Benjarvis and I had the pleasure of playing the last night of a concert series on Riverside California at La Sierra University. It was a really quiet crowd, and we played all the songs with clean guitar tone. It definitely was a different vibe, but a lot of fun. Thanks so much, La Sierra for having us!
Why I’m buzzing my head…
I first colored my hair when I was 12 years old. I carefully picked-out a box of burgundy-red hair color from the drugstore after school one day when my mom took us in there to grab a few essentials. I snuck up to the counter with money I’d saved up and bought it when she wasn’t looking. I got it home and read the instructions carefully. While my parents were upstairs making dinner and playing with my siblings, I was downstairs in my bathroom, changing my appearance permanently for the first time. I applied the orange-colored liquid to my shoulder-length caramel light brown hair. I waited 30 minutes and got back in the shower to rinse it out. It smelled like cat pee and stung my eyes when the water hit my head releasing more fumes. I conditioned with the provided tube of moisture, and then hopped out of the shower so fast I fell over the edge of the tub and caught myself on my elbows. I got up, wiped the steam off the mirror and looked at myself. I was beautiful!
I’ve been thinking a lot about all the things we do to look beautiful, and I’ve been thinking about being in touch with my body, my spirit, my true self. As a stylist, my number one priority is not to make people stylish, but to help people find the look that makes them feel the most like themselves. At 12 years old, I just knew I was a redhead and I wanted to see myself that way.
Lately, I’ve had this nagging feeling. It’s a little thing, but its gotten bigger the more I think about it. Here it is: I haven’t seen my natural hair color since I was 12. That glove-clad little gal working ammonia-based color through her hair in the mirror is my last image of me with a hair color that grows out of my head.
These days I have to color my hair about every three weeks or so to keep my gray spots covered. Early pigment loss is hereditary in the Wolf family. I’ve been thinking, how sad would it be to me if one day I’m totally gray and decide to stop coloring my hair and realize I have no idea what my hair color was as an adult.
That thought brings me to the solution:
I’m buzzing my hair off.
Don’t worry. I haven’t lost my mind. I’m not having a breakdown, and I will color at least parts of my hair again. I’m a colorist for goodness’ sake! I just want to be part of the process of watching my family birthrite fill in AND I want to see what color the rest of my hair is!
Like any human, I do care what people think, and want to be accepted. I know some people won’t like how it looks, but hopefully they’ll at least understand the motivation.
I have known many beautiful people in my life. They were caring, compassionate, funny, irreverent, joyful, mysterious, magical, and full of life. They were fat, thin, bald, buxom, wrinkly, fresh-faced, made-up, natural, over-done, under-done, stylish, tasteless, and everything in between. They are all my inspiration for being beautiful no matter what kind of hair day I’m having. So, today I say goodbye for now to my fun artificial color and hello to my head-shape and the first look at my natural color in twenty years.
New song called “Sad Verse”
catch a storm…catch a storm and ride it to the ocean
catch a storm…catch a storm and ride it out to sea
i don’t have a place for you
there’s nowhere to stay
I don’t have the space for you anyway
love is born…love is born and tangled in a motion
love is born…love is born and tangled in the cord
i don’t have a place for you
there’s nowhere to stay
i don’t have the space for you anyway
gather….what matters…your heart in your throat…swallow it whole
like a sad….sad verse
in the depths…in the depths far below commotion
in the depths…far below the raging of the tides
instrumental pre-chorus
catch a storm and ride it to the ocean
PRIM! Video about Bad Band Photos
PRIM! is quite honored to be playing The Boro in Murfreesboro TN tomorrow. In celebration of this fancy occasion, we made this compilation of bad band photos and set it to the sounds of our rehearsal! Party on it!
Black Hoodie Folk
Photo by: Erick Anderson
Hi everyone! Just wanted to say a big THANK YOU for coming out to support our first weekend show at The Basement. I received a personal text from Grimey today thanking us for “killing it!” We are so happy that the southeast is responding to our experimentation and that you like what you hear! It gives us the courage and inspiration to keep exploring this new project and record an album as soon as we can. For those of you that haven’t seen Black Hoodie Folk yet, I’ll give you a little background into how the band works.
My mother was a passionate lover of original local music. She raised four children that all play in bands, produce, write and record. After her death, I discovered several huge boxes of cassette tapes. They were recordings she had made of things that were important to her–music lessons, baby talk, a sound sampling of our kitchen while we made cookies, and songs we wrote as children. Benjarvis and I started playing with the IPad sampling function on garageband and sampling from the cassettes. We now create tracks to play our songs to with these samples.
The Process:
First, I write a song on acoustic guitar and record it to the IPad.
Second, I might place a few key whole samples of a child talking or my dad talking or some musical instrument, etc.
Third, Benjarvis comes in and puts on headphones and gets to work creating a rhythmic structure. He speeds up the samples to slice them and make hat piffs out of baby’s squeeks and lowers them to make bass drums out of tuned-down dog barks, etc.
At that point, I’ll come back in and tweak what works and doesn’t work for me, and maybe add more stuff.
Then back to Benjarvis to start putting in keys, sub bass, and other bells and whistles.
We continue to trade the IPad back and forth over a few days until we have what we feel is a soundscape that is weird enough to please us, but not so busy that it doesn’t do the song a service.
We draw a lot of our inspiration for these tracks from the underground rappers and beat-makers on soundcloud and bandcamp that we listen to. Black Hoodie Folk is about mixing that druggy, synthy cloud with lots of intricate rhythm, the organic warmth of live percussion and cassette tape samples, the harsh grind of an electric guitar and the smoothness of a female vocal to create something cohesive, yet sonically lush and interesting.
We are having a really wonderful time making these tunes and we look forward to seeing all of you at a Black Hoodie Folk show.
Much love!
Tish
MC FutureBOOM…
So, a few of you may know that I have a time-travelling rapping alter-ego named FutureBOOM. Her counterpart, DJ Daddywater was played by the incomparable Travis Vance. Together we wrote a record called “2000 and Future” that never came out due to some legal issues. ANYWAY, we are taking that project in a new direction with new songs and a new plot twist. Details to follow, but for now, look at this cool picture of FutureBOOM by stencil-maker Makemebark!
In the studio with Matt Urmy
Today I went into the studio once again to provide background vocals for one of Matt Urmy’s records. It reminded me how much I love singing with him. The above video is just a little track we did for one of his acoustic records a while back. Enjoy.
Benjarvis and I rehearsing for our shows this weekend…chattanooga, atlanta, and then art festival in buckhead…cmon out!
This is one of our favorite songs, but its hard to get it just right and we don’t here, but I like this clip cuz you can see how much we both really like this song. 🙂 We’re groovin’.
Fresh off the Shaming…I wrote a song in 5.
Here is a slideshow of some pics from us doing The Shaming of the True. The music is a demo I made today of a song I wrote on the plane last night coming home from the show. It was an hour of heavy turbulence and was perfect inspiration for a song. This song is inspired by the conversations, sounds and sights of rehearsing and performing The Shaming of the True.
Here are the lyrics:
Lightning in the sky
Lightning in the sky
Will it bring me down next to you
When I fly
Bring me down like you do
When I try
You don’t know my name
You don’t know my name
Still you call to me call to me
Just the same
You call to me call to me
Anyway
Sometimes life is like that. Sometimes life is like that.
You don’t understand.
You don’t understand.
But you sing to me songs in three
like a fan
Cool me off with your breeze
like a fan.
Why should I explain
Why should I explain
How it feels to dive in a plane
in the rain
Cuz now we’re here and we’re the same
Anyway
Sometimes life is just that. Sometimes life defies fact.
Flying home, I looked out my window to see the lightning rip a hole into the sky
As we fell down, my only thought was I didn’t hold you long enough when last we said goodbye
Oh flying, on my way home, are these the kind of thoughts that people have before they die?
All I wonder as I fall down is did I hold you long enough when we said goodbye.
New Black Hoodie Folk Song!
We LOVED playing Hendershots in Athens, GA. Here’s a clip of the show…
Tishimon Records 