STOMPY BOOTS CHOIR RECORDING POSTPONED

Due to the fact that I've had a bad cold for the past week and
also the fact that many people who had wanted to be on this
recording can't be here this weekend,

I"VE DECIDED TO POSTPONE the PUT ON YOUR STOMPY BOOTS
CHORAL RECORDING SESSIONS
that had been schedule for tomorrow night
(SUNDAY) at STATIC (at the Blue Lagoon)

I'll be demonstrating the LOOPERLATIVE next weekend in Anaheim, as well,
so I'll try to reschedule some time after I return from that.

My apologies, but I can't even speak myself, let alone sing and I was going to have to
be the one to teach everyone the words and melody.

Yours, Rick Walker

WOOHOOO!!! I just reached 10,000 profile views today here at tribe.net

it's a silly, relatively meaningless milestone, but I really love the
tribe.net community and am proud of this little accomplishment.

I'm also really happy that tribe.net has finally been taken over by people
who truly love it and they're rapidly working out the kinks and coming back

Let's go get a beer!!!!!!

Videos from Translucent Dayglo Orange live looping tour in Scandinavia, Germany and the UK

I just created a youtube page to put up some of the videos that I'm recieving from
producers of the many looping festivals that I headlined in Europe and the UK this summer.

www.youtube.com/DaygloOrangePlastic

First ones up are videos from the Oslo Looping Festival and the Koln Looping festival,
including one from Oslo where I am playing the frame drum in this picture).

By the way, I should mention that I met an amazing photographer on this tour,
Oslo's Janne Marie Fatland. Check out her website, she has amazing sensitivity in her photography
and in all my years working with really professional photographers in the music business, she's one
of the most artistic I've experienced.

Please go check this wonderful artist out. Buy prints from her.........she'll be famous one day.

www.flickr.com/people/jannemarie/

More videos are on there way and I'm trying to assemble the companion volume to my
Translucent Dayglo Lime Green Plastic live looping CD from the tracks from this wonderful tour.

It will be called Translucent Dayglo Orange Plastic and I'm hoping to release it in time for the
annual Y2k8 International Live Looping Festival in Santa Cruz and San Jose on October 16-21st

SC NOISE FEST: 7-22 Meta Music 7:30 pm Free!

I'm proud to announce a little
mini
SANTA CRUZ NOISE FESTIVAL celebrating
the surprise visit from Japan'sTait R (of the wonderful
Junk Sick Dawn)

featuring:
TAITO (from Tokyo's NOISE CLINIC)
No, I see (rick walker's electro-acoustic noise)
A Funeral for Love (brian from Rapeshower)

META MUSIC
Tues 7-22
7:30 p.m.
All Ages
Free

Performing my European Tour Show, TRANSLUCENT DAYGLO ORANGE PLASTIC TONIGHT (FRIDAY) at the HIDE GALLERY in Santa Cruz

I have just returned from headlining 15 live looping festivals and events
in 8 countries in Scandinavia, Germany and the British Isles during
a long 2 month tour.

On that tour, the TRANSPARENT DAYGLO ORANGE PLASTIC tour
I came up with an unusual found sound/live looping show that
utilizes a lot of Dayglo Orange Plastic under
black lights (and bells and tuning forks
and vibrators and trumpet and overtone flutes and extended vocal
techniques and beat boxing and and and......

I will be performing this show at the very final performance at
the HIDE GALLERY in Santa Cruz, tonight (FRIDAY, July 11th)
from 10-11 p.m.

The HIDE , in case you don't know, is in the 2nd block
of FRONT STREET just South of LAUREL STREET downtown.

FRONT STREET curves to the right as you approach the hill
and that's where I'll be performing along with an amazing
electronica/pop band from LA, WOVEN (11 p.m.-12 a.m.).

They are one of my very favorite musical groups and they rarely
play in Northern California.

There will also be painters and airbrushers and dancers all
performing and creating while I play so it should be
a wonderful send off to one of the most creative institutions
that this town has seen in a long time.

I hope you can make it.

Great to be back in Santa Cruz,

I hope to see you at the show tonight.

yours, Rick Walker

....leaving this morning to headline in 8 countries in Scandinavia, Germany and the British Isles

The sun is rising and in a couple of hours, Chris (my intrepid tour manager, road technician and spouse)
and I are taking the Airporter up to San Franscisco to fly to Goteborg, in the south of Sweden
for the first gigs of a two month tour of 8 countries.

I'll be headlining 15 different Live Looping Festivals and gigs on this tour in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark,
Germany, Great Britain, Wales, and Northern Ireland, finishing up in the first week of July with a three day
vacation in Dublin, Ireland.

This means we'll travel to four countries we've never been to and add three more countries to the list of
places that have had Live Looping Festivals.

By the end of this summer, there will have been 70 live looping festivals in 20 countries in the last five years and
since we kick started this global movement in Santa Cruz in 2000.

I'm blessed to be getting tour support from the Swedish, Finnish and German governments and from Looperlative,
the fantastic live looping device that I am using and helping to design software functioning for.

I'll be blogging and sending pictures to my own website if anyone is interested in following this tour.

It's at www.looppool.info Just look for the link on the homepage to the BLOG.

See you all in July!

NUMB GUMS WALKER

Today I went to the dentist for the first time in
at least 10 years.

I got a really heavy deep cleaning and my mouth had to be completely anaesthetized
because of all the grinding that the dentist did. He told me that he was amazed at
how strong my immune system was considering how infected my teeth and gums were
and the fact that I wasn't on my back from it all. It was continual sinus infections that prompted me
to go in the first place.

He said I'd probably feel sick off and on for about a week as my body tries to get rid
of it all but that I"d probably feel better than I have in 20 years once it all got sorted out.

Afterwards, with a ton of bleeding and mouth that would not work, I woozily made my
way home and took this video of me trying to say tongue twisters.

I really am as out of it as I appear..................lol.

I find it kind of amusing.

www.looppool.info/NUMB_GUMS_WALKER

Oh, and by the way, it's a hefty 57 megs so don't try this without DSL or BROADBAND or
a relatively fast computer.

Yungchen Llamo and a perfect day

After a really hard week (I have my main harddrive with my next two records and all my recent video
work bite the dust and discovered to my horror that my backup drive had folders on it that were all empty),
I had a nearly perfect day today: you know, one of those days that Native American cultures have called,
"a good day to die".

My dear friend (and renaissance man, Craig McCoullough) helped me to recover my hard drive data
in the middle of a very busy week) and I just finished an amazing rehearsal with the 'Voice of Tibet",
the fantastic singer, Yungchen Llamo tonight.

I was asked to put together a band to help her do the concert tonight at the Rio Theatre in Santa Cruz
and I was very lucky to get Dana Massie on guitar, Daniel Robbins on uprigtht and electric fretless bass guitar
and Peter Cor on keyboards. We just had an amazing rehearsal. There were several times where the hairs
went up on the back of my neck.

During a break, Yungchen came into my living room and asked me to play a few of the many instruments that are in there.
I explained to her about my career in live looping and played for her on a Native Amercian double drone flute and a
chromatic Strumstick. She enjoyed what I played and asked me if I would do a duet improvisation with her tomorrow night.

After the rehearsal, I spent some time and tuned my Cooperman Kanjira and Hadjira to the fundamental pitches of the Native American
Flute and then tuned the Strumstick to it as well. I'm very, very excited and privileged to play, creatively with such an amazing
singer. We are even going to do a little overtone singing together tomorrow night.

She has the sweetest vibe, too. She said, "don't worry about making mistakes tomorrow night. This is not about competition.
It is our karma to be playing together and we should enjoy it."

I felt so calm and relaxed and centered after the maelstorm of my earlier week (computer woes and booking snafus on my upcoming trip).

Everything got worked out though and tonight we'll have a two camera crew filming the results.
I am having a hard time sleeping because I"m so excited.

Excited about doing a purely exploratory experimental show for my upcoming tour of Scandinavia, Northern Europe and the British Isles

I’m basically going to try out a whole bunch of different musical and found sound scenarios in an attempt to decide what my repertoire will be for my upcoming 10 country tour of Scandinavia, Great Britain and Norhtern Europe.

I'm going to be playing an odd and fun assortment of instruments and found sounds , including

clitoral vibrators and bar glasses, amplified massage toys, bullhorn feedback, purple pocket trumpet,
xaphoon, strumstick, frame drums, altered tuning kalimbas, conch shell, prepared guitar, extended vocal
techniques, harmonicas and other odd things that strike my fancy on the day of the show.

Wonderful Norwegian live looping guitarist, Tellef Ogrim, all the way from Oslo will be performing a solo set
and then we will have an duet improvisation at the end of the evening.

I go on at 8 p.m. at METAMUSIC and it's this Wednesday, March 26th.
I don't get a chance to do this kind of show with unlimited creative freedom so I hope
you can make it.

It's free, what the heck?

I just had a sad and sweet memory

I just started a new tribe tonight based on a project that I'm starting with a talented group of
international composers called the CT Collective. It's called the WEIRD MUSIC BOXES tribe.

tribes.tribe.net/weirdmusicboxes

We are all going to make music using a programmable Mechanical Music Box
for a project called CT TOY MUSIC BOX (using it as the only source of sound for each
composer's track)

Anyway, I was posting a first thread on suitable acoustic resonators for these devices when
I just had a sweet and sad thought:

I had plans to go over the hill to San Jose build a wooden resonating box for my
Kikkerland programmable music box with my father. He didn't return my calls
and I found out that he had passed away.

We sat that last night and he picked up the beautiful swiss music box that he had purchased for my mother
50 years ago and thumped on it and looked at it very intently trying to figure out what kind of wood it was made of and
what kind of construction we should use when we were to meet the next week.

It was such a testimony to his wonderfully inquisitive and inventive mind that, at the very end of his life, he was excited about how to build the right resonating box for me.