Good Brother Earl brings unconventional sound to Diesel

Good Brother Earl brings unconventional sound to Diesel

photo credit: Courtesy Joe Teplitz

http://www.pittnews.com/article/2009/12/10/good-brother-earl-brings-unconventional-sound-diesel

Larissa Gula
Staff Writer

Good Brother Earl
Dec. 12
6:30 p.m.
Diesel
$10 (includes new album Fiction)
(412) 431-8800

Good Brother Earl is a band with a weird name that doesn’t mean anything, yet it has a distinctive sound formed by a collection of rock, blues, country and pop influences.

It’s an unconventional sound for an unconventionally named band, but this gives Good Brother Earl an edge and more room to experiment. Apparently, the Steel City has the ability to produce an eclectic variety of musicians.

“We’re mostly all Pittsburghers,” Jeff Schmutz, the band’s acoustic guitar player and vocalist, said. He described the band’s journey to spread its name as a challenge that cannot be done alone.

“The local media has been extremely kind with both airplay and in support of not only us, but all local music in general,” Schmutz said. “Pittsburgh is no Los Angeles or Nashville, but it really has it’s own flavor.”

The flavor of Pittsburgh seems to include the media support — with positive coverage from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and City Paper — and fan support alike.

“The folks that see our shows regularly are fantastic,” he said. “They are all extremely supportive.”

Good Brother Earl set out in 1998 as a college band, keeping its shows within the Northeast. It has played at multiple venues in Ohio, New York, Maryland and Pittsburgh, and with the CD release party tomorrow night, the band has released three albums.

Good Brother Earl has the oddball sound and name going for it, but where did the name come from?

“The name Good Brother Earl came from one of our previous drummers,” he said. “We needed to advertise for a show and he said, ‘What about Good Brother Earl?’ The name just ended up sticking.”

With a name chosen, the band went on to develop its sound and try to record albums without being signed to a record label.

“Although with the advances in recording technology, it has gotten much easier [to record albums],” Schmutz said, “Skip Sanders, our keyboard player, has a studio in his house, which ... is great because you don’t have to worry about time constraints. We get to be creative and stress free while we record.”

“Ultimately, I think we’d love to be on a label, because you get to reap the benefits of all the publicity and advertising they offer,” Schmutz said about record labels. “I will say, though, that being able to have the creative freedom of an independent label is very nice. As an independent, we are solely responsible for how the record sounds and what songs appear on it.”

After 11 years, Good Brother Earl has come to enjoy both the hardships of recording and the adrenaline of live performance.

“Recording allows you to put your song and performance under a microscope and shape it and really mold it into something you like,” he said. “It’s more creative. Playing live is great too, though. It’s all about the energy of the music, and the five of us all playing our parts cohesively to make the performance something people can get into.”

Behind the scenes, the band members’ musical tastes are very broad — part of the reason the band’s sound itself is very eclectic. Schmutz named Led Zeppelin, Dave Matthews, U2 and some classical and jazz music as some of the musicians’ favorite artists.

It created a sound so different that categorization isn’t possible.

“We’ve always had a difficult time in trying to classify ourselves,” said Schmutz, “I think that fact that we enjoy so many different styles definitely comes out in our music.”

Good Brother Earl believes it has found a substantial fanbase in Pittsburgh, and next, it wouldn’t mind winning over other cities.

“Ultimately, we’d like to be on a national level, getting radio airplay, touring around the country,” Schmutz said. “But for right now, our local fans and the support we’re received from the local media has been fantastic.”

Column 12 – Inspirational Halloween

(Belated posting, I know. I tend to wait to post these until RKYV is released, and this one came out late.)

Column 12 – Inspirational Halloween

Here’s to keep my miraculous appearance a second time running short and fairly sweet. Hm, sweet? Like, treat sweet? Trick ‘r Treat?

By the time you all read this, I’m sure it will be long past Halloween. (Sorry, Randy, but it’s true.) Still, I think my leading topic can be appreciated year round, especially when the sun goes down and the chill in the houses begins to increase.

Ghosts.

I’m willing to bet every reader has a single defining thing they gravitate towards when they hear that word. Some people probably think of the sheet-like ghost that’s a white see through mass. Others might think of a person, a relative or historic figure known to haunt a location nearby. Still others may go the extra length to think of malicious forces we cannot explain.

The thing is, we don’t know that much about ghosts. In fact, at least in the U.S., the majority cannot agree on whether they exist or not. (I know spiritually differs between cultures. Stay with me.)

But ghosts are pretty darn popular, at least in the U.S. I even went and wrote a story about ghost walks in Pittsburgh for the Pitt News. The newspaper wanted their share of ghosts, too.

Two things made my personal experience all the more worthy. One, our stories are often rooted in historical fact. Two, the man telling the ghost stories was a marvelous professional freelance story teller. Raconteur, was he? Oh yes, he was. He knew how to tell, what to include, what was entertaining, and in the end, how to build the story and keep it flowing right up until the end without letting the audience escape the hook and net he’d made just for them.

See the point yet? Whether these stories were true or not, whether the listeners believed or not: story telling itself is an act of creation. Another person would certainly have shared the tales in a different style and made them a bit different with their own style. It’s the nature of tales to be adopted and changed. Fairy tales are all said to originate from three basic stories that were elaborated on and changed for the cultures and times they existed in. I don’t even want to try to count how many exist now.

Not only that, but creation serves not only a personal desire, but a public desire. I could tell my tour guide wanted to share his stories, and I could tell the audience wanted to be there – or at least managed to enjoy themselves if they were dragged along. It happens.

It’s important to remember when working on artwork, you truly can’t please everyone, but on the other hand: maybe it’s not always the best idea to always create what you specifically want. There has to be at least a sliver of public desire for the artwork to be shared artwork. If you are happy keeping it to yourself as a hobby, by all means: go for it. But if you want to go public at some point, you can try to tone down your own artwork for the public, at least for a time. Maybe you can release a special edition later once you have fans?

This topic of ghosts may be as debated as the idea of being yourself versus selling to the public, and I am sure we all will take on other topics of questionable nature (what is more fun for an artist?) but I think peaceful debate is half the fun.

In the end, the best artist makes the art as believable as my ghost tour guide did – at least for a time. But preferably, permanently. (Which was the case with the walk. Congrats, good sir.)

To read the article I wrote for the Pitt News, go to http://trolleygirl13.blogspot.com/2009/10/pittsburgh-ghost-walks.html .

Best, and Happy Halloween,
-Larissa

Engineer Artwork

http://www.pittnews.com/article/2009/12/01/cecil-balmond-blends-line-between-engineering-art

Cecil Balmond blends line between engineering, art

photo credit: Courtesy Arup

Take a walk through a different kind of maze.

Forum 64: H_edge
Cecil Balmond
Carnegie Museum of Art
412.622.3131

An engineering degree doesn’t prevent the inspired from dabbling in the arts.

Engineer Cecil Balmond has a metallic labyrinth currently featured at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Oakland.

The exhibit, “H_edge,” demonstrates how Balmond has used a visionary approach toward art and creatively applied mathematical formulas, ultimately challenging the definitions of architecture and engineering.

Balmond is an engineer of international recognition who has worked with many architects globally, as well as some artists, according to Raymund Ryan, architecture curator at Carnegie Museum of Art and curator for the exhibit.

“The key point on ‘H_edge’ is it’s an installation,” Ryan said. “It’s a labyrinth. The intention is people will enjoy wandering through this thing but be puzzled how it stays vertical.”

The structure seems so simple, yet it forms an elaborate and decorative maze. It’s composed of around 6,000 aluminum plates suspended between stainless-steel chains, which look like metallic ivy hanging from thin air.

The trick is that it’s standing from panels on the floor.

“The edges of leaves are inserted into the circles of the cables, and the whole thing becomes a taught system,” Ryan said. “It’s very light, but it creates a taut three-dimensional framework so that the thing can span like a portal or a doorway. But it looks very delicate. It’s strong and delicate at the same time.”

This delicate but sturdy creation is essentially an engineering and mathematical premise formed into a beautiful and intriguing object, he said.

“The end product, because it is so thought-out and more than applied science, becomes an art object in and of itself,” he said.

Born in Sri Lanka, Balmond is deputy chairman of Arup, the international design consultant firm based in London. Despite Balmond not being considered an artist by profession, Ryan believes “H_edge” is an admirable structure.

In addition to the actual metallic structure, there is a mirror on the wall that visually elongates the maze, as well as several information boxes, called light boxes, on the walls that contain designs and information about engineering principles.

For example, Balmond explains in short films embedded within the light boxes, the fractal “is a geometric idea that repeats at different scales.”

“In the light boxes especially ... you can see that the notion of a coastline becomes fractal,” he said. “As you zoom in further and further, it essentially maintains the same form. I think you can find these things in lungs. If you take an X-ray you can find strange patterns in the lungs. It’s the same pattern existing in the same scale within itself. That’s one idea he is interested in.”

The boxes also explain connections between cultures and nature that deal with universally important numbers and other ideas and patterns.

Informative as this may be, there’s another goal of the exhibit.

“It should be somewhat mysterious,” Ryan said. “We try to get the lighting right. We want the natural light there, as well, when possible. The light should bounce around the complicated structure and create a sense of mystery.”

All of this information and mystery is tucked into a single room, going by the official name “Forum 64: H_edge,” because Balmond’s installation is No. 64 to go through the separated exhibition space.

The room sits between the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the Carnegie Museum of Art. The little room usually holds contemporary works of art with just one or two pieces, creating a teaser for the visitors.

“‘H_edge’ appeals to the core historic mission of Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh: the advancement of art and science,” Ryan said. “It plays to the issue of arts and sciences coexisting.”

On Saturday Nov. 21, a Pitt Arts-sponsored trip included a guided tour of the exhibit along with lunch at the Museum Café.

This exhibition takes place from Nov. 14, 2009 to May 30, 2010 in the Forum Gallery of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. Balmond will also give a lecture Feb. 6, 2010.