personalized live album book to support Kiva
As winter semester kicks off at school, I’ll be looking for new ways to procrastinate on job interview prep and schoolwork. What better way than to scribble notes to you and your friends—and support a smart nonprofit at the same time?
Through the end of January, the good people at Port Merchandise will be taking orders for personalized copies of The Moment Always Vanishing book: the collection of photos, essays, and fan artwork that accompanies the 2009 live recording I made with the multi-talented Alex Wong.
$15 of each book sale will fund loans through Kiva, a great nonprofit that connects micro-lenders like you and me with small business owners around the world. (Fun footnote: turns out Kiva founder Matt Flannery listens to my music and comes to Bay Area shows whenever he can—thanks Matt!)
[ Order a personalized copy of The Moment Always Vanishing book ]
Dreaming Through the Noise songbook pre-order
David Beattie’s done it again! After months of painstaking work, he’s completed the piano songbook for Dreaming Through the Noise. This was a particularly challenging one, since I wrote this collection of songs with ensemble rather than solo piano in mind; this book showcases David’s arrangement talents as well as his keen transcribing ear. Hope it brings much enjoyment to all of you fellow piano players, singers, and human-powered home karaoke systems. Pre-orders ship January 20.
help bring a new musical to the stage!
I write to you from snowy Michigan, with thoughts of comfort and joy and a partridge in a pear tree—and a humble plea for your help. In brief:
* I’ve written a musical!
* It’s a collaboration with award-winning playwright Tanya Shaffer, along with many other brilliant, hard-working people in theater.
* Now we’re raising funds for the premiere production, and you can help get us there. (Psst: there are rewards involved, too.)
We’ve decided to raise $80,000 to produce a four-to-six week run of The Fourth Messenger in early 2013. We hosted our first fundraiser in July and raised $35,000 in contributions, bringing us almost halfway to our goal.
Here’s where you come in: we’re raising the rest through an online IndieGoGo campaign. A generous donor has promised to match each contribution dollar-for-dollar up to $20,000. That means if you give $10, we get $20, if you give $50, we get $100, and onward and upward! The donor will deposit the matching grant every time we pass a $1000 benchmark, so you can watch online as our tally grows. Because we’re fiscally sponsored, your gifts are tax-deductible to the full extent of the law. And of course, we’ve got perks that we’ll send you for various levels of contribution.
It doesn’t take a village to bring a musical to life—more like a small nation. Thank you for being a part of ours.
new videos
A few multimedia clips that might interest you:
The talk/performance I gave at TEDxBoulder 2010. Theme of the night was "Truth and Beauty." Not sure if I stuck to that, but it was a wonderful evening to be part of, and I’m glad they let me on stage in bare feet.
A lovely, subtly emotional stop-motion clay animation of "1br/1ba" by blueplanetpiano. Like the song itself, it’s almost G-rated.
"The Tower" gets a crush on a whole new set of boys: the ever-soulful David Berkeley, trumpeter/multi-instrumentalist Jordan Katz, and ninja videographer Matthew Washburn. Special thanks to David for letting me join in at his show that afternoon for KC Turner’s House Concerts.
new song “The Breaking Light”: download to support relief efforts in Japan
Alex and Vienna have released an exclusive benefit single, a live recording of a new song called “The Breaking Light.” 100% of proceeds go to relief efforts in Japan.
You can download it at Alex’s Bandcamp site:
http://alexwong.bandcamp.com/track/the-breaking-light-live-at-yoshis
The story:
A few weeks ago we tried covering Vampire Weekend’s song “I Think Ur A Contra,” using only the sound of Alex’s waterphone and Vienna playing the rim of a wineglass. It went over decently that night at Rockwood, but we thought the idea was worth exploring further, so we set a goal to write a whole new song around that sound—in time to perform at The Bell House two days later. On the car ride over to the venue, we had an arrangement but no words; we were still frantically writing lyrics as the opening band started their set. Sometimes songs are most fun written that way—quickly, one idea building off another, with no time for second-guessing or over-analyzing.
When news of the earthquake and tsunami reached us, we decided to record this new song at a live show and release it as a benefit single. Fortunately, the audience that night at Yoshi’s Jazz Club in Oakland, CA were more than game to join us. We’ve set the minimum donation at $5.00 but you are welcome (and encouraged) to donate more.
Thank you so much for listening and helping, and an extra special thanks to the audiences at Yoshi’s that night for their gorgeous choir singing!
a song in one day: Dubway Days on Breakthru Radio
Last summer I got to reunite with fellow songwriter Ben Arthur (from the 2004 Modern Troubadours tour) and the excellent crew at Dubway Studios (where we recorded part of Inland Territory), to make the premiere episode of Dubway Days, their brand-new video series on the creative process. The premise was to write, arrange and record a song in a single day. How’d it turn out? You can judge for yourself in the final installment…
NPR’S California Report, Earphoria interview
A couple of interviews I did a while back have aired recently:
- A short piece about the song “City Hall” for NPR’s California Report, in conjunction with current developments in the same-sex marriage debate.
- A longer session with Earphoria.fm, complete with a cappella snippets of songs I grew up with, from backstage at the Outside Lands festival in 2008.
cover song on Kerrigan-Lowdermilk album
Last summer I got to meet up with musical theatre composers Kait Kerrigan and Brian Lowdermilk, to work on a re-interpretation of a song from their show The Unauthorized Biography of Samantha Brown. It’s now the opening track on their new album, Our First Mistake. You can listen to “Say The Word” and other songs from the album on the Kerrigan-Lowdermilk website (“My Party Dress” is my personal favorite).
Warm Strangers songbook is out!
David Beattie has produced another masterpiece of meticulousness. Seriously…his emails of editing notes are pages and pages long. He’s pored over the most minute details of my piano-playing (much to my chagrin), and produced transcriptions that are somehow both faithful to the recordings and a lot more structured than my sometimes rambling arrangements. He’s included backing vocals and some of the lovely melodic lines on trumpet, cello and English horn, too.
Huge props to David, manager/wrangler Amy Cox, and Port Merchandise honcho Chip Taylor for bringing this together.
Order the Warm Strangers songbook on Port Merchandise:
http://viennateng.portmerch.com/stores/product.php?productid=17600
The Waking Hour songbook is still available too, of course, as well as all incarnations of the live album The Moment Always Vanishing: CD only, USB drive with extra tracks & bonus material, and the art book + CD.
fan discount for the 30A Songwriters Festival
Got plans to see Vienna in Florida on Friday? Why not make a weekend out of it, and see more great performers such as Shawn Mullins, Emily Saliers, and Dar Williams? The 30A Songwriters Festival is offering 10% off three-day Weekend Passes for fans. To get the discount, visit the ticket page, click Find Tickets, and enter 30A2011 in the promotion code box. When the festival starts, the prices will go up on both single-day and Weekend Passes, so be sure to buy tickets in advance.
Vienna’s set times for the festival are now available on the Tour page.