a gesture toward how much I missed my musician friends in Michigan became a dance in celebration of them. I knew then that in my home there were people who were making real, beautiful art and that what was happening in the three boroughs where the indie kids are willing to live was no better and in most cases far, far worse than what my colleagues were doing in a part of the country some of the capital C City snobs couldn't even locate with their right palm facing them. So when I went broke and cashed out of the New York gambling table, I looked forward to reuniting with the artistic communities clinging to life, but living still, and living vibrantly, in the corners where the music we have made may yet echo still. - Dylan

Performances, in House and in the Studio.

Another day, another update from our hometown of Muskegon. More White Pines videos have been posted on the Jumberlack You Tube page. There are now a total of three videos there, of a solo performance by Joseph Patrick Scott. Right now the songs to be seen and heard, "Wolves Will Shiver", "Speak With The Dad", and "Our Things In The Street". Check them out, and look for three more uploads from this same performance at Jumberlack Manor back in late February. Also, check out the lyrics for two of my forthcoming songs on my MySpace blog. These songs, Tennessee Redhead and The Stomp, were recorded with Rick Johnson of Mustard Plug in his Cold War Studios in Grand Rapids. I am very pleased with how the performances came out and am looking forward to sharing the results with you all very soon. Until then, expect a stream of information from your source on the artists we love. - Dylan

Welcome to the Jumberworld.

Somehow or another, Jumberlack was not taken as a name for a blog. So I grabbed it. Expect a whole lot of updates to this little thing. For now, let's start with this video of Jumberlack artist Joseph Patrick Scott of White Pines playing a song of their debut EP, "A Face Made of Wood" available for order only physicially for now at their Jumberstore or on their artist page on the same site. The EP can be listened to in its entirety on our home page as well. And in case that wasn't enough for you, check out this video of the song "Wolves Will Shiver". That's enough out of this jumber for the day. Signing off, with promise of much more to come. - Dylan